Latest revision as of 20:57, 17 July 2025

CURRICULUM OF
THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM
PART 1

THE WORLDVIEW AND PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY OF MARXISM-LENINISM

For University and College Students

Not Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION

Translated and Annotated by Luna Nguyen

Foreword by Dr. Vijay Prashad

Introduction by Dr. Taimur Rahman

Edited, Annotated, and Illustrated by Emerican Johnson

Proofread by David Peat

Additional Contributions and Editorial Support by Iskra Books

Published in association with The International Magazine

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-2.png

1 License
2 Support for This Work
3 Dedication and Gratitude
4 Foreword
5 Preface to the First English Edition
6 Introduction
7 Editor’s Note
8 A Message From The International Magazine
9 Notes on Translation
10 Guide to Annotations
11 Original Vietnamese Publisher’s Note
12 Original Vietnamese Preface
13 Table of Contents
14 Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism
- 14.1 I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism
  - 14.1.1 1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts
    - 14.1.1.1 Annotation 1
  - 14.1.2 2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism
- 14.2 II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism
15 Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism
- 15.1 I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism
  - 15.1.1 1. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues
  - 15.1.2 2. Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism
    - 15.1.2.1 Annotation 55
    - 15.1.2.2 Annotation 56
- 15.2 II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness, and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness
16 Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics
- 16.1 I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics
  - 16.1.1 1. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics
  - 16.1.2 2. Materialist Dialectics
- 16.2 II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics
- 16.3 III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics
- 16.4 IV. Basic Laws of Materialist Dialectics
17 Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism
- 17.1 Annotation 210
- 17.2 1. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness
- 17.3 2. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth
  - 17.3.1 a. Opinions of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin about the Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth
  - 17.3.2 b. Truth, and the Relationship Between Truth and Reality
18 Afterword
- 18.1 Part 2: Historical Materialism
- 18.2 Part 3: Political Economy
- 18.3 Part 4: Scientific Socialism
- 18.4 Moving Forward
- 18.5 Advice on Further Study
- 18.6 Creative Application of Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics
- 18.7 In Closing
- 18.8 In Solidarity,
19 [Appendices]
- 19.1 Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics
- 19.2 Appendix B: the Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism
- 19.3 Appendix C: the Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics
- 19.4 Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge
- 19.5 Appendix E: Properties of Truth
- 19.6 Appendix F: Common Deviations From Dialectical Materialism
20 [Back Matter]
- 20.1 Glossary & Index

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“Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.”
- Ho Chi Minh

Support for This Work

Translating, annotating, and typesetting this book has taken three years, which would not have been possible without the support of our supporters on GoFundMe. GoFundMe is also the reason we are able to make the digital version of this entire text available for free online. We would therefore like to recognize all of our supporters:

Zach L.	Jake B.	Katia S.	Jimi C.
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There is still plenty of work to be done to complete the translation of this entire curriculum. If you would like to financially support our efforts, you can support us at:

BanyanHouse.org

Dedication and Gratitude

This book is dedicated to all the backers of the GoFundMe campaign that raised the funds to allow me to translate this text. What I initially believed would be a straightforward three-month process of translating ended up taking over three years of not just translation but also research, study, review, annotation, editing, proofreading, peer review, and more — with the incredible support of a full team of talented comrades — in order to make sure that everything would be digestible and intelligible for audiences outside of Vietnam. So, sincerely, thank you to everyone who backed this project for your patience, support, and encouragement.

Thank you to my husband and comrade, Emerican Johnson, who helped me throughout the translation process, and who did such a fantastic job editing, annotating, and illustrating this text. He was my constant dialectical companion as we grappled together with the spirit and meaning of the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Engels that are the bedrock of this text.

Thank you, also, to Iskra Books for the absolutely vital work they have done in helping us to edit this book and hold it to a high standard. We literally could not have done it without you. In particular, thank you to Ben Stahnke for organizing and cheerleading us through to the end, and to David Peat, for the painstaking, meticulous, and no-doubt frustrating work of proofreading our very, very, very imperfect writing!

Thanks also to The International Magazine, who have provided guidance and suggestions throughout the process of developing this translation. I have had the opportunity to work with The International Magazine on various projects and I can recommend no better monthly periodical for internationalist communists to learn about socialist movements around the world.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for taking the time to read through our translation and, in addition to providing their feedback and encouragement, also taking the time to write the foreword and introduction to the text. I know that you are both extremely busy with your own important literary, academic, and political work, so this assistance is so very much appreciated.

Finally, I would like to thank the Vietnamese intellectuals and experts who have done such an amazing job at taking hundreds of texts and distilling them down into the original volume which I have translated here. The elegance and precision with which they have been able to capture the essence of Marxism-Leninism is a monumental contribution to the workers of the world, and I only hope my translation does their work justice.

March, 2023
Luna Nguyen

Foreword

In December 1998, Fidel Castro addressed the Young Communist League’s 7^th Congress in Havana, Cuba. The Soviet Union and the Communist state system in Eastern Europe had collapsed, which greatly weakened the cause of socialism. Not only was Cuba hit hard by the loss of its major trading partners and political ally, but socialists in general were penalised by the lethal argument made by the imperialist sections that “socialism had been defeated.” After 1991, Fidel revived the phrase “Battle of Ideas,” which was had been used in The German Ideology by Marx and Engels. To the Young Communists, Fidel said:

We must meet, in the heat of the battle, with the leading cadres to discuss, analyse, expand on, and draft plans and strategies to take up issues and elaborate ideas, as when an army’s general staff meets. We must use solid arguments to talk to members and non-members, to speak to those who may be confused or even to discuss and debate with those holding positions contrary to those of the Revolution or who are influenced by imperialist ideology in this great battle of ideas we have been waging for years now, precisely in order to carry out the heroic deed of resisting against the most politically, militarily, economically, technologically and culturally powerful empire that has ever existed. Young cadres must be well prepared for this task.

Bourgeois ideology had tried to sweep aside its most fundamental critique – namely Marxism – by saying that “socialism had been defeated” and that Marxism was now obsolete. Marxist criticisms of the “casino of capitalism” – as Fidel called it – were being set aside both inside and outside the academy, with neoliberal policy confident enough to ignore each and every criticism. Fidel argued that young communists must learn the fundamentals of Marxism – including both dialectical and historical materialism – and must learn this in a way that was not religious thinking but would allow them to become “new intellectuals” of the movement, not those who repeat dogma but who learn to understand the conjuncture and become “permanent persuaders” for socialism (the two phrases in quotations are from Gramsci’s prison notebooks). The general ideological confidence of the cadre was not clear, and that confidence and their clarity needed to be developed in a project that Fidel called the Battle of Ideas.

During this period, communists around the world conceded that the demise of the Soviet Union had created a serious dilemma for the left. Not only were we penalised by the argument that “socialism has been defeated,” but our own arguments to explain the turbo-charged drive toward globalisation and neoliberalism and to make the case for a socialist alternative were not strong enough. One indication of that weakness was the 2001 World Social Forum meeting held in Brazil, which promoted the slogan – Another World is Possible, a weak slogan in comparison to a more precise slogan, such as – Socialism is Necessary. Young people drifted into our ranks in this decade, angered by the wretched social conditions created by the permanent austerity of neoliberalism, but bewildered about how to transform the political environment. The lack of Marxist political education was felt by socialist forces across the world, which is why many parties around the world began to revive a conversation about internal political education for cadre and active engagement with other social forces regarding the pressing issues of our time. Fidel called these two processes – internal education for the Party and external engagement on the dilemmas of humanity – the Battle of Ideas.

In line with this broad direction, the government of Vietnam worked with the national publishing house Sự Thật (The Truth) to develop a curriculum for universities and colleges in the country. They developed this order of study along five subject areas: Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism, Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This project worked to educate an entire population that would be able to understand the world in a rational and factual manner, outside the illusions of bourgeois ideology. Four years later, Communist Party of Vietnam adopted a resolution to take this work forward, and – under the leadership of Professor Nguyễn Viết Thông – produced this textbook that brought together the many themes of Marxism into focus for the introductory student and cadre. A book such as this is never easy to create, since it must introduce a form of thought that is critical of the foundations of bourgeois ideology – so it is a critique – but at the same time it provides a worldview to understand the actual world in which we live – so it is a science. The text must, therefore, show how bourgeois thought is partial and at the same time how socialist thought, creatively applied, will allow one to have a firmer grip of reality and be able to participate in fighting to transcend the obstinate facts of human indignity that are reproduced by capitalism. No manual such as this is without its flaws and without its limitations, but no education can start without a manual such as this one. The Vietnamese comrades have done a great service to the left movement by producing a text such as this, which can be used for study and then used as a model to develop similar texts in different parts of the world.

Ho Chi Minh, whose interpretation of Marxism and whose ideas about the Vietnamese Revolution, are all over this text once said: “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.” There can be no better injunction to get to work, to study and develop one’s theoretical armour and to use that theory as the guide to one’s work in the Battle of Ideas and in the battle for the streets, because this unity between theory and action is indeed praxis (thực tiễn), not just practice, but conscious human activity. That is what Fidel encouraged in his lectures on the Battle of Ideas.

Dr. Vijay Prashad.
5 March 2023
Caracas, Venezuela.

Preface to the First English Edition

The text of this book constitutes part one of a four-part curriculum on Marxism-Leninism developed and published by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam. This curriculum is intended for students who are not specializing in the study of Marxism-Leninism, and is intended to give every Vietnamese student a firm grounding in the political philosophy of scientific socialism.

The entire curriculum consists of:

Part 1: Dialectical Materialism (this text)

Part 2: Historical Materialism

Part 3: Political Economy

Part 4: Scientific Socialism

In Vietnam, each part of the curriculum encompasses one full semester of mandatory study for all college students. Each part builds upon the previous, meaning that this text is the foundation for all political theory education for most college students in Vietnam.

However, it is important to note that this is not the first encounter with dialectical materialism which Vietnamese students wil have had with these ideas, because Vietnamese students also study dialectical materialism, historical materialism, political economy, and scientific socialism from primary school all the way through high school.

As such, the text of this book — in and of itself — would probably seem overwhelmingly condensed to most foreign readers who are new to studying dialectical materialism. Therefore, we have decided to extensively annotate and illustrate this text with the information which would have been previously obtained in a basic Vietnamese high school education and/or provided by college lecturers in the classroom.

It is our desire that these annotations will be helpful for students who hope to learn these principles for application in political activity, but we should also make it clear to academic researchers and the like that our annotations and illustrations are not present in the original Vietnamese work.

We hope that this book will be useful in at least three ways:

As a comprehensive introductory textbook on dialectical materialism and for selfstudy, group study, classroom use, cadre training, etc.
As a quick and easy to reference handbook for reviewing the basic concepts of dialectical materialism for students of theory who are already familiar with dialectical materialism.
As a companion book for further reading of theory and political texts rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.

Also, please note: because this book is intended to be used as a quick reference and handbook for further study, there are many instances where we duplicate references, quotations, and other such information. We hope that this repetition may be an aid for study by reinforcing important concepts and quotations.

This book — Part 1 of the curriculum, which focuses on the universal philosophical system of dialectical materialism — serves as the foundation of all political theory and practice in the Vietnamese educational system as well as in the Communist Party of Vietnam and other organizations such as the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the Women’s Union, the Farmer’s Union, the Worker’s Union, etc. Dialectical materialism is the framework for theory and practice as well as the common lens through which Vietnamese socialists relate, communicate, and work together.

This book focuses almost exclusively on the written works of three historical figures:

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels... who initially developed the universal philosophy of dialectical materialism by synthesizing various pre-existing philosophical, political, economic, and historical tendencies including the idealist dialectical system of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the political economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the materialist positions of Ludwig Feuerbach, and countless others.

...and Vladimir Illyich Lenin, who further developed and defended dialectical materialism, expanded the analysis of imperialism, demonstrated how to apply dialectical materialism to local material conditions specific to Russia at the turn of the 20^th century, and made many other important contributions to dialectical materialist theory and practice.

Obviously, there are countless other writers, revolutionaries, philosophers, and scientists who have contributed to dialectical materialism and scientific socialism. This book focuses primarily on Marx, Engels, and Lenin, because these figures laid the foundations and formulated the basic principles of the philosophy of dialectical materialism and the methodology of materialist dialectics which are most universally applicable in all endeavors.

It is our desire that translating this important work into English will lead to further study, understanding, and appreciation of dialectical materialism as an applied philosophy which socialists can find value in returning to periodically. At the end of the book, we offer a glossary of terms which doubles as an index, appendices with summaries of important concepts and principles, and an afterword, in which we offer advice for further study and application of dialectical materialism.

At the time of publication, we are already in the process of translating and annotating Part 2 of this curriculum, which focuses on historical materialism, with the hopes of eventually releasing the full curriculum. Once it is complete, it will also be made available at BanyanHouse.org — where we also invite questions, constructive feedback, and suggestions.

Introduction

Just a generation ago, Vietnam was the site of the most brutal war of the 20^th century. More tonnage of bombs were dropped on the Vietnamese people than were dropped by all sides combined throughout the Second World War. In addition, countless acts of cruelty were used to scorch the very soil of the nation. By the end of Vietnam’s Resistance War Against Imperialist USA (known to the world as “the Vietnam War”), Agent Orange, napalm, and unexploded munitions had left a land deeply scarred and a people traumatised by decades of death and murder. The impression one had was that although Vietnam had won the war, it was so badly devastated that it could not hope to win the peace. But, miraculously, Vietnam is winning this war today, as the Vietnamese economy has become one of the fastest growing in the world and quality of life for the people is improving at a pace which could scarcely have been predicted in 1975.

No one could have imagined that Vietnam would turn around so dynamically and rapidly. How did they achieve this economic miracle? How could this nation — so recently devastated by imperialism and war — possibly be able to reconstruct, revive, rejuvenate, and rebuild? That story is now unfolding before our eyes.

Vietnam’s development has not come without hardship, struggle, setbacks, and mistakes. The people of Vietnam have had to learn hard lessons through struggle and practice to develop and strengthen ideological and theoretical positions. In this manner, the philosophical development of Vietnam deserves study and attention from socialists around the world. To outsiders, Vietnam can appear to be rife with contradictions. As depicted by Western journalists, Vietnam is simultaneously a success story driven by capitalist markets and a failing socialist state. Every victory is chalked up to private enterprise, while every setback is attributed to socialism. In this sense, the media has failed to understand the essential character of the core contradictions which drive the development of Vietnam politically, socially, and economically.

Luna Nguyen has used social media and played an incredibly important role in helping the English speaking world understand the complexities of such contradictions that beguile so many academics and experts. She has helped to give an insider’s perspective on her own country’s path of development towards socialism.

Nguyen’s translation of Part 1 of this influential work, Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, a textbook studied by university and college students across Vietnam, is yet another big step in the direction of making Vietnam’s understanding of their own country’s development available to the English reading world.

For me, as an outsider, it is fascinating not only to see how deeply Vietnamese society takes an interest in European philosophical development (referencing Hume, Hegel, Descartes, Marx, Engels, and so many other Europeans, almost as if they are figures seated in some ancient monastery in Fansipan), but, even more importantly, how they have assimilated that knowledge into the wider context of their own history, society, and culture. The textbook truly comes alive in all the parts where these ideas are shown to be relevant to Vietnam itself. For instance, the textbook stands out with discussions of Ho Chi Minh’s concept of “proletarian piety,” which artfully blends elements of Vietnamese culture with Marxist concepts of class consciousness, or the story of Chi Pheo, who stands as a sympathetic stand-in for the interpretation of the unique characteristics of the Vietnamese Lumpenproletariat. The book itself is an instance of the dialectic of the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete.

Just as importantly, it shows that, in Vietnam, Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought are not mere perfunctory rituals that are repeated like a learnt formula for this or that exam; but that although the Vietnamese political economy in its current form certainly contains contradictions which must be negated in the process of building the lower stage of socialism, the government remains seriously committed to the goals, theory, and practice of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.

Hence, I highly recommend this book, not merely because it is a well-illustrated and easy-to-read book on the principles of dialectical materialism, but more importantly because it offers an insight into how the Vietnamese government collects and synthesises the philosophical developments that are, on the one hand, the collective legacy of all of humanity, and, on the other hand, the concrete manifestations of a revolutionary theory of (and for the oppressed yearning for) freedom in every corner of the world.

March, 2023

Dr. Taimur Rahman

Editor’s Note

Working on this project has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life. In translating this work, Luna has opened a door for English speakers into the wide world of Vietnamese scholarship and pedagogy as it relates to socialist theory and philosophy.

Luna and I have done our best to capture the original meaning and spirit of the text. Furthermore, as we have mentioned elsewhere, our annotations and illustrations are intended only to contextualize and expand on the core information of the original text similarly to the class/lecture setting for which the curriculum is intended.

In their lives, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were never able to finish clarifying and systematically describing the philosophy of dialectical materialism which their work was built upon. Engels attempted to structurally define the philosophy in Dialectics of Nature, but unfortunately that work was never completed since he decided to prioritize publishing the unfinished works of Marx after his untimely death.

I believe that this text is a great step forward in that work of systematically describing the philosophical system of dialectical materialism and the methodological system of materialist dialectics. I also believe it’s worth noting how the Vietnamese scholars who crafted this curriculum have embedded the urgent necessity of action — of creative application of these ideas — throughout the text in a way that I find refreshing and reflective of the works of Marx and Engels themselves.

As the text will explain, dialectical materialism is a universal system of philosophy which can be utilized to grapple with any and every conceivable problem which we humans might encounter in this universe. In Vietnam, dialectical materialism has been used to delve into matters of art, ethics, military science, and countless other fields of inquiry and endeavor. It is my hope that this book will, likewise, lead to a wider and fuller understanding and (more importantly) application of dialectical materialism in the Western world.

March, 2023

Emerican Johnson

A Message From The International Magazine

The International Magazine began in 2020 to connect international socialist movements and to strengthen the voice of oppressed people across the globe. We have been following the work of Vietnamese communists in their unique path towards peace, prosperity, and the construction of socialist values with a keen eye and much interest. It is with this spirit of international solidarity and a deep desire to learn from and share wisdom from our comrades around the world that we celebrate the release of this First English Edition of The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism Part 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism.

Ho Chi Minh once said: “In order to build socialism, first and foremost, we need to have socialist people who understand socialist ideology and have socialist values.”

To this end, Vietnamese communists have expended tremendous resources building a curriculum on Marxist-Leninist philosophy and analysis which includes dialectical materialism, materialist dialectics, scientific socialism, historical materialism, and political economy. These topics are taught in primary and secondary schools and are mandatory subjects for all students attending public universities in Vietnam. Beyond that, Vietnam offers free degrees to students who wish to study Marxist theory and philosophy and Ho Chi Minh Thought (defined as the application of Marxist philosophy to the unique material conditions of Vietnam). In this manner, Vietnam has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to developing “socialist people” “with socialist values.”

We are, therefore, extremely excited to have worked with Luna Nguyen on the translation and annotation of Part 1 of the Vietnamese university curriculum on the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism into English, which will make this unique perspective of socialist theory available to comrades around the world for the first time.

After having read through this volume, which outlines the fundamentals of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, we find the most important lesson to be the relationship between theory and practice. According to the Vietnamese scholars who authored the original text, Marxist-Leninist philosophy must be considered a living, breathing philosophy which requires application in the real world — through practice — in order to be made fully manifest.

We hope that readers of this volume will carry forward this guidance through practice which suits your material conditions, wherever you are in the world.

If you would like to learn the perspective of socialists from other nations around the world, we invite you to visit our website at InternationalMagz.com — the home of The International Magazine online. There, you will find articles written by comrades from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities with a clear bias towards anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism!

In solidarity,

The Editorial Team of The International Magazine

Notes on Translation

Vietnamese is a very different language from English, which has presented many challenges in translating this book. Whenever possible, I have tried to let the “spirit” of the language guide me, without altering the structure, tone, and formatting of the book.

One thing you will likely notice right away: this book is highly condensed! This is because most Vietnamese students are already familiar with these concepts. We have added annotations to try to make the book more digestible for those of you who are new to Marxism-Leninism, and these annotations are explained on the next page.

I have worked hard to try to make the language in this book consistent with the language used in popular translations of works from Marx, Lenin, etc., that would be familiar to English-language students of Marxism-Leninism. That said, different translators have been translating these texts into English for over a century, such that different word choices have been used to relate the same concepts, and even Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different terms to describe the same concepts in many instances (not to mention the fact that Marx and Engels wrote primarily in German, whereas Lenin wrote primarily in Russian).

As such, I have made it my first priority to keep the language of this translation internally consistent to avoid confusion and, again, to match the spirit of the original text as much as possible. As a result, you may find differences between the translation choices made in this text and other translations, but it is my hope that the underlying meaning of each translation is properly conveyed.

March, 2023

Luna Nguyen

Guide to Annotations

This book was written as a textbook for Vietnamese students who are not specializing in Marxism-Leninism, and so it is meant to be a simple and condensed survey of the most fundamental principles of dialectical materialism to be used in a classroom environment with the guide of an experienced lecturer. That said, a typical Vietnamese college student will already have been exposed to many of the concepts presented herein throughout twelve years of primary and secondary education. As such, in translating and preparing this book for a foreign audience who are likely to be reading it without the benefit of a lecturer’s in-person instruction, we realized that we would need to add a significant amount of annotations to the text.

These annotations will take the following forms:

Short annotations which we insert into the text itself [will be included in square brackets like these].

Longer annotations which add further context and background information will be included in boxes like this.

We have also added diagrams to our annotations, as well as a detailed glossary/index and appendices, which are located in the back of the book. We hope these will resources will also be of use in studying other texts which are rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.

Original Vietnamese Publisher’s Note

In 2004, under the direction of the Central Government, the Ministry of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật [Vietnamese for “The Truth,” the name of a National Political Publishing House], published a [political science and philosophy] curriculum for universities and colleges in Vietnam. This curriculum includes 5 subjects: Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism, Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This curriculum has been an important contribution towards educating our students — the young intellectuals of the country — in political reasoning, so that the next generation will be able to successfully conduct national innovation.

With the new practice of education and training, in order to thoroughly grasp the reform of the Party’s ideological work and theory, and to advocate for reform in both teaching and learning at universities and colleges in general, on September 18^th, 2008, the Minister of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật, have issued a new program and published a textbook of political theory subjects for university and college students who are not specialized in Marxism — Leninism with Associate Professor and Doctor of Philosophy Nguyen Viet Thong as chief editor. There are three subjects:

Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

Curriculum of Ho Chi Minh Thought

Curriculum of the Revolutionary Path of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism was compiled by a collective of scientists and experienced lecturers from a number of universities, with Pham Van Sinh, Ph.D and Pham Quang Phan, Ph.D as co-editors. This curriculum has been designed to meet the practical educational requirements of students.

We hope this book will be of use to you.

April, 2016

NATIONAL POLITICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE — SỰ THẬT

Original Vietnamese Preface

To implement the resolutions of the Communist Party of Vietnam, especially the 5^th

Central Resolution on ideological work, theory, and press, on September 18^th, 2008, The Ministry of Education and Training has issued Decision Number 52/2008/QD-BGDDT, issuing the subject program: The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. In collaboration with Truth — the National Political Publishing House — we published the Curriculum of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in MarxismLeninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.

The authors of this text have drawn from the contents of the Central Council’s previous programs (Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, and Scientific Socialism) and compiled them into national textbooks for Marxist-Leninist science subjects and Ho Chi Minh Thought, as well as other curriculums for the Ministry of Education and Training. The authors have received comments from many collectives, such as the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Administration, the Central Propaganda Department, as well as individual scientists and lecturers at universities and colleges throughout the country. Notably:

Associate Professor To Huy Rua, Ph.D, Professor Phung Huu Phu, Ph.D, Professor Nguyen Duc Binh, Professor Le Huu Nghia, Ph.D, Professor Le Huu Tang, Ph.D,

Professor Vo Dai Luoc, Ph.D, Professor Tran Phuc Thang, Ph.D, Professor Hoang

Chi Bao, Ph.D, Professor Tran Ngoc Hien, Ph.D, Professor Ho Van Thong, Associate

Professor Duong Van Thinh, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Van Oanh, Ph.D,

Associate Professor Nguyen Van Hao, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Duc Bach, PhD. Pham Van Chin, Phung Thanh Thuy, M.A., and Nghiem Thi Chau Giang, M.A.

After a period of implementation, the contents of the textbooks have been supplemented and corrected on the basis of receiving appropriate suggestions from universities, colleges, the contingent of lecturers of political theory, and scientists. However, due to objective and subjective limitations, there are still contents that need to be added and modified, and we would love to receive more comments to make the next edition of the curriculum more complete.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism

1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts

Marxism-Leninism is a system of scientific opinions and theories which were built by Karl Marx^[1] and Friedrich Engels^[2], and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin^[3]. Marxism-Leninism was formed and developed by interpreting reality as well as building on preceding ideas. It provides the fundamental worldview* and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice. It is a science that concerns the work of liberating the proletariat from all exploitative regimes with the ambition of liberating all of humanity from all forms of oppression.

Marxism-Leninism is made up of three basic theories which have strong relationships with each other. They are: Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist Political Economics, and Scientific Socialism.

Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism studies the basic principles of the movement and development of nature, society and human thought. It provides the fundamental worldview and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice.

Based on this philosophical worldview and methodology, Marxist-Leninist Political Economics studies the economic rules of society, especially the economic rules of the birth, development, and decay of the capitalist mode of production, as well as the birth and development of a new mode of production: the communist mode of production.

Scientific Socialism** is the inevitable result of applying the philosophical worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism, as well as Marxist-Leninist Political Economics, to reveal the objective rules of the socialist revolution process: the historical step from capitalism into socialism, and then communism.

Annotation 1

* A worldview encompasses the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about ourselves as human beings, and about life and the position of human beings in the world.

** The word “science,” and, by extension, “scientific” in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning. Friedrich Engels was the first to describe the philosophy which he developed with Marx as “Scientific Socialism” in his book Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

However, it should be noted that the English phrase “scientific socialism” comes from

Engels’ use of the German phrase “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.”

“Wissenschaft” is a word which can be directly translated as “knowledge craft” in German, and this word encompasses a much more broad and general concept than the word “science” as it’s usually used in English.

In common usage, the word “science” in English has a relatively narrow definition, referring to systematically acquired, objective knowledge pertaining to a particular subject. But “wissenschaft” refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding. “Wissenschaft” is used in any study that involves systematic investigation. And so, “scientific socialism” is only an approximate translation of “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.” So, “scientific socialism” can be understood as a body of theory which analyzes and interprets the natural world to develop a body of knowledge, which must be constantly tested against reality, with the pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat.

Even though these three basic theories of Marxism-Leninism deal with different subjects, they are all parts of a unified scientific theory system: the science of liberating the proletariat from exploitative regimes and moving toward human liberation.

2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism

There have been two main stages of the birth and development of Marxism-Leninism:

1. Stage of formation and development of Marxism, as developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

2. Stage of defense and developing Marxism into Marxism-Leninism, as developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism

Annotation 2

The following sections will explain the conditions which led to the birth of Marxism. First, we will examine the Social-Economic conditions which lead to the birth of Marxism, and then we will examine the theoretical premises upon which Marxism was built. Later, we will also discuss the impact which 18^th and 19^th century advances in natural science had on the development of Marxism.

- Social-Economical Conditions

Marxism was born in the 1840s. This was a time when the capitalist mode of production was developing strongly in Western Europe on the foundation of the industrial revolution which succeeded first in England at the end of the 18^th century. Not only did this industrial revolution mark an important step forward in changing from handicraft cottage industry capitalism into a more greatly mechanized and industrialized capitalism, it also deeply changed society, and, above all, it caused the birth and development of the proletariat.

Annotation 3

Marx saw human society under capitalism divided into classes based on their relation to the means of production.

Means of production are physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including machinery, factory buildings, tools, and anything else used in producing goods and services. Capitalism is a political economy defined by private ownership of the means of production.

Within the framework of Dialectical Materialism, all classes are defined by internal and external relationships [see The Principle of General Relationships, p. 107]; chiefly, classes are defined by their relations to the means of production and to one another.

The proletariat are the working class — the people who provide labor under capitalism, but who do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who do own means of production: the bourgeoisie. As the owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie are the ruling class under capitalism.

According to Marx and Engels, there are other classes within the capitalist political economy. Specifically, Marx named the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat. Marx defined the petty bourgeoisie as including semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx described the petty bourgeoisie as:

... fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society... The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.

Vietnam’s Textbook of History for High School Students gives this definition of the petty bourgeoisie in the specific context of Vietnamese history:

The petty bourgeois class includes: intellectuals, scientists, and small business owners, handicraftsmen, doctors, lawyers, and civil servants. The vast majority of contemporary intellectuals before the August Revolution of 1945, including students, belonged to the petty bourgeoisie. In general, they were also oppressed by imperialism and feudalism, often unemployed and uneducated.
The petty bourgeoisie were intellectually and politically sensitive. They did not directly exploit labor. Therefore, they easily absorbed revolutionary education and went along with the workers and peasants.
However, the intelligentsia and students often suffer from great weaknesses, such as: theory not being coupled with practice, contempt for labor, vague ideas, unstable stances, and erratic behavior in political action.
Some other petty bourgeoisie (scientists and small businessmen, freelancers, etc.) were also exploited by imperialism and feudalism. Their economic circumstances were precarious, and they often found themselves unemployed and bankrupt. Therefore, the majority also participated in and supported the resistance war and revolution. They are also important allies of the working class.
In general, these members of the petty bourgeoisie had a number of weaknesses: self-interest, fragmentation, and a lack of determination. Therefore, the working class has a duty to agitate and spread propaganda to such members of the petty bourgeoisie, organize them, and help them to develop their strong points while correcting their weaknesses. It is necessary to skillfully lead them, make them determined to serve the people, reform their ideology, and unite with the workers and peasants in order to become one cohesive movement. Then, they will become a great asset for the public in resistance war and revolution.

Marx defined the “lumpenproletariat” as another class which includes the segments of society with the least privilege — most exploited by capitalism — such as thieves, houseless people, etc.

In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx defined the lumpenproletariat as: “The ‘dangerous class’ (lumpenproletariat), the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society.” Marx did not have much hope for the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, writing that they “may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”

Political Theories, an official journal of the Ho Chi Minh National Institute of Politics, discussed the lumpenproletariat in the specific context of Vietnamese revolutionary history:

It should be noted that Marxism-Leninism has never held that the historical mission of the working class is rooted in poverty and impoverishment. Poverty and low standards of living make workers hate the regime of capitalism, and causes disaster for workers, but the basic driving force behind the revolutionary struggle of the working class lies in the very nature of capitalist production and from the irreconcilable contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie.
Moreover, it should not be conceived that a class is capable of leading the revolution because it is the poorest class. In the old societies, there were classes that were extremely poor and had to go through many struggles against the ruling class, but they could never win and keep power, and did not become the ruling class of society.
History has proven that the class that represents newly emerging productive forces which are able to build a more advanced mode of production than the old ones can lead the revolution and organize society into the regime they represent. Fetishizing poverty and misery is a corruption of Marxism-Leninism...
The very existence of the lumpenproletariat is strong evidence of the inhumane nature of capitalist society, which regularly recreates a large class of outcasts at the bottom of society.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, millions of Vietnamese people were forced to leave their homes in rural farmlands to work for plantations and factories which were owned by French colonialists. These workers were functionally enslaved, being regularly physically abused by colonial masters, barred from any education whatsoever, and receiving only the bare minimum to survive. As a result, under French colonial rule, about 90% of Vietnamese were illiterate and the French aimed to indoctrinate Vietnamese people into believing that they were inferior to the French.

The French colonialists also worked with Vietnamese landlords to exploit peasants in rural areas. Those peasants received barely enough to survive and, like the plantation slaves, were prohibited from receiving education. Because Vietnamese peasants and colonial slaves composed the majority of workers while being so severely oppressed and living in conditions of such abject poverty, it was difficult to fully distinguish between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat in Vietnam during the colonial era.

During this time, Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists developed the philosophy of “Proletarian Piety.” The word “piety,” here, is a translation of the Vietnamese word hiếu, which originally comes from the Confucianist philosophy of “filial piety.” Filial piety demanded children to deeply respect, honor, and obey their parents. Through the concept of Proletarian Piety, Ho Chi Minh adapted this concept to proletarian revolution, calling for communists to deeply love, respect, and tirelessly serve the oppressed masses. This philosophical concept sought to unite the proletariat, lumpenproletariat, and petty bourgeoisie into one united revolutionary class. Even some feudal landlords and capitalists — who were, themselves, oppressed by the colonizing French — were willing to fight for communist revolution and were welcomed into the revolutionary movement if they were willing to adhere to the principle of proletarian piety. The working class and peasantry would lead the revolution, the more privileged classes would follow, and all communist revolutionists would serve the oppressed masses through sacrifice and struggle.

During this period, many novels were written and circulated widely which featured main characters who were members of the lumpenproletariat or enslaved by the French, such as Bỉ Vỏ, a story about a beautiful peasant girl who was forced to become a thief in the city, and Chí Phèo, the story of a peasant who worked as a servant in a feudal landlord’s house who was sent to prison and became a destitute alcoholic after being released. The purpose of these stories was to show the cruelty of the colonialist-capitalist society of Vietnam in the 1930’s and to inspire proletarian piety, including empathy and respect for the extreme suffering and oppression of the lumpenproletariat, peasantry, and colonial slaves. These stories also presented sympathetic views of intellectuals and members of the petty bourgeoisie: for instance, in the novel Lão Hạc, the son of a peasant leaves to work for a French plantation and the father never sees him again. The aged peasant becomes extremely poor and sick without the support of his son, and the only person in the village who helps him is a teacher, representing the intellectual segment of the petty bourgeoisie.

The writers of these novels were communists who wanted to promote the principles of proletarian piety. Rather than looking down on the most oppressed members of society, and rather than sewing distrust and contempt for the petty bourgeoisie, Vietnamese communists inspired solidarity and collaboration between all of the oppressed peoples of Vietnam to overthrow French colonialism, feudalism, and capitalism. Proletarian piety was crucial for uniting the divided and conquered masses of Vietnam and successfully overthrowing colonialism. Note that these strategies were developed specifically for colonial Vietnam. Every revolutionary struggle will take place in unique material conditions^[4], and the composition and characteristics of each class will vary over time and from one place to another. It is important for revolutionists to carefully apply the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to accurately analyze class conditions in order to develop strategies and plans which will most suitably and efficiently lead to successful revolution.

The deep contradictions* between the socialized production force** and the capitalist relations of production*** were first revealed by the economic depression of 1825 and the series of struggles between workers and the capitalist class which followed.

Annotation 4

* See: Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction, p. 175.

** In Marxism, “socialization” is simply the idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc.

The production force is the combination of the means of production and workers within any society. The “Socialized Production Force,” therefore, is a production force which has been socialized — that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. Under capitalism, the “Socialized Production Force” consists of the proletariat, or the working class, as well as means of production which are owned by capitalists.

*** Marx and Engels defined “relations of production” as the social relationships that human beings must accept in order to survive. Relations of production are, by definition, not voluntary, because human beings must enter into them in order to receive material needs in order to survive within a given society. Under capitalism, the relations of production require the working class to rent their labor to capitalists to receive wages which they need to procure material needs like food and shelter. This is an inherent contradiction because a small minority of society (the capitalist class) own the means of production while the vast majority of society (the working class) must submit to exploitation through wage servitude in order to survive.

Examples of such early struggles include: the resistance of workers in Lyon, France in 1831 and 1834; the Chartist movement in Britain from 1835 to 1848; the workers’ movement in Silesia (Germany) in 1844, etc. These events prove as historical evidence that the proletariat had become an independent political force which pioneered the fight for a democratic, equal, and progressive society.

Annotation 5

Here are some brief descriptions of the early working class movements mentioned above:

Resistance of Workers in Lyon, France:

In 1831 in France, due to heavy exploitation and hardship, textile workers in Lyon revolted to demand higher wages and shorter working hours. The rebels took control of the city for ten days. Their determination to fight is reflected in the slogan: “Live working or die fighting!”

This resistance was brutally crushed by the government, which supported the factory owners. In 1834, silk mill workers in Lyon revolted again to demand the establishment of a republic. The fierce struggle went on for four days, but was extinguished in a bloody battle against the French army. About 10,000 insurgents were imprisoned or deported.

The Chartist Movement in Britain:

Chartism was a working class movement in the United Kingdom which rose up in response to anti-worker laws such as the Poor Law Amendment of 1834, which drove poor people into workhouses and removed other social programs for the working poor. Legislative failure to address the demands of the working poor led to a broadly popular mass movement which would go on to organize around the People’s Charter of 1838, which was a list of six demands which included extension of the vote and granting the working class the right to hold office in the House of Commons.

In 1845, Karl Marx visited Britain for the first time, along with Friedrich Engels, to meet with the leaders of the Chartist movement (with whom Engels had already established a close relationship). After various conflicts and struggles, Chartism ultimately began to decline in 1848 as more socialist-oriented movements rose up in prominence.

Workers’ Movement in Silesia, Germany:

In June, 1844, disturbances and riots occurred in the Prussian province of Silesia, a major center of textile manufacturing. In response, the Prussian army was called upon to restore order in the region. In a confrontation between the weavers and troops, shots were fired into the crowd, killing 11 protesters and wounding many others. The leaders of the disturbances were arrested, flogged, and imprisoned. This event has gained enormous significance in the history of the German labor movement.

In particular, Karl Marx regarded the uprising as evidence of the birth of a German workers’ movement. The weavers’ rebellion served as an important symbol for later generations concerned with poverty and oppression of the working class in German society.

It quickly became apparent that the revolutionary practice of the proletariat needed the guidance of scientific theories. The birth of Marxism was to meet that objective requirement; in the meantime, the revolutionary practice itself became the practical premise for Marxism to continuously develop.

- Theoretical Premises

The birth of Marxism not only resulted from the objective requirement of history, it was also the result of inheriting the quintessence* of various previously established frameworks of human philosophical theory such as German classical philosophy, British classical political economics, and utopianism in France and Britain.

Annotation 6

* In the original Vietnamese, the word tinh hoa is used, which we roughly translate to the word quintessence throughout this book. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word quintessence, it has an exclusively positive connotation. Quintessence should not be confused with the universal category of Essence, which is discussed on p. 156.

German classical philosophy, especially the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel^[5] and Ludwig Feuerbach^[6], had deeply influenced the formation of the Marxist worldview and philosophical methodology.

Annotation 7

German classical philosophy was a movement of idealist philosophers of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Idealism is a philosophical position that holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within the human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason is the best way to seek truth, and that consciousness is thus the only reliable source of knowledge and information.

One of Hegel’s important achievements was his critique of the metaphysical method.

Annotation 8

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality by classifying things, phenomena, and ideas into various categories. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Metaphysical positions view nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. Engels explained the problems of metaphysics in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — hese were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years.

But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.

Francis Bacon (1561 — 1626) is considered the father of empiricism, which is the belief that knowledge can only be derived from human sensory experience [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. Bacon argued that scientific knowledge could only be derived through inductive reasoning in which specific observations are used to form general conclusions. John Locke (1632 — 1704) was another early empiricist, who was heavily influenced by Francis Bacon. Locke, too, was an empiricist, and is considered to be the “father of liberalism.”

Engels was highly critical of the application of metaphysical philosophy to natural science. As Engels continues in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes — ideas — are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses... For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.
At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.

Dialectical Materialism stands in contrast to metaphysics in many ways. Rather than splitting the world into distinct, isolated categories, Dialectical Materialist philosophy seeks to view the world in terms of relationships, motion, and change. Dialectical Materialism also refutes the hard empiricism of Bacon and Locke by describing a dialectical relationship between the material world and consciousness [see: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].

For the first time in the history of human philosophy, Hegel expressed the content of dialectics in strict arguments with a system of rules and categories.

Annotation 9

Dialectics is a philosophical methodology which searches for truth by examining contradictions and relationships between things, objects, and ideas. Ancient dialecticians such as Aristotle and Socrates explored dialectics primarily through rhetorical discourse between two or more different points of view about a subject with the intention of finding truth.

In this classical form of dialectics, a thesis is presented. This thesis is an opening argument about the subject at hand. An antithesis, or counter-argument, is then presented. Finally, the thesis and antithesis are combined into a synthesis, which is an improvement on both the thesis and antithesis which brings us closer to truth.

Hegel resurrected dialectics to the forefront of philosophical inquiry for the German Idealists. As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Hegel’s work’s greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought.

Hegel’s great contribution to dialectics was to develop dialectics from a simple method of examining truth based on discourse into an organized, systematic model of nature and of history. Unfortunately, Hegel’s dialectics were idealist in nature. Hegel believed that the ideal served as the primary basis of reality. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels strongly rejected Hegel’s idealism, as well as the strong influences of Christian theology on Hegel’s work, but they also saw great potential in his system of dialectics, as Marx explained in Capital (Volume 1):

The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

Starting with a critique of the mysterious idealism of Hegel’s philosophy, Marx and Engels inherited the “rational kernel” of Hegelian dialectics and successfully built materialist dialectics.

Annotation 10

In order to understand the ways in which the critique of Hegel’s philosophy by Marx and Engels led to the development of dialectical materialism, some background information on materialism — and the conflicts between idealist and materialist philosophy in the era of Marx and Engels — is needed.

Materialism is a philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sensory experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought through reasoning and human consciousness. The history and development of both idealism and materialism are discussed more in the section The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues on page 48.

In the era of Marx and Engels, the leading philosophical school of materialism was known as empiricism. Empiricism holds that we can only obtain knowledge through human sense perception. Marx and Engels were materialists, but they rejected empiricism (see Engels’ critique of empiricism in Annotation 8, p. 8).

One reason Marx and Engels opposed the strict empiricist view was that it made materialism vulnerable to attack from idealists, because it ignored objective relations and knowledge that went beyond sense data. The empiricist point of view also provided the basis for the subjective idealism of George Berkeley [see Annotation 32, p. 27] and the skepticism of David Hume. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism is empiricist in that it supports the idea that humans can only discover knowledge through direct sense experience. Therefore, Berkeley argues, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter.”

Similarly, David Hume’s radical skepticism, which Engels called “agnosticism,” denied the possibility of possessing any concrete knowledge. As Hume wrote in A Treatise on Human Nature: “I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.” Hume’s radical skepticism lay in his empiricist belief that the only source of knowledge is sense experience; but Hume went a step further, doubting that even sense experience could be reliable, adding: “The essence and composition of external bodies are so obscure, that we mustnecessarily, in our reasonings, or rather conjectures concerning them, involveourselves in contradictions and absurdities.”

Later, in the appendix of the same text, Hume argues that conscious reasoning suffers from the same unreliability: “I had entertained some hopes (that) the intellectual world ... would be free from those contradictions, and absurdities, whichseem to attend every explication, that human reason can give of the material world.”

Engels dismissed radical skepticism as “scientifically a regression and practically merely a shamefaced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world.” Engels directly refutes radical skepticism in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

... how do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? ... whenever we speak of objects, or their qualities, of which (we) cannot know anything for certain, but merely the impressions which they have produced on (our) senses. Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to beat by mere argumentation. But before there was argumentation, there was action... And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception.

This concept of determining the truth of knowledge and perception through practical experience is fundamental to dialectical materialist philosophy and the methodology of materialist dialectics, and is discussed in further detail in Chapter 3, p. 204.

Another weakness of empiricism is that it denies the objectiveness of social relations, which cannot be fully and properly analyzed through sensory experience and observation alone. Marx saw that social relations are, indeed, objective in nature and can be understood despite their lack of sensory observability, and that doing so is vital in comprehending subjects such as political economy, as he observes in Capital Volume I:

(The true) reality of the value of commodities contrasts with the gross material reality of these same commodities (the reality of which is perceived by our bodily senses) in that not an atom of matter enters into the reality of value. We may twist and turn a commodity this way and that — as a thing of value it still remains unappreciable by our bodily senses.

In other words, Marx pointed out that no amount of sense data about a commodity will fully explain its value. One can know the size, weight, hardness, etc., of a commodity, but without analyzing the social relations and other aspects of the commodity which can’t be directly observed with the senses, one can never know or understand the true value of the commodity. The materialism of Marx and Engels acknowledges the physical, material world as the first basis for reality, but Marx and Engels also understood that it was vital to account for other aspects of rational knowledge (such as social relations). Marx and Engels believed that empiricist materialism had roughly the same flaw as idealism: a lack of a connection between the material and consciousness. While the idealists completely dismissed sense data and relied exclusively on reasoning and consciousness, the empiricists dismissed conscious thought to focus solely on what could be sensed.

It is important to note that, while Marx and Engels rejected empiricism, they did not reject empirical knowledge nor empirical data which is collected from scientific observation [see Annotation 216, p. 210]. On the contrary, empirical data was key to the works of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism. As Lenin explained: “(Marx) took one of the economic formations of society – the system of commodity production – and on the basis of a vast mass of data which he studied for not less than twenty-five years gave a most detailed analysis of the laws governing this formation and its development.” And so, the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels served to bridge the gap between idealism and materialism. They believed that our conscious thoughts are derived from material processes, but that consciousness can also influence the material world. This is discussed in more detail in the section “Materialism and Dialectical Materialism” on page 48.

Marx and Engels also criticized many limitations of Feuerbach’s methodology and viewpoint* — especially Feuerbach’s prescriptions for how to deal with social problems — but they also highly appreciated the role of Feuerbach’s thought in the fight against idealism and religion to assert that nature comes first, and that nature is permanent and independent from human willpower.

Annotation 11

* Viewpoint, point of view, or perspective, is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which problems are considered. Marx and Engels were critical of Feurbach’s hyper-focused humanist viewpoint.

Feuerbach’s atheism and materialism offered an important foundation for Marx and Engels to develop from an idealist worldview into a materialist worldview, which led them directly to developing the philosophical foundation of communism.

Annotation 12

Ludwig Feuerbach was one of the “Young Hegelians” who adapted and developed the ideals of Hegel and other German Idealists. Feuerbach was a humanist materialist: he focused on humans and human nature and the role of humans in the material world. Like Marx and Engels, Feuerbach dismissed the religious mysticism of Hegel. Importantly, Feuerbach broke from Hegel’s religious-mystical belief that humans descended from supernatural origins, instead describing humans as originating from the natural, material world.

Feuerbach also distinguished between the objectivity of the material external world and the subjectivity of human conscious thought, and he drew a distinction between external reality as it really exists and external reality as humans perceive it. Feuerbach believed that human nature was rooted in specific, intrinsic human attributes and activities. As Feuerbach explains in The Essence of Christianity: “What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is conscious, or what constitutes the specific distinction, the proper humanity of man? Reason, Will, Affection.”

Feuerbach explained that the actions of “thinking, willing, and loving,” which correspond to the essential characteristics of “reason, will, and love,” are what define humanity, continuing: “Reason, Will, Love, are not powers which man possesses, for he is nothing without them, he is what he is only by them; they are the constituent elements of his nature, which he neither has nor makes, the animating, determining, governing powers — divine, absolute powers — to which he can oppose no resistance.”

In his Collected Works, Feuerbach further explains that materialism is supported by the fact that nature predates human consciousness:

Natural science, at least in its present state, necessarily leads us back to a point when the conditions for human existence were still absent, when nature, i.e., the earth, was not yet an object of the human eye and mind, when, consequently, nature was an absolutely non-human entity (absolut unmenschliches Wesen). Idealism may retort: but nature also is something thought of by you (von dir gedachte). Certainly, but from this it does not follow that this nature did not at one time actually exist, just as from the fact that Socrates and Plato do not exist for me if I do not think of them, it does not follow that Socrates and Plato did not actually at one time exist without me.

Marx and Engels were heavily influenced by Feuerbach’s materialism, but they took issue with Feuerbach’s sharp focus on human attributes and activities in isolation from the external material world. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach: “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that... reality... is conceived only in the form of the object... but not as sensuous human activity.”

“Sensuous human activity” has a very specific meaning to Marx; it grew from two conflicting schools of thought:

The idealists believed the external world can only be understood through the active subjective thought processes of human beings, while the empiricist materialists believed that human beings are passive subjects of the material world. Marx synthesized these contradicting ideas into what he called “sensuous activity,” which balanced idealist and materialist philosophical concepts.

According to Marx, humans are simultaneously active in the world in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, and passive in the sense that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world (see Chapter 2, p. 53). So, Marx and Engels believed that Feuerbach was misguided in defining human nature by our traits alone, portraying “the essence of man” as isolated from the material world and from social relations. In addition, Feuerbach’s humanism was based on an abstract, ideal version of human beings, whereas the humanism of Marx and Engels is firmly rooted in the reality of “real men living real lives.” As Engels wrote in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy:

He (Feuerbach) clings fiercely to nature and man; but nature and man remain mere words with him. He is incapable of telling us anything definite either about real nature or real men. But from the abstract man of Feuerbach, one arrives at real living men only when one considers them as participants in history... The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development. This further development of Feuerbach’s standpoint beyond Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in The Holy Family.^[7]

Marx and Engels believed that human nature could only be understood by examining the reality of actual humans in the real world through our relationships with each other, with nature, and with the external material world. Importantly, it was Marx’s critique of Feuerbach which led him to define political action as the key pursuit of philosophy with these immortal words from Theses on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

The British classical political economics, represented by such economists as Adam Smith^[8] and David Ricardo^[9], also contributed to the formation of Marxism’s historical materialist conception [see p. 23].

Smith and Ricardo were some of the first to form theories about labor value in the study of political economics. They made important conclusions about value and the origin of profit, and about the importance of material production and rules that govern economies. However, because there were still many limitations in the study methodology of Smith and Ricardo, these British classical political economists failed to recognise the historical characteristic of value*; the internal contradictions of commodity production**; and the duality of commodity production labor***.

Annotation 13

* Historical Characteristic of Value

Marx generally admired the work of Smith and Ricardo, but saw major flaws which undermined the utility of their classical economic theories. Perhaps chief among these flaws, according to Marx, was a tendency for Smith and Ricardo to uphold an ahistoric view of society and capitalism. In other words, classical economists see capitalism as existing in harmony with the eternal and universal laws of nature, rather than seeing capitalism as a result of historical processes of development [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Marx did not believe that the economic principles of capitalism resulted from nature, but rather, from historical conflict between different classes. He believed that the principles of political economies changed over time, and would continue to change into the future, whereas Smith and Ricardo saw economic principles as fixed, static concepts that were not subject to change over time. As Marx explains in The Poverty of Philosophy:

Economists express the relations of bourgeois production, the division of labour, credit, money, etc. as fixed, immutable, eternal categories... Economists explain how production takes place in the above mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement that gave them birth... these categories are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.

** Internal Contradictions of Commodity Production

In Marxist terms, a commodity is specifically something that has both a use value and a value-form (see Annotation 14, p. 16), but in simpler terms, a commodity is anything that can be bought or sold. Importantly, capitalism transforms human labor into a commodity, as workers must sell their labor to capitalists in exchange for wages. Marx pointed out that contradictions arise when commodities are produced under capitalism: because capitalists, who own the means of production, decide what to produce based solely on what they believe to be most profitable, the commodities that are being produced do not always meet the actual needs of society. Certain commodities are under-produced while others are over-produced, which leads to crisis and instability.

*** Duality of Commodity Production Labor

In Capital, Marx describes commodity production labor as existing in a duality — that is to say, it exists with two distinct aspects:

First, there is abstract labor, which Marx describes as “labor-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure.” This is simply the expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without any regard to production or value of the labor output. Second, there is concrete labor, which is the aspect of labor that refers to the production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor.

Marx argues that human labor, therefore, is simultaneously, an activity which will produce some specific kind of product, and also an activity that generates value in the abstract. Marx and Engels were the first economists to discuss the duality of labor, and their observations on the duality of labor were closely tied to their theories of the different aspects of value (use value, exchange value, etc.), which was key to their analysis of capitalism.

Smith and Ricardo also failed to distinguish between simple commodity production and capitalist commodity production*, and could not accurately analyse the form of value** in capitalist commodity production.

Annotation 14

* Commodity Production

Simple commodity production (also known as petty commodity production) is the production of commodities under the conditions which Marx called the “Simple Exchange” of commodities. Simple exchange occurs when individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. Under simple exchange, workers directly own their own means of production and sell products which they have made with their own labor.

Simple commodity production and simple exchange use what Marx referred to as “C→M→C mode of circulation” [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. Circulation is simply the way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another.

C→M→C stands for:

Commodity → Money → Commodity

So, with simple commodity production and simple exchange, workers produce commodities, which they then sell for money, which they use to buy other commodities which they need. For example, a brewer might make beer, which they sell for money, which they use to buy food, housing, and other commodities which they need to live.

In the C→M→C mode of circulation, the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities sold with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase with the money thus obtained.

Capitalist commodity production and capitalist exchange, on the other hand, are based on the M→C→M’ mode of circulation.

M→C→M’ stands for:

Money → Commodity → More Money

Under this mode of circulation, capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling commodities for MORE MONEY than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining more money.

Capitalist commodity production, therefore, uses the M→C→M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. The capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor which produced the commodities.

** Value-Form

This is one of the most important, and potentially most confusing, concepts in all of Marx’s analysis of capitalism. Marx explains these principles at length in Appendix of the 1^st German Edition of Capital, Volume 1, but here are some of the fundamentals:

One of Marx’s key breakthroughs was understanding that commodities have many different properties which have different effects in political economies.

Just as Commodity Production Labor exists in a duality of Concrete Labor and Abstract Labor (see Annotation 13, p. 15), commodities themselves also exist in duality according to Marx:

Commodities have both “use-value” and “value.”

Use-Value (which corresponds to Concrete Labor) is the commodity’s tangible form of existence; it is what we can physically sense when we observe a commodity. By extension, use-value encompasses how a commodity can be used in the material world.

Value, or the Value-Form, is the social form of a commodity, which is to say, it represents the stable relationships intrinsic to the commodity [see Content and Form, p. 147].

Note that this relates to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].

Value-forms represent relational equivalencies of commodities, i.e.: 20 yards of linen = 10 pounds of tea

These relational equivalencies are tied to the equivalent labor value (see Annotation 15 below, and Annotation 26, p. 23) used to produce these commodities. The value-form of a commodity is the social form because it embodies relational equivalencies:

1. The value-form represents the relationship between the commodity and the labor which was used to produce the commodity.

2. The value-form represents the relationship between a commodity and one or more other commodities.

As Marx explains in Appendix to the 1^st German Edition of Capital: “Hence by virtue of its value-form the (commodity) now stands also in a social relation no longer to only a single other type of commodity, but to the world of commodities. As a commodity it is a citizen of this world.”

Understanding the social form of commodities — the value-form — was crucial for Marx to develop a deeper understanding of money and capitalism. Marx argued that classical economists like Ricardo and Smith conflated economic categories such as “exchange value,” “value,” “price,” “money,” etc., which meant that they could not possibly fully understand or analyze capitalist economies.

British classical political economists like Ricardo and Smith outlined the scientific factors of the theories of labor value* and contributed many progressive thoughts which Marx adapted and further developed.

Annotation 15

* Adam Smith and David Ricardo revolutionized the labor theory of value, which held that the value of a good or service is determined by the amount of human labor required to produce it.

Thus, Marx was able to solve the contradictions that these economists could not solve and he was able to establish the theory of surplus value*, scientific evidence for the exploitative nature of capitalism, and the economic factors which will lead to the eventual fall of capitalism and the birth of socialism.

Annotation 16

* David Ricardo developed the concept of surplus value. Surplus value is the difference between the amount of income made from selling a product and the amount it costs to produce it. Marx would go on to expand on the concept of surplus value considerably.

Utopianism' had been developing for a long time and reached its peak in the late 18^th century with famous thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon^[10], François Marie Charles Fourier^[11] and Robert Owen^[12]. Utopianism sought to elevate the humanitarian spirit and strongly criticised capitalism by calling attention to the misery of the working class under capitalism. It also offered many far-ranging opinions and analyses of the development of human history and laid out some basic foundational factors and principles for a new society. However, Utopianism could not scientifically address the nature of capitalism. It failed to detect the Law of Development of Capitalism^[13] and also failed to recognise the roles and missions of the working class as a social force that can eliminate capitalism to build an equal, non-exploitative society.

Annotation 17

The early industrial working class existed in miserable conditions, and the political movement of utopianism was developed by people who believed that a better world could be built. The utopianists believed they could create “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity through education, science, technology, and communal living. For instance, Robert Owen was a wealthy textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Harmony, Indiana, in the USA. Owen purchased the entire town of New Harmony in 1825 as a place to build an ideal society. Owen’s vision failed after two years for a variety of reasons, and many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19^th century drew up similar plans which also failed.

Utopianism was one of the first political and industrial movements that criticized the conditions of capitalism by exposing the miserable situations of poor workers and offering a vision of a better society, and was one of the first movements to attempt to mitigate the faults of capitalism in practice.

Unfortunately, the utopianists were not ideologically prepared to replace capitalism, and all of their attempts to build a better alternative to capitalism failed. Marx and Engels admired the efforts of the utopianist movement, and studied their attempts and failures closely in developing their own political theories, concluding that the utopianists failed in large part because they did not understand how capitalism developed, nor the role of the working class in the revolution against capitalism.

As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

(The) historical situation also dominated the founders of Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.

Engels is explaining, here, that — in a sense — the utopian socialists were victims of arriving too early. Capitalism had not yet developed enough for its opponents to formulate plans based on actual material conditions, since capitalism was only just emerging into a stable form. Without a significant objective, material basis, the utopians were forced to rely upon reasoning alone to confront capitalism.

In this sense, the early historical utopianists fell into philosophical utopianism in its broader sense — defined by the mistaken assertion that the ideal can determine the material [see Annotation 95, p. 94]. In believing that they could build a perfect society based on ideals and “pure fantasy” alone without a material basis for development, the utopians were, in essence, idealists. As Engels explained: “from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism.” Engels concluded that in order to successfully overthrow capitalism, revolution would need to be grounded in materialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.”

The humanitarian spirit and compassionate analysis which the utopians embodied in their efforts to lay out concrete features of a better future society became important theory premises for the birth of the scientific theory of socialism in Marxism.

- Natural Science Premise:

Along with social-economic conditions and theory premises, the achievements of the natural sciences were also foundational to the development of arguments and evidence which assert the correctness of Marxism’s viewpoints and methodology.

Annotation 18

Natural science is science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc.

Three major scientific breakthroughs which were important to the development of Marxism include:

• The law of conservation and transformation of energy scientifically proved the inseparable relationships and the mutual transformation and conservation of all the forms of motion of matter in nature.

• The theory of evolution offered a scientific basis for the development of diverse forms of life through natural selection.

• Cell theory was a scientific basis proving unity in terms of origins, physical forms and material structures of living creatures. It also explained the development of life through those relationships.

These scientific discoveries led to the rejection of theological and metaphysical viewpoints which centered the role of the “creator” in the pursuit of truth.

Annotation 19

For centuries in Europe, natural science and philosophy had been heavily dominated by theological viewpoints which centered God in the pursuit of truth. Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, and many other metaphysical philosophers who developed the earliest theories of modern natural science centered their religious beliefs in their philosophies. These theological viewpoints varied in many ways, but all shared a characteristic of centering a “creator” in the pursuit of philosophical and scientific inquiry.

Together, the law of conservation and transformation of energy, the theory of evolution, and cell theory provided an alternative viewpoint which allowed scientists to remove the “creator” from the scientific equation. For the first time, natural scientists and philosophers had concrete theoretical explanations for the origin and development of the universe, life, and reality which did not rely on a supernatural creator.

Marx and Engels closely observed and studied the groundbreaking scientific progress of their era. They believed strongly in materialist scientific methods and the data which they produced, and based their analysis and philosophical doctrines on such observations. They recognized the importance and validity of the scientific achievements of their era, and they developed the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism into a system which would help humans study and understand the whole material world.

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels explained that ancient Greek dialecticians had correctly realized that the world is “an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away.”

Engels goes on to explain that it was understandable for early natural scientists to break their inquiries and analysis down into specialized fields and categories of science to focus on precise, specific, narrow subject matters so that they could build up a body of empirical data. However, as data accumulated, it became clear that all of these isolated, individual fields of study must somehow be unified back together coherently and cohesively in order to obtain a deeper and more useful understanding of reality.

As Engels wrote in On Dialectics:

Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative. It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance.

As science grows increasingly complex, a necessity develops for a philosophical and cognitive framework which can be used to make sense of the influx of information from disparate fields. In Dialectics of Nature, Engels explains how dialectical materialism is the perfect philosophical foundation for unifying scientific fields into one cohesive framework:

Dialectics divested of mysticism becomes an absolute necessity for natural science, which has forsaken the field where rigid categories sufficed, which represent as it were the lower mathematics of logic, its everyday weapons.

So, Marx and Engels developed Dialectical Materialism not in opposition to science, but as a way to make better use of scientific data, and to analyze the complex, dynamic, constantly changing systems of the world in motion. While distinct scientific discoveries and empirical data are invaluable, each data point only provides a small amount of information within a single narrow, specific field of science. Dialectical Materialism allows humans to view reality — as a whole — in motion, and to examine the interconnections and mutual developments between different fields and categories of human knowledge.

These scientific principles confirmed the correctness of the dialectical materialist view of the material world, with such features as: endlessness, self-existence, self-motivation, and self-transformation. They also confirmed the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in both material processes and thought processes.

Annotation 20

Endlessness refers to the infinite span of space and time in our universe. Self-existence means that our universe exists irrespective of human consciousness; it existed before human consciousness evolved and it will continue to exist after human consciousness becomes extinct. Self-motivation and Self-transformation refer to the fact that motion and transformation exist within the universe independent of human consciousness.

Engels wrote of the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that... Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution.

In conclusion, the birth of Marxism is a phenomenon which is compatible with scientific principles; it is the product of the social-economic conditions of its time of origin, of the human knowledge expressed in science at that time, and it is also the result of its founders’ creative thinking and humanitarian spirit.

b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism

Marx and Engels initiated the birth and development stage of Marxism from around 1842~1843 through around 1847~1848. Later, from 1849 to 1895, Marxism was developed to be more thorough and comprehensive, but in this early period of birth and development, Marx and Engels engaged in practical activities [Marx and Engels were not just theorists, but also actively supported and participated with various revolutionary and working class organizations including the Chartists, the League of the Just, the Communist League, the International Workingmen’s Association, etc.] and studied a wide range of human thought from ancient times on through to their contemporaries in order to methodically reinforce, complement and improve their ideas.

Many famous works such as The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Marx, 1844), The Holy Family (Marx and Engels, 1845), Thesis on Feuerbach (Marx, 1845), The German Ideology (Marx and Engels, 1845–1846), and so on, clearly showed that Marx and Engels inherited the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of the dialectical and materialist methods which they received from many predecessors. This philosophical heritage led to the development of the dialectical materialist viewpoint and materialist dialectics.

Annotation 21

There is a subtle, but important, distinction between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics. This will be explained further in chapters I (p. 48) and II (p. 98).

With works such as The Poverty of Philosophy (Marx, 1847) and The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx and Engels, 1848), Marxism was presented as a complete system of fundamental views with three theoretical component parts.

Annotation 22

According to Lenin, the three component parts of Marxism (and, by extension, of Marxism-Leninism) are:

1. The Philosophy of Marxism: Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism
2. The Political Economy of Marxism: A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.
3. Scientific Socialism: The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.

These are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, p. 38.

In the book The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx proposed the basic principles of Dialectical Materialism and Scientific Socialism,* and gave some initial thoughts about surplus value. The Manifesto of the Communist Party laid the first doctrinal foundation of communism. In this book, the philosophical basis was expressed through the organic unity between the economical viewpoint and socio-political viewpoint.

Annotation 23

* Scientific Socialism is a series of socio-political-economic theories intended to build socialism on a foundation of science within society’s current material conditions [see Annotation 79, p. 81]. Scientific Socialism is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party outlined the laws of movement in history,* as well as the basic theory of socio-economic forms.

Annotation 24

* The laws of movement in history are the core principles of historical materialism, which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

The basic theory of socio-economic forms dictates that material production plays a decisive role in the existence and development of a society, and that the material production methods decide both the political and social consciousness of a society.

Annotation 25

Social consciousness refers to the collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society. This is related to the concept of base and superstructure, which is discussed later in this chapter.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party also showed that for as long as classes have existed, the history of the development of human society is the history of class struggle. Through class struggle, the proletariat can liberate ourselves only if we simultaneously and forever liberate the whole of humanity. With these basic opinions, Marx and Engels founded Historical Materialism.

By applying Historical Materialism to the comprehensive study of the capitalist production method, Marx made an important discovery: separating workers from the ownership of the means of production through violence was the starting point of the establishment of the capitalist production method. Workers do not own the means of production to perform their labor activities for themselves, so, in order to make income and survive, workers have to sell their labor to capitalists. Labor thus becomes a special commodity, and the sellers of labor become workers for labor-buyers [the proletariat and capitalist class respectively]. The value that workers create through their labor is higher than their wage. And this is how surplus value* is formed. Importantly, this means that the surplus value belongs to people who own the means of production — the capitalists — instead of the workers who provide the labor.

Annotation 26

* Surplus value is equal to labor value (the amount of value workers produce through labor) minus wages paid to workers. Under capitalism, this surplus value is appropriated as profit by capitalists after the products which workers created are sold.

So, in discovering the origin of surplus value, Marx pointed out the exploitative nature of capitalism [because capitalists essentially steal surplus labor value from workers which is then transformed into profits], though this exploitative nature is concealed by the money-commodity relationship.

Annotation 27

Under capitalism, a worker’s labor is a commodity which capitalists pay for with money in the form of wages. Workers never know how much of their labor value is being withheld by employers, which conceals the nature of capitalist wage-theft.

The theory of surplus value was deeply and comprehensively researched and presented in Capital^[14] by Marx and Engels. This work not only paves the way to form a new political-economic theory system based on the working class’s viewpoint, it also firmly consolidates and develops the historical-materialist viewpoint through the theory of socio-economic forms.

Annotation 28

Karl Marx explained that the goal of writing Capital was “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.” By “laws of motion,” Marx refers to the origins and motivations for change within human society. Historical materialism holds that human society develops based on internal and external relationships within and between aspects of society. Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

According to the theory of socio-economic forms [which is the basis of historical materialism], the movements and developments of human society are natural-historical processes based on dialectical interactions between forces of production and relations of production; between infrastructure basis [commonly referred to as “base” in English] and superstructure.

Annotation 29

The forces of production consist of the combination of means of production and workers within society. Under capitalism, the production force consists of the proletariat (working class) and means of production which are owned by the bourgeoisie (capitalist class).

Marx viewed society as composed of an economic base and a social superstructure. The base of society includes the material relationships between humans and the means of productions and the material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment. The superstructure of society includes all components of society not directly relating to production, such as media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations.

In the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explained:

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

RELIGION GOVERNMENT EDUCATION

POLITICAL ECONOMY NATURE

The base of society includes material-based elements and relations including political economy, means of production, class relations, etc. The superstructure includes human-consciousness-based elements and relations including government, culture, religion, etc.

In other words, Marx argued that superstructure (which includes social consciousness) is shaped by the infrastructural basis, or base, of society. This reflects the more general dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness, in which the material, as the first basis of reality, determines consciousness, while consciousness mutually impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]. So, the base of society — being material in nature — determines the superstructure, while the superstructure impacts the base. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around, according to the dialectical materialist worldview, because the primary driving forces of conscious activity are rooted in material needs.

The theory of socio-economic forms proves that the materialist viewpoint of history is not just a hypothesis, but a scientifically-proven principle.

Annotation 30

As Lenin explains in What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats:

Now — since the appearance of Capital — the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society — formation of society, mind you, and not the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc. — another attempt just as capable of introducing order into the “pertinent facts” as materialism is, that is just as capable of presenting a living picture of a definite formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation -until then the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not ‘primarily a scientific conception of history’... but the only scientific conception of it.

Capital is Marx’s main work which presents Marxism as a social science by illuminating the inevitable processes of birth, development, and decay of capitalism; the replacement of capitalism with socialism; and the historical mission of the working class — the social force that can implement this replacement. Marx’s materialist conception of history and proletarian revolution continued to be developed in Critique of Gotha Programme (Marx, 1875). This book discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, and phases of the communism building process, and several other premises. Together, these premises formed the scientific basis for Marx’s theoretical guidance for the future revolutionary activity of the proletariat.

Annotation 31

When Marx refers to a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” he does not mean “dictatorship” to mean “totalitarian” or “authoritarian.” Rather, here “dictatorship” simply refers to a situation in which political power is held by the working class (which constitutes the vast majority of society). “Dictatorship,” here, refers to full control of the means of production and government. This stands in contrast to capitalism, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in which capitalists (a small minority of society) have full control of the means of production and government.

c. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism

- Historical Background and the Need for Defending and Developing Marxism

In the late 19^th century and early 20^th century, capitalism developed into a new stage, called imperialism. The dominant and exploitative nature of capitalism became increasingly obvious. Contradictions in capitalist societies became increasingly serious — especially the class struggles between the proletariat and capitalists. In many colonised countries, the resistance against imperialism created a unity between national liberation and proletarian revolution, uniting people in colonised countries with the working class in colonial countries. The core of such revolutionary struggles at this time was in Russia. The Russian proletariat and working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party became the leader of the whole international revolutionary movement.

During this time, both capitalist industry and natural sciences developed rapidly. Some natural scientists, especially physicists, lacked a grounding in materialist philosophical methodology and therefore fell into a viewpoint crisis. Idealist philosophers used this crisis to directly influence the perspective and activities of many revolutionary movements.

Annotation 32

Imperialism

Lenin defined imperialism as “the monopoly stage of capitalism,” listing its essential characteristics as “finance capital (serving) a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists” and “a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.”

Subjective and Empiricist Idealism

In the late 19^th century, natural scientists were exploring various philosophical bases for scientific inquiry. One Austrian physicist, Ernst Mach, attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German-Swiss philosopher Richard Avenarius known as “Empirio-Criticism.” Empirio-Criticism, which also came to be known as Machism, has many parallels with the philosophy of George Berkeley. Berkeley (1685 — 1753) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “Esse est percipi” — “To be is to be perceived.” Subjective Idealism holds that individuals can only directly perceive and know about physical objects through direct sense experience. Therefore, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter”.

The philosophy of Empirio-Criticism, which was developed by Avenarius and Mach, also holds that the only reliable human knowledge we can hold comes from our sensations and experiences. Mach argued that the only source of knowledge is sense data and “experience,” but that we can’t develop any actual knowledge of the actual external world. In other words, Mach’s conception of empirio-criticism holds all knowledge as essentially subjective in nature, and limited to (and by) human sense experience. Mach’s development of Empirio-Criticism (which can also be referred to as empirical idealism or Machism)' was therefore a continuation of Berkeley’s subjective idealism. Both Berkeley’s Immaterialism and Empirio-Criticism are considered to be subjective idealism because these philosophies deny that the external world exists — or otherwise assert that it is unknowable — and, as such, hold that all knowledge stems from experiences which are essentially subjective in nature.

Mach argued that reality can only be defined by our sensual experiences of reality, and that we can never concretely know anything about the objective external world due to the limitations of sense experience. This stands in direct contradiction to dialectical materialism, which holds that we can develop accurate knowledge of the material world through observation and practice. Whereas Berkeley developed subjective idealist theological arguments to defend the Christian faith, Mach employed subjective idealism for purely secular purposes as a basis for scientific inquiry.

Note: all quotations below come from Lenin’s book: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

Vladimir Lenin strongly opposed Empirio-Criticism and, by extension, Machism, which was becoming popular among communist revolutionists in the late 19^th century, because it pushed forward idealist principles which directly opposed the core tenets of dialectical materialism.

Lenin believed that revolutionaries should be guided not by idealism, but by dialectical materialism. He believed that Empirio-Criticism and Machism consisted of mysticism which would mislead political revolutionaries.

Lenin outlined Machian arguments against materialism:

The materialists, we are told, recognise something unthinkable and unknowable — ’things-in-themselves’ — matter ‘outside of experience’ and outside of our knowledge [see: Annotation 72, p. 68]. They lapse into genuine mysticism by admitting the existence of something beyond, something transcending the bounds of ‘experience’... When they say that matter, by acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensations, the materialists take as their basis the ‘unknown,’ nothingness; for do they not themselves declare our sensations to be the only source of knowledge?

Lenin argued that this new form of Machist subjective idealism was, in fact, simply a rehashing of “old errors of idealism,” disguised and dressed up with new terminology. As such, Lenin simply reiterated the longstanding, bedrock dialectical materialist arguments against idealism [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. He was especially upset that contemporary Marxists of his era were being swayed by Machist Empirio-Criticism because he found it to be in direct conflict with dialectical materialism, writing: “(These) would-be Marxists… try in every way to assure their readers that Machism is compatible with the historical materialism of Marx and Engels.”

Lenin goes on to describe the work of philosophers such as Franz Blei, who critiqued Marxism with Machist arguments, as “quasi-scientific tomfoolery decked out in the terminology of Avenarius.” He saw Empirio-Criticism as completely incompatible with communist revolution, since idealism had historically been used by the ruling class to deceive and control the lower classes. In particular, he believed that Machist idealism was being used by the capitalist class to preach bourgeois economics, writing that “the professors of economics are nothing but learned salesmen of the capitalist class.”

Lenin was deeply concerned that prominent Russian socialist philosophers were adopting Machist ideas and claiming them to be compatible with Marxism, writing:

The task of Marxists in both cases is to be able to master and adapt the achievements of these ‘salesmen’... and to be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue your own line and to combat the whole alignment of forces and classes hostile to us. And this is just what our Machians were unable to do, they slavishly follow the lead of the reactionary professorial philosophy.

Lenin further explains how Empirio-Criticism serves the interests of the capitalist class:

The empirio-criticists as a whole... claim to be non-partisan both in philosophy and in social science. They are neither for socialism nor for liberalism. They make no differentiation between the fundamental and irreconcilable trends of materialism and idealism in philosophy, but endeavor to rise above them. We have traced this tendency of Machism through a long series of problems of epistemology, and we ought not to be surprised when we encounter it in sociology.

In the conclusion of the same text, Lenin explains why communists should reject Empirio-Criticism and Machism with four “standpoints,” summarized here:

1. The theoretical foundations of Empirio-Criticism can’t withstand comparison with those of dialectical materialism. Empirio-Criticism differs little from older forms of idealism, and the tired old errors of idealism clash directly with Marxist dialectical materialism. As Lenin puts it: “only utter ignorance of the nature of philosophical materialism generally and of the nature of Marx’s and Engels’ dialectical method can lead one to speak of ‘combining’ empirio-criticism and Marxism.”

2. The philosophical foundations of Empirio-Criticism are flawed. “Both Mach and Avenarius started with Kant (see: Annotation 72, p. 68) and, leaving him, proceeded not towards materialism, but in the opposite direction, towards Hume and Berkeley (see: Annotation 10, p. 10)... The whole school of Mach and Avenarius is moving more and more definitely towards idealism.”

3. Machism is little more than a relatively obscure trend which has not been adopted by most scientists; a “reactionary (and) transitory infatuation.” As Lenin puts it: “the vast majority of scientists, both generally and in this special branch of science... are invariably on the side of materialism.”

4. Empirio-Criticism and Machism reflect the “tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society.” Idealism represents the interests of the ruling class in modern society, and is used to subjugate the majority of society. Idealist philosophy “stands fully armed, commands vast organizations and steadily continues to exercise influence on the masses, turning the slightest vacillation in philosophical thought to its own advantage.” In other words, idealism is used by the ruling class to manipulate our understanding of the world, as opposed to materialism (and especially dialectical materialism) which illuminates the true nature of reality which would lead to the liberation of the working class.

At this time, Marxism was widely disseminating throughout Russia, which challenged the social positions and benefits of capitalists. In reaction to Marxism, many ideological movements such as empiricism, utilitarianism, revisionism, etc. [see: Appendix F, p. 252] rose up and claimed to renew Marxism, while in fact they misrepresented and denied Marxism.

In this context, new achievements of natural science needed to be analyzed and summarized in order to continue the authentic development of Marxist viewpoints and methodologies. Theoretical principles to fight against the misrepresentation of Marxism needed to be developed in order to bring Marxism into the new era. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin would fulfill this historical requirement with his theoretical developments.

- The Role of Lenin in Defending and Developing Marxism.

Lenin’s process of defending and developing Marxism can be separated into three periods: first, from 1893 to 1907; next, from 1907 to 1917; and finally from the success of the October socialist revolution in 1917 until Lenin’s death in 1924.

From 1893 to 1907, Lenin focused on fighting against populists^[15]. His book What the Friends of the People are and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats (1894) criticized the serious mistakes of this faction in regards to socio-historical issues and also exposed their scheme of distorting Marxism by erasing the boundaries between Marxism’s materialist dialectics and Hegel’s idealist dialectics. In the same book, Lenin also shared many thoughts about the important roles of theory, reality, and the relationship between the two.

Annotation 33

The populist philosophy was born in Russia in the 19^th century with roots going back to the Narodnik agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. In the late 19^th century, a new political movement emerged rooted in Narodnik ideas and a new party called the Socialist Revolutionary Party was formed. The political philosophy of this movement, now commonly translated into English as “populism,” focused on an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. This movement overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism (see Annotation 95, p. 94).

With the book What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin developed Marxist viewpoints on the methods for the proletariat to take power. He discussed economic, political, and ideological struggles. In particular, he emphasized the ideological formation process of the proletariat.

Annotation 34

In What is to be Done?, Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously attain class consciousness and push for political revolution simply due to economic conflict with employers and spontaneous actions like demonstrations and workers’ strikes. He instead insists that a political party of dedicated revolutionaries is needed to educate workers in Marxist principles and to organize and push forward revolutionary activity. He also pushed back strongly against the ideas of what he called “economism,” as typified by the ideas of Eduard Bernstein, a German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories.

Bernstein opposed a working class revolution and instead focused on reform and compromise. He believed that socialism could be achieved within the capitalist economy and the system of bourgeois democracy. Lenin argued that Bernstein and his economist philosophy was opportunistic, and accused economists of seeking positions within bourgeois democracies to further their own personal interests and to quell revolutionary tendencies. As Lenin explained in A Talk With Defenders of Economism:

The Economists limited the tasks of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, etc., asserting that the political struggle was the business of the liberal bourgeoisie. They denied the leading role of the party of the working class, considering that the party should merely observe the spontaneous process of the movement and register events. In their deference to spontaneity in the working-class movement, the Economists belittled the significance of revolutionary theory and class-consciousness, asserted that socialist ideology could emerge from the spontaneous movement, denied the need for a Marxist party to instill socialist consciousness into the working-class movement, and thereby cleared the way for bourgeois ideology. The Economists, who opposed the need to create a centralized working-class party, stood for the sporadic and amateurish character of individual circles. Economism threatened to divert the working class from the class revolutionary path and turn it into a political appendage of the bourgeoisie.

The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Vietnam, published by the National Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, defines opportunism, in this context, as “a system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.”

Lenin critiques opportunist socialism — referring to it as a “critical” trend in socialism — in What is to be Done?:

He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new “critical” trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people... by their actions and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means “freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism.”

The first revolution of the Russian working class, from 1905 to 1907, failed. Lenin summarized the reality of this revolution in the book Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905). In this book, Lenin explains that the capitalist class in Russia was actively engaged in its own revolution against Czarist feudalism. In this context of this ongoing bourgeois revolution, Lenin deeply developed Marxist concepts related to revolutionary methodologies, objective and subjective factors that will affect the working class revolution, the role of the people, the role of political parties etc.

Annotation 35

From 1905 to 1907, Russia was beset by political unrest and radical activity including workers’ strikes, military mutinies, and peasant uprisings. Russia had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese war which cost tens of thousands of Russian lives without any benefits to the Russian people. In addition, the economic and political systems of Czarist Russia placed a severe burden on industrial workers and peasant farmers.

In response, the Russian proletariat rose up in various uprisings, demonstrations, and clashes against government forces, landlords, and factory owners. In the end, this revolutionary activity failed to overthrow the Czar’s government, and the Czar remained firmly in power until the communist revolution of 1917.

Lenin wrote Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution in 1905 in

Geneva, Switzerland. In it, he argues forcefully against the political faction within the Russian socialist movement that came to be known as the “Mensheviks.” The Mensheviks, as well as the Bolsheviks (Lenin’s contemporary faction) emerged from a dispute within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which took place in 1903.

In the same text, Lenin argued that the Mensheviks misunderstood the forces that were driving revolutionary activity in Russia. While the Mensheviks believed that the situation in Russia would develop along similar lines to previous revolutionary activity in Western Europe, Lenin argued that Russia’s situation was unique and that Russian Marxists should therefore adopt different strategies and activities which reflected Russia’s unique circumstances and material conditions.

Specifically, the Mensheviks believed that the working class should ally with the bourgeoisie to overthrow the Czar’s feudalist regime, and then allow the bourgeoisie to build a fully functioning capitalist economy before workers should attempt their own revolution.

Lenin, on the other hand, presented a completely different analysis of class forces in Russia. He believed the bourgeoisie would seek a compromise with the Czar, as both feudal and bourgeois classes in Russia feared a proletarian revolution.

It’s important to note that Russia’s industrial workforce was very small at this time, and most Russians were peasant farmers. The Mensheviks believed Russian peasants would not be useful in a proletarian revolution, which is why they argued for allowing capitalism to be fully established in Russia before pushing for a working class revolution. They believed it was prudent to wait until the working class became larger and more dominant in Russia before attempting to overthrow capitalism. They believed that the peasant class would not be useful in any such revolution.

In contrast, Lenin believed that the peasants and industrial workers would have to work together to have any hope of a successful revolution. He further argued that an uprising of armed peasants and workers, fighting side by side, would be necessary for overthrowing the Czar.

From 1907 to 1917, there was a viewpoint crisis among many physicists. This strongly affected the birth of many idealist ideologies following Mach’s Positivism that attempted to negate Marxism [See: Annotation 32, p. 27]. Lenin summarized the achievements of natural science as well as historical events of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century in his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909). By giving the classical definitions of matter, proving the relationships between matter and consciousness and between social existence and social consciousness, and pointing out the basic rules of consciousness, etc., Lenin defended Marxism and carried it forward to a new level. Lenin clearly expressed his thoughts on the history, nature, and structure of Marxism in the book The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913). He also talked about dialectics in Philosophical Notebooks (1914–1916) and expressed his thoughts about the proletarian dictatorship, the role of the Communist Party, and the path to socialism in his book The State and Revolution (1919).

The success of the October revolution in Russia in 1917 brought about a new era: the transitional period from capitalism to socialism on an international scale. This event presented new theoretical requirements that had not existed in the time of Marx and Engels’ time.

In a series of works including: “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920),

Once Again on the Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin (1921), The Tax in Kind (1921), etc., Lenin summarized the revolutionary practice of the people, continued defending Marxist dialectics, and uncompromisingly fought against eclecticism and sophistry.

Annotation 36

In Anti-Dühring, Engels identifies the historical missions of the working class as:

1. Becoming the ruling class by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat.

2. Seizing the means of production from the ruling class to end class society.

Eclecticism is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the comprehensive and historical viewpoints [see p. 116]. Eclecticism bears superficial resemblance to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.

Sophistry is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.

Simultaneously, Lenin also developed his Marxist viewpoint of the factors deciding the victory of a social regime, about class, about the two basic missions of the proletariat, about the strategies and tactics of proletarian parties in new historical conditions, about the transitional period, and about the plans of building socialism following the New Economic Policy (NEP), etc.

Annotation 37

The early 1920s were a period of great internal conflict in revolutionary Russia, with various figures and factions wanting to take the revolution in different directions. As such, Lenin wrote extensively on the direction he believed the revolution should be carried forth to ensure lasting victory against both feudalism and capitalism. He believed that the October, 1917 revolution represented the complete defeat of the Czar, however he believed the proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie would take more time. Russia was a poor, agrarian society. The vast majority of Russians under the Czar were poor peasants. Industry — and thus, the proletariat — was highly undeveloped compared to Western Europe. According to Lenin, a full and lasting proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie could only be won after the means of production were properly developed. In Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin wrote:

This first victory [the October, 1917 revolution] is not yet the final victory, and it was achieved by our October Revolution at the price of incredible difficulties and hardships... We have made the start... The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown.

So, Lenin knew that the victory over the Czar and feudalism was only a partial victory, and that more work needed to be done to defeat the bourgeoisie entirely. He believed the key to this victory over the capitalist class would be economic development, since Russia was still a largely agrarian society with very little industrial or economic development compared to Western Europe:

Our last, but most important and most difficult task, the one we have done least about, is economic development, the laying of economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice on the site of the demolished feudal edifice and the semi-demolished capitalist edifice.

Lenin’s plan for rapidly developing the means of production was his New Economic Policy, or the NEP. The New Economic Policy was proposed to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-class-dominated state. As Lenin explains in Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution:

At this very moment we are, by our New Economic Policy, correcting a number of our mistakes. We are learning how to continue erecting the socialist edifice in a small-peasant country.

He continues later in the text:

The proletarian state must become a cautious, assiduous and shrewd “businessman,” a punctilious wholesale merchant — otherwise it will never succeed in putting this small-peasant country economically on its feet. Under existing conditions, living as we are side by side with the capitalist (for the time being capitalist) West, there is no other way of progressing to communism. A wholesale merchant seems to be an economic type as remote from communism as heaven from earth. But that is one of the contradictions which, in actual life, lead from a small-peasant economy via state capitalism to socialism. Personal incentive will step up production; we must increase production first and foremost and at all costs. Wholesale trade economically unites millions of small peasants: it gives them a personal incentive, links them up and leads them to the next step, namely, to various forms of association and alliance in the process of production itself. We have already started the necessary changes in our economic policy and already have some successes to our credit; true, they are small and partial, but nonetheless they are successes. In this new field of “tuition” we are already finishing our preparatory class. By persistent and assiduous study, by making practical experience the test of every step we take, by not fearing to alter over and over again what we have already begun, by correcting our mistakes and most carefully analyzing their significance, we shall pass to the higher classes. We shall go through the whole “course,” although the present state of world economics and world politics has made that course much longer and much more difficult than we would have liked. No matter at what cost, no matter how severe the hardships of the transition period may be — despite disaster, famine and ruin — we shall not flinch; we shall triumphantly carry our cause to its goal.

With these great works dedicated to the three component parts of Marxism [see Annotation 42, p. 38], the name Vladimir Ilyich Lenin became an important part of Marxism. It marked a comprehensive developing step from Marxism to Marxism-Leninism.

d. Marxism-Leninism and the Reality of the International Revolutionary Movement

The birth of Marxism greatly affected both the international worker movements and communist movements. The revolution in March 1871 in France could be considered as a great experiment of Marxism in the real world. For the first time in human history, a new kind of state — the dictatorship of the proletariat state (Paris Commune) was established.

Annotation 38

The Paris Commune was an important but short-lived revolutionary victory of the working class which saw a revolutionary socialist government controlling Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871.

During the brief existence of the Paris Commune, many important policies were set forth, including a separation of church and state, abolishment of rent, an end to child labor, and the right of employees to take over any business which had been abandoned by its owner. Unfortunately, the Paris Commune was brutally toppled by the French army, which killed between 6,000 and 7,000 revolutionaries in battle and by execution. The events of the Paris Commune heavily influenced many revolutionary thinkers and leaders, including Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and was referenced frequently in their works.

In August 1903, the very first Marxist proletariat party was established — the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. It was a true Marxist party that led the revolution in Russia in 1905. In October 1917, the victory of the socialist revolution of the proletariat in Russia opened a new era for human history.

In 1919, the Communist International* was held; in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic was established. It marked the alliance of the proletariat of many countries. With the power of this alliance, the fight against Fascism not only protected the achievements of the proletariat’s revolution, but also spread socialism beyond the borders of Russia. Following the lead of the Soviet Union, a community of socialist countries was built, with revolutions leading to the establishment of socialism in the following countries [and years of establishment]: Mongolia [1921], Vietnam [1945], the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [1945], Yugoslavia [1945], Albania [1946], Romania [1947], Czechoslovakia [1948], East Germany [1949], China [1949], Hungary [1949], Poland [1956], and Cuba [1959].

Annotation 39

* The First International, also known as the International Workingmen’s Association, was founded in London and lasted from 1864–1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers.

The Second International was founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International. It fell apart in 1916 because the members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I.

The Third International, also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short), was founded in Moscow in 1919 (though many nations didn’t join until later in the 1920s). Its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II.

These great historical events strongly enhanced the revolutionary movement of the working class all around the whole world. The people awakened and encouraged the liberation resistance of many colonised countries. The guiding role of Marxism-Leninism brought many great results for a world of peace, independence, democracy, and social progress.

However, because of many internal and external factors, in the late 1980s, the socialist alliance faced a crisis and fell into a recession period. Even though the socialist system fell into crisis and was weakened, the socialist ideology still survived internationally. The determination of successfully building socialism was still very strong in many countries and the desire to follow the socialist path still spread widely in South America.

Nowadays, the main feature of our modern society is fast and varied change in many social aspects caused by technology and scientific revolution. But, no matter how quickly and diversely our society changes, the nature of the capitalist production method never changes. So, in order to protect the socialist achievements earned by the flesh and blood of many previous generations; and in order to have a tremendous development step in the career of liberating human beings, it is very urgent to protect, inherit and develop Marxism-Leninism and also innovate the work of building socialism in both theory and practice.

The Communist Party of Vietnam declared: “Nowadays, capitalism still has potential for development, but in nature, it’s still an unjust, exploitative, and oppressive regime. The basic and inherent contradictions of capitalism, especially the contradictions between the increasing socialization of the production force and the capitalist private ownership regime, will never be solved and will even become increasingly serious. The feature of the current period of our modern society is: countries with different social regimes and different development levels co-exist, co-operate, struggle and compete fiercely for the interests of their own nations. The struggles for peace, independence, democracy, development, and social progress of many countries will still have to cope with hardship and challenges but we will achieve new progress. According to the principles of historical development, human beings will almost certainly go forward to socialism.”^[16]

Annotation 40

Historical materialism is the application of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology to the analysis of human history, society, and development. The principles of historical materialism, as developed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, indicate that human society is moving towards socialism and will almost certainly — in time — develop into socialism, and then proceed towards a stateless, classless form of society (communism). These principles of historical materialism were initially formulated and discussed in several books by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, including:

• The German Ideology, by Marx and Engels

• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, by Marx and Engels

• Karl Marx, by Lenin

The Communist Party of Vietnam has also declared:

“In the opinion of the Vietnam Communist Party, using Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought as the foundation for our ideology, the guideline for our actions is an important developmental step in cognition and logical thinking^[17]. Achievements that the Vietnamese people have gained in the war to gain our independence, in peace, and in the renovation era, are all rooted in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. Therefore, we have to ‘creatively apply and develop Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought in the Party’s activities. We have to regularly summarise reality, complement and develop theory, and soundly solve the problems of our society.’”^[18]

Annotation 41

Ho Chi Minh Thought refers to a system of ideas developed by Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists which relate to the application of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and methodology to the specific material conditions of Vietnam during the revolutionary period.

There is no universal road map for applying the principles of Marxism-Leninism. How the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism should be applied will vary widely from one time and place to another. This is why Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists had to develop Ho Chi Minh Thought: so that scientific socialism could be developed within the unique context of Vietnam’s particular historical development and material conditions.

It is the duty of every revolutionary to study Marxism-Leninism as well as specific applied forms of Marxism-Leninism developed by revolutionaries for their own specific times and places, such as: Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), Mao Zedong (China), Fidel Castro and Che Guevera (Cuba), etc. However, it must be recognized that the ideas, strategies, methodologies, and philosophies developed in such particular circumstances can’t be applied in exactly the same way in other times and places, such as our own contemporary material conditions.

The Renovation Era refers to the period of time in Vietnam from the 1980s until the early 2000s during which the Đổi Mới (renovation) policies were implemented. These policies restructured the Vietnamese economy to end the previous subsidizing model (which was defined by state ownership of the entire economy). The goals of the Renovation Era were to open Vietnam economically and politically and to normalize relations with the rest of the world. The Đổi Mới policies were generally successful and paved the way to the Path to Socialism Era which Vietnam exists in today. The goals of the Path to Socialism Era are to develop Vietnam into a modern, developed country with a strong economy and wealthy people, which will allow us to transition towards the lower stage of communism, which Lenin called “socialism.”

And, finally: “We have to be consistent with Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. We have to creatively apply and develop the ideology correspondingly with the reality in Vietnam. We have to firmly aim for national independence and socialism.”

II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

1. Objects and Purposes of Study

The objects of study of this book, The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, are the fundamental viewpoints of Marxism-Leninism in its three component parts.

Annotation 42

Remember that a viewpoint is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking and the perspective from which problems are considered. Also remember that Marxism-Leninism has three component parts:

1. The Philosophy of Marxism:

Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism

2. The Political Economy of Marxism:

A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.

3. Scientific Socialism

The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.

These objects of study stand as the viewpoints — the starting points of analysis — of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and the three component parts of which it’s composed.

In the scope of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy [the first component part of Marxism-Leninism], these objects of study are:

Dialectical Materialism — the fundamental and most universal worldview and methodologies which form the theoretical core of a scientific worldview*. [See Part 1, p. 44]
Materialist Dialectics — the science of development, of common relationships, and of the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society and human thought. [See Chapter 2, p. 98]
Historical Materialism — the application and development of Materialism and Dialectics in studying social aspects. [Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.]

Annotation 43

* Remember that Scientific in Marxism-Leninism refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Annotation 1, p. 1]. Note, also, that Worldview refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. This is discussed in more detail on page 44.

Thus, a scientific worldview is a worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge of definitions and categories that generally and correctly reflect the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world.

In the scope of Marxist-Leninist Political Economics [the second component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:

The theory of value and the theory of surplus value.
Economic theory about monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.
General economic rules about capitalist production methods, from the stage of formation, to the stage of development, to the stage of perishing, which will be followed by the birth of a new production method: the communist production method.

Annotation 44

Marxist-Leninist political economics is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

In the scope of Scientific Socialism [the third component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:

The historical mission of the working class and the progression of a socialist revolution.
Matters related to the future formation and development periods of the communist socio-economic form.
Guidelines for the working class in implementing our historical mission.

The purposes of studying The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism are:' to master Marxist-Leninist viewpoints of science, revolution, and humanism*; to thoroughly understand the most important theoretical foundation of Ho Chi Minh Thought, the revolutionary path, and the ideological foundation of the Vietnam Communist Party. Based on that basis, we can build a scientific worldview and methodology and a revolutionary worldview; build our trust in our revolutionary ideals; creatively apply them in our cognitive and practical activities and in practicing and cultivating morality to meet the requirements of Vietnamese people in the cause of building a socialist Vietnam.

Annotation 45

* The humanism of Marxism-Leninism differs greatly from the humanism of Feuerbach discussed in Annotation 12, p. 13. Marxist-Leninist humanism concerns itself with the liberation of all humans. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

2. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method

There are some basic requirements for studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism:

First, Marxist-Leninist theses were conceptualized under many different circumstances in order to solve different problems, so the expressions of thought of Marxist-Leninists can vary. Therefore, students studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism must correctly understand its spirit and essence and avoid theoretical purism and dogmatism.

Annotation 46

Marxism-Leninism should be understood as an applied science, and application of this science will vary based on material conditions. As Engels wrote in a personal letter in 1887, remarking on the socialist movement in the USA: “Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learned by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is drilled into the Americans from outside and the more they test it with their own experience... the deeper will it pass into their flesh and blood.”

As an example, Lenin tailored his actions and ideas specifically to suit the material conditions of Russia under the Czar and in the early revolutionary period. Russia’s material conditions were somewhat unique during the time of Lenin’s revolutionary activity, since Russia was an agrarian monarchy with a large peasant population and a relatively undeveloped industrial sector. As such, Lenin had to develop strategies, tactics, and ideas which suited those specific material conditions, such as determining that the industrial working class and agricultural peasants should work together. As Lenin explained in The Proletariat and the Peasantry:

Thus the red banner of the class-conscious workers means, first, that we support with all our might, the peasants’ struggle for full freedom and all the land; secondly, it means that we do not stop at this, but go on further. We are waging, besides the struggle for freedom and land, a fight for socialism.

Obviously, this statement would not be specifically applicable to a society with highly developed industry and virtually no rural peasants (such as, for instance, the modern-day USA), just as Lenin’s remarks about the Czar would not be specifically applicable to any society that does not have an institution of monarchy.

As another example, take the works of Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh Thought is defined by the Communist Party of Vietnam as “a complete system of thought about the fundamental issues of the Vietnam revolution.” In other words, Ho Chi Minh Thought is a specific application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism to the material conditions of Vietnam.

One unique aspect of Vietnam’s revolution which Ho Chi Minh focused on was colonization. As a colonized country, Ho Chi Minh realized that Vietnam had unique challenges and circumstances that would need to be properly addressed through revolutionary struggle. Another unique aspect of Vietnam’s material conditions was the fact that the colonial administration of Vietnam changed hands throughout the revolution: from France, to Japan, back to France, then to the USA. Ho Chi Minh was able to dynamically and creatively apply Marxism-Leninism to these shifting material conditions. For instance, in Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party, written in 1930, Ho Chi Minh explains some of the unique problems faced by the colonized people of Indochina (modern day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and proposes solutions specific to these unique material conditions:

On the one hand, they (the French) use the feudalists and comprador bourgeoisie (of Vietnam) to oppress and exploit our people. On the other, they terrorize, arrest, jail, deport, and kill a great number of Vietnamese revolutionaries. If the French imperialists think that they can suppress the Vietnamese revolution by means of terror, they are grossly mistaken. For one thing, the Vietnamese revolution is not isolated but enjoys the assistance of the world proletariat in general and that of the French working class in particular. Secondly, it is precisely at the very time when the French imperialists are frenziedly carrying out terrorist acts that the Vietnamese Communists, formerly working separately, have united into a single party, the Indochinese Communist Party, to lead the revolutionary struggle of our entire people.

During this period, the nations of Indochina were predominantly agricultural, prompting Ho Chi Minh to suggest in the same text that it would be necessary “to establish a worker-peasant-soldier government” and “to confiscate all the plantations and property belonging to the imperialists and the Vietnamese reactionary bourgeoisie and distribute them to the poor peasants.” Obviously all of these considerations are specific to the material conditions of Indochina under French colonial rule in 1930.

By 1939, the situation was changing rapidly. Ho Chi Minh was operating from China, which was being invaded by fascist Japan. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the Japanese imperial army would come to threaten Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. As such, Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter to the Indochinese Communist Party outlining recommendations, strategies, and goals pertaining to the precipitating material conditions. At that time, France had not yet been invaded by Germany, but Ho Chi Minh was very aware of the looming threat of fascism both in Europe and in Asia. He realized that rising up in revolutionary civil war against the French colonial administration would give fascist Japan the opportunity to quickly conquer all of Indochina, which is why he made the following recommendations in a letter to the Communist Party of Indochina in 1939:

Our party should not strive for demands which are too high, such as total independence, or establishing a house of representatives. If we do that, we will fall into the trap of fascist Japan. For now, we should only ask for democracy, freedom to organize, freedom to hold meetings, freedom of speech, and for the release of political prisoners. We should also fight for our party to be organized and to operate legally.

Once France fell to Germany in 1940, Indochina was immediately handed over to Japanese colonial rule. The Japanese army was brutal in its occupation of Vietnam, and the French colonial administrators surrendered entirely to the Japanese empire and helped the Japanese to administer all of Indochina. Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in January of 1941 and participated directly with the resistance struggle against Japan until 1945, when the situation once again changed dramatically due to the Japanese military’s surrender to allied forces and withdrawal from Vietnam. He immediately took advantage of this situation and held a successful revolution against both the Japanese and French administrators. In the Declaration of Independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh wrote:

After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French. The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the homeland.

As France began to make their intentions clear that they would be resuming their colonialist claim to Indochina, Ho Chi Minh began preparing the country for a new chapter in revolutionary struggle. In his 1946 letter to the people of Vietnam, entitled A Nationwide Call for Resistance, Ho Chi Minh wrote:

We call everyone, man and woman, old and young, from every ethnic minority, from every religion, to stand up and fight to save our country. If you have guns, use guns. If you have swords, use swords. If you have nothing, use sticks. Everyone must stand up and fight.

As these historical developments illustrate, Ho Chi Minh was able to creatively and dynamically apply the principles of Marxism-Leninism to suit the shifting material conditions of Vietnam, just as Lenin had to creatively and dynamically apply these principles to the emerging situation in Russia in the early 20^th century. So is the task of every student of Marxism-Leninism: to learn to apply these principles creatively and dynamically to the material conditions at hand.

Second, the birth and development of Marixst-Leninist theses is a process. In that process, all Marixst-Leninist theses have strong relationships with each other. They complement and support each other. Thus, students studying each Marxist-Leninist thesis need to put it in proper relation and context with other theses found within each different component part of Marxism-Leninism in order to understand the unity in diversity [see: Annotation 107, p. 110], the consistency of every thesis in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.

Third, an important goal of studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism is to understand clearly the most important theoretical basis of Ho Chi Minh Thought, of the Vietnam Communist Party and its revolutionary path. Therefore, we must attach Marxist-Leninist theses to Vietnam’s revolutionary practice and the world’s practice in order to see the creative application of Marxism-Leninism that President Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnam Communist Party implemented in each period of history.

Fourth, we must study the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to meet the requirements for a new Vietnamese people in a new era. So, the process of studying is also the process of self-educating and practicing to improve ourselves step-by-step in both individual and social life.

Fifth, Marxism-Leninism is not a closed and immutable theoretical system. On the contrary, it is a theoretical system that continuously develops based on the development of reality. Therefore, the process of studying Marxism-Leninism is also a process of reflection: summarizing and reviewing your own practical experiences and sharing what you’ve learned from these experiences in order to contribute to the scientific and humanist development of Marxism-Leninism. In addition, when studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, we need to consider these principles in the proper context of the history of the ideological development of humanity. Such context is important because Marxism-Leninism is quintessentially^[19] the product of that history.

These requirements have strong relationships with each other. They imbue the studying process with the quintessence of Marxism-Leninism. And more importantly, they help students apply that quintessence into cognitive and practical activities.

Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism — Leninism

Worldview refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in that world. Our worldview directs and orientates our life, including our cognitive and practical activities, as well as our self-awareness. Our worldview defines our ideals, our value system, and our lifestyle. So, a proper and scientific worldview serves as a foundation to establish a constructive approach to life. One of the basic criteria to evaluate the growth and maturity of an individual or a whole society is the degree to which worldview has been developed.

Methodology is a system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with philosophical methodology being the most general scope of methodology.

Annotation 47

Tran Thien Tu, the vice-dean of the Department of Marxist-Leninist Theoretical Studies at the Le Duan Political Science University in Quang Tri, Vietnam, defines three degrees of scopes of Methodology. They are, from most specific to most general:

1. Field Methodology

The most specific scope of methodology; a field methodology will apply only to a single specific scientific field.

2. General Methodology

A more general scope of methodology; a general methodology will be shared by various scientific fields.

3. Philosophical Methodology

The most general scope of methodology, encompassing the whole of the material world and human thought.

Worldview and philosophical methodology are the fundamental knowledge-systems* of Marxism-Leninism.

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* In the original Vietnamese, the word lý luận is used, which we roughly translate to the phrase “knowledge-system” throughout this book. Literally, lý luận is a combination of the words lý lẽ, which means “argument,” and bàn luận, which means “to infer.”

The full meaning of lý luận is: a system of ideas that reflect reality expressed in a system of knowledge that allows for a complete view of the fundamental laws and relationships of objective reality.

The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism

Marxist-Leninist worldview and philosophical methodology emerge from the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of dialectical materialism, which itself developed from other forms of dialectics, which in turn developed throughout the history of the ideological development of humanity.

Materialism is foundational to Marxism-Leninism in two important ways:

Dialectical Materialism is the ideological core of a scientific worldview.

Historical Materialism is a system of dialectical materialist opinions about the origin of, motivation of, and the most common rules that dominate the movement and development of human society.

Dialectics are also foundational to Marxism-Leninism, specifically in the form of Materialist Dialectics, which Lenin defined as “the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge.”^[20] Lenin also defined Materialist Dialectics as “what is now called theory of knowledge or epistemology.”^[21] [Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.]

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For beginning students of Marxism-Leninism, distinguishing between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics may at first be confusing. Here is an explanation of each concept and how they relate to one another:

Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.

Dialectical Materialism is a scientific understanding of matter, consciousness and the relationship between the two. Dialectical Materialism is used to understand the world by studying such relationships.

Materialist Dialectics is a science studying the general laws of the movement, change, and development of nature, society and human thought.

Relationship between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.

And so, we use Dialectical Materialism to understand the fundamental nature of reality. This understanding is used as a basis for changing the world, using Materialist Dialectics to guide our activities. We can then reflect on the results of our activities, using Dialectical Materialism, to further develop our understanding of the world.

As Marxist-Leninists, we utilize this continuous cycle between studying and understanding the world through Dialectical Materialism and affecting change in the world through Materialist Dialectics with the goal of bringing about socialism and freeing humanity.

It is also important to understand the nature of dialectical relationships.

A dialectical relationship is a relationship in which two things mutually impact one another. Dialectical materialism perceives all things in motion [see Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter, p. 59] and in a constant state of change, and this motion and change originates from relationships in which all things mutually move and change each other through interaction, leading to development over time.

Thoroughly understanding the basic content of the worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism is the most important requirement in order to properly study the whole theory system of Marxism-Leninism and to creatively apply it into cognitive and practical activities in order to solve the problems that our society must cope with.

3. Excerpt From Modifying the Working Style By Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh training cadres in 1959.

Training is a must. There is a proverb: “without a teacher, you can never do well;” and the expression: “learn to eat, learn to speak, learn to pack, learn to unpack.”

Even many simple subjects require study, let alone revolutionary work and resistance work. How can you perform such tasks without any training?

But training materials must be aimed at the needs of the masses. We must ask: after people receive their training, can they apply their knowledge immediately? Is it possible to practice right away?

If training is not immediately practical, then years of training would be useless.

Unfortunately, many of our trainers do not understand this simple logic. That’s why there are cadres who train rural people in the uplands in the field of “economics!”

In short, our way of working, organizing, talking, propagandizing, setting slogans, writing newspapers, etc., must all take this sentence as a model:

“From within the masses, back into the masses.”

No matter how big or small our tasks are, we must clearly examine and modify them to match the culture, living habits, level of education, struggling experiences, desire, will, and material conditions of the masses. On that basis we will form our ways of working and organizing. Only then can we have the masses on our side.

Otherwise, if you just do as you want, following your own thoughts, your subjectivity, and then force your personal thoughts upon the masses, it is just like “cutting your feet to fit your shoes.” Feet are the masses. Shoes are our ways of organizing and working.

Shoes are made to fit people’s feet, not the other way around.

Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism

Dialectical Materialism, one of the materialist foundations of Marxism-Leninism, uses the materialist worldview and dialectical methods to study fundamental philosophical issues. Dialectical Materialism is the most advanced form of Materialism, and serves as the theoretical core of a scientific worldview. Therefore, thoroughly understanding the basic content of Dialectical Materialism is the essential prerequisite to study both the component principles of Marxism-Leninism in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.

I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism

1. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues

Philosophy is a system of the most general human theories and knowledge about our world, about ourselves, and our position in our world.

Philosophy has existed for thousands of years. Philosophy has different objects of study depending on different periods of time. Summarizing the whole history of philosophy, Engels said: “The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being^[22].”

So, philosophy studies the relations between consciousness and matter, and between humans and nature.

In philosophy, there are two main questions:

Question 1: The question of consciousness and matter: which came first; or, to put it another way, which one determines which one?

In attempting to answer this first question, philosophy has separated into two main schools: Materialism, and Idealism.

Question 2: Do humans have the capacity to perceive the world as it truly exists?

In answer to this second question, two schools: Intelligibility — which admits the human cognitive capacity to truly perceive the world — and unintelligibility — which denies that capacity.

Materialism is the belief that the nature of the world is matter; that matter comes first; and that matter determines consciousness. People who uphold this belief are called materialists. Throughout human history, many different factions of materialists with various schools of materialist thought have evolved.

Idealism is the belief that the nature of the world is consciousness; consciousness precedes matter; consciousness decides matter. People who uphold this belief are called idealists. Like materialism, various factions of idealists with varying schools of idealist thought have also evolved throughout history.

Idealism has cognitive origins and social origins.

Annotation 50

Cognitive origin refers to origination from the human consciousness of individuals.

Social origin refers to origination from social relations between human beings.

So, idealism originates from both the conscious activity of individual humans as well as social activity between human beings.

These origins are unilateral consideration and absolutization of only one aspect or one characteristic of the whole cognitive process.

Annotation 51

Unilateral consideration is the consideration of a subject from one side only.

Absolutization occurs when one conceptualizes some belief or supposition as always true in all situations without exception.

Both unilateral consideration and absolutization fail to consider the dynamic, constantly changing, and interconnected relations of all things, phenomena, and ideas in our reality.

Idealism originates from unilateral consideration because idealists ignore the material world and consider reality only from the perspective of the human mind. It also originates from absolutism because idealists absolutize human reasoning as the only source of truth and knowledge about our world without exception.

As Lenin wrote in On the Question of Dialectics: “Philosophical idealism is a unilateral development, an overt development, of one out of many attributes, or one out of many aspects, of consciousness.”

Historically, idealism has typically benefitted the oppressive, exploitative class of society. Idealism and religions usually have a close relation with each other, and support each other to co-exist and co-develop.

Annotation 52

Idealists, in absolutizing human consciousness, have a tendency to only give credence to the work of the mind and ignore the value of physical labor. This has been used to justify class structures in which religious and intellectual laborers are given authority and privilege over manual laborers.

This situation has also led to the idea that mental factors play a decisive role in the development of human society in particular and the whole world in general. This idealist view was supported by the ruling class and used to justify its own power and privilege in society. The dominant class has historically used such idealist philosophy as the justifying foundation for their political-social beliefs in order to maintain their ruling positions.

Marx discusses this tendency for rulers to idealistically justify their own rule in The German Ideology:

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an ‘eternal law.’

Marx goes on to explain how the idealist positions of the ruling class tend to get embedded in historical narratives:

Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true. This historical method which reigned in Germany, and especially the reason why, must be understood from its connection with the illusion of ideologists in general, e.g. the illusions of the jurist, politicians (of the practical statesmen among them, too), from the dogmatic dreamings and distortions of these fellows; this is explained perfectly easily from their practical position in life, their job, and the division of labour.

In history, there are two main forms of idealism: subjective and objective.

Subjective idealism asserts that consciousness is the primary existence. It asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions while denying the objective existence of material reality altogether.

Objective idealism also asserts the ideal and consciousness as the primary existence, but also posits that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. This concept is given many names, such as “absolute concept”, “absolute spirit,” “rationality of the world,” etc.

Annotation 53

Primary existence is existence which precedes and determines other existences.

Idealists believe that consciousness has primary existence over matter, that the nature of the world is ideal, and that the ideal defines existence.

Materialists believe the opposite: that matter has primary existence over the ideal, and that matter precedes and determines consciousness.

Dialectical Materialism holds that matter and consciousness have a dialectical relationship, in which matter has primary existence over the ideal, though consciousness can impact the material world through willful conscious activity.

The primary existence of matter within Dialectical Materialism is discussed further in The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.

Willful activity (willpower) is discussed in Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.

The key difference between subjective and objective idealists is this:

Subjective idealists believe that there is no external material world whatsoever — that what we imagine as the material world is merely illusory — and that all reality is created by consciousness, whereas objective idealists believe that there is a material world outside of human consciousness, but it exists independently of human consciousness; therefore (according to objective idealists), since humans can only observe the world through conscious experience, the material world can never be truly known or observed by our consciousness.

In opposition to Idealism, Materialism originated through practical experience and the development of science. Through practical experience and systematic development of human knowledge, Materialism has come to serve as a universally applicable theoretical system which benefits progressive social forces and which also orients the activities of those forces in both perception and practice.

Annotation 54

Materialism benefits progressive social forces by showing reality as it is, by dispelling the idealist positions of the ruling class, and by revealing that society and the world can be changed through willful activity.

Materialism guides progressive social forces by grounding thought and activity in material reality, enabling strategies and outcomes that line up with the realities of the material world. For instance, we must avoid utopianism [see Annotation 17, p. 18] in which emphasis is placed on working out ideal forms of society through debate, conjecture, and conscious activity alone. Revolution against capitalism must, instead, focus on affecting material relations and processes of development through willful activity.

As Engels pointed out in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: “The final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”

2. Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism

In human history, as human society and scientific understanding have developed, materialism has also developed through three forms: Primitive Materialism, Metaphysical Materialism, and Dialectical Materialism.

Primitive Materialism is the primitive form of materialism. Primitive materialism recognizes that matter comes first, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects, the origin, of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. These Primitive Materialist concepts can be found in many ancient materialist theories in such places as China, India, and Greece. [These Primitive Materialist elemental philosophies are discussed more in Matter, p. 53] Although it has many shortcomings, Primitive Materialism is partially correct at the most fundamental level, because it uses the material of nature itself to explain nature.

Metaphysical Materialism is the second basic form of Materialism. This form of materialism was widely discussed and developed in Western Europe in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. During this time, the metaphysical method of perceiving the world was applied to materialist philosophy. Although Metaphysical Materialism does not accurately reflect the world in terms of universal relations [see p. 108] and development, it was an important step forward in the fight against idealist and religious worldviews, especially during the transformational period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in many Western European countries.

Annotation 55

Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by mechanical philosophy, a scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17^th century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Mechanical philosophy led to a belief that all things — including living organisms — were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices. Influenced by this philosophy, metaphysical materialists came to see the world as a giant mechanical machine composed of parts, each of which exists in an essentially isolated and static state.

Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes Metaphysical materialism contributed significantly to the struggle against idealistic and religious worldviews, especially during the historical transition period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Western European countries. Metaphysical materialism also had severe limitations; especially in failing to understand many key aspects of reality, such as the nature of development through change/motion and relationships.

Dialectical Materialism is the third basic form of materialism. It was founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many of his successors. By inheriting the quintessence of previous theories and thoroughly integrating contemporary scientific achievements, Dialectical Materialism immediately solved the shortcomings of the Primitive Materialism of ancient times as well as the Metaphysical Materialism of modern Western Europe. It reaches the highest development level of materialism so far in history.

By accurately reflecting objective reality with universal relations and development*, Dialectical Materialism offers humanity a great tool for scientific cognitive activities and revolutionary practice. The Dialectical Materialist system of thought was built on the basis of scientific explanations about matter, consciousness, and the relationship between the two.

Annotation 56

* Materialist Dialectical methodology explains the world in terms of relationships and development. This is discussed in Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics, p. 106.

II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness, and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness

1. Matter

a. Category of “Matter”

Matter is a philosophical subject which has been examined for more than 2,500 years. Since ancient times, there has been a relentless struggle between materialism and idealism around this subject. Idealism asserts that the world’s nature, the first basis of all existence, is consciousness, and that matter is only a product of that consciousness. Conversely, materialism asserts that nature, the entirety of the world, is composed of matter, that this material world exists indefinitely, and that all things and phenomena are composed of matter.

Before dialectical materialism was born, materialist philosophers generally believed that matter was composed of some self-contained element or elements; that is to say some underlying substance from which everything in the universe is ultimately derived. In ancient times, the five elements theory of Chinese philosophy held that those self-contained substances were metal — wood — water — fire — earth; in India, the Samkhya school believed that they were Pradhana or Prakriti^[23]; in Greece, the Milesian school believed they were water (Thales’s^[24] conception) or air (Anaximene’s^[25] conception); Heraclitus^[26] believed the ultimate element was fire; Democritus^[27] asserted that it was something called an “atom,”' etc. Even as recently as the 17^th-18^th centuries, conceptions about matter belonging to modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon^[28], Renes Descartes^[29], Thomas Hobbes^[30], Denis Diderot^[31], etc., still hadn’t changed much. They continued following the same philosophical tendency as ancient philosophers by focusing their studies of the material world through elemental phenomena.

These conceptions of matter which were developed by philosophers before Marx’s time laid a foundation for a tendency to use nature to explain nature itself, but that tendency still had many shortcomings, such as: oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements;” failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness; failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis, etc.

Annotation 57

Here are further explanations of these shortcomings of early materialists:

Oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements”

Due to a lack of understanding and knowledge of matter, metaphysical materialists created erroneous conceptions of “elements” which do not accurately describe the nature of matter. By using such an erroneously conceived system of non-existing elements to describe nature, metaphysical materialists were prevented from gaining real insights into the material world which delayed and hindered scientific progress.

Failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness

Many early materialists believed that consciousness was simply a mechanical byproduct of material processes, and that mental events (thoughts, consciousness) could not affect the material world, since these events were simply mechanically determined by the material world.

As a first principle, Dialectical Materialism does hold that consciousness is created by matter. However, Dialectical Materialism also holds that consciousness can influence the material world through conscious action. This constitutes a dialectical relationship.

As Lenin explains in Materialism and Empirio-criticism: “Consciousness in general reflects being—that is a general principle of all materialism... social consciousness reflects social being.”

Whereas early materialists erroneously held that consciousness is simply an “accidental” byproduct of matter, Dialectical Materialism holds that consciousness is a characteristic of the nature of matter. As Engels wrote in the notation of Dialectics of Nature:

That matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain is for mechanism a pure accident, although necessarily determined, step by step, where it happens. But the truth is that it is the nature of matter to advance to the evolution of thinking beings, hence this always necessarily occurs wherever the conditions for it (not necessarily identical at all places and times) are present.

Dialectical materialism also breaks from early materialism by positing that consciousness has a dialectical relationship with matter. Consciousness arises from the material world, but can also influence the material world through conscious action. In other words, mental events can trigger physical actions which affect the material world.

As Marx explains in Theses on Feuerbach:

The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice... Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Put more simply, we as humans are capable of “revolutionary practice” which can “change the world” because our consciousness allows us to “change circumstances.” This is discussed further in Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.

Failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis

Dialectical materialists believe that matter exists in many forms, and that human society is a special form of existence of matter. Lenin referred to the material existence of human society as social being, which stood in contrast with human society’s social consciousness. Social being encompasses all of the material existence and processes of human society.

As Lenin wrote in Materialism and Empirio-criticism:

Social being is independent of the social consciousness of men. The fact that you live and conduct your business, beget children, produce products and exchange them, gives rise to an objectively necessary chain of events, a chain of development, which is independent of your social consciousness, and is never grasped by the latter completely. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible.

Early materialists failed to recognise the relationship between matter and consciousness — as Lenin puts it, specifically, between social being and social consciousness. Thus in contemplating social issues, these early materialists were unable to find proper materialist solutions.

These shortcomings resulted in a non-thorough materialist viewpoint: when dealing with questions about nature, the early materialists had a strong materialist viewpoint but when dealing with social issues, they “slipped” into an idealist viewpoint.

Annotation 58

Lenin explains this concept of “slipping into” idealism through a non-thorough materialist viewpoint in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: “Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every one of your weapons against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism — and that is all fideism wants.”

Note: fideism is a form of idealism which holds that truth and knowledge are received through faith or revelation. Subjectivism is the centering of one’s own self in conscious activities and perspective; see Annotation 222, p. 218.

In the same work, Lenin upholds that objective reality can be known through sense perception:

We ask, is a man given objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or not? [...] If you hold that it is not given, you... inevitably sink to subjectivism... If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.

Lenin also explains that proper materialism must recognize objective/absolute truth:

To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth.

A failure to recognize the existence of such objective, absolute truth, according to Lenin, constitutes “relativism,” a position that all truth is relative and can never be absolutely, objectively knowable.

It is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance, from religious ideology), there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature. You will say that this distinction between relative and absolute truth is indefinite. And I shall reply: yes, it is sufficiently ‘indefinite’ to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified; but it is at the same time sufficiently ‘definite’ to enable us to dissociate ourselves in the most emphatic and irrevocable manner from fideism and agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and the sophistry of the followers of Hume and Kant. Here is a boundary which you have not noticed, and not having noticed it, you have fallen into the swamp of reactionary philosophy. It is the boundary between dialectical materialism and relativism.

In other words, while proper materialism must contain a degree of relativistic thinking sufficient to challenge assumptions and reexamine perceived truth periodically, materialists must not fall into complete relativism (such as that espoused by Hume and Kant) lest they fall into idealist positions. Ultimately, Absolute Truth — according to Lenin — constitutes the alignment of conscious understanding with objective reality (not to be confused with Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth; see Annotation 232, p. 228).

Lenin recognized the development of Marx and Engels as “modern materialism, which is immeasurably richer in content and in comparably more consistent than all preceding forms of materialism,” in large part because Marx and Engels were able to apply materialism properly to social sciences by taking the “direct materialist road as against idealism.” He goes on to describe would-be materialists who fall to idealist positions due to relativism and other philosophical inadequacies as “a contemptible middle party in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question.”

Lenin warned that a failure to hold a thoroughly materialist viewpoint leads philosophers to become “ensnared in idealism, that is, in a diluted and subtle fideism; they became ensnared from the moment they took ‘sensation’ not as an image of the external world but as a special ‘element.’ It is nobody’s sensation, nobody’s mind, nobody’s spirit, nobody’s will — this is what one inevitably comes to if one does not recognise the materialist theory that the human mind reflects an objectively real external world.”

In other words, idealist conceptions of sensation inject mysticism into philosophy by conceiving of sensation as otherworldly, supernatural, and detached from material human beings with material experiences in the material world.

The development of natural sciences in the late 19^th century and early 20^th centuries (especially the inventions of Roentgen^[32], Becquerel^[33], Thomson^[34] etc.), disproved the theories of “classical elements” such as fire, water, air, etc. [see Primitive Materialism, p. 52]. These innovations led to a viewpoint crisis in the field of physical science. Many idealists used this opportunity to affirm the non-material nature of the world, ascribing the roles of supernatural forces to the birth of the world.

Annotation 59

Lenin discussed this viewpoint crisis extensively in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Here Lenin discusses relativist reactions to new breakthroughs in natural science, which led even scientists (who proclaimed to be materialists) to take idealist positions:

We are faced, says Poincaré [a French scientist], with the “ruins” of the old principles of physics, “a general debacle of principles.” It is true, he remarks, that all the mentioned departures from principles refer to infinitesimal magnitudes; it is possible that we are still ignorant of other infinitesimals counteracting the undermining of the old principles... But at any rate we have reached a “period of doubt.” We have already seen what epistemological deductions the author draws from this “period of doubt:” “it is not nature which imposes on [or dictates to] us the concepts of space and time, but we who impose them on nature;” “whatever is not thought, is pure nothing.” These deductions are idealist deductions. The breakdown of the most fundamental principles shows (such is Poincaré’s trend of thought) that these principles are not copies, photographs of nature, not images of something external in relation to man’s consciousness, but products of his consciousness. Poincaré does not develop these deductions consistently, nor is he essentially interested in the philosophical aspect of the question.

Lenin concludes by stating that the non-thorough materialist position has lead directly to these idealist positions of relativism:

The essence of the crisis in modern physics consists in the breakdown of the old laws and basic principles, in the rejection of an objective reality existing outside the mind, that is, in the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism.

With this historical background, in order to fight against the distortions of many idealists and to protect the development of the materialist viewpoint, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin simultaneously summarized all the natural scientific achievements in late 19^th and early 20^th century and built upon Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ thought to develop this definition of matter:

“Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”

Lenin’s definition of matter shows that:

First, we need to distinguish between the definition of “matter” as a philosophical category (the category that summarizes the most basic and common attributes of all material existence, and which was defined with the objective of solving the basic issues of philosophy) from the definition of “matter” that was used in specialized sciences (specific and sense-detectable substance).

Second, the most basic, common attribute of all kinds of matter [and under both definitions listed in the previous paragraph] is objective existence, meaning matter exists outside of human consciousness, independently of human consciousness, no matter whether humans can perceive it with our senses or not.

Third, matter, with its specific forms, can cause and affect mental events in humans when it directly or indirectly impacts the human senses; human consciousness is the reflection of matter; matter is the thing that is reflected by human consciousness.

Lenin’s definition of matter played an important role in the development of materialism and scientific consciousness.

First, by pointing out that the most basic, common attribute of matter is objective existence, Lenin successfully distinguished the basic difference between the definition of matter as a philosophical category and the definition of matter as a category of specialized sciences. It helped solve the problems of defining matter in the previous forms of materialism; it offered scientific evidence to define what can be considered matter; it layed out a theoretical foundation for building a materialist viewpoint of history, and overcame the shortcomings of idealist conceptions of society.

Second, by asserting that matter was “objective reality,” “given to man in his sensations,” and “copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations,” Lenin not only confirmed the primary existence of matter and the secondary existence of consciousness [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88] but he also affirmed that humans had the ability to be aware of objective reality through the “copying, photographing and reflection of our sensations” [in other words, sense perceptions].

b. Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter

According to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, motion is the mode of existence of matter; space and time are the forms of existence of matter.

Annotation 60

Mode refers to the way or manner in which something occurs or exists. You can think of mode as pertaining to the “how,” as opposed to the “what.” For example, the mode of circulation refers to how commodities circulate within society [see Annotation 14, p. 16]; mode of production refers to how commodities are produced in society. So, mode of existence of matter refers to how matter exists in our universe.
Form comes from the category pair [see Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics, p. 126] of Content and Form [see p. 147]. Form refers to how we perceive objects, phenomena, and ideas. So, form of existence of matter refers to the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter [explained below] in our universe.

- Motion is the Mode of Existence of Matter

As Friedrich Engels explained: “Motion, in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking.”

According to Engels, motion encompasses more than just positional changes. Motion embodies “all the changes and processes happening in this universe;” matter is always associated with motion, and matter can only express its existence through motion.

Annotation 61

In Dialectical Materialist philosophy, “motion” is also known as “change” and it refers to the changes which occur as a result of the mutual impacts which occur in or between subjects through the negation of contradictions. Motion is a constant attribute of all things, phenomena, and ideas (see Characteristics of Development, p. 124).

Because matter is inseparable from motion (and vice versa), Engels defined motion as the mode of matter — the way or manner in which matter exists. It is impossible for matter in our universe to exist in completely static and unchanging state, isolated from the rest of existence; thus matter exists in the mode of motion. Over time, motion leads to development as things, phenomena, and ideas transition through various stages of quality change [see Annotation 117, p. 119].

Matter exists objectively, therefore motion also exists objectively. The motion of matter is self-motion^[35].

Annotation 62

It is important to note that “matter,” in the philosophical sense as used in dialectical materialist phlosophy, includes all that is “objective” (external) to individual human cosnciousness. This includes objective phenomena which human senses are unable to detect, such as objective social relations, objective economic values, etc. Objectiveness is discussed more in Annotation 108, p. 112; objective social relations are discussed more in Annotation 10, p. 10.

In Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels discussed the properties of motion and explained that motion can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore, motion can only change form or transfer from one object to another. In this sense, all objects are dynamically linked together through motion:

The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existence extending from stars to atoms... In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. It already becomes evident here that matter is unthinkable without motion. And if, in addition, matter confronts us as something given, equally uncreatable as indestructible, it follows that motion also is as uncreatable as indestructible. It became impossible to reject this conclusion as soon as it was recognised that the universe is a system, an interconnection of bodies.

In other words, every body of matter is in motion relative to other bodies of matter, and thus matter is inseparable from motion. Motion results from the interaction of bodies of matter. Because motion and matter define each other, and because motion can only exist in relation to matter and matter can only exist in relation to motion, the motion of matter can be described as “self-motion,” because the motion is not created externally but exists only within and in relation to matter itself. Engels further explains that if this were not true — if motion were external to matter — then motion itself would have had to have been created external to matter, which is impossible:

To say that matter during the whole unlimited time of its existence has only once, and for what is an infinitesimally short period in comparison to its eternity, found itself able to differentiate its motion and thereby to unfold the whole wealth of this motion, and that before and after this remains restricted for eternity to mere change of place — this is equivalent to maintaining that matter is mortal and motion transitory. The indestructibility of motion cannot be merely quantitative, it must also be conceived qualitatively; matter whose purely mechanical change of place includes indeed the possibility under favourable conditions of being transformed into heat, electricity, chemical action, or life, but which is not capable of producing these conditions from out of itself, such matter has forfeited motion; motion which has lost the capacity of being transformed into the various forms appropriate to it may indeed still have dynamis but no longer energeia, and so has become partially destroyed. Both, however, are unthinkable.

So, motion can change forms and can transfer from one material body to another, but it can never be created externally from matter, and neither motion nor matter can be created or destroyed in our universe. Thus, matter exists in a state of “self-motion;” motion can never externally be created nor externally applied to matter.

To put it another way, motion results from the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist as assemblages of relationships [see The Principle of General Relationships, p. 107], and these relationships contain opposing forces. As Lenin explained in his Philosophical Notebooks:

The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their ‘self-movement,’ in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.

Based on the scientific achievements which occurred in his lifetime, Engels classified motion into 5 basic forms: mechanical motion (changes in positions of objects in space); physical motion (movements of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity…); chemical motion (changes of organic and inorganic substances in combination and separation processes…); biological motion (changes of living objects, or genetic structure…); social motion (changes in economy, politics, culture, and social life).

These basic forms of motion are arranged into levels of advancement based on the level of complexity of matter that is affected.

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The basic forms of motion each affect different forms of matter, but these forms of motion do not exist independently from each other; they actually have strong relationships with each other, in which the more advanced forms of motion develop from lower forms of motion; the more advanced forms of motion also internally include lower forms of motion. [I.e., biological motion contains chemical motion; chemical motion contains physical motion; etc.]

Every object exists with many forms of motion, but any given object is defined by its most advanced form of motion. [I.e., living creatures are defined in terms of biological motion, societies are defined in terms of social motion, etc.]

By classifying the basic forms of motion, Engels laid out the foundation for classification and synthesization of science. The basic forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion.

Annotation 63

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels clears up a great deal of confusion and addresses many misconceptions about matter, motion, forces, energy, etc. which existed in both science and philosophy at the time by defining and explaining the dialectical nature of matter and motion.

When Dialectical Materialism affirmed that motion was the mode of existence — the natural attribute of matter — it also confirmed that motion is absolute and eternal. This does not mean that Dialectical Materialism denies that things can become frozen; however, according to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, freezing is a special form of motion, it is motion in equilibrium and freezing is relative and temporary.

Motion in equilibrium is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things.

Freezing is a relative phenomenon because freezing only occurs in some forms of motion and in some specific relations, it does not occur in all forms of motion and all kinds of relations. Freezing is a temporary phenomenon because freezing only exists for a limited period of time, it cannot last forever.

Annotation 64

Equilibrium can exist at any advancement of motion. Lenin discussed equilibrium as it pertains to the social form of motion in discussing an equilibrium of forces existing in Russia in 1905 in this article, An Equilibrium of Forces:

1) The result to date (Monday, October 30) is an equilibrium of forces, as we already pointed out in Proletary, No. 23.
2) Tsarism is no longer strong enough, the revolution not yet strong enough, to win.
3) Hence the tremendous amount of vacillation. The terrific and enormous increase of revolutionary happenings (strikes, meetings, barricades, committees of public safety, complete paralysis of the government, etc.), on the other hand, the absence of resolute repressive measures. The troops are wavering.
4) The Tsar’s Court is wavering (The Times and the Daily Telegraph) between dictatorship and a constitution.
The Court is wavering and biding its time. Strictly speaking, these are its correct tactics: the equilibrium of forces compels it to bide its time, for power is in its hands.
The revolution has reached a stage at which it is disadvantageous for the counter-revolution to attack, to assume the offensive.
For us, for the proletariat, for consistent revolutionary democrats, this is not enough. If we do not rise to a higher level, if we do not manage to launch an independent offensive, if we do not smash the forces of Tsarism, do not destroy its actual power, then the revolution will stop half way, then the bourgeoisie will fool the workers.
5) Rumour has it that a constitution has been decided upon. If that is so, then it follows that the Tsar is heeding the lessons of 1848 and other revolutions: he wants to grant a constitution without a constituent assembly, before a constituent assembly, apart from a constituent assembly. What kind of constitution? At best (for ’the Tsar) a Constitutional-Democratic constitution.
This implies: achievement of the Constitutional-Democrats’ ideal, skipping the revolution; deceiving the people, for all the same there will be no complete and actual freedom of elections.
Should not the revolution skip this granted constitution?

- Space and Time are Forms of Existence of Matter

Every form of matter exists in a specific position, with specific space particularity (height, width, length, etc.), in specific relation (in front or behind, above or under, to the left or right, etc.) with other forms of matter. These positional relations exist in what we call space. [Space is defined by positional relations of matter.]

On the other hand, the existence of matter is also expressed in the speed of change and the order in which changes occur. These changes occur in what we call time. As Engels wrote: “For the basic forms of all existence are space and time, and a being outside of time is as absurd as an existence outside space.” Matter, space, and time are not separable; there is no matter that exists outside of space and time; there is also no space and time that exist outside of matter’s motion.

Annotation 65

Space and time, as the forms of matter, i.e.: the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter. We are only able to perceive and understand material objects as they exist within space and time.

Space and time, as forms of existence of matter, exist objectively [see Annotation 108,

p. 112], and are defined by matter. [Space is defined by the positional relations between material objects; time is defined by the speed of change of material objects and the order in which these changes occur.] Space has three dimensions: height, width, length; time has one direction: from the past to the future.

c. The Material Unity of the World

Dialectical Materialism affirms that the nature of the world is matter, and the world is unified in its material properties. [In other words: the entire universe, in all its diversity, is made of matter, and the properties of matter are the same throughout the known universe.]

The material nature of the world is proven on the following basis:

First, there is only one world: the material world; the material world is the first existence [i.e., it existed before consciousness], it exists objectively, and independently, of human consciousness.

Second, the material world exists eternally, endlessly, infinitely; it has no known beginning point and there is no evidence that it will ever disappear.

Third, all known objects and phenomena of the material world have objective relations with each other and all objects and phenomena exist in unity with each other. All of them are specific forms and structures of matter, or have material origin which was born from matter, and all are governed by the objective rules of the material world. In the material world, there is nothing that exists outside of the changing and transforming processes of matter; all of these processes exist as causes and effects of each other.

Annotation 66

The most important thing to understand here is that every object and phenomenon in the universe arises as matter, all material objects and phenomena are dynamically linked to one another in an infinite chain of causes and effects and changes and transformations, all governed by the material laws of our reality. This understanding is the material foundation of dialectical materialism.

2. Consciousness

a. The Source of Consciousness

According to the materialist viewpoint, consciousness has natural and social sources.

Annotation 67

Consciousness arises from nature, and from social activities and relations.

Natural refers to the material world. Without the material world of matter, material processes, and the evolution of material systems — up to and including the human brain — consciousness would never have formed.

Social activities and relations also contributed to the development of consciousness. The social processes of labor and language were also prerequisites for the development of conscious activity in human beings.

- Natural Source of Consciousness

There are many factors that form the natural sources for consciousness, but the two most basic factors are human brains and the relationship between humans and the objective world which makes possible creative and dynamic reflection.

About human brains: consciousness is an attribute of a highly organized form of matter, which is the brain. Consciousness is the function and the result of the neurophysiological activities of human brains. As human brains evolved and developed over time, their neurophysiological activities became richer, and, as these activities progressed, consciousness developed further and further over time. This explains why the human evolution process is also a process of developing the capacity for perception and thinking. Whenever human neurophysiological activities don’t function normally because of damaged brains, our mental life is also disturbed.

About the relationship between humans and the objective world which made possible creative and dynamic reflection: The relationship between humans and the objective world has been essential for as long as humans have existed. In this relationship, the objective world is reflected through human senses which interact with human brains and then form our consciousness.

Consciousness exists as a dynamic set of relationships between the external material world, human sense perception, and the functions of the human brain.

Reflection is the re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. Reflection is a characteristic of all forms of matter.

There are many forms and levels of reflection such as [from more simple to more complex]: physical and chemical reflection, biological reflection, mental reflection, creative and dynamic reflection, etc.

Annotation 68

Change is driven by mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and/or ideas. Any time two such subjects impact one another, traces of some form or another are left on both interacting subjects. This characteristic of change is called reflection.

The concept of reflection, first proposed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, has been advanced through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists (including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others), and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry up to this day by mainstream researchers in Cuba, Vietnam, China, and Laos. The information provided below is somewhat simplified and generalized to give the reader a basic familiarity with the theory of reflection and the development of reflection in nature.

Dialectical materialist scientists have developed a theory of the development of evolution of forms of reflection, positing that forms of reflection have become increasingly complex as organic processes and life have evolved and grown more complex over time.

The chart below gives an idea of how different forms of reaction have evolved over time:

This chart outlines the basic development tendency of Forms of Reflection in matter which lead from inorganic matter, to life, to human consciousness and society.

Obviously, not all subjects develop completely along the path outlined above. Thus far, to our knowledge, only human beings have developed entirely to the level of consciousness and society. It is also unknown whether, or how, human society may develop into some future, as-yet-unknown, form.

Physical and chemical reflection is the simplest form of reflection, dealing with the ways in which inorganic matter is reflected in human consciousness. Physical and chemical reflection is the reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, positions, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). Physical and chemical reactions are passive: when two objects interact with each other physically or chemically, they do not do so consciously.

Annotation 69

Reflection occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the object are transferred to each other. Below are some very simplified illustrations to relate the basic idea of the physical reflection of material objects.

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Reflection as Change in Position:

1. Round Object moves towards Square Object.

2. Round Object impacts Square Object.

3. Square Object changes position; Round Object “bounces” and reverses direction.

4.Thus, Square Object’s change in position reflects the motion of Round Object (and vice-versa). Traces of both contradicting objects are reflected in the respective motion and position of each object.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-12.png

Reflection as Change in Structure:

1. Round Object moves toward Square Object.

2. Round Object impacts Square Object.

3. Structural changes (traces) occur in both Round and Square Object as a result of impact.

4. These changes constitute structural, physical reflection.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-13.png

Chemical Reflection:

1. Atom C is attached to Atom B.

2. Atom C detaches from Atom B and transfers to attach to Atom A.

3. This is a process of chemical reflection, in which both molecules mutually reflect one another after A _CB a process of chemical reaction (one molecule loses Atom C while the other gains Atom C).

As dialectical materialists, we must strive to develop our understanding of the reflections of physical and chemical changes and reactions so that our conceptions reflect the material world as accurately as possible. For example: we must not ascribe consciousness to physical processes. Example: a gambler who comes to believe that a pair of dice is “spiteful” or “cursed” is attributing conscious motivation to unconscious physical processes, which is an inaccurate ideological reflection of reality.

Biological reflection is a higher, more complex form of reflection [compared to physical reflection]. It deals with reflection of organic material in the natural world. As our observations of biological processes have become more sophisticated and complex [through developments in natural science, the development of better tools for observation such as microscopes and other technologies, and so on], our conscious reflections of the natural world have also become more complex.

Biological reflection is expressed through excitation, induction, and reflexes.

Excitation is the reaction of simple plant and animal life-forms which occurs when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes to their habitat [i.e., a plant which moves toward the sun throughout the day].

Induction is the reaction of animals with simple nerve systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms.

Annotation 70

Unconditioned reflexes are characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. Such reactions are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within the organism. An example of an unconditioned reflex response would be muscles in the leg twitching at the response of a tap on the knee. Such responses are purely physiological and are never learned (“conditioned” into us) — these reactions are simply induced physiologically.

Mental reflections are reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms.

Annotation 71

Conditioned reflexes are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals learn to associate previously unrelated neural stimuli to elicit a particular reaction. The Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov famously developed our understanding of conditioned responses by ringing a dinner bell shortly before giving dogs food. After a few repetitions, dogs would begin to salivate upon hearing the dinner bell being rung, even before any food was offered. Any dog which did not receive this conditioning would not salivate upon hearing a dinner bell. This is what makes it a learned, conditioned response — a type of mental reflection.

Dynamic and creative reflection is the most advanced form of reflection. It only occurs in matter that has the highest structural level, such as the human brain. Dynamic and creative reflection is done through the human brain’s nervous physiological activities whenever the objective world impacts human senses. This is a kind of reflection that actively selects and processes information to create new information and to understand the meaning of that information. This dynamic and creative reflection is called consciousness.

Annotation 72

Remember Lenin’s definition of matter from Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: “Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”

An intrinsic property of matter is that it can be sensed by human beings, and through this sensation, reflected in human consciousness. Thus, all forms of matter share the characteristic of being able to be reflected in the human mind.

Criticizing Karl Pearson, who said that it was not logical to maintain that all matter had the property of being conscious, Lenin wrote in brackets: “But it is logical to suppose that all matter possesses a property which is essentially kindred to sensation: the property to reflect.” Understanding the concept of dynamic and creative reflection is critical to understanding the role of consciousness and the ideal in Dialectical Materialism. In particular, reflection differentiates Dialectical Materialism from the idealist form of dialectics used by Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10]. As Marx famously wrote in Capital Volume I:

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.

In other words, Hegelian idealism saw human consciousness as defining the material world. Dialectical Materialism inverts this relationship to recognize that what we conceive in our minds is only a reflection of the material world. As Marx explains in The German Ideology, all conscious thought stems from life processes through reflection:

Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

Marx and Engels argued that consciousness arose from the life-processes of human beings. Life-processes are processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life, and these processes have a dialectical relationship with consciousness: the processes of life, therefore, reflect consciousness, just as consciousness reflects human life-processes. Conscious activities (such as being able to hunt, gather, and cook food, build shelter, and so on) improve the life-processes of human beings (by improving our health, extending our life-spans, etc.); and as our life-processes improved, our consciousness was able to develop more fully. As a concrete example of the dialectic between life processes and consciousness, it is now widely believed by scientists that the advent of cooking and preparing food (conscious activity) improved the functioning of the human brain^[36] (a life process) which, in turn, developed human consciousness, and so on. Life-processes thus determine how consciousness reflects reality, while consciousness impacts back on life-processes, reflecting the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness [see p. 88] and between practical activities and consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226].

Because consciousness arose from life-processes of human beings in the material world, we know that the material world is reflected in our consciousness. However, these reflections do not determine the material world, and do not mirror the material world exactly [see Annotation 77, p. 79]. It is also important to understand that, since life-processes in the material world predate and determine consciousness, consciousness can never be a first basis of seeking truth about our world. As Marx further explains in The German Ideology:

Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation.

In other words, Hegelian idealism makes the critical mistake of believing that the ideal — consciousness — is the first basis of reality, and that anything and everything can be achieved through mere conscious activity. Marx, on the other hand, argues that “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life,” and that we must understand the ways in which reality is reflected in consciousness before we can hope to affect change in the material conditions of human beings:

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here [in the materialist perspective] we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.

So, the work of the Dialectical Materialist is not to try to develop Utopian conceptions of reality first, to then proceed to try and force such purely ideal conceptions onto reality (see Annotation 17, p. 18).

Rather, we must understand the material basis of reality, as well as the material processes of change and motion which govern reality, and only then can we search for ways in which human beings can influence material reality through conscious activity. As Marx explains, the revolutionary must not be fooled into believing we can simply conceive of an ideal world and then replicate it into reality through interpretation and conscious thought alone. Instead, we must start with a firm understanding of material conditions and, from that material basis, determine how to build our revolutionary movement through conscious impact of material relations and processes of development in the material world.

As Marx wrote in The German Ideology: “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” This distinction may seem subtle at first, but it has massive implications for how Marx suggests we go about participating in revolutionary activity. For Marx, purely-idealist debates and criticisms are an unproductive waste of time:

The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly ‘world-shattering’ statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against ‘phrases.’ They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. The only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few (and at that thoroughly one-sided) elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries of universal importance.

Marx also discusses the uselessness of idealist conjecture:

Moreover, it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to do on its own: out of all such muck we get only the one inference that these three moments, the forces of production, the state of society, and consciousness, can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the division of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact that intellectual and material activity — enjoyment and labour, production and consumption — devolve on different individuals, and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of labour. It is self-evident, moreover, that ‘spectres,’ ‘bonds,’ ‘the higher being,’ ‘concept,’ ‘scruple,’ [terms for idealist conceptions] are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression, the conception apparently of the isolated individual, the image of very empirical fetters and limitations, within which the mode of production of life and the form of intercourse coupled with it move.

What Marx means by this is that we should focus on the material processes and conditions of society if we intend to change society, because idealist speculation, conjecture, critique, and thought alone, at the individual level, will never be capable of affecting revolutionary change in our material world.

Instead, we must focus on the material basis of reality, the material conditions of society, and seek revolutionary measures which are built upon materialist foundations. Only by understanding material processes of development, as well as the dialectical relationship between consciousness and matter, can we reliably and effectively begin to impact reality through conscious activity. This begins with the recognition that conscious thought itself is a reflection of material reality which developed and results from life-processes of material motion and processes of change within the human brain.

This concept of reflection, pioneered by Marx and Engels, was significantly developed by V. I. Lenin in his response to Machian positivists who posited that what we perceive is not truly reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27]. In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin wrote: “Life gives rise to the brain. Nature is reflected in the human brain.”

In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin further defined the relationship between matter and consciousness through reflection.

LENIN’S PROOF OF THE THEORY OF REFLECTION

In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin offered the following arguments to back up the theory of reflection.

1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin [a chemical substance which was newly discovered at time of writing] existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.

Lenin is saying that the material world must exist outside of and independent from our consciousness. He cites as evidence the discovery of a chemical substance which until recently we had no sensory perception of, noting that this substance must have existed long before we became aware of it through sensory observation.

2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is “beyond” phenomena (Kant) or that we can or must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) — all this is the sheerest nonsense, [unfounded belief], trick, invention.

Lenin is referencing a centuries-old debate about whether or not human beings are capable of having real knowledge of a “thing-in-itself,” or if we can only perceive phenomena of things (characteristics observable to our senses). The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness. So the question being posed is: can we REALLY have knowledge of material objects outside of our consciousness, or does consciousness itself act as a barrier to ever REALLY knowing anything about material objects and the material world outside of our consciousness?

Immanuel Kant argued that we can never know the true nature of the material world, writing: “we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing-in-itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.” This idea that the senses could not be trusted to deliver accurate knowledge — and thus, the “thing-in-itself” is essentially unknowable — was carried forward by later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Marx and Engels refute this notion, arguing that practice allows us to discover truth about “things-in-themselves:”

The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice — namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable “thing-in-itself”.

Lenin expanded on this argument, explaining that the phenomena of objects which we observe with our senses do accurately reflect material objects, even though we might not know everything about these objects at once. Over time, as we learn more and more about material objects and the material world through practice and repeated observation, we more fully and accurately come to understand “things-in-themselves, as he writes in Empirio-Criticism and Materialism:

3) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as readymade and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.

Here, Lenin further elaborates on the dialectical nature of knowledge: we must simultaneously accept that our knowledge is never perfect and unchanging, but we must also recognize that we are capable of making our knowledge more exact and complete over time. To further defend his ideas about reflection, Lenin cited Czech philosopher Karl Kautsky’s argument against Kant:

That I see green, red and white is grounded in my faculty of sight. But that green is something different from red testifies to something that lies outside of me, to real differences between the things... The relations and differences between the things themselves revealed to me by the individual space and time concepts are real relations and differences of the external world, not conditioned by the nature of my perceptive faculty... If this were really so [i.e., if Kant’s doctrine of the ideality of time and space were true], we could know nothing about the world outside us, not even that it exists.

Lenin followed from Marx and Engels that, in order to further develop our understanding and knowledge of the material world, it was necessary to engage in practice [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.

Notice that Engels is careful to use the words so far: “its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.” Engels does not argue that human understanding of the material world is infallible: mistakes are often made. But over time, as such mistakes are discovered and our understanding improves, our knowledge of the material world develops. This is only possible if the phenomena of objects which we observe — the reflections within our consciousness — do actually and accurately represent material reality. Lenin elaborated on this necessity to constantly update and improve dialectical materialist philosophy as new information and knowledge became available:

Engels, for instance, assimilated the, to him, new term, energy, and began to employ it in 1885 (Preface to the 2^nd ed. of Anti-Dühring) and in 1888 (Ludwig Feuerbach), but to employ it equally with the concepts of ‘force’ and ‘motion,’ and along with them. Engels was able to enrich his materialism by adopting a new terminology.

Engels provided further elaborations on how practical experience and mastery of the material world refutes the notion that it is impossible to have real knowledge of the material world in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy:

The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice, viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable... The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such thingsin-themselves until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the thing-in-itself became a thing for us, as for instance, alizarin [a dye which was originally plant-based], which we no longer trouble to grow in in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.

So, dialectical materialism holds that there is a material world external from our consciousness; that conscious thoughts are reflections of this material world; that we can have real knowledge of the material world through sensory observation; and that our knowledge and understanding of the material world is best advanced through practice in the material world.

- Social Sources of Consciousness

There are many factors that constitute the social sources of consciousness. The most basic and direct factors are labor and language.

Labor is the process by which humans interact with the natural world in order to make products for our needs of existing and developing. Labor is also the process that changes the human body’s structure [i.e., muscles developing through exercise].

Annotation 73

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels describes the dialectical relationship between labor and human development:

Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source — next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.
Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.
But the hand did not exist alone, it was only one member of an integral, highly complex organism. And what benefited the hand, benefited also the whole body it served.

Labor also allows us to discover the attributes, structures, motion laws, etc., of the natural world, via observable phenomena.

Annotation 74

We discover truth about the natural world through labor — through physical practice in the material world. See the discussion of practice in Annotation 211, p. 205.

All of these phenomena, through our human senses, impact our human brains. And through brain activity, knowledge and consciousness of the objective world are formed and developed.

Language is a system of material signals that carries information with cognitive content. Without language, consciousness could not exist and develop.

The birth of language goes hand in hand with labor. From the beginning, labor was social. The relationships between people who perform labor processes require them to have means to communicate and exchange thoughts. This requirement caused language to arise and develop along with the working processes. With language, humans not only communicate, but also summarise reality and convey experience and thoughts from generation to generation.

Annotation 75

From Dialectics of Nature:

It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another.
Comparison with animals proves that this explanation of the origin of language from and in the process of labour is the only correct one. The little that even the most highly-developed animals need to communicate to each other does not require articulate speech. In its natural state, no animal feels handicapped by its inability to speak or to understand human speech. It is quite different when it has been tamed by man. The dog and the horse, by association with man, have developed such a good ear for articulate speech that they easily learn to understand any language within their range of concept. Moreover they have acquired the capacity for feelings such as affection for man, gratitude, etc., which were previously foreign to them. Anyone who has had much to do with such animals will hardly be able to escape the conviction that in many cases they now feel their inability to speak as a defect, although, unfortunately, it is one that can no longer be remedied because their vocal organs are too specialised in a definite direction. However, where vocal organs exist, within certain limits even this inability disappears. The buccal organs of birds are as different from those of man as they can be, yet birds are the only animals that can learn to speak; and it is the bird with the most hideous voice, the parrot, that speaks best of all. Let no one object that the parrot does not understand what it says. It is true that for the sheer pleasure of talking and associating with human beings, the parrot will chatter for hours at a stretch, continually repeating its whole vocabulary. But within the limits of its range of concepts it can also learn to understand what it is saying. Teach a parrot swear words in such a way that it gets an idea of their meaning (one of the great amusements of sailors returning from the tropics); tease it and you will soon discover that it knows how to use its swear words just as correctly as a Berlin costermonger. The same is true of begging for titbits.
First labour, after it and then with it speech — these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which, for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect. Hand in inevitably accompanied by a corresponding refinement of the organ of hearing, so the development of the brain as a whole is accompanied by a refinement of hand with the development of the brain went the development of its most immediate instruments — the senses. Just as the gradual development of speech is all the senses. The eagle sees much farther than man, but the human eye discerns considerably more in things than does the eye of the eagle. The dog has a far keener sense of smell than man, but it does not distinguish a hundredth part of the odours that for man are definite signs denoting different things. And the sense of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest initial form, has been developed only side by side with the development of the human hand itself, through the medium of labour.

So, the most basic, direct and important source that decides the birth and development of language is labor. Language appeared later than labor but always goes with labor. Language and labor were the two main stimulations affecting the brains of the primates which evolved into humans, slowly changing their brains into human brains and transforming animal psychology into human consciousness.

This diagram is based on work from an article titled “Evidence in Hand: Recent Discoveries and the Early Evolution of Human Manual Manipulation[37].”Modern research has discovered strong evidence[38] that the human hand evolved along with tool use, in line with Engels’ analysis in Dialectics of Nature.

Annotation 76

It is also worth noting that, just as human consciousness derived from labor and language and social activity, so too did society itself arise from language and labor, as Engels explained in Dialectics of Nature:

The reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development. This development did not reach its conclusion when man finally became distinct from the ape, but on the whole made further powerful progress, its degree and direction varying among different peoples and at different times, and here and there even being interrupted by local or temporary regression. This further development has been strongly urged forward, on the one hand, and guided along more definite directions, on the other, by a new element which came into play with the appearance of fully-fledged man, namely, society.

In other words, these factors of human’s physical nature and human society have a dialectical relationship with one another. Elements of human nature — in particular labor and language — led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.

Human language and human labor mutually develop one another through a dialectical process to develop human nature. Simultaneously, human nature and human society mutually develop one another through a dialectical process.

Elements of human nature — in particular labor and language — led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.

b. Nature and Structure of Consciousness

- Nature of Consciousness

Consciousness is the dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; it is the subjective image of the objective world. [See discussion of dynamic and creative reflection on p. 68]

The dynamic and creative nature of reflection is expressed in human psycho-physiological activities when we receive, select, process, and save data in our brains. Within the human brain, we are able to collect data from the external material world. Based on this information, our brain is capable of creating new information, and we are able to analyze, interpret, and understand all of this information collectively within our consciousness.

The dynamic and creative nature of reflection is also expressed in several human processes:

The creation of ideas, hypotheses, stories, etc.
The ability to summarize nature and to comprehend the objective laws of nature.
The ability to construct models of ideas and systems of knowledge to guide our activities.

Consciousness is the subjective image of the objective world. Consciousness is defined by the objective world in both Content and Form [see Annotation 150, p. 147]. However, consciousness does not perfectly reflect the objective world. It modifies information through the subjective lenses (thoughts, feelings, aspirations, experiences, knowledge, needs, etc.) of humans. According to Marx and Engels, ideas are simply “sublimates [transformations] of [the human brain’s]... material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.”^[39]

Annotation 77

In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels refer to ideas somewhat poetically as “the phantoms formed in the human brain,” and explains that ideas arise directly from material human life processes [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Lenin makes it very clear in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism that consciousness is not a mirror image, or exact reproduction of reality, quoting Engels:

The great basic question of all philosophy,” Engels says, “especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being,” of “spirit and nature.” Having divided the philosophers into “two great camps” on this basic question, Engels shows that there is “yet another side” to this basic philosophical question, viz., “in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality?” “The overwhelming majority of philosophers give an affirmative answer to this question,” says Engels, “including under this head not only all materialists but also the most consistent idealists.

Of extra importance is Lenin’s footnote to the above passage, regarding what he purports to be Viktor Chernov’s mistranslation of Engels:

Fr. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., 4^th Germ. ed., S. 15. Russian translation, Geneva ed., 1905, p. 12–13. Mr. V. Chernov translates the word Spiegelbild literally (a mirror reflection) accusing Plekhanov of presenting the theory of Engels “in a very weakened form” by speaking in Russian simply of a “reflection” instead of a “mirror reflection”. This is mere cavilling. Spiegelbild [mirror reflection] in German is also used simply in the sense of Abbild [reflection, image].

Here, Lenin reaffirms and clarifies Engels’ idea that consciousness is not a perfect, exact duplicate of reality; not a “mirror image.” This, however, does not contradict the fact that we can obtain real knowledge of the real world in our consciousness, and that this knowledge improves over time through practice and observation. Indeed, Lenin’s passage on practice cited first in this annotation directly follows the above passage in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

See: Natural Source of Consciousness, p. 64, and Annotation 32, 27.

Consciousness is a social phenomenon and has a social nature. Consciousness arose from real life activities. Consciousness is always ruled by natural law and by social law.

Annotation 78

Natural law includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. Consciousness itself can never violate natural law as it arises from the natural processes of the natural world.

Social law includes the objective and universal relationships between social phenomena and social processes. Human society was created through labor, and this labor was performed in very specific material relations between humans and the natural world.

Note: social law is a key concept of historical materialism, which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains how social existence and social laws govern the consciousness of individuals:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

Consciousness is determined by the social communication needs of human beings as well as the material conditions of reality.

Annotation 79

The term material conditions refers to the external environment which humans inhabit. Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base^[40] of human society, and other objective externalities and systems which affect human life and society. Note that material conditions don’t refer to physical matter alone, but also include objective social relations and phenomena. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx argues that “neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life.”

Consciousness is dynamic in nature, constantly learning and changing flexibly. Consciousness guides humans to transform the material world to suit our needs.

Annotation 80

Consciousness and material conditions have a dialectical relationship with one other, just as the base of society and the superstructure have a dialectical relationship with one other [see Annotation 29, p. 24]. Consciousness arises from material conditions, though conscious activity can affect material conditions.

As Marx explains in Capital Volume I:

At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose.

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains how the development of material conditions eventually leads to conscious activity which will in turn lead to changes in society:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

As Marx further explains, material conditions must first be met before such revolutionary social changes can be made through conscious activity:

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

- Structure of Consciousness

Consciousness has a very complicated structure, including many factors which have strong relationships with each other. The most basic factors are knowledge, sentiment and willpower.

Annotation 81

As with the concept of reflection (see Annotation 68, p. 65), the analysis of the structure of consciousness which follows is rooted in ideas first proposed by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and later developed through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others, and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry and development up to this day. According to Where is Marx in the Work and Thought of Vygotsky? by Lucien Sève (2018), much of this work, such as the groundbreaking work of Lev Vygotsky, has been heavily “de-Marxized,” stripped of all aspects of Marxism and, by extension, dialectical materialism, in translation to English.

Knowledge constitutes the understanding of human beings, and is the result of the cognitive process. Knowledge is the re-created image of perceived objects which takes the form of language. Knowledge is the mode of existence of consciousness and the condition for consciousness to develop.

Annotation 82

Marx and Engels discussed the relationship between language and consciousness extensively in The German Ideology, explaining that language — the form of knowledge which exists in human consciousness — evolved dialectically with and through social activity, and that consciousness also developed along with and through the material processes that gave rise to speech:

From the start the ‘spirit’ is afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”So, language, physical speech organs, and human society all developed in dialectic relations with one another. Since language is the form of knowledge in human consciousness, this means that knowledge arose directly from these dialectical processes:
Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious.

The fact that knowledge has a language-form in human consciousness is also important to understand because it shows that consciousness arose dialectically as, and through, social activity, and indeed, language and social activity gave rise to consciousness as a replacement for animal instinct in our relations with nature.

Man’s consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all. This beginning is as animal as social life itself at this stage. It is mere herd-consciousness, and at this point man is only distinguished from sheep by the fact that with him consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a conscious one.

And, as language and social activity dialectically developed through one another, human society became complex enough to give rise to human societies and human economies:

This sheep-like or tribal consciousness receives its further development and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs, and, what is fundamental to both of these, the increase of population. With these there develops the division of labour…

Knowledge can be separated into two broad categories: knowledge of nature, and knowledge of human society. Each of these categories of knowledge reflects its corresponding entity in the external world.

Annotation 83

Each category of knowledge reflects a corresponding entity in the external world.

It’s also important to note that human society and nature have a dialectical relationship with each other and mutually impact one another, and, by extension, knowledge of nature and knowledge of human society also dialectically influence one another. So these categories of knowledge are not isolated from one another but rather dynamically shape and influence each other continuously through time.

Based on levels of cognitive development, we can also classify knowledge into categories of: daily life knowledge and scientific knowledge, experience knowledge and theory knowledge, emotional knowledge and rational knowledge.

Annotation 84

The following information is from the Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism, released by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training:

Daily Life and Scientific Knowledge

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Daily Life Knowledge is the knowledge we acquire in our daily lives to deal with our daily tasks. From our interactions with nature and human society, we cultivate life experience and our understanding of every aspect of our daily lives in relation to human society and nature.

Scientific Knowledge arises from Daily Life Knowledge: as our daily lives become more complex, we develop a need to understand the material world and human society more deeply and comprehensively. Scientific Knowledge is thus a developed system of knowledge of nature and human society. Scientific Knowledge can be tested and can be applied to human life and activity in useful ways.

Experience and Theory Knowledge:

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-18.png

Experience Knowledge is cultivated from direct observation of nature and human society. This kind of knowledge is extremely diverse, and we can apply this kind of knowledge to guide our daily activities.

Theory Knowledge arises from Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is composed of abstract generalizations of Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is more profound, accurate, and systematically organized than Experience Knowledge and gives us an understanding of the laws and dynamics of nature and human society.

Emotional and Rational Knowledge:

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-19.png

Less Developed More Developed

Emotional Knowledge is the earlier stage of cognitive processing. Emotional Knowledge comes directly to us from our human senses. We obtain emotional knowledge when we use our human senses to directly learn things about nature and human society. Emotional Knowledge is usually manifested as immediate cognitive responses such as pleasure, pain, and other such impulses.

Rational Knowledge arises from Emotional Knowledge. It is a higher stage of cognitive processing, involving abstract thought and generalization of emotional knowledge.

Rational Knowledge is usually manifested as definitions, conjectures, judgments, etc.

See also: Principle of Development, p. 119; Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.

Sentiment is the resonant manifestation of human emotions and feelings in our relationships. Sentiment is a special form of reality reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Whenever reality impacts human beings, we feel specific sensations and emotional reactions to those impacts. Over time, these specific sensations and emotions combine and dialectically develop into generalized human feelings, and we call these generalized feelings sentiment. Sentiment expresses and develops in every aspect of human life; it is a factor that improves and promotes cognitive and practical activities.

Annotation 85

As Marx explains in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: “Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being — and because he feels that he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object.” Marx further elaborates that sentimental emotion is essential to human nature: “The domination of the objective essence within me, the sensuous eruption of my essential activity, is emotion which thereby becomes the activity of my nature.”

Depending on the subjects that are perceived, as well as our human emotions about them, sentiments can be manifested in many different forms such as: moral emotion, aesthetic emotion, religious emotion, etc.

Annotation 86

Moral Emotion is the basic manifestation of moral consciousness at an emotional level. For example: when we see people helping other people, we have positive emotional responses, yet when we see people harming other people, we have negative emotional responses. (Source: Nguyen Thi Khuyen of the National Institute of Administration of Vietnam)

Aesthetic Emotion refers to the the resonant feelings which arise from our interaction with beauty, sadness, comedy, etc., in life and in art. For example: when humans encounter beauty, we feel positive emotional responses. When humans encounter ugliness, we feel negative emotional responses. When we witness pain, we feel sympathetic feelings of pain and a desire to help. When we witness comedy, we feel humorous emotions ourselves. (Source: Textbook of General Aesthetic Studies from the Ministry of

Education and Training of Vietnam)

Religious Emotion is the human belief in supernatural or spiritual forces which can’t be tested or proved through material practice or observation. However, belief in these forces can give human beings emotional responses such as hope, love, etc. (Source: Pham Van Chuc, Doctor of Philosophy, Central Theoretical Council of the Communist Party of Vietnam)

These are just a few illustrative examples; there are many other ways in which human emotion and sentiment can manifest.

Willpower is the manifestation of one’s own strength used to overcome obstacles in the process of achieving goals. Willpower is a dynamic aspect of consciousness, a manifestation of human consciousness in the material world.

Annotation 87

An unnamed poem by Ho Chi Minh, written in 1950 for the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers, addresses the phenomenon of willpower:

Nothing in this world must be difficult
The only thing that we should fear is having a waivering heart
We can dig up mountains and fill the sea
Once we’ve willfully made a firm decision

Today, this poem serves as the lyrics for anthem of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (formerly the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers).

Willpower arises from human self-awareness and awareness of the purposes of our actions. Through this awareness and through willpower, we are able to struggle against ourselves and externalities to successfully achieve our goals. We can consider willpower to be the power of conscious human activity; willpower controls and regulates human behaviors in order to allow humans to move towards our goals voluntarily; willpower also allows humans to exercise self-restraint and self-control, and to be assertive in our actions according to our views and beliefs.

Annotation 88

In Dialectics of Nature, Engels explains how willpower developed in human beings as we separated from animals through the development of consciousness: “The further removed men are from animals, however, the more their effect on nature assumes the character of premeditated, planned action directed towards definite preconceived ends.”

In Capital Volume I, Marx explains how willpower uniquely allows humans to consciously change our own material conditions to suit our needs according to pre-conceived plans:

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.

The true value of willpower is not only manifested in strength or weakness, but is also expressed in the content and meaning of the goals that we try to achieve through our willpower. Lenin believed that willpower is one of the factors that will create revolutionary careers for millions of people in the fierce class struggles to liberate ourselves and mankind.

Annotation 89

In “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Lenin explains how revolutions are born from the collective willpower of thousands of people:

History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes. This can readily be understood, because even the finest of vanguards express the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of thousands, whereas at moments of great upsurge and the exertion of all human capacities, revolutions are made by the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute struggle of classes. Two very important practical conclusions follow from this: first, that in order to accomplish its task the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception (completing after the capture of political power — sometimes at great risk and with very great danger — what it did not complete before the capture of power); second, that the revolutionary class must be prepared for the most rapid and brusque replacement of one form by another.

All of these factors [knowledge, sentiment, and willpower] which, together, create consciousness, have dialectical relationships with each other. Of these factors, knowledge is the most important, because it is the mode of existence of consciousness, and also the factor which guides the development of all the other factors, and it also determines how the other factors manifest.

3. The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness

The relationship between matter and consciousness is dialectical. In this relationship, matter comes first, and matter is the source of consciousness; it decides consciousness. However, consciousness is not totally passive, it can impact back to matter through the practical activities of human beings.

Annotation 90

Engels explained in Dialectics of Nature that “matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain,” which means that matter must necessarily come prior to consciousness.

As Marx explains in Capital Volume I, matter determines conscious activity:

The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

However, it’s important to remember that the relationship between matter and consciousness is dialectical, and that conscious activity — through the combination of willpower and labor — can also impact the material world; social change arises through the combined willpower of many human beings. See: Annotation 80, p. 81.

a. The Role of Matter in Consciousness

Dialectical Materialism affirms that:

• Matter is the first existence, and that consciousness comes after.

• Matter is the source of consciousness, it decides consciousness.

We know that matter determines consciousness because consciousness is the product of the high-level-structured matter such as the human brain. Consciousness itself can only exist after the development of the material structure of the human brain. Humans are the result of millions of years of development of the material world. We are, therefore, products of the material world. This conclusion has been firmly established through the development of natural science, which has given us great insight into the long history of the Earth and of the evolution of living organisms, including human beings.

All of this scientific evidence stands as the basis for the viewpoint: matter comes first, consciousness comes after [see Annotation 114, p. 116].

We have already discussed the factors which constitute the natural and social sources of consciousness:

• Human brains

• Impacts of the material world on human brains that cause reflections

• Labor

• Language

[See Annotation 72, p. 68 and Annotation 73, p. 75]

All of these factors also assert that matter is the origin of consciousness.

Annotation 91

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The material basis of consciousness is rooted in the following phenomena:

1. The material structure of the human brain.
1. Impacts from the material world cause reflections in human consciousness.
1. Human Labor — physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.
1. Human Speech — physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.
1. Evolution of human brains and consciousness through material processes of the material world.

For more information, see: Nature and Structure of Consciousness.

Consciousness is composed of reflections and subjective images of the material world, therefore the content of consciousness is decided by matter [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. The development of consciousness is determined by natural laws and by social laws^[41] as well as the material environment which we inhabit. All of these factors which determine consciousness are material in nature. Therefore, matter determines not only the content but also the development of consciousness.

b. The Role of Consciousness in Matter

In relation to matter, consciousness can impact matter through human activities.

When we discuss consciousness we are discussing human consciousness. So, when we talk about the role of consciousness, we are talking about the role of human beings. Consciousness in and of itself cannot directly change anything in reality. In order to change reality, humans have to implement material activities. However, consciousness controls every human activity, so even though consciousness does not directly create or change the material world, it equips humans with knowledge about objective reality, and based on that foundation of knowledge, humans are able to identify goals, set directions, develop plans, and select methods, solutions, tools, and means to achieve our goals. So, consciousness manifests its ability to impact matter through human activities.

The impact of consciousness on matter can have positive or negative results.

Annotation 92

“Positive” and “negative,” in this context, are subjective and relative terms which simply denote “moving towards a goal” and “moving away from a goal,” based on a specific perspective.

From the perspective of revolutionary communism, “positive” can be taken as moving towards the end goal of the liberation of the working class from capitalist oppression and the construction of a stateless, classless society. Likewise, “negative” can be taken as moving away from that goal. See: Annotation 114, p. 116.

Humans have the ability to overcome all challenges in the process of achieving our goals and improving our world, so long as our conscious activities meet the following criteria:

We must perceive reality accurately.
We must properly apply scientific knowledge, revolutionary sentiments, and directed willpower.
We must avoid contradicting objective laws of nature and society.

Successfully achieving our goals and improving the world in this manner constitutes the positive outcome of human consciousness.

On the contrary, if human consciousness wrongly reflects objective reality, nature, and laws, then, right from the beginning, our actions will have negative results which will do harm to ourselves and our society.

Therefore, by directing the activities of humans, consciousness can determine whether the results of human activities are beneficial or harmful. Our consciousness thus determines whether our activities will succeed or fail and whether our efforts will be effective or ineffective.

By studying the matter, origin, and nature of consciousness, as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness, we can see that:

Matter is the source of consciousness ^[42].
Matter determines the content and creative capacity of consciousness ^[43].
Matter is the prerequisite to form consciousness ^[44].
Consciousness only has the ability to impact matter, and this impact is indirect, because it has to be done through human material activities within material reality ^[45].

Matter determines consciousness while consciousness impacts matter indirectly through human activity.

The strength with which consciousness can impact the material world depends on:

The accuracy of reflection of the material world in consciousness ^[46].
Strength of willpower which transmits consciousness to human activity ^[47].
The degree of organization of social activity ^[48].
Material conditions in which human activity occurs ^[49].

Annotation 93

The importance of organization in determining the outcomes of human social activity is one of the most important concepts of Marxism-Leninism and is discussed frequently by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and nearly every other important communist revolutionary in history. Marx explains the connections between social organization and conscious human activity in Capital Volume I [see Annotation 80, p. 81].

4. Meaning of the methodology

Dialectical Materialism builds the most basic and common methodological^[50] principles for human cognitive and practical activities on the following bases:

The viewpoint of the material nature of the world [matter comes first, consciousness comes after].
The dynamic and creative nature of consciousness ^[51].
The dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness ^[52].

All cognitive and practical activities of humans originate from material reality and must observe objective natural and social laws, however, our activities are capable of impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity. [See The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].

Annotation 94

The above paragraph summarizes an important methodological concept which is critical for undestanding the philosophical framework of Dialectical Materialism. Dialectical Materialism, as a philosophy, synthesizes earlier materialist and idealist positions by recognizing the fact that the material determines consciousness, while consciousness can impact the material world through willful activity.

From this philosophical basis, the methodology of Materialist Dialectics has been developed to provide a deeper understanding of dialectical development, which is rooted in contradiction and negation within and between subjects. Materialist Dialectics is the subject of Chapter 2, p. 98.

According to this methodological principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], if we hope to succeed in accomplishing our goals in the material world, then we must simultaneously meet two criteria:

1. We must ensure that our knowledge reflects the objective material world as much as possible, respecting the objective natural and social laws of the material world.

2. We must simultaneously recognize the dynamic and creative nature of our conscious activity.

When we say that human activities originate from material reality and must observe objective natural and social laws we' mean that human knowledge must originate from the material world. This means that if we hope to be successful in our activities, we should respect the natural and social laws of the material world.

This means that in our human perception and activities, we must determine goals, and set strategies, policies, and plans which are rooted firmly in objective material reality. Humans have to take objective material reality as the foundation of our activities and plans, and all of our activities must be carried out in the material world. Humans have to examine and understand our material conditions and transform them in ways that will help us to accomplish our goals.

When we talk about impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity, we mean we must recognize the positive, dynamic, and creative roles of consciousness. We must recognize the role human consciousness plays in dynamically and creatively manifesting our will in the material world through labor. Impacting the material world through conscious activity at a revolutionary scale requires humans to respect and understand the role of scientific knowledge; to study laboriously to master such knowledge; and then to propagate such knowledge so to the masses to develop public knowledge and belief so as to guide the people’s action.

Moreover, we also have to voluntarily study and practice^[53] in order to form and improve our revolutionary viewpoint^[54] and willpower^[55] in order to have both scientific and humanitarian activity guidelines.

To implement this principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], we have to avoid, fight against, and overcome the diseases of subjectivism^[56] and idealism^[57] through such errors as:

Attempting to impose idealist plans and principles [which are not rooted in material conditions] into reality.
Considering fantasy, illusion, and imagination instead of reality.
Basing policies and programs on subjective desires.
Using sentiment as the starting point for developing policies, strategies, etc.

On the other hand, in cognitive and practical activities, we also have to fight against empiricism^[58], which disregards scientific knowledge and theories, and which is also very conservative, stagnant and passive.

Annotation 95

Process of Developing Revolutionary Public Knowledge

Developing revolutionary public knowledge must be preceded by mastery of knowledge and a firm grounding in the role and nature of knowledge.

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels makes a scathing critique of idealist socialist revolutionary thought, writing:

To all these [idealist socialists], Socialism is the expression of absolute truth^[59], reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as an absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive of one another.

Here, Engels points out the absurdity of the idea that some abstract, purely ideal “truth” could liberate workers in the material world. Engels continues on, explaining how such idealist socialism could never lead to meaningful revolutionary change:

Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

In other words, idealist revolutionary movements only tend to result in endless debate and meaningless theories which are divorced from objective reality and material conditions. Such theories and idealist constructions do not lead to effective action in the real world. Socialism must become real (i.e., based in objective material conditions and praxis^[60] in the real world) to affect change in the material world, as Engels explains elsewhere in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific [see Annotation 17, p. 18].

In Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx lays out an excellent case study of the failings of incoherent, idealist socialism. He begins by quoting the Gotha Program, which was an ideological program which the German Workers Party hoped to implement. In this text, Marx cites the Gotha Program line by line and offers his materialist critique of the idealist principles presented. In the following passage, Marx refutes some key errors caused by idealism and offers materialist correction:

Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power... But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.

Here, Marx points out the importance of having a firm understanding of the material reality of labor and its relation to the material, natural world. Marx points out that the idea that labor, alone, is the source of all wealth is an idealist notion of the bourgeoisie, a false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] which prevents proper material analysis and props up the capitalist viewpoint. A failure to grasp the truth of the material basis of reality weakens the socialist position, and any movement built on such weak idealist foundations will lead to failure in trying to bring about revolutionary change.

We have already discussed the shortcomings of empiricism in Annotation 10, p. 10, but it might be helpful to see another case study, this time from Engels, pointing out the flaws of empiricist analysis in his text Anti-Dühring. Engels begins by quoting the empiricist Eugen Dühring, who wrote:

Philosophy is the development of the highest form of consciousness of the world and of life, and in a wider sense embraces the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series of cognitions or stimuli or a group of forms of being come to be examined by human consciousness, the principles underlying these manifestations of necessity become an object of philosophy. These principles are the simple, or until now assumed to be simple, constituents of manifold knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition of bodies, the general constitution of things can be reduced to basic forms and basic elements. These ultimate constituents or principles, once they have been discovered, are valid not only for what is immediately known and accessible, but also for the world which is unknown and inaccessible to us. Philosophical principles consequently provide the final supplement required by the sciences in order to become a uniform system by which nature and human life can be explained. Apart from the fundamental forms of all existence, philosophy has only two specific subjects of investigation — nature and the world of man. Accordingly, our material arranges itself quite naturally into three groups, namely, the general scheme of the universe, the science of the principles of nature, and finally the science of mankind. This succession at the same time contains an inner logical sequence, for the formal principles which are valid for all being take precedence, and the realms of the objects to which they are to be applied then follow in the degree of their subordination.

Engels then proceeds to critique this empiricist worldview, showing that it does not properly reflect the material world and amounts to idealism in its own right:

What [Dühring] is dealing with are therefore principles, formal tenets derived from thought and not from the external world, which are to be applied to nature and the realm of man, and to which therefore nature and man have to conform. But whence does thought obtain these principles? From itself?
No, for Herr Dühring himself says: the realm of pure thought is limited to logical schemata and mathematical forms (the latter, moreover, as we shall see, is wrong). Logical schemata can only relate to forms of thought; but what we are dealing with here is solely forms of being, of the external world, and these forms can never be created and derived by thought out of itself, but only from the external world. But with this the whole relationship is inverted: the principles are not the starting-point of the investigation, but its final result; they are not applied to nature and human history, but abstracted from them, it is not nature and the realm of man which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid in so far as they are in conformity with nature and history. That is the only materialist conception of the matter, and Herr Dühring’s contrary conception is idealistic, makes things stand completely on their heads, and fashions the real world out of ideas, out of schemata, schemes or categories existing somewhere before the world, from eternity — just like a Hegel.

Lenin also heavily criticized empiricism in his work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, which we discuss at length in Annotation 32, p. 27.

Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics

Materialist dialectics is one of the basic theoretical parts that form the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. It is the “science of common relations” and also the “science of common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thoughts... Dialectics, as understood by Marx, and also in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.”^[61]

[Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.]

I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics

1. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics

a. Definitions of Dialectics and the Subjective Dialectic

In Marxism-Leninism, the term dialectic refers to regular relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought.^[62]

There are two forms of dialectic: the objective dialectic and the subjective dialectic. The objective dialectic is the dialectic of the material world, while the subjective dialectic is the reflection of objective dialectic in human consciousness. [See Annotation 68, p. 65].

According to Engels, “Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevail throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature.”^[63]

Annotation 96

Dialectics is an umbrella term which includes both forms of dialectical systems: subjective and objective dialectics.

Objective dialectics are the dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time.

Subjective dialectics, or dialectical thought, is a system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics [see Annotation 49, p. 45].

Subjective dialectics is the theory that studies and summarises the [objective] dialectic of nature into a system with scientific principles and rules, in order to build a system of methodological principles of perception and practice. Dialectics is opposed to metaphysics — a system of thought which conceives of things and phenomena in the world in an isolated and unchanging state [See Annotation 8, p. 8].

b. Basic Forms of Dialectics

Dialectics has developed into three basic forms and levels: ancient primitive dialectics, German idealist dialectics, and the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism.

Ancient primitive dialectics is the earliest form of dialectics. It has developed independently in many philosophical systems in ancient China, India and Greece.

Chinese philosophy has two major forms of ancient primitive dialectics:

“Changing Theory” (a theory of common principles and rules pertaining to the changes in the universe)
The “Five Elements Theory” (a theory of the principles of mutual impact and transformation of the five elements of the universe) of the School of Yin-Yang. [See: Primitive Materialism, p. 52]

In Indian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy is a quintessential [see Annotation 6, p. 8] form of ancient primitive dialectics, which includes such concepts as “selflessness,” “impermanence,” and “predestination.”

An ancient, primitive form of dialectics also developed in Ancient Greek philosophy.

Friedrich Engels wrote: “The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought… This primitive, naive, but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.”^[64]

Engels also wrote of Greek dialectics: “Here, dialectical thought still appears in its pristine simplicity, as yet undisturbed by the charming obstacles which the metaphysicists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — Bacon and Locke in England, Wolff in Germany — put in its own way... Among the Greeks — just because they were not yet advanced enough to dissect and analyse nature — nature is still viewed as a whole, in general. The universal connection of natural phenomena is not proved in regard to particular; to the Greeks it is the result of direct contemplation.”^[65]

Annotation 97

Engels, here, is explaining how the ancient Greek dialecticians were correct to view nature as a cohesive system, a “whole, in general,” which they determined through direct observation of the natural world. The major shortcoming of this ancient Greek form of dialectics was a lack of inquiry into the specific processes and principles of nature. Engels laments that seventeenth and eighteenth century metaphysicists took us backwards by disregarding this view of nature as a cohesive, general whole.

Ancient, primitive dialectics had an accurate awareness of the dialectical characteristic of the world but with its primitive and naive perspective, it still lacked evidence-based forms of natural scientific achievements.

Jumping forward to the late 16^th century, natural sciences started developing rapidly in Europe. Scientists began deeply analysing and studying specific factors and phenomena of nature which led to the birth of modern European metaphysical analysis. In the 18^th century, metaphysics became the dominant methodology in philosophical thought and scientific study. However, when natural scientists moved from studying each subject separately to studying the unification of all those subjects in their relationships, the metaphysical method proved insufficient. Thus, European scientists and philosophers had to transition into a more advanced system of thought: dialectical thought.

The classical German idealist dialectics were founded by Kant and completed by Hegel. According to Engels: “The second form of dialectics, which is the form that comes closest to the German naturalists [natural scientists], is classical German philosophy, from Kant to Hegel.”^[66]

Annotation 98

Engels discusses this history, and the shortcomings of the metaphysical philosophy of his era, in The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring. First, Engels explains why early modern natural scientists initially did not feel constrained by their adherence to metaphysics, since inquiries in the initial revolution of scientific study were limited to the narrow development of specific fields of inquiry by necessity:

Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative.

Engels goes on to explain that at the time he was writing, enough knowledge had been accumulated within specific, distinct fields that it becomes necessary to begin studying the connections and overlaps between different fields, which called for theoretical and philosophical foundations:

It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance.

Unfortunately, natural scientists were held back by the existing metaphysical theoretical foundations which were dominant at the time as, according to Engels, “theoretical thinking is an innate quality only as regards natural capacity. This natural capacity must be developed, improved, and for its improvement there is as yet no other means than the study of previous philosophy.”

Metaphysical theory and formal logic were in common use by natural scientists at the time. As Engels explained in On Dialectics and Dialectics of Nature, metaphysics and formal logic could never be as useful as dialectical analysis for examining and unifying concepts from wide-ranging dynamic systems of overlapping fields of inquiry.

Unfortunately, dialectics had not yet been suitably developed for use in the natural sciences before the work of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism, as Engels explained in On Dialectics:

Formal logic itself has been the arena of violent controversy from the time of Aristotle to the present day. And dialectics has so far been fairly closely investigated by only two thinkers, Aristotle and Hegel. But it is precisely dialectics that constitutes the most important form of thinking for present-day natural science, for it alone offers the analogue for, and thereby the method of explaining, the evolutionary processes occurring in nature, inter-connections in general, and transitions from one field of investigation to another.

The Idealist Dialectics of Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10] constituted a major development of dialectics, but the idealist nature of Hegelian dialectics made them unsuitable for natural scientists, who therefore discarded “Old-Hegelian” dialectics and were thus left without a suitable dialectical framework. Again, from On Dialectics:

The year 1848, which otherwise brought nothing to a conclusion in Germany, accomplished a complete revolution there only in the sphere of philosophy [and] the nation resolutely turned its back on classical German philosophy that had lost itself in the sands of Berlin old-Hegelianism... But a nation that wants to climb the pinnacles of science cannot possibly manage without theoretical thought. Not only Hegelianism but dialectics too was thrown overboard — and that just at the moment when the dialectical character of natural processes irresistibly forced itself upon the mind, when therefore only dialectics could be of assistance to natural science in negotiating the mountain of theory — and so there was a helpless relapse into the old metaphysics.

Engels goes on to explain that, having rejected Hegel’s dialectics, natural scientists were set adrift, cobbling together theoretical frameworks from the works of philosophers which were plagued by idealism and metaphysics, and which were therefore not suitable for the task of unifying the disparate fields of natural sciences together:

What prevailed among the public since then were, on the one hand, the vapid reflections of Schopenhauer, which were fashioned to fit the philistines, and later even those of Hartmann; and, on the other hand, the vulgar itinerant-preacher materialism of a Vogt and a Büchner. At the universities the most diverse varieties of eclecticism competed with one another and had only one thing in common, namely, that they were concocted from nothing but remnants of old philosophies and were all equally metaphysical. All that was saved from the remnants of classical philosophy was a certain neo-Kantianism, whose last word was the eternally unknowable thing-in-itself, that is, the bit of Kant [see Annotation 72, p. 68] that least merited preservation. The final result was the incoherence and confusion of theoretical thought now prevalent.

Engels explains that this lack of a proper dialectical materialist framework had frustrated natural scientists of his era:

One can scarcely pick up a theoretical book on natural science without getting the impression that natural scientists themselves feel how much they are dominated by this incoherence and confusion, and that the so-called philosophy now current offers them absolutely no way out. And here there really is no other way out, no possibility of achieving clarity, than by a return, in one form or another, from metaphysical to dialectical thinking.

After explaining that Hegel’s system of dialectics came closest to meeting the needs of contemporary science, Engels explains why Hegelian dialectics were ultimately rejected by the scientific community:

Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line. Hence, with the fall of the idealist point of departure, the system built upon it, in particular Hegelian philosophy of nature, also falls. It must however be recalled that the natural scientists’ polemic against Hegel, in so far as they at all correctly understood him, was directed solely against these two points: viz., the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.”

In other words, it was the idealism and the unworkable structuring of Hegelian dialectics that prevented its adoption by natural scientists. Engels finally explains how Marx was able to modify Hegel’s idealist dialectics into a materialist form which is suitable for empirical scientific inquiry:

It is the merit of Marx that... he was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method, its connection with Hegelian dialectics and its distinction from the latter, and at the same time to have applied this method in Capital to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.

These Classical German philosophers [Kant, Hegel, etc.^[67]] systematically organized idealist dialectics into formal philosophies. Of particular note was Hegel’s belief that the dialectical process would eventually lead to an “absolute idea.” This foundational belief in an “absolute idea” is what chiefly defines Hegelian dialectics as idealist in nature [see Annotation 98, p. 100].

Hegel believed that the subjective dialectic is the basis of the objective dialectic. [In other words, Hegel believed that dialectical thought served as the objective dialectics of the material world.]

According to Hegel, the “absolute idea” was the starting point of all existence, and that this “absolute idea,” after creating the natural world, then came to exist within human consciousness.

Engels wrote that in Hegelian dialectics: “... spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea.”^[68]

Annotation 99

In the above quoted passage, Engels was explaining why Hegelian dialectics were unsuitable for use in natural sciences. Here is a longer excerpt:

First of all it must be established that here it is not at all a question of defending Hegel’s point of departure: that spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea... We all agree that in every field of science, in natural as in historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms and the various forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science, too, the inter-connections are not to be built into the facts, but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.

The German idealists (most notably Hegel) built an idealist system of dialectics organized into categories and common laws along with a strict logic of consciousness.

Lenin stated that: “Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts.”^[69]

Annotation 100

What Lenin means, here, is that Hegel inadvertently and unconsciously discovered the concept of reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Hegel intuitively understood that the material world was reflected in human consciousness, and, by extension, subjective dialectics (dialectical thought) reflected objective dialectics (of the material world). Hegel’s error was an inversion of the ideal and the material. As Marx later pointed out in the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, it is the material which precedes the ideal, and not the other way around:

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.

Engels also quoted and emphasized Marx’s thoughts [in the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, citing another quote of Marx from the Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, further quoted in Annotation 100 above]: “The mystification which dialectics suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”^[70]

Annotation 101

In the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Engels explains some of the contemporary currents of science and philosophy of his era. Engels explains that Hegelian philosophy had been dismissed by a newer current of natural scientists who dismissed “the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.” In other words, the natural scientists rejected Hegelianism because it was both idealist and was not built on a foundation of objective facts.

Engels points out, however, that Marx “was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method” of Hegel.

The dialectical method was forgotten in the sense that the natural scientists ignored and dismissed dialectics along with the rest of Hegel’s philosophy. So, Engels is pointing out that one of the great contributions of Marx was salvaging the dialectical method from Hegel while rejecting the idealist and non-fact-based characteristics of Hegelian philosophy.

Marx, according to Engels, proved that the dialectical method could be separated from idealism by “[applying the dialectical method] in Capital to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.” This was the origin of dialectical materialism: the resurrection of the dialectical method and the development of a dialectical method in a materialist and scientific form.

The idealist characteristics of classical German dialectics and Hegelian philosophy was a limitation that needed to be overcome [so that it could be utilized for scientific inquiry]. Marx and Engels overcame that limitation and in so doing developed materialist dialectics. This system of dialectics is the most advanced form of dialectics in the history of philosophy to date. It is the successor of previous systems of dialectics, and it arose as a critique of the classical German dialectics.

Engels said: “Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history.”^[71]

2. Materialist Dialectics

a. Definition of Materialist Dialectics

Materialist dialectics have been defined in various ways by many prominent Marxist-Leninist philosophers.

Engels defined materialist dialectics as: “nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society, and thought.”^[72]

Engels also emphasized the role of the principle of general relations.^[73] As John Burdon

Sanderson Haldane noted in the 1939 preface to Dialectics of Nature: “In dialectics they

[Marx and Engels] saw the science of the general laws of change.”^[74]

Lenin emphasized the important role of the principles of development^[75] (including the theory of cognitive development) in the dialectics that Marx inherited from Hegelian philosophy.

Lenin wrote: “The main achievement was dialectics, i.e., the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest, and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge that provides us with a reflection of eternally developing matter.”^[76]

b. Basic Features and Roles of Materialist Dialectics

There are two basic features of the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism:

First, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism is a system of dialectics that is based on the foundation of the scientific materialist viewpoint.

Annotation 102

Remember that scientific in Marxism-Leninism refers broadly to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Objects and Purposes of Study, p. 38]. Remember also that materialism in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning as well, which differentiates it from other forms of materialism [see Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism, p. 52]. Here, materialism includes an understanding that the material is the first basis of reality, meaning that the material determines the ideal (though human consciousness can impact the material world through willpower and labor [see Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79]). Materialism is also built upon scientific explanations (rooted in empirical data and practice, i.e. systematic experimentation and observation) of the world. And finally, remember that viewpoint is the starting point of inquiry [see Annotation 11, p. 12].

Thus, a scientific materialist viewpoint is a perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world.

Note: Materialist Dialectics contains Twelve Basic Pairs of Categories, Two Basic Principles and Three Universal Laws. These are summarized, respectively, in Appendix A (p. 246), Appendix B (p. 247), and Appendix C (p. 248), and explained in depth throughout the rest of this chapter.

In this way, materialist dialectics fundamentally differs from the classical German idealist dialectics, and especially differs from Hegelian dialectics^[77] (as these dialectics were founded on idealist viewpoints).

Moreover, it also has a higher level of development compared to other dialectical systems of thought found in the history of philosophy going back to ancient times. Such previous forms of dialectics were fundamentally based on materialist stances, however the materialism of those ancient times was still naive, primitive and surface-level.

Second, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism unifies dialectical materialist viewpoints and materialist dialectical methodology, so it not only explains the world, but is also a tool humans can use to perceive and improve the world.

Every principle and law of Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics is both:

1. An accurate explanation of the dialectical characteristics of the world.

2. A scientific methodology for perceiving and improving the world.

By summarizing the general interconnections and development of all things — every phenomenon in nature, society and human thought — Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics provides the most general methodological principles for the process of perceiving and improving the world. They are not just objective methodological principles; they are a comprehensive, constantly developing, and historical methodology.

This methodology can be used to analyze contradictions [see Annotation 119, p. 123] in order to find the basic origins and motivations of both motion and developmental processes. Therefore, materialist dialectics is a great scientific tool for the revolutionary class to perceive and improve the world.

With these basic features, materialist dialectics plays a very important role in the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. Materialist dialectics are the foundation of the scientific and revolutionary characteristics of Marxism-Leninism and also offer the most general worldview and methodology for creative activities in scientific study and practical activities.

II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics

Annotation 103

The Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development are the most basic principles of materialist dialectics. These two principles are dialectically related to one another.

The following sections will outline the Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development, which are the most fundamental principles of materialist dialectics. These two concepts are closely (and dialectically) related:

1. The Principle of General Relationships

a. Definition of Relationship and Common Relationship

Annotation 104

The Principle of General Relationships describes how all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships

The Principle of Development relates to the idea that motion, change, and development are driven by internal and external relationships.

These two principles are dialectically linked: any given subject is defined by its internal relationships, and these same relationships drive the development of every subject.

Note: The foundation of the principles of Materialist Dialectics were laid out by

Engels in Dialectics of Nature. Engels began working on Dialectics of Nature in February, 1870 and had to stop in 1876 to work on Anti-Dühring. He then restarted work on Dialectics of Nature in 1878 and continued working on it until 1883, when Karl Marx died. Engels felt that it was more important to try and put together Marx’s great unfinished works, Capital Volumes 2, 3, and 4, and so stopped working on Dialectics of Nature once again. So, unfortunately, Engels died before this seminal work on Materialist Dialectics could be completed, and what we have instead is an unfinished assemblage of notes.

What follows in the rest of this book is a cohesive system of Materialist Dialectics which was built upon the foundations laid out by Engels in Dialectics of Nature and many other works of political and scholarly writing from various sources. This is the system of Materialist Dialectics studied by Vietnamese students and applied by Vietnamese communists today.

Because this text comes from predominantly Vietnamese scholarship and ideological development, we have had to translate some terms into English which are not derived from the “canon” of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. In some cases, various terms have been consolidated into one concept. For example: Engels used the term “interconnection” (German: innern Zusammenhang, literally: “inner connections”) in Dialectics of Nature, but Vietnamese political scientists use the term “relationship.” Where Engels uses the term “motion” (German: Bewegung) modern Vietnamese communists tend to use the word “development.” Wherever this is the case, we have chosen to use the words in English which most closely match the language used in the original Vietnamese of this text.

In materialist dialectics, the word relationship refers to the regulating principles, mutual interactions, and mutual transformations which exist between things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as those existing between aspects and factors within things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 105

Throughout this book, phenomenon/phenomena simply refers to anything that is observable by the human senses.

Materialist dialectics examines relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas and within things, phenomena, and ideas. A relationship which occurs between two separate things or phenomena is referred to as an external relationship. A relationship which occurs within a thing or phenomenon is referred to as an internal relationship.

These terms are relative; sometimes a relationship may be internal in one context but external in a different context. For example, consider a solar system:

When considering a solar system as a whole, the orbit of a moon around a planet may be considered as an internal relationship of the solar system. But when considering the moon as an isolated subject, its orbit around a planet may be seen as an external relationship which the moon has with the planet.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-24.png

The diagram above illustrates different types of relationships:

Object 1 has its own internal relationships (A), and, from its own perspective, it also has external relationships with Object 2 (B). From a wider perspective, the relationship between Object 1 and Object 2 (B) may be viewed as an internal relationship.

This system of relationships (between Object 1 and Object 2) will also have external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas (C).

Relationships have a quality of generality, which refers to how frequently they occur between and within things, phenomena, and ideas. When we refer to general relationships, we are usually referring to relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, within things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, between things, phenomena, and ideas.

The most general relationships are universal relationships: these are relationships that exist between and within everything and all phenomena, and they are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. [The other primary subject of study is the Principle of Development; see page 119.]

Annotation 106

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-25.png

The discussion of generality of relationships can seem confusing at first. What’s important to understand is that generality is a spectrum ranging from the least general relationships (unique relationships, which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas) and the most general relationships (universal relationships, which occur between or within all things/phenomena/ideas).

Of particular importance in the study of materialist dialectics are universal relationships which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas [see below].

Translation Note: In the original Vietnamese, the word “universal” is not used. Instead, the compound term “phổ biến nhất” is used, which literally means “most general.” In Vietnamese, this phrasing is commonly used to describe the concept of “universal” and it is thus not confusing to Vietnamese speakers. For this translation, we have opted to use the word “universal” because we feel it is less confusing and better explains the concept in English.

The universal relationships include (but are not limited to):

Relationships between basic philosophical category pairs (Private and Common, Essence and Phenomenon, etc.). ^[78]
Relationships between quantity and quality. ^[79]
Relationships between opposites. ^[80]

Together, in all forms of relationships in nature, society and human thought (special, general, and universal) there is unity in diversity and diversity in unity.

Annotation 107

Principle of General Relationships

According to Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought: “Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation. That is the core idea of the Principle of General Relationships.”

From this Principle, we find the characteristics of Diversity in Unity and Unity in Diversity; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, or idea, contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist — unified — within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.

Diversity in Unity

There exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.

An infinite diversity of relationships exist within the unity of the material world.

The material world is not a chaotic and random assortment of things, phenomena, and ideas. Rather, it is a system of relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas. Likewise, since the material world exists as the foundation of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the material world is thus the foundation for all relationships within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. Because all relationships share a foundation in the material world, they also exist in unity, even though all relationships are diversified and different from one another.

Universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas manifest in infinitely diverse ways.

Unity in Diversity

When we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.

Paraphrased From: Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought

b. Characteristics of Relationships

Objectiveness, generality, and diversity are the three basic characteristics of relationships.

- The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Relationships

According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint, relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas have objective characteristics.

Annotation 108

In materialist dialectics, objectiveness is an abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject (i.e., each individual thing/phenomena/idea), all other things, phenomena, and ideas are external objects

All things, phenomena, and ideas have the relative characteristic of objectiveness.

All together, the collection of all things, phenomena, and ideas in the universe create the external reality of any given subject. So, objectiveness is relative. In the case of human beings, every individual person exists as an individual subject to which all other things, phenomena, and ideas (including other human beings) have objective characteristics.

Alice and Bob are external to one another; each is objective from the other’s perspective.

Of course, objectiveness is always relative. Something might be external from a certain perspective but not from another perspective. For example, say there are two people: Bob and Alice. From Bob’s perspective, Alice has objective characteristics. But from Alice’s perspective, Bob would have objective characteristics.

The relationship between Alice and Bob has objective characteristics to both Alice and Bob.

As all relationships are inherently external to any given subject (even subjects which are party to the relationship), relationships also have objective characteristics.

Whenever two things, phenomena, or ideas have a relationship with one another, they form a pair. The relationship is inherent to this pair and external to any subject which exists outside of the pair. The mutual interaction and mutual transformation which occurs to the things, phenomena, or objects within the pair as the result of the relationship are inherent and objective properties of the pair.

Annotation 109 Translation note:

In the original Vietnamese text, the word for “objective” is “khách quan.” This is a compound word in which “khách” means “guest,” and “quan” means “point of view.” Therefore, “khách quan” literally means “the guest’s (or outsider’s) point of view.”

Thus we translate this to “objectiveness/objective,” the characteristic of being viewed from the outside.

The word “inherent” in the original Vietnamese is “vốn có.” This is another compound word: “vốn” is a shortened form of the word “vốn dĩ,” which means “by or through nature,” “naturally,” and “intrinsically.” “Có” means “to have” or “to exist.” “Vốn có” thus means “already existing naturally” or “already there, through nature.”

So we use the word “inherent” to mean “existing intrinsically or naturally within, without external influence.”

Human beings can’t change or impact external things and phenomena — and the relationships between them — through human will alone. Humans are limited to perceiving relationships between things and phenomena and then impacting or changing them through our practical activities.

- The Characteristic of Generality of Relationships

According to the dialectical viewpoint, there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea that exists in absolute isolation from other things, phenomena and ideas.

Annotation 110

Although all things, phenomena, and ideas have the characteristic of externality and objectiveness to all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], this does not mean that they exist in isolation. Isolation implies a complete lack of any relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. On the contrary, according to the Principle of General Relationships [see p. 107], all things, phenomena, and ideas have relationships with all other things, phenomena, and ideas.

Simultaneously, there is also no known thing, phenomenon, nor idea that does not have a systematic structure, including component parts which in turn have their own internal relationships. This means that every existence is a system, and, moreso, is an open system that exists in relation with other systems. All systems interact and mutually transform one another.

Annotation 111

As explained above, a systematic structure is a structure which includes within itself a system of component parts and relationships. It has been postulated by some scientific models that there may be some “fundamental base particle” (quarks, preons, etc.), which, if true, would mean that there is a certain basic material component which cannot be further broken down. However, this would not contradict the Principle of Materialist Dialectics of General Relationships (which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact with and mutually transform one another — see Annotation 107, p. 110).

- The Characteristic of Diversity of Relationships

In addition to affirming the objectiveness^[81] and generality^[82] of relationships, the dialectical viewpoint of Marxism-Leninism also emphasizes the diversity of relationships. The characteristic of diversity is defined by the following features:

All things, phenomena, and ideas have different relationships. Every relationship plays a distinct role in the existence and development of the things, phenomena, and ideas which are included within.
Any given relationship between things, phenomena, and ideas will have different characteristics and manifestations under different conditions and/or during different periods of motion and/or at different stages of development.

Annotation 112

One of Marx’s most critical observations was that things are defined by their internal and external relationships, including human beings. For example, in Theses on Feuerbach, Marx wrote that “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.” It is only through relationships — through mutual impacts and transformations — that things, phenomena, and ideas (including human beings and human societies) change and develop over time. All of these relationships — which both define and transform all things, phenomena, and ideas in existence — exist in infinite diversity [see Annotation 107, p. 110].

Just as things, phenomena, and ideas change and transform through the course of relations with one another, the nature of the relationships themselves also change and develop over time.

Characteristics refer to the features and attributes that exist internally within a given thing, phenomena, or idea.

Manifestation refers to how a given thing, phenomena, or idea is expressed externally in the material world.

For example, a ball may have the characteristics of being made of rubber, having a mass of 100 grams, and having a melting point of 260℃. It may manifest by bouncing on the ground, having a spherical shape, and having a red appearance to human observers.

If ten such balls exist, they will all be slightly different. Even if they have the same mass and material composition, they will have slightly different variations in size, shape, etc. Even if each ball will melt at 260℃, the melting will manifest differently for each ball — they will melt into slightly different shapes, at slightly different speeds, etc.

Relationships also have characteristics and manifestations. For example, the moon’s orbit around the Earth is a relationship. It has characteristics such as the masses of each related body, forces of gravity, and other factors which produce and influence the orbit. The same orbital relationship also has manifestations such as the duration of the moon’s orbit around the Earth, the size of its ellipse, the orbit’s effects on the tides of the Earth’s ocean, etc.

Characteristics and Manifestation correspond, respectively, to the philosophical category pair of Content and Form, which is discussed in section page 147.

Therefore, no two relationships are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations.

It is also important to note that the characteristic of diversity also applies to things, phenomena, and ideas themselves. In other words, every individual thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence also manifests differently from every other thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence, even if they seem quite similar.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Based on the objective and popular characteristics of relationships, we can see that in our cognitive and practical activities, we have to have a comprehensive viewpoint.

Having a comprehensive viewpoint requires that in the process of perceiving and handling real life situations, humans have to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon. We also need to consider the external mutual interactions they have with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Only on such a comprehensive basis can we properly understand things and phenomena and then effectively handle problems in real life. So, the comprehensive viewpoint is the opposite of a unilateral and/or metaphysical viewpoint [see Annotation 51, p. 49] in both perception and practice.

Lenin said: “If we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all of its facets, its connections, and ‘mediacies [indirect relationships].’”^[83]

Annotation 113

The comprehensive viewpoint sees the subject in terms of all of its internal and external relationships.

Consider a factory. A factory exists as a collection of internal relationships (between the workers, between machines, between the workers and the machines, etc.) and external relationships (between the factory and its suppliers, between the factory and its customers, between the factory and the city, etc.). In order to have a comprehensive viewpoint when examining the factory, one must consider and understand all of the internal and external relationships which define it.

The diversified characteristic of relationships [see Annotation 107, p. 110] shows that in human cognitive and practical activities, we have to simultaneously use a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint.

Having a historical viewpoint requires that, in perceiving and handling real life situations, we need to consider the specific properties of subjects, including their current stage of motion and development. We also need to consider that the exact same methods can’t be used to deal with different situations in reality — our methods must be tailored to suit the exact situation based on material conditions.

Annotation 114

While the comprehensive viewpoint focuses on internal and external relationships of subjects, the historical viewpoint focuses on the specific properties of subjects — especially the current stage of motion and development. In order to have a proper historical viewpoint, we must study and understand the way a subject has developed and transformed over time. To do this, we must examine the history of the subject’s changes over time, hence the term “historical viewpoint.” In addition, it’s important to understand that no two situations which we might encounter will ever be exactly the same. This is because the component parts and relationships that make up any given situation will manifest differently.

So, in order to properly deal with situations, we have to understand the component parts and relationships of examined subjects as well as their histories of development so that we can develop plans and strategies that are suitable to the unique circumstances at hand.

For example, it would be disastrous if communists today tried to employ the exact same methods which were used by the Communist Party of Vietnam in the 20^th century to defeat Japan, France, and the USA. This is because the material conditions and relationships of Vietnam in the 20^th century were very different from any material conditions existing on Earth today. It is possible to learn lessons from studying the methods of the Vietnamese revolution and to adapt some such methods to our modern circumstances, but it would be extremely ineffective to try to copy those methods and strategies — exactly as they manifested then and there — to the here and now.

In order to come up with suitable and effective solutions to deal with real life problems, we must clearly define the roles and positions of each specific relationship that comes into play, and the specific time, place, and material conditions in which they exist.

Annotation 115

A historical viewpoint focuses on the roles and positions of relationships and properties of subjects as well as their development over time.

The role of a relationship has to do with how it functions within a system of relationships and the position refers to its placement amongst other subjects and relationships.

Consider once again the example of the factory [see Annotation 113]. In addition to its internal and external relationships, the factory also has various roles — it functions within various systems and from various perspectives. For instance, the factory may have the role of financial asset for the corporation that owns it, it may have the role of place of employment for the surrounding community, it may have the role of supplier for various customers, etc.

The factory is also positioned among other subjects and relations. If it’s the only employer in town then it would have a position of great importance to the people of the community. If, on the other hand, if it’s just one of hundreds of factories in a heavily industrialized area, it may have a position of much less importance. It may have a position of great importance to an individual factory worker who lives in poverty in an economy where there are very few available jobs, but of less importance to a freelance subcontractor for whom the factory is just one of many customers, and so on.

These positions and roles will change over time. For example, the factory may initially exist as a small workshop with a small handful of workers, but it may grow into a massive factory with hundreds of employees. It is vital to understand this Principle of Development, which is discussed in more detail on the next page.

In summary, proper dialectical materialist analysis requires a comprehensive and historical viewpoint — we must consider subjects both comprehensively in terms of the internal and external relationships of the subject itself as well as historically in terms of roles and positions of subjects, as well as their relationships, material conditions, and development over time.

So, in both perception and practice, we have to avoid and overcome sophistry and eclectic viewpoints.

Annotation 116

Sophistry is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.

Eclecticism is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the comprehensive and historical viewpoints. Eclecticism is somewhat similar to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.

2. Principle of Development

a. Definition of Development

According to the metaphysical viewpoint, development is simply a quantitative increase or decrease; the metaphysical viewpoint does not account for qualitative changes of things and phenomena. Simultaneously, the metaphysical viewpoint also views development as a process of continuous progressions which follow a linear and straightforward path.

Annotation 117

In materialist dialectics, it is important to distinguish between quantity and quality.

Quantity describes the total amount of component parts that compose a subject.

Quality describes the unity of component parts, taken together, which defines the subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.

Both quantity and quality are dynamic attributes; over time, the quantity and quality of all things develop and change over time through the development of internal and external relationships. Quantity and quality itself form a dialectical relationship, and as quantity develops, quality will also develop. A given subject may be described by various quantity and quality relationships.

Example 1:

In the process of development, Quantity Change leads to Quality Change

A single football player, alone, has the quantity value of 1 football player and the quality of a football player. Eleven football players on a field would have the quantity value of 1 and will develop the quality of a football team. This subject, football team, is composed of the same component parts as the subject football player, but the quantity change and other properties (being on a field, playing a game or practicing, etc.) change the quality of the component parts into a different stable and unified form which we call a football team.

The relationship between quantity and quality is dynamic:

If one of the players doesn’t show up for practice, and there are only ten players on the field, it might still have the quality of football team, but in a live professional game there will be a certain threshold — a minimum number of players who must be present to officially be considered a team. If this number of players can’t be fielded then they will not be considered a full team and thus won’t be allowed to play.

Likewise, if there are only one or two players practicing together in a park, they would probably not be considered a football team (though they might be described in terms of having the quality of being on the same team).

Example 2:

Quantity: 1 O + 2 H atoms Quantity: Billions of H2O Molecules Quantity: ~5,000 Drops of Water Quality: Water Quality: Drop of Water Quality: Cup of Water

DEVELOPMENT: QUANTITY CHANGE LEADS TO QUALITY CHANGE

All of these have the quality of water because of the molecular quantities of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, however, from the perspective of volume, quantity changes still lead to quality changes.

The properties of quantity and quality are relative, depending on the viewpoint of analysis.

A single molecule of water has a quantity of one in terms of molecules, but it still retains the quality of “water” because of the quantities of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms per molecule which, in this stable form, give it the quality of water.

A drop of water might have a quantity of many billions of molecules, but it would still have the quality of “water.” It would also now assume the quality of a “drop.”

When you combine enough drops of water, you will eventually have a quality shift where the “drops” of water combine to form another quality — i.e., a “cup” of water. The quantity change leads to a change in quantity; we would no longer think of the water in terms of “drops” after the quantity rises to a certain level.

In terms of temperature and physical properties, if the water is heated to a certain point it will boil and the water will become steam. The quantity of water in terms of drops wouldn’t change, but the quantity-value of temperature would eventually lead to a quality value change from “water” to “steam.”

Example 3:

AS QUANTITY OF AGE INCREASES, QUALITY CHANGES

The same human being will undergo various quality changes as age quantity increases over time.

As humans age and the quantity of years we’ve lived builds up over time, our “quality” also changes, from baby, to child, to teenager, to young adult, to middle age, to old age, and eventually to death. The individual person is still the same human being, but the quality of the person will shift over time as the quantity-value of age increases.

Metaphysical vs. Dialectical Materialist Conceptions of Change

Metaphysics only consider linear properties of quantitychange; Materialist Dialectics takes quantity changes and quality shifts into consideration when considering change over time.

Because the metaphysical perspective tries to define the world in terms of static, isolated subjects, only quantity is considered and quality shifts are not taken into account. Thus, metaphysical logic sees development as linear, simple, and straightforward. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, sees development as a more complicated, fluid, and dynamic process involving multiple internal and external relationships changing in quantity and quality over time.

In contrast to the metaphysical viewpoint, in materialist dialectics, development refers to the motion of things and phenomena with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced, from a less complete to a more complete level.

Annotation 118

In materialist dialectics, motion (also known as change) is the result of mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and ideas, and all motion and change results from mutual impacts which themselves result from internal and external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Any given motion/change leads to quantity changes, and these quantity changes cumulatively lead to quality changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Grasping this concept — that development is driven by relations — is critically important for understanding materialist dialectics.

The concept of “change” in materialist dialectics centers on internal and external relationships causing mutual impacts which lead to quantity changes which build into quality shifts.

This process, taken in total, is referred to as development. Development represents the entire process in which internal and external change/motion leads to changes in quantity which in turn lead to changes in quality over time. The process of development can be fast or slow, complex or simple, and can even move backwards, and all of these properties are relative. Development has a tendency to develop from less advanced to more advanced forms. The word tendency is used to denote phenomena, development, and motion which inclines in a particular direction. There may be exceptional cases which contradict such tendencies, but the general motion will incline towards one specific manner. Thus, it is important to note that “development” is not necessarily “good” nor “bad.” In some cases, “development” might well be considered “bad,” or unwanted. For example, rust developing on a car is typically not desired. So, the tendency of development from lower to higher levels of advancement implies a “forward motion,” though this motion can take an infinite number of forms, depending on the relative perspective. Development can also (temporarily) halt in a state of equilibrium [see Annotation 64, p. 62] or it can shift direction; though it can never “reverse,” just as time itself can never be “reversed.”

For example, during a flood, water may “develop” over the land, and as the floodwaters recede this may alternatively be viewed as another “forward” development process of recession — a development of the overall “flooding and receding” process. The flood is not actually “reversing” — the development is not being “undone.” Flood water may recede but it will leave behind many traces and impacts; thus it is not a true “reversal” of development.

Both flooding and flood recession are development processes with the same forward tendency. Flood recession may appear to be a “reversal,” but it is in fact forward development.

The false belief that development can be reversed is the root of conservative and reactionary positions [see Annotation 208].

Development can be considered positive or negative, depending on perspective. Some ecosystems have natural flood patterns which are vital for sustaining life. For a person living in a flood zone, however, the flood would most likely be considered an unwanted development, whereas flood recession would be a welcomed development.

It is important to note that the definition of development is not identical to the concept of “motion” (change) in general. It is not merely a simple quantitative increase or decrease, nor a repetitive cyclic change in quantity. Instead, in materialist dialectics, development is defined in terms of qualitative changes with the direction of advancing towards higher and more advanced levels. [See diagram Relationship Between Motion,

Quantity/Quality Shifts, and Dialectical Development, Annotation 119, below]

Development is also the process of creating and solving objective contradictions within and between things and phenomena. Development is thus the unified process of negating negative factors while retaining and advancing positive factors from old things and phenomena as they transform into new things and phenomena.

Annotation 119

A contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another. Although a contradiction might exist in equilibrium for some amount of time [see Annotation 64, p. 62], eventually, one force will overcome the other, resulting in a change of quality. This process of overcoming is called negation. In short, development is a process of change in a subject’s quantity as well as negation of contradictions within and between subjects, leading to quality shifts over time.

b. Characteristics of Development

Every development has the characteristics of objectiveness,^[84] generality,^[85] and diversity.^[86]The characteristic of objectiveness of development stems from the origin of motion.

Annotation 120

Remember that, in materialist dialectics, objectiveness is the relative characteristic that every subject has of existing and developing externally to all other subjects [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.

Dialectical Development consists of Quantity and Quality Shifts, which in turn derive from motion.

Development is derived from motion as a process of quality shifting which arise from quantity changes which arise from motion [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Since development is essentially an accumulation of motion, and motion is objective, development itself must also be objective.

The Principle of Development states that development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.

Annotation 121

The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Development arises from motion and self-motion [see Annotation 62, p. 59] with objective characteristics. Although human will can impact motion and development through conscious activity in the material world [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88], motion and development can and does occur without being dependent on human will. Human will is neither a requirement nor prerequisite for motion and development to occur.

Development has the characteristic of generality because development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every idea and at every stage* of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every transformation process contains the possibility that it might lead to the birth of a new thing, phenomenon, or idea [through a change in quality, i.e. development].

Annotation 122

* In materialist dialectics, “stage” (or “stage of development”) refers to the current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into.

Development has the characteristic of diversity because every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. Things and phenomena will develop differently in different spaces and times. Simultaneously, within their own processes of development, things, phenomena, and ideas are impacted by other things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as by many other factors and historical conditions. Such impacts can change the direction of development of things, phenomena, and ideas. They can even temporarily set development back, and/or can lead to growth in one aspect but degeneration in another.

Annotation 123

Because development has the characteristic of generality and the characteristic of diversity, the principle of diversity in unity and unity in diversity also applies to development [see: Annotation 107, p. 110].

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Materialist dialectics upholds that the principle of development is the scientific theoretical basis that we must use to guide our perception of the world and to improve the world. Therefore, in our perception and reality, we have to have a development viewpoint.

According to Lenin: “dialectical logic requires that an object should be considered in development, in change, in ‘self-movement.”^[87]

This development viewpoint [which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly developing, and that development is thus unavoidable] requires us to overcome conservatism, stagnation^[88], and prejudice, which are all opposed to development.

Annotation 124

Conservatism and prejudice are mindsets which seek to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, we must avoid and fight against such stagnant mindsets.

According to this development viewpoint, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind. On the other hand, the path of development is a dialectical process that is reversible and full of contradictions. Therefore, we must be aware of this complexity in our analysis and planning. This means we need to have a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] which accounts for the diversity and complexity of development in perceiving and solving issues in reality.

Annotation 125

Materialist dialectics requires us to consider the complexity and constant motion of reality. By comparison, the metaphysical viewpoint (which considers all things, phenomena, and ideas as static, isolated entities which have linear and simple processes of development) stands as a barrier to understanding this complexity and incorporating it into our worldview. Thus, it is vital that we develop comprehensive and historical viewpoints which acknowledge the diversity and complexity of reality.

In summary, as a science of common relations and development, Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics serve a very important role in perception and practice. Engels affirmed the role of materialist dialectics in this passage:

“An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics, with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.”

Lenin also said: “Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development, but not a patchwork of bits and pieces.”^[89]

III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics

Category* is the most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another.

Annotation 126

* Translation note: In Vietnamese, the word “phạm trù” is used here, which translates in this context more closely to the English philosophical term “category of being,” which means “the most general, fundamental, or broadest class of entities.” “Category of being” is sometimes simplified in English-language philosophical discourse to “category,” which we have chosen to do here for ease of reading and to better reflect the way it reads in the original Vietnamese.

Every science has its own systems of categories that reflect the aspects, attributes, and basic relations that fall within its scope of study. For example, mathematics contains the categories “arithmetic,” “geometry,” “point,” “plane,” and “constant.” Physics contains the categories of “mass,” “speed,” “acceleration,” and “force,” and so on. Economics includes “commodity,” “value,” “price,” “monetary,” and “profit” categories.

Every such category reflects only the common relations found within the specific fields that fall within the scope of study of a specific science.

Categories of materialist dialectics, on the other hand, such as “matter,” “consciousness,” “motion,” “contradiction,” “quality,” “quantity,” “reason,” and “result,” are different. Categories of materialist dialectics reflect the most general aspects and attributes, as well as the most basic and general relations, of not just some specific fields of study, but of the whole of reality, including all of nature, society and human thought.

Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has many properties, including: a reason for existing in its current form, a process of motion and change, contradictions, content, form, and so on. These properties are aspects, attributes, and relations that are reflected in the categories of materialist dialectics. Therefore, the relationship between the categories of specific sciences and categories of materialist dialectics is a dialectical relationship between the Private and the Common [see Private and Common, p. 128].

Annotation 127

The categories of specific sciences are limited to the scope of study, while the categories of materialist dialectics encompass all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Unlike the categories contained within specific scientific fields, the philosophical categories of materialist dialectics can be used to analyze and define all things, phenomena, and ideas. The categories of specific scientific fields and the materialist dialectical categories have a Private/Common dialectical relationship [discussed on the next page].

As a science of general relations and development, materialist dialectics summarizes the most general relations of every field of nature, society, and human thought into basic category pairs: Private and Common, Reason and Result, Obviousness and Randomness, Content and Form, Essence and Phenomenon, Possibility and Reality.

Annotation 128

Every individual materialist dialectical category has a dialectical relationship with another materialist dialectical category. Thus, all categories in materialist dialectics are presented as category pairs. So, a category pair is simply a pair of categories within materialist dialectics which have a dialectical relationship with one another.

Note that the this formalized system of category pairs reflects many decades of work by Vietnamese philosophical and political scientists based on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other socialist thinkers. Also note that these are not the only category pairs that can be discussed; there are potentially an infinite number of categories which can be used in materialist dialectical analysis. However, universal category pairs, which can be applied to analyze any and all things, phenomena, and ideas, are much fewer and farther between. That said, the universal category pairs discussed in this book are the ones which have most often been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other prominent materialist dialecticians.

1. Private and Common

a. Categories of Private and Common

The Private Category encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the Common Category defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena.

Within every Private thing, phenomenon, and idea, there exists the Common, and also the Unique. The Unique encompasses the attributes and characteristics that exist in only one specific thing, phenomenon, or idea, and does not repeat in any other things, phenomena, or ideas.

Annotation 129

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-41.png

The Private category includes specific individual things, phenomena and ideas.

The Common category includes aspects, factors, and relations that exist in many things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, say there are two apples: Apple A and Apple B. Apple A is a specific individual object. Apple B is another distinct, separate object. In that sense, both apples are private apples, and fall within the Private category.

However, both Apple A and Apple B share common attributes. For instance, they are both fruits of the same type: “apple.” They may have other attributes in common: they may be the same color, they may have the same basic shape, they may be of similar size, etc. These are common attributes which they share. Thus, Apple A and Apple B will also fall within the common category, based on these common attributes.

Apple A and Apple B will also have unique attributes. Only Apple A has the exact molecules in the exact place and time which compose Apple A. There is no other object in the world which has those same molecules in that same place and time. This means that Apple A also has unique properties.

All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.

The Common and Private categories have a dialectical relationship. The Common contains the Private, and the Private contains the Common. Every private subject has some attributes in common with other private subjects, and common attributes can only exist among private subjects. Thus every thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence contains internally within itself dialectical relationships between the Private and the Common, and has dialectical Private/Common relationships externally within other things, phenomena, and ideas.

All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.

It is also true that every private subject contains within itself Unique attributes which it does not share with any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, Mount Everest is unique in that it is 8,850 meters tall. No other mountain on Earth has that exact same height. Therefore, the private subject “Mount Everest” has unique properties which it does not share with any other subject, even though it has other attributes in common with countless other private entities.

All things, phenomena, and ideas contain the unique, the private, and the common.

Whenever two individual subjects have a relationship with one another, that relationship is a unique relationship in the sense that it is a relationship that is shared only by those two specific subjects; however, there will also be common attributes and properties which any such relationship will share with other relationships in existence. This recalls the principle of Unity in Diversity and Diversity in Unity [see Annotation 107, p. 110]. So, every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains the Common and the Unique and has unique and common relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas.

This category pair is very useful in developing a comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Remember that a comprehensive viewpoint indicates an understanding of the internal and external relations of a given subject. This means that in order to develop a comprehensive viewpoint, you must know the private aspects of each individual relation, component, and aspect of the subject, and you must also study the commonalities of the subject as well. It’s also important to study a variety of private information sources or data points to look for commonalities between them. In other words, if you want to have a proper comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 113, p. 116] about any subject, you have to find and analyze as many private data points and pieces of evidence as possible.

For example: If a person only ever saw one apple, a green apple, then that person might believe that “all apples are green.” This conclusion would be premature: the person is attempting to make an assumption about the Common without examining enough Privates. This is a failure of mistaking mistaking the Private for the Common which stems from a lack of a comprehensive viewpoint.

Now, let’s take a look at an example of how the “Unique” can become “Common,” and vice-versa: 1947 TODAY

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-45.png

“Unique” things, phenomena, and ideas can become “common” through development processes (and vice-versa).

In 1941, a Soviet soldier named Mikhail Kalashnikov was in the hospital after being wounded in the Battle of Bryansk. Another soldier in the hospital said to Kalashnikov, “why do our soldiers only have one rifle for two or three of our men, while the Germans have automatics?” To solve this problem, Kalashnikov designed the AK-47 machine gun. When he finished making the first prototype, it was the only AK-47 in the world.

At this precise moment, the AK-47 was simultaneously Unique, Private, and Common.

It was Unique because it was the first and only AK-47 in the world, and no other object in the world had those properties. It was Private because it was a specific object with its own individual existence. It was Common — even though it was the only existing prototype — because it shared Common features with other rifles, and with other prototypes. It was the only AK-47 in existence.

Soon, however, the Soviet Union began manufacturing them, and they became very common. Now there are millions of AK-47s in the world. So, today, that prototype machine gun remains simultaneously Unique, Private, and Common, with some slight developments:

It remains Private because it is a specific object with its own individual existence. Even though it is no longer the only AK-47 in existence, it remains Unique because it is still the very first AK-47 that was ever made, and even though there are now many other AK-47s, there is no other rifle in the universe that shares that same unique property. It remains Common because it still shares common features with other rifles and other prototypes, but it now also shares commonality with many other AK-47 rifles. It is no longer Unique for having the properties of an AK-47 in and of itself.

If someone were to destroy Kalashnikov’s prototype AK-47, the Private of that object would no longer exist — it would remain only as an idea, and the Private would transform to whatever becomes of the material components of the rifle. The Unique would also no longer remain specifically as it was before being destroyed. However, there would still be many other AK-47s which would share common features related to that prototype; for instance, that they were all designed based on the prototype’s design.

Translator’s Note: The words “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” may seem unusual because they are direct translations from the Vietnamese words used to describe these concepts in the original text. Various other words have been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other materialist dialecticians when discussing the underlying concepts of these philosophical categories. For instance, in most translations of Lenin, his discussion of such topics is typically translated into English using words such as “universal,” “general,” “special,” “particular,” etc.

Example (from Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks): “Language in essence expresses only the universal; what is meant, however, is the special, the particular. Hence what is meant cannot be said in speech.” Here, “universal” refers to that which is Common in all things, phenomena, and ideas, and “special/particular” refers to the Private — specific individual things, phenomena, and ideas — along with their Unique properties.

Here are excerpts from Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks discussing these concepts:

(‘It?’ The most universal word of all.) Who is it? I. Every person is an I.
Das Sinnliche? It is a universal, etc., etc. ‘This??’ Everyone is ‘this.’
Why can the particular not be named? One of the objects of a given kind (tables) is distinguished by something from the rest...
Leaves of a tree are green; John is a man; Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal... And a naïve confusion, a helplessly pitiful confusion in the dialectics of the universal and the particular — of the concept and the sensuously perceptible reality of individual objects, things, phenomena.
Further, the ‘subsumption’ under logical categories of ‘sensibility’ (Sensibilität), ‘irritability’ (irritabilität) — this is said to be the particular in contrast to the universal!! — and ‘reproduction’ is an idle game.

Marx, too, discussed these concepts using words which are commonly translated into English using different terms. For example, in Capital:

The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent – here the linen – into the universal equivalent.

Here, “general form” refers to the commonalities of form that exist between all commodities. The “single commodity” refers to a private commodity; a specific commodity that exists separately from all other commodities. And when referring to a “universal equivalent,” Marx is referring to equivalence which such a commodity has in common with every other commodity.

The rest of this passage continues as a materialist dialectical analysis of the Private, Common, and Unique features and aspects of commodities:

The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power. The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.

We have chosen to use the terms “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” in the translation of this text because they most closely match the words used in the original Vietnamese. In summary, it is important to realize that you may encounter the underlying concepts which are related by these words using various phrasings in the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.

b. Dialectical Relationship Between Private and Common

According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint: the Private, the Common and the Unique exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. The Common only exists within the Private. It expresses its existence through the Private.

Annotation 130

The Common can’t exist as a specific thing, phenomenon, or idea. However, every specific thing, phenomenon, or idea exists as a private subject which has various features in common with other private things, phenomena, and ideas. We can therefore only understand the Common through observation and study of various private things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, a human can’t perceive with our senses alone the Common of apples. Only by observing many private apples can begin to derive an understanding of what all private apples have in common.

The Common does not exist in isolation from the Private. Therefore, commonality is inseparable from things, phenomena, and ideas. The Private only exists in relation to the Common. Likewise, there is no Private that exists in complete isolation from the Common.

Annotation 131

No commonality can possibly exist outside of private things, phenomena, and ideas because commonality describes features which different things, phenomena, and ideas share. No private thing, phenomenon, or idea can possibly exist absolutely without commonality because there is no thing, phenomenon, or idea that shares absolutely no features with any other thing, phenomenon, or idea.

The Private category is more all-encompassing and diverse than the Common category; Common is a part of Private but it is more profound and more “essential” than the Private. This is because Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique; the Common expresses generality and the regular predictability of many Privates.

Annotation 132

The Private encompasses all aspects of a specific, individual thing, phenomenon, or idea; thus it encompasses all aspects, features, and attributes of a given subject, including both the Common and the Unique. In this way, the Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique.

Common attributes require more consideration, effort, and study to properly determine, because multiple private subjects must be considered and analyzed before common attributes can be confidently discovered and understood. They offer us a more profound understanding of the essence [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156] and nature of things, phenomena, and ideas because they offer insights into the relationships between and within different things, phenomena, and ideas. As we discover more commonalities, and understand them more deeply, we begin to develop a more comprehensive perspective of reality. We begin to develop an understanding of the laws and principles which govern relations between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, and this gives us the power to more accurately predict how processes will develop and how things, phenomena, and ideas will change and mutually impact one another over time.

Under specific conditions, the Common and the Unique can transform into each other [See Annotation 129, p. 128].

The dialectical relationship between Private and Common was summarised by Lenin:

“Consequently, the opposites (the individual as opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, ideas) etc.”^[90] [Note: “individual and universal” here refer the same underlying concepts of “Private and Common” (respectively); see translator’s note on p. 132].

c. Meaning of the Methodology

We must acknowledge and recognize the Common in order to study the Private in our cognitive and practical activities. If we fail to acknowledge the Common, then whenever we attempt to understand and comprehend any Private thing, phenomenon or idea, we will make mistakes and become disoriented. To understand the Common we have to study and observe the Private because the Common does not exist abstractly outside of the Private.

Annotation 133

Our understanding of Common attributes arise from the observation and study of private things, phenomena, and ideas. At the same time, developing our understanding of Commonalities between and within Private subjects deepens our understanding of their essential nature [see: Essence and Phenomenon].

Dialectical analysis of private and common characteristics involves observing private subjects to determine common attributes and considering common attributes to gain insights about private subjects.

It is impossible to know anything at all about the Common without observing Private subjects, and attempting to understand Private subjects without taking into consideration the attributes and features which they have in Common with other Private subjects will lead to incomplete and erroneous analysis.

In addition, we must identify the Common features and attributes of every specific Private subject we study. We must avoid being dogmatic, metaphysical, and inflexible in applying our knowledge of commonalities to solve problems and interpret the world.

Annotation 134

Dogmatism and Revisionism in Relation to the Private and Common

Dogmatism is the inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence.

Dogmatism typically arises when the Common is overemphasized without due consideration of the Private. A dogmatic position is one which adheres to ideals about commonalities without taking Private subjects into consideration.

Dogmatism can be avoided by continuously studying and observing and analyzing

Private subjects and taking any evidence which contradicts erroneous perceptions of “false commonalities” into consideration. This will simultaneously deepen our understanding of the Private while improving our understanding of the Common. For example: Sally might observe a few red apples and arrive at the conclusion: “all apples are red.” If Sally is then presented with a green apple, yet refuses to acknowledge it by continuing to insist that “all apples are red,” then Sally is engaging in dogmatism.

According to Vietnam’s Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought, the opposite of Dogmatism is Revisionism. Revisionism occurs when we overestimate the Private and fail to recognize commonalities. In failing to recognize common attributes and features between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, the Revisionist faces confusion and disorientation whenever they encounter any new things, phenomena, and ideas, because they lack any insight into essential characteristics of the subject and its relations with other subjects.

For example: if Sally has spent a lot of time studying a red apple, she may start to become confident that she understands everything there is to know about apples. If she is then presented with a green apple, she might become confused and disoriented and draw the conclusion that she has to start all over again with her analysis, from scratch, thinking: “this can’t possibly be an apple because it’s not red. It must be something else entirely.” Sally can avoid this revisionist confusion by examining the other common features which the red and green apples share before making any conclusions.

Metaphysical Perception of the Private and Common

The metaphysical position attempts to categorize things, phenomena, and ideas into static categories which are isolated and distinct from one another [see Annotation 8,

p. 8]. In this way, the metaphysical perception ultimately fails to properly understand the role of both the Private and the Common. Categories may be arranged in taxonomic configurations based on shared features, but ultimately every category is seen as distinct and isolated from every other category. This perspective severs the dialectical relationship between the Private, the Common, and the Unique, and thus leads to a distorted perception of reality. As Engels wrote in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.”

In other words, Engels points out that separating and dividing Private subjects into distinct and isolated categories without acknowledging the dialectical nature of the Private and the Common leads to severe limitations on what we can learn about the world. Instead, we have to examine things, phenomena, and ideas in relation to one another, which must include the analysis of Commonalities.

Rather than divide subjects into distinct, separate categories, materialist dialectics seek to examine Private subjects as they really exist: as a synthesis of Unique and Common attributes; and simultaneously to examine commonalities as they really exist: as properties which emerge from the relations of Private objects.

In our cognitive and practical activities, we must be able to take advantage of suitable conditions that will enable transformations from the Unique and the Common (and vice versa) for our specific purposes.

Annotation 135

In advancing the cause of socialism, revolutionaries must work to transform our Unique positions into common positions. For instance, the process of developing revolutionary public knowledge [see Annotation 94, p. 93] begins with studying and understanding revolutionary knowledge. Initially, this knowledge will be unique to the socialist movement. By disseminating the knowledge to the public, we hope to transform this knowledge into common knowledge.

Likewise, we hope to transform other common things, phenomena, and ideas back towards the Unique. For instance, the capitalist mode of production is currently the most common mode of production on Earth. In order to advance humanity towards communism, we must transition the capitalist mode of production from the Common towards the Unique, with the ambition of eventually eliminating this mode of production altogether.

2. Reason and Result

a. Categories of Reason and Result

The Reason category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes.

The Result category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or externally between different things, phenomena, or ideas.

Annotation 136

Translation note: the Vietnamese words for “reason and result” can also be translated as “cause and effect.” We have chosen to use the words “reason and result” to distinguish materialist dialectical categories from metaphysical conceptions of development.

In metaphysics [see Annotation 8, p. 8], any given effect is seen to have a single cause. In materialist dialectics, we instead examine the mutual impacts which occur within and between subjects through motion and development processes.

Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of development.

In the metaphysical conception of cause and effect, (A) causes effect (B), then effect (B) causes effect (C), and so on. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, uses the model of development (see Annotation 117, p. 119), wherein objects (A) and (B) mutually impact one another, resulting in development (C). (C) will then have relations with other things, phenomena, and/or ideas, and the mutual impacts from these new relations will become the reasons for future results. Consider the following example:

Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of frying and eating an egg.

In the metaphysical “cause and effect” model, putting an egg in a hot pan is the cause which results in the effect of producing a fried egg. The egg being fried has the effect of the egg now being suitable for eating, which is the cause of the egg being eaten by a hungry person.

This is a simplification of the metaphysical conception of causes and effects, since metaphysics does recognize that one cause can have branches of multiple effects, but the essential characteristic of the metaphysical conception of causality is to break down all activity and change in the universe into static and distinct episodes of one distinct event causing one or more other distinct events.

In contrast, the materialist dialectical model of development holds that every result stems from mutual impacts which occur relationally between things, phenomena, and ideas, and that the resulting synthesis — the newly developed result of mutual impacts — will then have new relations with other things, phenomena, and ideas, and that these relations will become new reasons for new results through mutual impact.

In this example, the egg and the hot pan will mutually impact each other. The frying pan will become dirty and need to be washed (the result of putting an egg in the frying pan); meanwhile, the egg will become a fried egg, which is fit for human consumption (the result of being cooked in the frying pan). The fried egg will then have a relationship with a hungry human, and this relationship will be a new reason which will lead to further results (i.e., the human eating and digesting the egg).

So, the key difference between the classical metaphysical conception of causality and the materialist dialectical model of development is that metaphysics focus more on individual events in time whereas materialist dialectics focus on the relations and mutual impacts between things, phenomena, and ideas over time.

b. Dialectical relationship between Reason and Result

The relationship between Reason and Result is objective, and it contains inevitability: there is no Reason that does not lead to a Result; and likewise, there is no Result without any Reason.

Reasons cause Results, which is why Reason always comes before Result, and Result always comes after Reason.

A Reason can cause one or many Results and a Result can be caused by one or many Reasons.

When many Reasons lead to a single Result, the impacts which lead to the Result are mutual between all things, phenomena, and ideas at hand. These mutual impacts can have many relational positions or roles, including: direct reasons, indirect reasons, internal reasons, external reasons, etc.

Annotation 137

As stated in the previous annotation, Reasons which lead to Results stem from mutually impacting relations between things, phenomena, and ideas. There is no way for one subject to affect another subject without also being affected itself in some way.

Reasons can take many forms, including (but not limited to):

Types of Reasons and Results

Direct Reasons stem from immediate relations.

Direct Reasons are Reasons which stem from immediate relations, with no intervening relations standing between the Reason and Result.

For example, dropping a coffee cup causes an immediate relationship between the cup and the ground, and that relation leads directly to the Result of the coffee cup breaking to pieces.

Indirect Reasons have an intervening relationship between the Reason and the Result.

Indirect Reasons are Reasons which have intervening relations between a Reason and a Result.

For example, the dropped coffee cup above may have smashed into pieces directly because it hit the ground, but it may also have indirect Reasons. The person holding the cup may have been frightened because she heard a loud noise, and the loud noise was caused by a car backfiring, and the car backfiring was caused by the driver not maintaining his car engine.

In materialist dialectical terms, the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the car backfiring; the relationship between the car (which backfired) and the person holding the coffee cup would be the direct Reason for dropping the cup; and the cup’s relationship with the ground would be the direct reason for the cup smashing. At the same time, the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the Result of the coffee cup smashing to pieces.

Internal Reasons stem from internal relationships.

Internal Reasons are Reasons which stem from internal relations that occur between aspects and factors within a subject.

For example, if a building collapses because the steel structure within the building rusts and fails, then that could be viewed as an internal Reason for the collapse.

External Reasons stem from external relations.

External Reasons are reasons which stem from external relations that occur between different things, phenomena, and ideas.

For example, if a building collapses because it is smashed by a wrecking ball, then that could be viewed as an external Reason for the collapse.

All of these roles and positions can be viewed relatively. From one viewpoint, a Reason may be seen as internal, but from another viewpoint, it might be viewed as external. For example, if a couple has a disagreement which leads to an argument, the disagreement may be seen as an external Reason from the perspective of each individual within the couple. But to a relationship counselor viewing the situation from the outside, the disagreement may be seen as an internal Reason which leads to the couple (a subject defined by the internal relationship between the husband and wife) arguing.

From one perspective, a government official ordering a building to be torn down may be seen as the direct Reason for the Result of the building being torn down. But from a different perspective, one can see many intervening relations: complaints from local residents may have led to the government official making the order, the order would be delivered to a demolition crew, the demolition crew would assign a crew member to operate a wrecking ball, the crew member would operate the wrecking ball, the wrecking ball would smash the building. All of these can be seen as intervening relations which constitute indirect reasons leading up to the direct Reason of the wrecking ball smashing the building. Choosing the right viewpoint during analysis is critical to make sure that Reason and Result relations are viewed properly and productively, and care must also be taken to ensure that the correct Reasons are attributed to Results (see Reason and Result, p. 138).

Likewise, a Reason can cause many Results, including primary and secondary Results.

Annotation 138

Primary Results are Results which are more direct and predictable.

Secondary Results are Results which are indirect and less predictable.

For example, an earthquake may have primary Results such as the ground shaking, buildings being destroyed, etc. Secondary Results from the earthquake might include flights being rerouted from local airports, shortages at grocery stores, etc.

In the motion of the material world, there is no known “first Reason” or “final Result.”

Annotation 139

With our current understanding of the universe, it is uncertain what might have caused the creation of all existence. Was it the Big Bang? If so, did the Big Bang have some underlying reason? There is also no way to know if there will ever be a “final Result.” Will the heat death of the universe occur, and if so, will that end all transpiring of relations which would end the cycle of development — of Reasons and Results?

As of now, we do not have solid answers to these questions. If and when answers arise, it is possible that the materialist dialectical framework will need to be updated to reflect new scientific knowledge, just as Marx, Engels, and Lenin have updated materialist dialectics in the past [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. What’s important to understand in the meantime is that within our realm of human experience and understanding, for all practical purposes, every Result which we live through and observe has some underlying Reason, and will itself lead to one or more Results.

Engels said: “we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis [see Annotation 200, p. 192], positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed, and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate [are mixed together]. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.”^[91]

Annotation 140

In the above passage, Engels is simply explaining that since all things, phenomena, and ideas are relationally linked and inter-related [see Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics, p. 106], the mutual impacts and processes of change which lead to development (the reasons and results which transpire between all things, phenomena, and ideas) are also all linked and inter-related. What might be viewed as a Reason is also a Result of one or more prior Reasons, just as every Result is also a Reason for future Results.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Because the relationship between Reason and Result is objective and inevitable, we can’t ignore the relationship between Reason and Result in our perception and practice. In reality, there is no thing, phenomenon or idea that can exist without any underlying Reason or Reasons; and vice versa, there is no Reason that does not lead to any Result.

Annotation 141

In political activity, it is important to remember that every interaction within every relationship will lead to mutual impacts which will cause change and development; in other words, everything we choose to do will be the Reason for one or more Results. We must be aware of unintended or unpredicted Results from our activities.

Reason-Result relationships are very complicated and diverse. Therefore, we must accurately identify the types of Reasons [direct, indirect, internal, external, etc.] so that we can come up with proper solutions which are suitable for the specific situation in both perception and practice. A Reason can lead to many results and, likewise, a Result can be caused by many Reasons, which is why we must have a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] in our perception of reality so we can properly analyse, solve and apply Reason-Result relationships.

Annotation 142

It is critical to understand that there may be many events or relationships which might be falsely ascribed as Reasons for a given Result (and vice-versa).

For example: in 1965, the United States of America officially declared war on North Vietnam after the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” in which Vietnamese forces supposedly fired on a United States Navy ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is often described as the “cause” or the “Reason” that the Vietnam War began.

However, the real “Reason” why the USA declared war on North Vietnam had to do with the underlying contradiction between capitalist imperialism and communism in Vietnam. This contradiction had to be resolved one way or another. The United States of America willfully decided to try to negate this contradiction by instigating war, and this was the true reason the war began. In fact, the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” never even occurred as described — the attack on the USA’s ship never really occurred. A document released by the Pentagon in 2005 revealed that the incident was completely fabricated. So, saying that the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” was the Reason for the war is nonsensical, since it’s an event which never even occurred in reality.

Understanding the true nature of Reason and Result is very important for making decisions and choosing a path forward in political action. Attributing the wrong Reason to a Result, or misunderstanding the Results which stem from a Reason, can lead to serious setbacks and failures. Therefore, it is vital for revolutionaries to properly identify and understand the actual Reasons and Results which drive development.

3. Obviousness and Randomness

a. Categories of Obviousness and Randomness

Annotation 143

In Vietnamese, the words for these categories are “tất nhiên” and “ngẫu nhiên,” which respectively translate to “obvious” and “random.” In socialist literature, various words have been used by different authors to convey the underlying meaning of these categories (Engels, for instance, used the terms “necessary” and “accidental” to mean “obvious” and “random,” respectively). We have chosen to use words which closely match the Vietnamese used in the original text, but the reader should be aware that these same concepts may be described using many different words in various English translations of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, etc.

The Obviousness category refers to events that occur because of the essential [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156] internal aspects of the material structure of a subject. These essential internal characteristics become reasons for certain results under certain conditions: the Obvious has to happen in a certain way, it can’t happen any other way.

Annotation 144

Obviousness can only apply to material subjects in the material world and results which are certain to happen based on the material laws of nature. Obviousness arises from the internal aspects, features, and relations of physical objects. Paper will burn under certain specific conditions, due its internal material structure. If those conditions (i.e., temperature, the presence of oxygen, etc.) exist, then paper will catch fire predictably. In other words, paper will obviously burn under certain circumstances due to its internal composition,.

The Randomness category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A Random outcome may occur or it may not occur; a Random outcome could happen this way or it could happen that way.

Annotation 145

As we discussed above, paper will burn if it reaches a certain temperature — that much is obvious. If your friend holds paper over the flame of the lighter, the paper will burn — that’s obvious. But you can’t be certain whether your friend will actually hold the paper to the flame or not. This demonstrates Randomness. Whether your friend will ultimately hold the paper to the flame or not depends on an external relation which is not defined by the internal structure of the paper, and which can’t be predicted with the same predictability as obvious events which are rooted in internal material aspects.

b. Dialectical relationship between Obviousness and Randomness

Obviousness and Randomness both exist objectively and play an important role in the motion and development of things and phenomena. Obviousness plays the decisive role.

Annotation 146

Obviousness plays the decisive role simply because Obviousness is far more predictable and the laws which govern material phenomena are essentially fixed. We can’t change the laws of physics, the nature of chemical reactions, etc.

Obviousness and Randomness exist in dialectical unity; there is no pure Obviousness, nor pure Randomness. It is obvious that Randomness shall occur in our universe, however Obviousness clears a path through this Randomness.

Annotation 147

Our universe is incredibly complex and there are many different potential external relations which could impact any given situation, such that some degree of Randomness is always present in any situation; in other words, the presence of Randomness can be seen as Obvious.

In 1922, Ho Chi Minh identified objective internal characteristics of the working class of France and its colonies. He wrote: “The mutual ignorance of the two proletariats gives rise to prejudices. The French workers look upon the native as an inferior and negligible human being, incapable of understanding and still less of taking action. The natives regard all the French as wicked exploiters. Imperialism and capitalism do not fail to take advantage of this mutual suspicion and this artificial racial hierarchy to frustrate propaganda and divide forces which ought to unite.”

In this example, Ho Chi Minh identifies prejudice as an obvious outcome of mutual ignorance. The prejudice arises as a matter of course from internal objective aspects of the two proletarian groups. As long as French and native workers remain ignorant of one another, prejudice will arise. The specific forms which this prejudice will take, however, and their resulting impacts and developments, will be more or less Random because there are many external factors (including the external impacts of the capitalist class, which seeks to take advantage of these prejudices) which can’t be predicted. Therefore, it is necessary for political revolutionaries to account for both random and obvious factors in confronting such prejudice. Ho Chi Minh’s suggestion for overcoming these difficulties was concise and to-the-point: “Intensify propaganda to overcome them.” Only by negating the internal aspects of mutual ignorance through education and propaganda could communists hope to negate the resulting prejudice.

As Engels said: “One knows that what is maintained to be necessary [obvious] is composed of sheer accidents, and that the so-called accidental [random] is the form behind which necessity hides itself — and so on.”^[92]

Obviousness and Randomness are not static properties: Randomness and Obviousness continuously change and develop over time. Under specific conditions, Obviousness and Randomness can transform into each other: Obviousness can become Random and Randomness can become obvious.

Annotation 148

Randomness can be introduced to an obvious situation: it may be obvious that a mineshaft will collapse, until human beings come along and intervene by repairing the structural integrity of the mineshaft. It may seem Random whether a city’s economy will grow or shrink, until a volcano erupts and buries the city in lava and ash, making it obvious that the economy will not grow because the city no longer exists.

Most situations are in a flux, as Obviousness and Randomness dialectically develop and change over time, with outcomes becoming more or less obvious or Random over time. It is vital that we, as political revolutionaries, are able to distinguish between Obviousness and Randomness and to leverage this understanding to our advantage.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Basically, in our perception and reality, we have to base our plans, strategies, and actions as much as possible on the Obvious, not the Random. However, we must not ignore Randomness, nor try to separate the Obvious from the Random. When faced with situations which seem very Random, we must find ways to develop Obviousness. When faced with what seems obvious, we must keep an eye out for Randomness. Obviousness and Randomness can mutually transform, so we need to create suitable conditions to hinder or promote such transformation to suit our purposes.

Annotation 149

We must always remember that no situation is purely obvious, nor purely Random, and to take this into account in all of our planning and activity.

A skyscraper made from heavy steel beams may seem quite sturdy and stable; it may appear obvious that the structure will remain stable and sound for decades. However, it is still important for engineers to periodically confirm that the steel is still sound through testing and observation. Engineers must also be prepared for Random events like lightning, earthquakes, storms, etc., which may affect the seemingly obvious structural integrity of the building.

Likewise, when faced with extremely complex situations which seem completely Random, we must seek out (or bring about) the obvious. Wildfires are extremely chaotic and difficult to predict. However, firefighters can rely on certain obvious patterns and natural laws which govern the spread of fire. By digging trenches, lighting counter-fires, spraying water, and other such actions, firefighters can bring wildfires under control. This illustrates how humans are able to make situations less Random by bringing about an increasing amount of Obviousness over time through practical activity.

4. Content and Form

a. Categories of Content and Form

The Content category refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from.

The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 150

Content and Form can be difficult to comprehend at first because the ways in which Content and Form manifest and interact can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered.

Content represents the component things, materials, attributes, features, etc., which, together, make up a thing, phenomenon, or idea. You can think of it as the “ingredients” from which a subject is made.
Form refers to a stable system of internal relationships which compose a thing, phenomenon, or idea, as well as the mode of existence and development [see Annotation 60, p. 59] of those relations.

Remember that from a dialectical materialist perspective, everything in our universe is defined by internal and external relations. If a thing, phenomenon, or idea has internal relations which are relatively stable, then it has a Form.

We would not call all of the assorted ingredients which are used to make a cake “a cake” unless they have been assembled together and baked into the stable form which we interpret as “a cake.” Once a portion is removed from the cake, the portion itself assumes a new stable form which we call “a slice of cake.” The slice of cake will maintain its relatively stable form until being eaten, discarded, or otherwise transitioning into some other form. It is only considered a “slice of cake” for as long as it maintains its own specific stable form.

Stability itself is also relative: a “spray” of water may only last for a few seconds but we can still conceive of it as having Form. On the other hand, a mountain has a set of stable internal relations (a Form) which might last for millions of years.

We can think of Form as having two aspects: inner Form and outer Form.

Inner form refers to the internal stable relations which we have already discussed.

Outer form is how an object “appears” to human senses.

In this book, we are primarily concerned with the inner Form of subjects, however, in other contexts (such as art and design), the outer Form plays a more prominent role.

Now, let’s identify some of the common viewpoints from which Content and Form might be considered.

Material vs. Ideal

When discussing the material — i.e., objective systems and objects^[93] — discussion of Content and Form is more straightforward.

Material

With material things and phenomena, the Content is what the thing is made out of: the physical parts, aspects, attributes, and processes that compose the subject. For example, the Content of a wooden chair might be the wood, nails, paint, and other materials which are used to create the chair.

A material object can be described in terms of content, inner form, and outer form.

The inner Form of a material object refers to stable internal relations which compose the object. The stable relationship between the wood and the nails — the nails bind the wood together, the wood is cut in certain patterns, the paint adheres to the wood through physical and chemical bonds, etc. Stability is, again, relative — over time, the paint will chip and flake, the wood will rot, the nails will rust, etc. Dialectical processes of change will eventually reduce the chair into something other than a chair (i.e., through rotting, burning, disassembly, etc.), but as long as the internal relations maintain the Form of a chair we conceive of it as a chair.

The outer Form of a material object refers to the way it appears to human consciousness. Its shape, aesthetics, etc.

Ideal

With the ideal — i.e., abstract ideas and concepts — discussion of Content and Form becomes more complicated. As Vietnam’s Marxism-Leninism Textbook for Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism explains:

Many times, human consciousness has difficulty in trying to clearly define the Content of a subject — especially when the subject is an abstract idea. We often mistake Content with inner Form. Usually, in this situation, there is a strong combination and intertwining between both Content and Form. In such a situation, the Form can be referred to as the “inner Form,” or the “Content-Form.”
With physical things and phenomena, this type of Form usually belongs to a very specific Private, it doesn’t exist in any other Private, it is the Unique [see Annotation 129, p. 128].

The reason the inner Form of physical objects usually exists in Private as the Unique is because the stable internal relations of any given physical object are equivalent to the specific material components which distinguish one physical object from all other physical objects. In other words, if you have two chairs which are exact copies of each other, made from the same kind of wood, cut into the same shape, using the same type and configuration of fasteners, etc., they are still not the exact same object. The internal relations of one chair are what make it that chair and distinguish it from all other objects in the universe. The outer Form of these chairs may have many commonalities (they look similar, they have the same color, etc.), but the inner Form is what distinguishes one chair from the other.

However, within the realm of abstract ideas, there are also Forms which many abstract Privates share. In the context of abstract ideas, we call this kind of Form the “outer Form,” the “form-Form,” or the “common Form.”
When we try to define the Content of a subject which is an abstract idea, our consciousness usually tries to answer the question: “what is the subject?”

This is usually a simple matter. Take, for example, the abstract idea of “freedom.” When we try to think of the Content of freedom we can answer it pretty easily. What is the subject of freedom? It is the condition which allows humans to follow their own will, it is the absence of external coercion, etc., etc.

But, when we try to define the Form of an abstract idea, our consciousness tries to answer the question: “how is the subject?” — this is when we have to define the mode of existence (the Form) of that subject.

This is where things get more complicated. The mode of existence of an abstract idea can usually be considered to be language, since our ideas are usually expressed through language, but it can take on other modes of existence as well, such as visual media (paintings, photographs), physical motions of the human body (body language, dance), etc. This is how the field of art studies is concerned with the philosophical categories of Content and Form.

Content and Form in Art

Many readers may already be familiar with the subject of Content and Form from studying art, design, communications, and related fields. At first glance, the definitions of Content and Form may seem different from what we’ve been discussing so far.

This is because art concerns itself with abstract ideas expressed through various Forms of physical representations.

These physical representations may include physical objects (photographs, paintings, sculptures), performed and/or recorded physical activities (dance, music, theater, film), human language recorded in stable physical Forms of written language (novels, poems, stories) or spontaneously performed oral language (storytelling, impromptu spoken-word poetry).

Because the study of art is primarily concerned with interpreting and understanding ideas expressed through these physical manifestations, art is concerned with the stable inner relations of the ideas which artists imbue within their works of art — much more than the stable inner relations of the physical components of the object.

According to the Vietnamese art textbook Curriculum of General Aesthetics:

What is the Form of a work of art? Form is the way to express the Content of an artwork. Form and Content within a work of art have a strong unity with each other and they regulate each other. Form is the organization, the inner structure of the Content of an artwork. Therefore, Form is the way that the Content expresses itself, and that way is described by two features. We must ask:
First: what expresses the Content of a work of art?
Second: how is it expressed?
Art exists when two conditions are met: first, there must be a subject with an outer Form. Second, an artist must convey aesthetic meaning, or humanization, of that subject. This aesthetic meaning is the Content.

So, in studying works of art, we are less concerned with the physical content of the artwork (the canvas, paint, etc.) than we are with the abstract content of the artwork (the ideas which the artist imbues within the artwork).

As for Form, the inner Form of art represents the stable internal relations which compose the art (both ideal, i.e., the stable internal relations of the abstract ideas imbued within the art by the artist, as well as physical, i.e., the stable internal relations of the physical media of the art).

The outer Form of art represents how our human senses perceive the art, such as composition techniques, the use of color, etc.

The chart below breaks down the differences in a general, non-artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes in materialist dialectical terms (i.e., the viewpoint an engineer might have), as compared with the artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes (which an art critic might have). Some fields, such as designing products for human use, might draw from both viewpoints.

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Content and Form in Specific Artistic Media

Every medium of art will interpret Content and Form in its own way. For example:

Literature is a specific art discipline which deals with recorded human language in the Form of writing. In written literature, the Content would be the ideas expressed in a piece of writing; what the words say. The inner Form would be the way the ideas relate to each other — i.e., story structure, pacing, character development, etc. The outer form would be the physical format of the writing — i.e., manuscript, magazine article, paperback book, ebook, etc.

Painting is a specific art discipline in which pigments are applied to objects to create images which convey ideas and emotions. In painting, the Content would be the meaning which an artist embodies in a work of art. The inner Form would include the stable internal relations within the artwork (i.e., the bonds and mixtures between the pigments, the canvas, etc.), while the outer Form would be how the artwork appears to human senses (composition, aesthetics, etc.). Generally speaking, the creator of the art will have to make decisions about the inner Form (i.e., selection of oil vs. acrylic vs. watercolor, selection of shade, tint, and hue, physical brush strokes, etc.) so as to produce the desired outer Form (the way the finished artwork will appear to viewers).

Theater is a specific art discipline in which human beings perform physical actions and use their voices to convey ideas to an audience. In theater, the Content includes the ideas which are being presented, such as the script, the musical score, the story, the performance choices of actors, costumes, props, etc. The inner Form would include the stable relations between the members of the cast, the director, the physical stage, the lighting, etc., and the outer Form would be the way the play appears to the audience.

These are just some examples. Each medium of expression will have its own variations in how Content and Form are considered.

Engels described the manifestation of Content and Form in Dialectics of Nature:

The whole of organic nature is one continuous proof of the identity or inseparability of form and content. Morphological and physiological phenomena, form and function, mutually determine one another. The differentiation of form (the cell) determines differentiation of substance into muscle, skin, bone, epithelium, etc., and the differentiation of substance in turn determines difference of form.

Content and Form are discussed frequently in analysis of human social systems and objective relations which occur within society. For example, Marx made many criticial insights into economics by analyzing and explaining the form of value [see Annotation 14, p. 16] under capitalism.

Indeed, the entire capitalist system can be viewed in terms of content and form. The current form of human civilization is capitalism. That is to say, capitalism is the stable set of relations and characteristis of the current political economy which dominates the planet. The content of capitalism includes all the components of the base and superstructure, including the various classes (capitalists, working class, etc.), the means of production, government institutions, corporate institutions, etc. All of these elements are configured together into the relatively stable form which we call “capitalism.”

b. Dialectical relationship between Content and Form

Content and Form have a strong dialectical relationship with one other. There is no Form that does not contain any Content. Simultaneously, there is no Content that does not exist in a specific Form. The same Content can manifest in many Forms and a Form can contain many Contents.

The relationship between Content and Form is a dialectical relationship in which Content decides Form and Form can impact Content.

Annotation 151

For example, if you want to make a table, and all you have available are wood and nails, then that Content (the wood and the nails) will determine the Form the table ends up taking. You are going to end up with a wooden table, and it will therefore have to have certain characteristics of Form.

When Content changes, the Form must change accordingly. If, instead of wood, you have iron, then the table you end up building will have a much different Form. Form can also influence the Content, but not nearly as much as Content determines Form. For instance, if you have wood and nails, but you develop a technique for building a table that doesn’t need any nails, then the result (a wooden table without any nails) would be an example of a development in Form reflecting as a change in Content.

The main tendency of Content is change. On the other hand, Form is relatively stable in every thing and phenomenon. As Content changes, Form must change accordingly. However, Content and Form are not always perfectly aligned.

Annotation 152

Since all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly changing, it stands to reason that the internal components (things, phenomena, and ideas, and their relations) which compose the Content of a subject will constantly be undergoing processes of change and development. Thus, we say that the tendency of Content is change. Since the Form is based on the internal relations of the components of Content, it stands to reason that a change in Content will lead to change in Form. These kinds of changes in Content and Form also occur through the dialectical process: changes in quantity lead to changes in quality [see Annotation 117, p. 119].

Quantity changes in Content lead to quality shifts in Form.

As soon as a wooden chair is finished being built, the paint is already beginning to degrade. The wood is already beginning to rot. The iron nails are already beginning to rust. These changes may be imperceptibly slow — they may even take centuries to occur, if the chair is kept in a hospitable environment — but the changes are occurring, quantitatively, over time, none-the-less.

Eventually, changes in quantity will lead to changes in quality. At some point, the chair might weaken and begin to wobble whenever it’s sat in. Human beings might recognize this quality and begin to think of it as a “wobbly chair.” The chair might degrade to the point where it can’t be safely used at all, in which case it will have quality shifted into a “broken chair.” If the chair is repaired, that would represent another quality shift. If it is used for firewood, that would be another quality shift.

Keep in mind that changes in Form do not directly cause changes in Content. If you disassemble a wooden chair into the constituent wood and nails, the wood and nails remain more or less unchanged. But if you burn a wooden chair, it’s the change in Content which leads to the change in Form from “chair” to “pile of ash.”

Form simply represents the stable relationships between the component parts of the subject’s Content. The only way to change Form is to change those inner relations, or to change the components which are relating. There is no way to change Form without changing the Content, and changing the Content changes the Form by definition.

Content determines Form, but Form is not fully decided by Content, and Form can impact back on Content. If a Form is suitable with its Content, it can improve the development of its Content. If a Form is not suitable with its Content, it can constrain the development of its Content.

Annotation 153

The dialectical relationship between Content and Form is somewhat similar to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal (see Matter and Consciousness,

p. 88). Just as the material world determines consciousness while consciousness impacts the material world, the Content of a subject determines the Form while the Form impacts the Content.

Suitability describes the applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. Whether or not something is “suitable” or not can be highly subjective (i.e., which music would be “suitable” to play at a party), or it can be more objective (i.e., what kind of batteries to use with an electronic device).

We might say that hardwood is “suitable” Content for the Form of a chair because it is durable, strong, relatively inexpensive, and long-lasting. It might be “unsuitable” to have a chair made of hardwood if it is to be used as an office chair, because the hard surfaces might cause strain and discomfort. However, we can utilize conscious activity to adjust and develop suitability between Content and Form. Changing the Content by adding cushioning or padding might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other. Similarly, changing the Form by designing contours and adding adjustability to the chair might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other for their intended application as an office chair.

If a Form is not suitable with the Content, it restrains the development of the Content. Just think of a shovel (Form) made of wood (Content), which will degrade very rapidly over time, vs. a shovel (Form) made of steel (Content) which will last much longer. This works in both directions. Consider the Content of drinking cups: a porcelain cup might last for a long time and even develop positively over time (by acquiring a desirable patina), while a cup made out of mild steel would not be desirable, as it would be highly prone to rust from extended use containing liquids.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Content and Form always have a dialectical relationship with each other. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must not try to separate Content and Form, nor should we solely focus on one and ignore the other.

Because Content determines Form, whenever we are considering a thing, phenomenon, or idea, we must base our consideration first on its Content. If we want to change a thing or phenomenon, we have to change its Content first.

In reality, we must promote the positive impact of Form on Content by making the Form fit the Content. Likewise, we must also change the Form that is no longer suitable with its Content and therefore constrains the development of its Content.

Annotation 154

In any analysis, it is very important that we carefully consider whether or not Content and Form are suitable with each other in our own projects and activities. We can learn a lot about suitability from observation and practice (see Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204) and improve suitability through conscious activity.

Marx believed that it is vital to consider Content and Form when analyzing human society and political economy. One of his core critiques of political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo was a failure to consider Content and Form when it comes to value, commodities, and money. He discusses this extensively in Capital Volume 1, as in this excerpt:

The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both.

Marx, here, is saying that studying the economy is more difficult than studying the human body because it can’t be physically observed and dissected. Rather, we have to rely on abstraction, which leaves us prone to making many more mistakes in analyzing Content and Form.

But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour – or value-form of the commodity – is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.

Marx’s analysis of capitalism relies to great extent upon recognizing the commodity-form of the product (Content) of labor. Labor existed long before capitalism. Labor has existed for as long as humans have worked to change our own material conditions. But under capitalism, labor specifically takes on the Form of a commodity which is bought by capitalists. This becomes the basis for Marx’s entire critique of capitalism.

Obviously, there is much more to Marx’s use of Content and Form in analyzing capitalism and human society, but this should hopefully give you some idea of the importance of Content and Form in analysis of human society and revolutionary activity.

5. Essence and Phenomenon

a. Categories of Essence and Phenomenon

The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas.

The Phenomenon category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions.

Annotation 155

Understanding Essence and Phenomena can be challenging at first, but it is very important for materialist dialectical analysis.

Essence should not be confused with Form. Form represents the stable internal relations of the component content of a subject, whereas Essence represents the synthesis of all internal aspects as well as all obvious and stable attributes which define the existence, motion, and development of a subject.

Phenomena are simply external manifestations of a subject which occur in specific conditions.

The Essence of a subject is not dependent on conditions, whereas in different conditions, the same subject will exhibit different Phenomena. For example, COVID-19 is, essentially, a specific virus strain. That is to say, all of the internal aspects and stable relations that define the existence, motion, and development of COVID-19 are synthesized as a virus which we call COVID-19.

The Phenomena of COVID-19 which we can observe in patients would include symptoms such as fever, coughing, trouble breathing, etc.

The Essence of a cloud is water vapor in the atmosphere: that is the synthesis, the coming-together, of all the internal stable relations and aspects which will determine how a cloud exists, moves, and develops over time.

The Phenomena of clouds are all the things we can sense: the appearance of big fluffy white things in the air, shadows on the ground, and, sometimes, rain.

Essence defines Phenomenon: the internal attributes and stable relations will produce the Phenomena which we can observe. A cloud is not essentially defined as a fluffy white thing in the air; that is just the appearance a cloud has to our human senses in certain specific conditions.

b. Dialectical relationship between Essence and Phenomenon

Essence and Phenomenon both exist objectively as two unified but opposing sides.

The unity between Essence and Phenomenon: Essence always manifests through Phenomena, and every Phenomenon is always the manifestation of a specific Essence. There is no pure Essence that exists separately from Phenomena and there is no Phenomenon that does not manifest from any kind of Essence.

When Essence changes, Phenomena also change accordingly. When Essence appears, Phenomena also appear, and when Essence disappears, Phenomena also disappear. Therefore, Lenin said: “The Essence appears. The appearance is essential.”^[94]

The Opposition of Essence and Phenomenon: Essence is that which defines a thing, Phenomenon, or idea, while Phenomena are diversified and conditional. Essence is internal, while Phenomena are external. Essence is relatively stable, while Phenomena continuously change.

Annotation 156

Essence and Phenomenon are simultaneously unified and opposite because neither can exist without the other, yet they have completely opposite features from one another.

Discussing the Essence and Phenomena of physical objects is relatively straight-forward. The Essence will typically encompass the physical object or system itself. For example, a car engine is essentially a machine; that is to say, the synthesis of all the internal aspects (the engine parts) as well as the obvious and stable relations (the relations between the parts of the engine; how they are assembled and work together in the engine system) that define the existence, motion and development of the engine (the way it works) are what essentially make it a car engine. All of these essential characteristics are internal, relatively stable, and remain the same regardless of the condition of the engine (i.e., they continue to exist whether the engine is turned on, turned off, inoperable, etc.).

The Phenomena of the car engine are all the things that we can sense from it, but this can vary a great deal depending on conditions. When the car engine is turned off, it will be silent. It may be cool to the touch. It will be at rest. If the engine is turned on, the parts will move, it will become hot, it will make noise. In some situations it might smoke or even catch on fire. All of these Phenomena are conditional, unstable, and external to the engine itself.

With ideas and abstract thought, Essence and Phenomenon becomes more difficult to determine and analyze. Lenin discussed this in his Philosophical Notebooks, beginning with a quote from Hegel:

Dialectics in general is “the pure movement of thought in Notions“ (i.e., putting it without the mysticism of idealism: human concepts are not fixed but are eternally in movement, they pass into one another, they flow into one another, otherwise they do not reflect living life.

Knowing that Hegel was an idealist, Lenin wanted to strip all idealism from his conception of dialectics, and thus made it clear that “the pure movement of thought” simply refers to the fact that human thoughts are constantly changing, always in motion, within the living human mind, writing:

The analysis of concepts, the study of them, the “art of operating with them” (Engels) always demands study of the movement of concepts, of their interconnection, of their mutual transitions).

This is a description of materialist dialectical analysis of human thought. We must understand that human thoughts are always in motion, always developing, and always mutually impacting other thoughts.

In particular, dialectics is the study of the opposition of the Thing-in-itself, of the essence, substratum, substance — from the appearance, from “Being-for-Others.” (Here, too, we see a transition, a flow from the one to the other: the essence appears. The appearance is essential.) Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on without end.

This is where Lenin introduces the concept of Essence and Phenomenon (or “appearance,” as Lenin puts it) as simultaneously oppositional and in unity. Essence refers to the qualities and nature of the “thing-in-itself” (its internal components, relations, etc.) while Phenomena represents “being-for-others” (that which external observers can sense or witness of a subject). However, as Lenin notes, Essence and Phenomena have a dialectical relationship with each other — a “flow from the one to the other.” The Essence “appears” by exuding Phenomena which we can sense.

Conscious thoughts also have Essence and Phenomena of their own. With thought, the development from Essence to Phenomena is constant and inevitable. The Essence of each thought leads to thought-Phenomena which develop in turn into the Essence of new thoughts in a constant flow.

In this sense, Essence and Phenomenon of abstract thought is somewhat different from Essence and Phenomenon of physical objects, but physical objects can have this same dialectical pattern of development. For example, the emissions from the engine of a car can be considered Phenomena of the engine, but as these Phenomena build up in the air (along with the emissions from many other cars), they can develop into a physical subject with a new Essence of its own, which we call “air pollution.”

We can also think of the light which comes from the sun. The light itself can be thought of as Phenomena of the sun, but the light energy can be captured by a solar panel and converted into energy, creating a new subject with its own Essence which we would describe as “solar energy.” In this sense, it is possible for Phenomena to have Phenomena. If you witness light waves in the desert which cause an optical illusion, then the illusion is a Phenomenon of the light waves (the light waves being the Essence which exuded the Phenomenon of illusion), and the light waves are the Phenomena of the sun (the essential subject which exudes the Phenomena of the light waves).

Essence and Phenomena can also be contextual. In some contexts, physical objects which have their own Essence (and Phenomena) may be the Phenomena of some other entity. For example, archaeologists can’t observe prehistoric civilizations directly. They can only study the things which are left behind. In this sense, we can think of an archaeological artifact, like a stone tool, as a Phenomenon of a prehistoric civilization. The tool has its own Essence and Phenomena, but it is also itself a Phenomenon. A single stone tool can’t tell archaeologists much about an ancient civilization, however, archaeologists can gather many Phenomena (tools, structural ruins, nearby animal bones and seeds, human remains, etc.) to look for patterns which reveal more insights about the Essence of the prehistoric civilization which exuded those Phenomena.

Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects: not only are appearances transitory, mobile, fluid, demarcated only by conventional boundaries, but the essence of things is so as well.

Lenin, here, points out that proper analysis hinges on understanding the Essence of a subject, since the Phenomena are fleeting and subject to change. Most notably, we should look for contradictions within the subject (see Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction, p. 175), because contradictions are what drive dialectical development of a subject over time.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

If we want to be accurately aware of things, phenomena, and ideas, we must not just stop at studying their Phenomena, we have to study their Essence. Only through examining many Phenomena of a subject can we fully and correctly understand the Essence of said subject.

Annotation 157

With physical objects, we must study the Phenomena to know anything about a subject, since Phenomena is, by definition, that which we can observe. Only through systematic, repeated observations can we come to understand the Essence of the object which exudes the Phenomena. Because Phenomena can change based on conditions, we must observe Phenomena under various conditions in a systematic way. This is the basis of all scientific inquiry.

This is also true for analyzing aspects of human society. To understand a social system, we must observe its Phenomena systematically over time and look for patterns which form under various conditions. We must also keep in mind that social systems develop and change over time, and so the Essence might develop with or without changes in certain Phenomena. For example, the phenomena of the United States of America have changed significantly over the years. The national flag, military uniforms, seals, and other iconography have changed throughout the history of the USA. Similarly, there have been many presidents, and the government and constitution have also been through many changes. That said, the essential nature of the USA’s political economy has not changed significantly since its foundation; the USA has been a capitalist bourgeois democracy since the beginning and remains so to this day. Regardless of which bourgeois-dominated political party holds power in the white house and congress — Whig, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise — the essential nature of the USA as a capitalist bourgeois democracy has remained the same.

According to Lenin: “Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on, without end.”^[95] On the other hand, Essence is what defines a thing, phenomenon, or idea. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must recognize a thing, phenomenon, or idea based on its Essence, not its Phenomena, to evaluate it correctly, and after that, we can make fundamental improvements.

Annotation 158

For example: Thousands of years ago, people observed that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west everyday. Based on these Phenomena, many human civilizations developed the belief that the Essence of our solar system was that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun rotated around it. Today, thanks to scientific observation and practice, we have proven that the sun is the center of the solar system and that the earth is rotating around it, which is totally opposite to what many believed hundreds of years ago. In this case, the initially observed Phenomena were misleading, and it was only by getting a better grasp of the essential nature of the solar system that we could better comprehend its functioning.

It is usually easy to observe Phenomena (since they are defined by being observable) but it’s also easy to misunderstand relationships between Essence and Phenomena. Sometimes people get a false perception of Essence from real Phenomena, such as believing the Sun revolves around the Earth. Sometimes people attribute the wrong Phenomena to Essences as well, such as believing that all poor people are lazy.

Phenomena can easily be mistaken for essence. For example, bourgeois liberal political parties often portray themselves as being pro-worker and therefore exhibit phenomena such as rhetoric, slogans, propaganda, and even platform positions which appeal to workers. These phenomena may confuse many into believing that they are workers’ parties when, in reality, they are essentially dominated by the capitalist class. The reverse can also occur. For example, workers may be fooled into believing that a ruthless capitalist politician or celebrity is “working class at heart,” falsely believing that the capitalist’s class position is merely a phenomenon when in fact it is essential.

Understanding true Essence based on real Phenomena is one of the most important aspects of analysis. It is the primary realm of science. In politics, misunderstanding or mischaracterizing Essence and Phenomena can reinforce false beliefs about the way society works which can lead to promulgation of dangerous and reactionary ideologies like neoliberalism and fascism amidst the working class. For this reason, we must avoid examining Phenomena alone. We have to dive deep to discover and understand the essential nature of things, phenomena, and ideas in our analysis.

6. Possibility and Reality

a. Categories of Possibility and Reality

The Possibility category refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions.

The Reality category refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought.

b. Dialectical Relationship Between Possibility and Reality

Possibility and Reality have a unified and inseparable relationship: Possibility can transform into Reality and Reality contains new Possibility; any given Possibility, under specific conditions, can transform into Reality.

Given specific conditions, there could be one or many possibilities for the development of any given thing, phenomenon, or idea: practical Possibility, random Possibility, obvious Possibility, abstract Possibility, near Possibility, far Possibility, etc.

Annotation 159

Excerpt From Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism

Editor’s notes in [brackets]

Reality has many aspects. It also has many tendencies of development. These aspects and tendencies of Reality have different roles and positions in the development process of Reality. For example, manifesting any given Possibility into Reality requires us to change a specific subject from one status to a different status. Some subjects are easier to transform and others are more difficult to transform. Some require us to change quality, others only require quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119].

Because Reality has many aspects and tendencies of development, it is useful to classify Possibility. There are at least four types of Possibility, in two separate categories.

[The categorization below draws a distinction between the obvious and the practical.

The obvious is that which will certainly occur. If you drop an object, it will obviously fall. The practical is that which we certainly could make occur through human will. If you are holding an object, you could practically drop it.]

Obvious Possibility and Random Possibility [see: Obviousness and Randomness, p. 144].

Obvious Possibility refers to Possibility that will happen, because conditions to make it happen are set in place so that the Possibility developing into Reality is unavoidable.

[If the conditions arise for a hurricane to form, it eventually becomes obvious that a hurricane will form.]

Random Possibility is Possibility which may or may not happen depending on how external factors develop, our actions, the actions of others, etc. [Whether or not a hurricane may develop on any given day is, from our human perspective, random, since we do not have any technology to cause or prevent the development of hurricanes. Other events may be more or less random. We can, for instance, prepare for an incoming hurricane to minimize the risk of harm to human communities.]

Second, based on the practical relationships between subjects, we have:

Practical Possibility vs. Abstract Possibility:

Practical Possibility means that conditions in Reality which could make something happen are already in place. [If you have all the ingredients, knowledge, and equipment needed to make a pie, you could make a pie. The material conditions are in place.]

Abstract Possibility is Possibility which may become Reality in the future but the conditions which would make this Possibility become Reality have not yet developed.

[It is an abstract Possibility that you could make a pie, even if you don’t have the tools, ingredients, or knowledge. It is possible, in the abstract, that you could buy the ingredients and equipment and learn the necessary skills to make a pie. Near Possibility simply refers to Possibility which may become Reality in the shorter term, far Possibility refers to things which may happen in a more distant future, relative to the subject being discussed.]

In social life, in order to transform a Possibility into Reality, there must be objective conditions and subjective factors. Subjective factors include the ability of humans to change Possibility into Reality. Objective conditions refer to the situations needed to make such a change occur. [In other words, humans are able to subjectively change possibility into reality, but only when the objective circumstances exist in the external world.]

c. Meaning of the Methodology

We must base our perception and practice on Reality.

Lenin said: “Marxism takes its stand on the facts, and not on possibilities. A Marxist must, as the foundation of his policy, put [forth] only precisely and unquestionably demonstrated facts.”^[96]

However, in our perception and practice, we also need to comprehensively recognize possibilities which could arise from Reality. This will allow us to develop methods of practical operation which are suitable to changes and developments which might occur. We must actively make use of subjective factors in perception and practice to turn Possibility into Reality whenever it would serve our purposes.

Annotation 160

This idea is perhaps best exemplified in the traditional Vietnamese proverb: “you can’t just open your mouth and wait for fruit to drop into your mouth.” We have to actively apply our will, through practice and labor, to develop the best possibilities into manifested Reality. See more about subjective factors in Annotation 207, p. 202.

IV. Basic Laws of Materialist Dialectics

Laws are the regular, common, obvious, natural, and objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena.

There are many types of laws in this world and they all have different prevalence, reach, characteristics, and roles in regard to the motion and development processes of things and phenomena in nature, society, and human thought. So, it is necessary to classify different laws for humans to understand and apply them effectively into practical activities. Classifying laws based on prevalence, we have: private laws, common laws, and universal laws [see: Private and Common, p. 128].

Private laws are laws that only apply to a specific range of things and phenomena. For example: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc.

Common laws are laws that apply to a broader range of subjects than private laws, and they impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc.

Universal laws are laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws.

If we classify laws based on the reach of impact, we will have three main groups: laws of nature, laws of society, and laws of human thought.

Laws of nature are laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body. They are not products of human conscious activities.

Laws of society are the laws of human activity in social relations; these laws only apply to the conscious activities of humans, yet they are still objective.

Annotation 161

We have already discussed how relations between human beings are objective [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. By extension, the human relations which compose human societies are objective, and thus, any laws which govern objective human relations must also be objective.

Marx’s assertion that human social relations are objective is critical to understanding his work. Marx pointed out that social relations may not be “physical,” in the sense that they can’t be observed directly with human senses, but that they still have an objective character — they exist externally to a given subject, and they have objective impacts on reality. For instance, the class relations between the capitalist class and the working class result in objective manifestations in reality, such as wealth accumulation, modes of circulation, etc.

Laws of human thought are laws of the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness.

As the science of common relations and development, materialist dialectics studies the universal laws that influence the entire natural world, human society, and human thought, all together as a whole.

These universal laws are:

The law of transformation between quantity and quality.
The law of unification and contradiction between opposites.
The law of negation of negation.

Annotation 162

Each of these laws is considered universal because they apply to all things, phenomena, and ideas, and all the internal and external relations thereof, in human perception and practice. All things, phenomena, and ideas change and develop as a result of mutual impacts and relationships in accordance with these universal laws. On a fundamental level, materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws and their utility.

1. Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality

The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought.

Annotation 163

Remember that mode refers to how something exists, functions, and develops [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. The universal mode of motion and development processes thus refers to how all things, ideas, and phenomena move, change, and develop.

Friedrich Engels defined the law of transformation between quantity and quality in Dialectics of Nature:

The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).

In other words, quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas lead to quality shifts.

The universal mode of motion and development processes follows the law of transformation between quantity and quality, which states:

Qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas; and, vice versa: quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 164

Put simply: quantity changes develop into quality changes, and quality changes lead to quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. We say that these changes to quantity and quality occur on the “inevitable basis” of one another because quality changes always, invariably, arise from quantity changes, and, likewise, quantity changes always, invariably, arise from quality changes.

Just as quantity shifts lead to quality shifts, it is also true that quality shifts lead to quantity shifts. For example, if you have 11 donuts, then add 1 donut, you now have 1 dozen donuts. If you add 12 more donuts, you would then have 2 dozen.

Another example of quality shift leading to quantity shift would be a pond filling with rain water. Once enough drops of water collect and the pond is considered full — that is to say, once it is considered to be “a pond” of water — we will no longer think of the pond in terms of “drops.” We would think of the pond as “filled,” “overfilled,” “underfilled,” etc.

Note that both of these examples are related to our human perceptions and understanding of the material world. The material world does not change based on our perceptions, nor how we classify the quantity or quality of a given subject. There are also objective aspects related to quality shifts leading to quantity shifts. For example, if we adjust the quantity of the temperature of a sheet of paper to the point of burning, and the paper burns, then the quantity of paper would be reduced from one sheet to zero sheets. In other words, the quality shift arising from temperature quantity increase (i.e., the paper burning into ash) results in a quantity shift in how many pieces of paper exist (from one sheet to zero sheets). However, even this is ultimately a subjective assessment rooted in human consciousness, since we subjectively think in terms of “sheets of paper,” and the concept of a “sheet of paper” is essentially a classification rooted in human consciousness. It is merely an abstract way of perceiving and considering the quantity and quality of the material subject which we think of as “paper.”

The law of transformation between quantity and quality is an inevitable, objective, and universal relationship that repeats in every motion and development process of all things, phenomena, and ideas in nature, human society, and human thought.

a. Definitions of Quality and Quantity

- Definition of Quality

Quality refers to the organic unity which exists amongst the component parts of a thing, phenomenon, or idea that distinguishes it from other things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 165

Note: we have already given basic definitions of quantity and quality in Annotation 117, p. 119. What follows are more comprehensive philosophical definitions of quality and quantity. Our world exists as one continuity of matter. All things and phenomena in our universe exist essentially as one unified system — namely, the entity which we call “the universe.” This unified nature of existence is extremely difficult for human beings to comprehend. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel pointed out that, in this sense, the unity of “pure being” is indistinguishable from “nothingness.” In Science of Logic, Hegel noted that if we try to comprehend pure material existence, as a whole, without distinguishing any component thing or phenomenon from any other, then all is incomprehensible. Human consciousness needs to delineate and distinguish the component parts of this unified system from each other in order to make sense of it all.

Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same thing. Something can be distinguished only in determinate light or darkness... [F]or this reason, it is only darkened light and illuminated darkness which have within themselves the moment of difference and are, therefore, determinate being.

The human mind has evolved to perceive various things, phenomena, and ideas as differentiated. Quality is the basis on which we perceive subjects as distinct from one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea is composed of internal components and relations. The unity of these internal components and relations is what we refer to as quality. For example, a human being’s quality refers to the unity of all the internal components and relationships of which the human being is composed (i.e., the cells, organs, blood, etc., as well as the thoughts, memories, etc., which make the human) in unity. Quality is also a subjective phenomenon: a reflection of the material world in human consciousness [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Therefore we may conceive of various qualities for the same subject. We can think of 12 donuts as “a box of donuts,” “a dozen donuts,” or as 12 individual donuts. We could consider a building as “one apartment building” or “forty apartments,” depending on the viewpoint of analysis.

So, objective and inherent attributes form the quality of things, phenomena, and ideas, but we must not confuse quality and attribute with one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has both fundamental and non-fundamental attributes. Only fundamental attributes constitute the quality of things, phenomena and ideas. When the fundamental attributes change, the quality also changes. The distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes of things, phenomena, and ideas must depend on the purpose of the analysis; the same attribute may be fundamental when analyzing with one purpose but non-fundamental when analyzing with another purpose.

Annotation 166

Whether or not an attribute is considered “fundamental” depends entirely on conscious perspective. For example, one baker may consider chocolate chips to be “fundamental” for baking cookies while another baker may not. This subjective characteristic of what might be considered “fundamental” or not is reflected in how we consider quality. If you are trying to determine how much water you need to fill a swimming pool, you may think of a pool in terms of size (i.e., “this is an Olympic sized pool”), but if you just want to go for a swim, you are likely to just think in terms of the water level (i.e., “the pool is empty, we can’t swim”).

If you are planning the construction of a school and want to know how many classrooms it will need, you might think in terms of “classrooms of students.” But if you are considering funding for a school year, you might consider the total number of students.

The quality of a thing, phenomenon, or idea is determined by the qualities of its component parts.

Annotation 167

Qualities are composed of qualities, combined, in unity. “A swimming pool” may consist of a certain amount of concrete in a specific configuration combined with 5,000 gallons of water. A car may be composed of a body, an engine, four tires, etc. Each individual component exists as a quality — a unity of component attributes — in and of itself.

Quality is also determined by the structures and connections between component parts which manifest in specific relations. Therefore, distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes is also relative.

Annotation 168

It’s not just the component parts of a subject which define its quality, but also the relations of those component parts. For instance, a quantity of wood and nails configured in one set of structural relations may have the quality of a chair, whereas the same component parts arranged with different structures and relations may have the quality of a table. In this sense, quality can be thought of as a synthesis of the Content and Form [see Content and Form, p. 147] of a thing, phenomenon, or idea from a certain perspective.

For example, if we see two shoes, we may think of each shoe as an individual qualitative object (two shoes). On the other hand, we may think of the shoes, together, as a single qualitative “object” in terms of its utility and in terms of synthesis of content and form (“a pair of shoes”), so much so that if one shoe is lost then the remaining shoe is considered useless and discarded as trash.

Because there are countless ways in which quality — the configuration and relations and composition of constituent parts of any given subject — can manifest, we must recognize that quality itself, based on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes, is a relative and subjective phenomenon of human consciousness.

Any given subject will have multiple qualities, depending on the relations which exist between and within that subject and other subjects.

Annotation 169

Any thing, phenomenon, or idea may be perceived from various different perspectives which would cause us to consider it as having different qualities. A single shoe may be considered as: a shoe, 3 pounds of leather, half of a pair, etc., depending on its internal and external relations and the perspective of the person considering the shoe.

We can’t consider things, phenomena, and ideas apart from quality. Quality exhibits a subject’s relative stability.

Annotation 170

Remember that quality is the way in which the human mind conceives of the world as a collection of distinct things, phenomena, and ideas. These perceptions of quality are purely relative, but they are important, because they are what allow us to develop an understanding of the complicated system of things, phenomena, and ideas which make up our universe. In our perception, quality represents the relative stability of a thing, phenomenon, or idea which makes it a subject that we can consider and analyze in and of itself. Understanding how we distinguish between different subjects is crucial in developing a scientific understanding of the world which is rooted in observation and practice.

- Definition of Quantity

Quantity refers to the amount or extent of specific attributes of a thing, phenomenon, or idea, including but not limited to:

The amount of component parts.
Scale or size.
Speed or rhythm of motion.

A thing, phenomenon, or idea can have many quantities, with each quantity determined by different criteria. [i.e., a car may be measured by many criteria of quantity, such as: length in meters, weight in kilograms, speed in kilometers per hour, etc.]

Quality and quantity embody two different aspects of the same subject. Both quality and quantity exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. However, the distinction between “quality” and “quantity” in the process of perceiving things, phenomena, and ideas has only relative significance: an attribute may be considered “quantity” from one perspective but “quality” from another perspective.

Annotation 171

If you are filling a box with a dozen donuts, then once you add the 12^th donut, one “dozen” may represent the quality which you seek. From the perspective of a customer buying donuts for a party, “dozen” may represent the “quantity.” In other words, you need to make an order (quality) of three dozen donuts (quantity). And the manager of the store, at the end of the day, may tally twenty orders (quantity) as the day’s sales goal (quality). Quantity and quality, therefore, are both considered relatively, based on perspective and the purpose of analysis at hand.

b. Dialectical Relationship Between Quantity and Quality

Every thing, phenomenon, and idea exists as a unity of two aspects: quality and quantity. Quantity and quality do not exist separate from one another. Quantity and quality dialectically and mutually impact one other. Changes in quantity lead to changes in quality. However, not every change in quantity will cause a change in quality.

Annotation 172

In order for quantity change to lead to quality change, a certain amount must be met.

This amount is called the threshold, which is explained further below in this section. A threshold may be exact and known (i.e., it takes exactly 12 donuts to make a dozen donuts) or it may be relative and unknown (i.e., a certain quantity of air inflated into a balloon may cause it to burst, but the exact, specific quantity of air may be relative to other factors such as air temperature and may be unknown to the observer until the balloon actually bursts).

With any given subject, there will be a range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality. This range is called the quantity range.

Quantity range is defined as a relationship between quantity and quality: the range of intervals in which the change in quantity does not substantially change the quality of a given subject. Within the limits of a quantity range, the subject retains the same quality.

Annotation 173

The quantity range is a range of quantities between quality shifts.

Quantity range can be thought of as the range of quantities which exists between thresholds. For instance, between the qualities of “one donut” and “one dozen donuts,” there is a quantity range of 10 donuts (2 donuts through 11 donuts) which can be added before the quality shifts to “one dozen donuts.” You can keep adding additional donuts, up to the quantity of 11 donuts, without reaching the threshold of quality shift to “one dozen donuts.” This is the quantity range between the qualities of donut and one dozen donuts. Again, the quantity range is relative to the perspective and the nature of analysis. One person may only be concerned with “dozens of donuts,” while another may consider the quality of “half dozens,” which would consider a quality shift to “one half-dozen donuts” to occur once the sixth donut (quantity) is added.

Motion and change usually begins with a change in quantity. When changes in quantity reach a certain amount, quality will also change. The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs is called the threshold.

Annotation 174

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-57.png

Note that the threshold is an approximate range. At a certain quantity, a glass may be considered “half full” and at another certain quantity, after passing the threshold, the glass will be considered “full,” though there may be a wide range of quantities at which the glass would be considered to have the quality of being “full,” depending on perspective and purpose of analysis.

When quantity change meets a threshold, within necessary and specific conditions, quality will change. This change in quality, which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, is called a quality shift.

A quality shift occurs when a quantity changes beyond a threshold, leading to a change in quality.

Quality shifts inevitably occur as transformations in the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas. Qualitative changes can be expressed or manifested through many forms of quality shifts which are determined by the contradictions, characteristics and conditions of a given subject, including such characteristics as: fast or slow, big or small, partial or entire, spontaneous or intentional.

Annotation 175

Quality shifts are inevitable because there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea which can exist statically, forever, without ever undergoing change. Eventually, any given subject will undergo quality shifts, even if such transformation may take millions of years to occur.

Quality shifts can take various forms, depending on the nature of internal and external relationships, contradictions, and mutual impacts. For instance, a river may dry up or it may flood depending on internal and external relations and characteristics, but it will not simply flow at the same level forever without ever undergoing any quality shifts.

The rate and degree of quality shifts can vary considerably based on such internal and external factors, and may be “spontaneous,” that is to say, without human intervention, or may be the result of the intentional, conscious action of human beings.

Quality shifts mark the end of one motion period and the start of a new motion period.

Annotation 176

The Quantity Range (A) refers to the range of quantities between two qualities in the process of development. The Quality Shift (B) refers to the point at which quantity accumulates to the point of changing the Quality of the developing subject. The Period of Motion (C) includes both the quantity range and the quality shifts themselves.

Period of motion refers to the development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves.

Period of motion differs from quantity range because quantity range only includes the range of quantity change which can occur between quality shifts, without including the quality shifts themselves.

For example, a period of motion for a cup filling with water from a half cup would include all of the change which occurs from the cup being half full to the cup becoming entirely full. The quantity range of this same process would only include the quantities of water that stand between half-full and full, where the cup is neither considered to be “half full” or “full” but somewhere in between, i.e., between quality shifts.

Quality shift represents discontinuity within the continuous development process of things and phenomena. In the material world, all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing continuous sequences of quantitative changes leading to quality shifts, creating an endless line of nodes, showing how all things, phenomena, and ideas move and develop to increasingly advanced degrees [see illustration on p. 121 for a visualization of this “endless line of nodes”].

As Friedrich Engels summarised: “merely quantitative changes beyond a certain point pass into qualitative differences.”^[97]

Annotation 177

Processes of change and development in our universe are continuously ongoing. Whenever a quality shift occurs, it represents a brief discontinuity in the sense that we perceive a definite and distinct transformation from one thing, phenomenon, or idea into another; in other words, we can distinguish between the mode of existence of the thing, phenomenon, or idea before and after the quality shift.

Take, for example, the “lifespan” of a house. A human being could easily distinguish between the empty land which exists before the house is built, the construction site which exists as it’s being built, and the house itself once construction is completed. In reality, this process of change is continuous, but to our human perception, each quality shift represents a definite and distinct period of change and discontinuity in terms of our perception of the “thing” which is the house.

This is related to the historic perspective of things, phenomena, and ideas, in which we recognize the continuity of existence between different stages of development of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 201, p. 195].

When a quality shift occurs, there is an impact on the quantity. Quality impacts quantity in a number of ways, including [but not limited to]:

Changing the structure, scale, or level of the subject.
Changing the rhythm or speed of the motion and development of the subject.

In summary, dialectical unity between quantity and quality exists in every thing, phenomenon, and idea. A gradual quantitative change [through the quantity range] will eventually meet the threshold, which will inevitably lead to a qualitative change through quality shift. Simultaneously, the new quality will mutually impact the quantity, causing new quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. This process takes place continuously, forming the fundamental and universal mode of movement and development processes of all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 178

Transformation between quantity and quality is the mode of movement and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, because it reflects the way in which human consciousness perceives movement and development.

So, it is important to understand that there is no material manifestation of quantity and quality. They are simply mental constructs which reflect the ways in which we observe and understand change, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Transformation processes in the material world are fully fluid and continuous, but our consciousness perceives change in stages of development. Quality simply reflects how we distinguish one subject from another subject, as well as how we recognize the transformation process (and stages of development) of a single subject over time.

There is no specific point, metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality.

Quality refers to the differences which are distinguished in human consciousness between one subject and another, or changes in a subject’s form over time.

There is no metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality. We create categories which reflect quality to organize and systematically understand the world around us, and to distinguish between different subjects, and to distinguish between different stages of development of a given subject.

We can also distinguish differences of quality between different subjects: we can distinguish a cat from a dog, and we can distinguish one dog from another dog. These distinguishing attributes constitute differences in quality. Note that this conception of differentiation of things, phenomena, and ideas into qualities which constantly change and develop over time is fundamentally distinct from metaphysical categorization, which seeks to divide all things, phenomena, and ideas into static, perpetually unchanging categories (see Annotation 8, p. 8).

Distinction within the human mind is reflected in the concept of quantity and quality. If we do not observe quality differences between subjects, then we would not be able to distinguish between different subjects at all. If we could not recognize the quality shifts of any given subject, then we would not be aware of change or motion at all.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Every thing, phenomenon and idea has characteristics of quality and quantity which mutually impact and transform one another. Therefore, in perception and practice, we need to understand and take into account the law of transformation between quantity and quality in order to have a comprehensive viewpoint of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 114, p. 116].

Quantitative changes of things, phenomena and ideas inevitably lead to qualitative changes in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, in our perception and practice, as we plan and enact change in our world and in human society, it is necessary to gradually accumulate changes in quantity in order to make changes in quality. At the same time, we must recognize and make use of the fact that quality shifts also lead to changes in quantity.

Annotation 179

We have to understand and utilize the law of transformation between quantity and quality in our activities. For instance, if a group of activists hopes to address hunger in their community, they have to realize that they can’t immediately enact a quality shift which solves the entire problem of hunger across the city instantaneously. Instead, the activists must recognize that quantity shifts lead to quality shifts through stages of development. In planning and acting, they may need to set certain development targets, predict thresholds at which quality shifts will occur, etc.

For instance, the first goal for these activists may be to provide free lunches to houseless people in a particular park every weekend. If they can accomplish this, then they will not have completely eliminated hunger in the city, but they will have reached a threshold — a quality shift — in that nobody in that specific park will be hungry at lunch time on weekends. From there, they can continue to build quality shifts through accumulation of changes in quantity, one stage of development at a time.

Quality shifts leading to quantity shifts must also be recognized and utilized in our planning and activities. For example, once an effective strategy is developed for eliminating hunger in one park through quantity changes leading to quality shifts, this strategy can then be implemented in other parks. Thus the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in one park” can lead to a quantity shift: “eliminating hunger in two parks, three parks, etc.,” until the quantity shift of “eliminating hunger in parks” leads to the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in all the parks in the city.” This entire process of enacting quantity changes to lead to quality shifts, and accumulating quality shifts to change quantity, are all focused toward the ultimate goal of achieving the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in the entire city.”

In short, it’s vital for us to understand the ways in which quantity and quality mutually impact each other so that we can formulate plans and activities which will lead to motion and development which accomplish our goals, step by step, through one stage of development at a time.

Changes in quantity can only lead to changes in quality provided the quantity accumulates to a certain threshold. Therefore, in practice, we need to overcome impatient, left-sided thought. Left-sided thinking refers to thinking which is overly subjective, idealistic, ignorant of the laws which govern material reality. Left-sided thinking neglects to acknowledge the necessity of quantity accumulation which precedes shifts in quality, focusing instead on attempting to perform continuous shifts in quality.

On the other hand, we must also recognize that once change in quantity has reached a threshold, it is inevitable that a quality shift will take place. Therefore, we need to overcome conservative and right-sided thought in practical work. Right-sided thinking is the expression of conservative, stagnant thought that resists or refuses to recognize quality shifts even as changes in quantity come to meet the threshold of quality shift.

Annotation 180

“Right-sided thinking” and “left-sided thinking” are Vietnamese political concepts which are rooted in the ideas of Lenin’s book: Leftwing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. In Vietnamese political philosophy, “left-sided thinking” is a form of dogmatic idealism which upholds unrealistic conceptions of change and development. Left-sided thinkers don’t have the patience for quantity accumulation which are prerequisite to quality shifts, or expect to skip entire stages of development which are necessary to precipitate change in the real world. An example of left-sided thinking would be believing that a capitalist society can instantly transition into a stateless, classless, communist society, skipping over the transitions in quantity and quality which are required to bring such a massive transformation in human society to fruition.

“Right-sided thinking,” on the other hand, is conservate resistance to change. Right-sided thinkers resist quality changes to human society; they either want to preserve society as it exists right now, or reverse development to some previous (real or imagined) stage of development. Right-sided thinkers also refuse to acknowledge quality shifts once they’ve occurred, idealistically pretending that changes in material conditions have not occurred. For example, right-sided thinkers may refuse to recognize advances which have been made in the liberation of women, or even attempt to reverse those advances in hopes of returning to previous stages of development when women had fewer freedoms. Here is a practical example of these concepts in use, from the Vietnam Encyclopedia, published by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Vietnam:

Opportunism is a system of political views that do not follow a clear direction nor a clear line, do not have a definite stance, and are inclined toward the immediate personal gain of the opportunist. In the proletarian revolutionary movement, opportunism is a politics of compromise, reform, and unprincipled collaboration with the enemy which run contrary to the basic interests of the working class and the working people. In practice, opportunism has two main trends, stemming from right-sided thinking and from left-sided thinking, respectively:
Right-wing opportunism is reformist, favors undue compromise, and aims to peacefully “convert” capitalism into socialism while abandoning the struggle for meaningful victory of the working class. Right-wing opportunism, typified by Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, has its origins in the Workers’ Parties of the Second International era and exists to this day.
Left-wing opportunism is a mixture of extremism and adventurism, dogmatism, arrogance, subjectivity, cults of violence, and disregard for the objective situation.
Both “right” and “left” opportunism push the workers’ movement to futile sacrifice and failure.

Quality shifts are diverse and plentiful, so we need to promote and apply quality shifts creatively and flexibly to suit the specific material conditions we face in a given situation. This is especially true in changing human society, as social development processes depend not only on objective conditions but also on subjective human factors. Therefore, we need to be active and take the initiative to promote the process of converting between quantity and quality in the most effective way.

Annotation 181

Put simply, we have to use our human will and labor to actively promote quantity changes which lead to quality changes, and quality changes which lead to quantity changes, which move us towards our goal of ending all forms of oppression in human society. This will involve not just objective factors^[98] (i.e., material conditions which are necessary to accomplish something), but subjective factors^[99] as well (factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting directly).

2. Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites

The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the Essence of dialectics [see: Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. According to Lenin: “In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the Essence of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development.”^[100] According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 182

In other words, contradiction (defined further in the next section) is the force which serves as the fundamental, originating, and universal force which drives all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Contradiction is a fundamental driving force because it is the most basic driving force which all other forms of motion and development are based upon.

Contradiction is the originating driving force because all motion and development arises from contradiction.

Contradiction is the universal driving force because all things, phenomena, and ideas — without exception — are driven to motion and development by contradiction.

a. Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction

- Definition of Contradiction

In dialectics, the concept of contradiction is used to refer to the relationship, opposition, and transformation between opposites which takes place within all things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as between all things, phenomena, and ideas. This dialectical concept of contradiction is fundamentally different from the metaphysical concept of contradiction. The metaphysical concept of contradiction is an illogical conception of opposition without unity and without dialectical transformation between opposites.

Annotation 183

A contradiction is, fundamentally, just a type of relationship. In a contradictory relationship, two things, phenomena, and/or ideas mutually impact one another, resulting in the eventual negation of one subject and the synthesis of the negator and the negated into some new form.

The metaphysical concept of contradiction is considered illogical because it establishes no connection between that which is negated and the resulting synthesis.

In the metaphysical conception of contradiction, the negated “disappears” and is not represented in the resulting synthesis.

Metaphysical contradiction presents contradicting subjects as isolated from one another and completely distinct, when in reality the relationship between the negated and the negator essentially defines the contradiction. The negated subject is seen as completely negated; that is to say, it is conceived of as essentially “disappearing” into the synthesized result of the contradiction. In this sense, this metaphysical conception of negation is inaccurate in that it is represented as a complete, terminating process.

In the above example, once the fox eats the rabbit, the rabbit is considered “gone” after a terminal negation process (see Annotation 196, p. 188) ends the contradiction.

The materialist dialectical conception of contradiction recognizes that contradicting subjects are defined by their relationship and that the synthesis of the contradiction carries forward attributes and characteristics from both the negator and the negated.

Materialist dialectical contradiction recognizes that every contradiction is defined by the relationship between the negated and the negator. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that attributes and characteristics of the negated subject are carried forward into the synthesized subject [see Annotation 203, p. 198]. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that contradiction continues indefinitely, as the negated becomes negated again, and so on, continuously, forever [see Negation of Negation, p. 185].

In the example on the previous page, the fox consuming the rabbit constitutes a negation process in which the fox takes on characteristics from the rabbit (i.e., nutritional and energy content, any diseases which may be carried forward to the fox, etc.).

Contradiction arises from opposition which exists within or between things, phenomena, and ideas. The concept of opposing “sides” refers to such aspects, properties, and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. Examples include:

Negative charge and positive charge within atoms.
Anabolism and catabolism within living organisms [anabolism refers to the growth and building up of molecules within an organism, while catabolism refers to the digestion and breaking down of molecules within an organism].
Production and consumption as socioeconomic activities.
Trial and error which leads to cognitive development.

Annotation 184

All of the above forms of contradiction drive motion and development. These processes exist in unity and opposition. For example, in political economics, production is driven by consumption and consumption is facilitated by production. Even though these are fundamentally opposite forces (production adds to the total quantity of products, while consumption reduces the total quantity of products), they can’t exist without one another, and they drive each other forward. This is the dialectical nature of contradiction as the driving force of all motion and development as defined in materialist dialectics.

- The General Properties of Contradictions

Contradiction is objective and universal. According to Friedrich Engels: “If simple mechanical change of position contains a contradiction, this is even more true of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of organic life and its development. We saw above that life consists precisely and primarily in this — that a being is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in. We likewise saw that also, in the sphere of thought, we could not escape contradictions, and that, for example, the contradiction between man’s inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its actual presence only in men who are externally limited and possess limited cognition finds its solution in what is — at least practically, for us — an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.”^[101]

Annotation 185

Here, Engels is explaining how contradiction is the driving force in both material and conscious processes of motion and development. The process of life is a process of contradiction — all organic life forms must consume organic matter so that they can produce growth and offspring, must produce certain molecules and metabolic processes so that they can consume nutrients, and so on. Once these contradictory processes stop, as Engels says, “death steps in” (though even death is a transition forward).

Conscious motion and development are also rooted in contradictory forces. Engels points out the contradiction between humanity’s seemingly infinite capacity for learning with the seemingly infinite amount of knowledge which can be obtained in the world. This great contradiction drives a seemingly endless process of expanding human knowledge, collectively, over countless generations.

Contradictions are not only objective and universal, but also diverse and plentiful. The diverse nature of contradictions is evident in the fact that every subject can include many different contradictions and that contradictions manifest differently depending upon specific conditions. Contradictions can hold different positions and roles in the existence, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. These positions and roles include [but are not limited to]:

Internal and external contradictions
Fundamental and non-fundamental contradictions
Primary and secondary contradictions

Annotation 186

Internal contradictions are contradictions which exist in the internal relations of a subject, while external contradictions exist between two or more subjects as external relations.

For example: a sports team might have internal contradictions between players, between the players and the coach, between the coach and management, etc. External contradictions might exist between the team and other teams, between the team and league officials, between the team and the landlords who own the team’s practice space, etc.

A fundamental contradiction is a contradiction which defines the Essence of a relationship [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction can impact a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. Whether or not a contradiction is fundamental is relative to the point of view.

For example: the fundamental contradiction of one nation engaged in war against one another might be the war itself. There will exist many other contradictions; one nation at war might have a trade dispute with a third nation which is not participating in the war. From the “war perspective,” this contradiction is non-fundamental, as it does not define the essential characteristic of the nation at war (though from the perspective of a diplomat charged with ending the trade dispute, the war may be seen as a non-fundamental contradiction while the dispute would be seen as fundamental).

In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the primary contradiction. Secondary contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative: it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation.

For example: when restoring an old car that doesn’t run any more, a mechanic may consider the primary contradiction to be the non-functioning engine. There may be many secondary contradictions which contribute to the problems with the car’s engine problems. The battery may be dead, the spark plugs may need to be bad, the tires may need replacement, the timing belt may be loose, etc. Those are all secondary contradictions which do not define the stage of development which is “repairing the engine.” Some of these secondary contradictions may need to be resolved (such as replacing the spark plugs) before the primary contradiction can be fully addressed; others, such as a cracked windshield, may not need to be addressed before the primary contradiction can be dealt with.

On the other hand, a secondary contradiction may become the primary contradiction: if a mechanic resolves every problem with the engine except for one bad spark plug, then the bad spark plug will shift from being a secondary contradiction to being the primary contradiction: the bad spark plug is now the primary reason the car won’t start and this stage of development can’t be completed.

Within all the various fields of inquiry, there exist contradictions which have a diverse range of different properties and characteristics.

Annotation 187

Different fields of study will focus on different forms of contradictions, and any given thing, phenomenon, or idea may contain countless contradictions which can be analyzed and considered for different purposes. For example, consider a large city, which might contain far too many contradictions to count. Civil engineers may focus primarily on contradictions in traffic patterns, the structural integrity of bridges and roads, ensuring that buildings are safe and healthy for inhabitants, etc. Utilities departments will focus on contradictions related to sewage, electrical, and sanitation systems. The education system will focus on contradictions which prevent students from achieving success in schools.

All of these various methods of analysis may focus on specific forms of contradictions, though there will also be overlap. For instance, designing a school bus system will require the education system and civil engineers to discover and grapple with contradictions which might be hindrances for transporting students safely to school.

b. Motion Process of Contradictions

In every contradiction, the opposing sides are united with each other and opposed to each other at the same time. The concept of “unity between opposites” refers to the fact that a contradiction is a binding, inseparable, and mutually impacting relationship which exists between opposites.

Annotation 188

Contradictions are binding and inseparable because they hold a relationship together. If two opposing things, phenomena, or ideas simply separate, then contradiction, by definition, no longer exists. For example, an economy is bound together by the contradiction of production and consumption; if production exists without consumption (or vice-versa), it can’t be considered to be an economy.

Contradictions are said to be mutually impacting because any time a contradiction exists between two opposing sides, both sides are mutually impacted for as long as the contradiction exists and develops. Of course, it is possible for two opposing sides to separate from one another; for example, a factory which produced buggy whips may have failed to find consumers after the invention of the car. Thus, there would exist a situation in which production exists without consumption. In this situation, the termination of the contradiction between production and consumption leads to a new contradiction: the factory will now be in the midst of a crisis which will require it to either provide a different product or go out of business.

Thus we see that production and consumption can’t be separated from one another without leading to a change in the essential nature of the relationship and the opposing subjects, and we see that the opposing sides mutually impact one another (a change in consumption will affect production, and vice-versa).

In any given contradictory relationship, each oppositional side is the premise for the other’s existence. Unity among opposites also defines the identity of each opposing side. Lenin wrote: “The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their ‘unity,’—although the difference between the terms identity and unity is not particularly important here. In a certain sense, both are correct) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society).”^[102]

Annotation 189

Here, Lenin is explaining that identity and unity are (more or less) the same concept when it comes to understanding the nature of contradiction between opposites. In material processes of nature, social processes, and processes of consciousness, we perceive and define oppositional forces by recognizing mutually exclusive and contradictory tendencies within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. In other words, whenever we think of an oppositional relationship, we define it in terms of the opposition.

War, disease, and economy are all examples of unity in contradiction.

When we think of a war, we think of the contradictions which exist between the opposing nations. When we think of a disease, we define it by the oppositional forces between the ailment and the human body. When we think of an economy, we think of the oppositional forces of production and consumption within the economy.

In other words, the identity of contradictory relationships is defined by the unity of the opposing sides with one another.

The concept struggle of opposites refers to the tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. There exist many diverse forms of struggle between opposites. Struggle can manifest in various forms based on:

The nature of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea.
Relationships within a thing, phenomenon, or idea (or between things, phenomena, and ideas).
Specific material conditions [see Annotation 10, p. 10].

The process of unity and struggle of opposites inevitably leads to a transformation between them. The transformation between opposites takes place with rich diversity, and such transformations can vary depending on the properties of the opposite sides as well as specific material conditions.

Annotation 190

Opposing sides, by definition, oppose one another. If forces or characteristics which exist within or between things, phenomena, or ideas do not oppose one another, then they are not, by definition, opposites. Thus, it can be understood that opposing sides have a tendency to struggle against one another. It is this very struggle which defines two sides as opposites, and as contradictory.

Lenin explained that some contradicting opposite sides can exist in what he described as equilibrium, but that this is only ever a temporary state of affairs, as exemplified in his article An Equilibrium of Forces.

[See Annotation 64, p. 62 for relevant text and more info on equilibrium.]

Clearly, Lenin sees that this equilibrium of contradictory forces is not permanently sustainable. Indeed, no equilibrium of contradictory forces can be permanent. Eventually, one opposing side will overtake the other, and eventually, any given contradiction will result in one opposing side overcoming the other.

According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the struggle between two opposing sides is absolute, while the unity between them is relative, conditional, and temporary; in unity there is a struggle: a struggle in unity. According to Lenin: “The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”^[103]

Annotation 191

“Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence. That which is absolute exists independently and with permanence. That which is relative is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist.

So Lenin’s point is that unity exists temporarily in any given pair of opposing sides, as the unity only exists as long as the opposing sides are opposing one another. As soon as one side eliminates or negates the other, the unity subsides. However, opposition is considered absolute, because it is opposition which drives motion and change in all things, phenomena, and ideas through contradictory processes of opposing sides.

In the same text quoted in the passage above, On the Questions of Dialectics, Lenin notes:

The distinction between subjectivism (skepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative. For subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute...
Such must also be the method of exposition (i.e., study) of dialectics in general... To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., with any proposition: the leaves of a tree are green; John is a man: Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal.
The individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes) etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other.

In other words, we must understand that in materialist dialectics, the absolute and the relative exist within one another; in other words, the absolute and the relative have a dialectical relationship with one another in all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Relative unity refers to the nature of unity between contradictory subjects. Contradictory subjects are unified in the sense that any given contradiction is essentially defined by the contradiction between two subjects. Thus, the two subjects are unified in contradiction. However, this unity is relative in the sense that this unification is temporary (the unity will end upon negation and synthesis) and relative (i.e., defined by the relationship between the two contradicting subjects).

Absolute struggle refers to the fact that contradiction, negation, and synthesis will go on forever; in this sense, contradictory processes are absolute because such struggle exists permanently; struggle has no set beginning or end point, and exists independently of any specific thing, phenomenon, or idea.

Relative Unity refers to the temporary and relative nature of specific relationships which define and unify specific contradictions; Absolute Struggle refers to the permanent, constant nature of development through contradiction.

The relationship between relative unity and absolute struggle defines and drives change, motion, and development through contradiction.

This applies to contradictions. The relative unity and the absolute struggle between opposing sides have a dialectical relationship with one another. The permanent absoluteness of struggle — the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing processes of change through contradictory forces — can only manifest in the relative unity of opposing sides, which can only exist through the temporary existence of conditional relations between opposing sides.

The interaction that leads to the transformation between opposites is a process. At the beginning, contradictions manifest as differences and then develop into two opposing sides. When the two contradictions are fiercely matched and when the conditions are ripe, they will transform each other, and finally, the conflict will be resolved. As old contradictions disappear, new contradictions are formed and the process of mutual impact and transformation between opposites continues, which drives the motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. The relationship, impact and transformation between opposites are the source and driving force of all movement and development in the world. Lenin affirmed: “Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.”^[104]

Annotation 192

Any given process of development — that is to say, of transformation or motion — can be seen as a struggle between opposites. Various forms of struggle can exist simultaneously for any given subject, and the way we interpret struggle can depend on our point of view.

For an engineer, a car moving along a road might be seen as a struggle between the power generated by the engine against the mass of the car itself and the friction of the tires on the ground. The driver of the car might see the process in terms of the struggle between the driver and the environment as they navigate across town avoiding accidents and following traffic laws.

An organism’s life can be seen as a struggle between the organism’s life processes and its environment, or it might be seen as a struggle of contradictory forces within the organism itself (i.e., forces of consumption of nutrition vs. forces of expending energy to survive, forces of disease vs. forces of the organism’s immune system, etc.).

Materialist dialectics requires us to identify, examine, and understand the opposing forces which drive all development in our universe. Only through understanding such contradictions can we intercede and affect changes in the world which suit our purposes.

For example, in order to fight against capitalism and other forms of oppression, we must first understand the contradictory forces which exist within and between those oppressive social structures. Only then can we determine how we might best apply our will, through labor processes, to dismantle such oppressive structures. We might do this by exacerbating existing contradictions within oppressive structures, by introducing new contradictions, by negating contradictions which inhibit our own progress, etc.

c. Meaning of the Methodology

Given that contradictions are objective and universal, and that they are the source and driving force of movement and development, it is therefore necessary to detect, recognize, and understand contradictions, to fully analyze opposing sides, and to grasp the nature, origin and tendencies of motion and development in our awareness and practice.

Lenin said: “The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts… is the essence… of dialectics.”^[105]

Annotation 193

In other words, materialist dialectics is simply a system of understanding the world around us by viewing all things, phenomena, and ideas as collections of relationships and contradictions which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Since contradictions exist with such rich diversity, it is necessary to have a historical point of view [see Annotation 114, p. 116] — that is, to know how to analyze each specific type of contradiction and have appropriate methods for resolving them. In our perception and practice, it is necessary to properly distinguish the roles and positions of different types of contradictions in each situation and condition; we must also distinguish between different characteristics which contradictions might have in order to find the best method of resolving them.

Annotation 194

The historical viewpoint is vital because in order to fully understand any given contradiction, we must understand the process of development which led to its formation.

For example, before a car engine can be repaired, we must first find out what caused the engine to stop working to begin with. If the car is out of fuel, we must determine what caused it to run out of fuel. Did the driver simply drive until the fuel tank was empty, or is there a hole or leak in a fuel line, in the tank, etc.?

It is vital to know the history of development of a given pair of opposing sides, as well as the characteristics and other properties of both opposing sides, to fully understand the contradiction. Since all conscious activity (like all processes of motion and change) ultimately derives from the driving force of contradiction, it is vital for us to develop a historical and comprehensive perspective of any contradictions we hope to affect through our conscious activities.

3. Law of Negation of Negation

The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through dialectical negation, forming a cyclical form of development through what is termed “negation of negation.”

a. Definition of Negation and Dialectical Negation

The world continuously and endlessly changes and develops. Things, phenomena, and ideas that arise, exist, develop and perish, are replaced by other things, phenomena, and ideas; one form of existence is replaced with another form of existence, again and again, continuously, through this development process. This procedure is called negation.

All processes of movement and development take place through negation. From certain perspectives, negations can be seen as end points to the development (and thus, existence) of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea [which we can think of as “terminal negations;” see Annotation below]. But from other perspectives, negations can also create the conditions and premises for new developments. Such negations, which create such conditions and premises for the development of things and phenomena, are called dialectical negation.

Annotation 195

Negation refers to any act of motion or transformation which arises from contradiction. Specifically, negation is what occurs when one opposing side completely overcomes the other. Nothing in our universe can transform or move all by itself, without any contradiction. Thus, negation drives all development and motion of all things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 119, p. 123]. There are various forms of negation, and the same negation process may be seen to take different forms depending on viewpoint of analysis [see Annotation 11, p. 12, and Annotation 114, p. 116], as depicted in the diagram below.

An overview of various forms of negation as they relate to dialectical development.

Dialectical negation occurs when the end of development leads directly to some new development process. Dialectical negation occurs through quality shifts [see Annotation 117, p. 119], which, themselves, occur through negation of opposite sides.

Replacement negation refers to the replacement of one thing, phenomenon, or idea with another through dialectical negation.

Translation Note: The terms “terminal negation” and “replacement negation” do not appear in the original Vietnamese text. We chose to assign terms to these concepts for clarity.

Replacement negation occurs when one thing, phenomenon, or idea takes the place of another. Replacement negation is always a dialectical process, where one subject is replaced gradually by another. Replacement may be relatively fast or slow, but it is never instantaneous — nothing can pop in and out of existence instantaneously. For example: swords were gradually replaced by firearms as the primary weapons of war over the course of many centuries. Today, swords have been completely replaced by firearms on the battlefield. This was a process of replacement negation — weapons are still used in war, but the type of weapon used has been completely replaced. Development continues, even though development of swords as battle weapons has essentially ended.

Terminal negation refers to the end of a specific cycle of development.

Terminal negation is what happens when development completely ends for a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, from one viewpoint, the development of swords as weapons of war can be seen as having ended — having been terminally negated — due to the innovation of firearms. In essence, swords are no longer developed, nor implemented, in modern warfare.

Replacement negation and terminal negation must be considered in relative terms. From one viewpoint, we can see the rise of firearms as the underlying reason for the terminal negation of military use of swords. Today, no army on Earth uses swords as primary battlefield weapons and militaries no longer develop sword technology for battlefield use. However, from another viewpoint, the development of battlefield weapons has continued on long after the end of the primacy of swords, and it could be said that firearms have replaced swords as the primary battlefield weapon.

Consider the death of a human being. From one perspective, death is a terminal negation — the person’s consciousness has ended, and no further development of consciousness will occur for that individual. From other perspectives, development continues. The individual may have had children who will continue their familial lineage, they may have contributed ideas which will continue to impact other people for centuries to come, and so on. In that sense, replacement negation may be viewed as dialectical negation. For example, someone studying modes of transportation in the history of the USA may see the process of steam locomotives replacing horses, and then cars replacing steam locomotives, as processes of dialectical negation from the overarching perspective of the transportation system.

Materialist dialectics is concerned with all forms of negation, but focuses primarily on dialectical negation. Therefore, materialist dialectics is not just a theory of transformation in general, but fundamentally a theory of development

Annotation 196

All transformation is driven by negation. Development is a process, specifically, of dialectical negation, which is a specific form of transformation in which an end of development creates the conditions for new development, either through internal quality shifts or through replacement by some external subject.

Materialist dialectics is primarily concerned with dialectical negation (which drives development) because it is development which brings forth continuous change in our world. Terminal negations and other forms of transformation which do not drive further development are of limited utility, and can only represent certain limited viewpoints [i.e., the viewpoint of that which is terminated].

From a broader perspective, nearly all “terminations” are replaced in some way or another by some other form of development. For instance, even when a person dies, although the consciousness of that person may terminate, there will be continuous impacts which will be carried forward from the deceased person’s lifetime of consciousness, as well as from the developments which arise from the death itself.

This dialectical definition of negation differs greatly from metaphysical conceptions of development [see Annotation 201, p. 195], which are essentially viewed as terminal. From the metaphysical perspective, all things, phenomena, and ideas are viewed as separate from one another; therefore negations are viewed as terminal processes which bring development processes to their ends.

The metaphysical perspective of terminal negation views negation as an essentially terminal process representing the end point of the existence of a static and isolated thing, phenomenon, or idea.

In the above example, the metaphysical framework would present smashing a vase with a hammer as a terminal negation from the perspective of the observer. Once the vase is smashed, the vase is considered to no longer exist, and the broken shards are not considered to be “a vase” any more. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, view “the shards” as merely a developed form of the vase; a transition to a new stage of development; the negation was only terminal from the perspective of the vase itself.

Excerpt From Vietnam’s High School Freshman Civic Education textbook:

Metaphysical and dialectical negation share one commonality: they both see development as the replacement of an old subject with a new subject. However, metaphysical negation happens when outside forces impact on a subject, deleting completely the existence of the old subject. According to this metaphysical perspective, the old subject and the new subject which replaces it do not have any connection.

Dialectical negation fundamentally differs from metaphysical negation because it views development as a process of internal development. Dialectical negation does not view complete erasure or deletion of any former subject; instead, dialectical development sees the older subject, which is replaced (negated), as the premise or basis of existence for the new subject.

Comparison Examples:

Metaphysical Negation	Dialectical Negation
The earthquake destroyed the house.	The house was impacted by the external force of an earthquake, which caused it to collapse, due to internal characteristics of the house itself (which could not withstand the forces of the earthquake). The debris from the collapsed house will be cleared away, and will continue to develop. The space where the house stood will also continue to develop in some way, with the earthquake and the resulting collapse serving as the basis for this further development.
Water eroded the mountain.	The external force of water caused erosion by transferring material away from the mountain, due to the internal characteristics of the mountain’s composite material. The water, the material which was washed away, and the mountain will all continue to develop. The erosion process will be the basis for this further development.
The car has a new tire because it ran over a nail.	The external force of the nail caused the tire to permanently deflate, due to the internal characteristics of the tire, which could not withstand running over a nail. This served as the basis for further development: the old tire was removed and will be disposed of, which will serve as the basis for further development (i.e., the tire may be recycled or sent to a landfill); the removal of the tire serves as the basis for the further development of a new tire being installed.
When you add water, sunlight, and nutrition to a seed, it will grow into a plant.	The seed went through a process of negation as a sprout grew, through various stages of development, into a plant, facilitated by outside forces (such as water, nutrition, sunlight, etc. — the seed would not grow in isolation) as well as the internal characteristics of the seed itself; the seed served as the basis of the sprout’s development. The sprout then served as the basis for the growth of a seedling, and the seedling served as the basis for the growth of a fully grown plant. All of this development was driven by negation processes as quantity shifts gradually led to quality shifts through those various stages of development.

As you can see from the examples above, the metaphysical perspective focuses on external forces affecting a given subject and views every development process as terminal, with a beginning, middle, and end. The metaphysical perspective thus views negation as a termination of the subject (and, by extension, of development).

Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, views development as a continuous and never-ending process of mutual impact, negation, and further negation of each negation. A comprehensive and historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] must thus be sought to fully comprehend development and negation processeses.

Dialectical negation has two basic characteristics: objectivity and inheritance.

Dialectical negation is objective because negation arises from contradictions which exist between two opposite sides. These opposing sides may exist within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, but the opposing sides are still, by definition, externally opposed to one another from the perspective of either side.

Annotation 197

Though any given negation may be viewed as terminal from a certain perspective, materialist dialectics is most concerned with processes of development wherein the end of one stage of development creates the conditions for further development [see Annotation 117, p. 119].

Therefore, every development is simultaneously an internal and an external process, depending on perspective. Development processes may, from certain perspectives, be seen to take place within a subject or between two subjects, but they are always external (and, therefore, objective — see Annotation 108, p. 112) from the perspective of either opposing side while simultaneously internal to the relationship.

For example: The relationship between a husband and wife may be seen as an internal process of development of “the marriage” from the perspective of a marriage counselor. However, from their own perspectives, each “opposing side” (i.e., the husband and the wife) see one another as external to each other.

Therefore, the development of a marriage may be seen as an internal process, but the mutual impacts and negations which occur within the relationship are objective and external forces from the perspective of either opposing side.

This is important because it means that all development and all negation are essentially objective processes; therefore no entity has complete, omniscient control over any development process. We must, therefore, understand the nature of development and negation in order to be able to properly plan and affect change in our world.

Dialectical negation is, therefore, the result of the process of resolving inevitable contradictions within a subject [i.e., a relationship] itself. Dialectical negation allows for the old to be replaced by the new, thereby creating trends of development. Therefore, dialectical negation is also self-negation.

Annotation 198

To reiterate: from the perspective of either opposing side, development is an external, objective process. From the perspective of the contradictory relationship, processes of development are internal processes of self-negation. Thus, dialectical negation is both an objective process which no entity can completely control, while, simultaneously, an internal process of self-negation and self-development.

If two nations go to war, either nation may view the war as an objective, external development process, but from a wider perspective, the war is an internal development process of the diplomatic relationship between the two warring nations. This is drastically different from the metaphysical perspective, which views any negation process as a purely external process of development wherein one subject is permanently deleted from existence, then replaced by another subject [see Annotation 196, p. 188]. From the metaphysical perspective, a war is simply a conflict between two distinct and separate nations, and the conclusion of the war is a terminal negation which ends development of the war. From the materialist dialectical perspective, on the other hand, the end of the war would be seen as the basis of future development of the relationship between the two formerly warring nations.

Dialectical negation also has an inheritance characteristic: when one opposing side negates another, the remaining side inherits factors from the negated side which are suitable with present conditions.

Annotation 199

Every negation process arises from contradictions between two opposing sides. Within any such negation process, we can think of one side as the “negator” and the other side as the “negated.” Negation, like all relational processes, leads to mutual impact between both sides [see Annotation 136, p. 138]. Therefore, the negated will impact the negator; in other words, the negated side will be somehow reflected in the negator [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. This means that the negator will inherit and carry forward certain attributes, factors, and characteristics which it receives from the negated side.

Again, consider a war between two nations. Even if one nation completely conquers and subjugates the other in total victory, the victorious nation will still inherit certain factors from the defeated nation. Which factors are inherited will depend on the conditions. The victorious nation may pick up some cultural aspects from the defeated nation, such as cuisine, fashion, etc., they may incorporate tactics and strategies which they observed the defeated enemy using on the battlefield, and so on. The point is that the victorious nation will be impacted in some way by the defeated nation.

The factors which are adopted will be suitable with the present conditions. Take, for example, a car breaking down due to engine failure. This can be seen as an opposing relationship between the car itself and the car’s owner. If the present conditions are suitable [i.e., the owner has the funds and resources available, and the desire to repair the car], then the car may be repaired and continue operating for years to come. If, on the other hand, conditions aren’t suitable [i.e., the owner does not have the funds or resources or the owner no longer wants the car], then the car may be sent to the scrapyard.

As another example, if a fox eats a rabbit, it will inherit certain characteristics from the rabbit. It will inherit nutrition from the rabbit’s body. It may also inherit other characteristics, such as a disease the rabbit was carrying, if the conditions of the fox’s biological composition are suitable [i.e., if the disease can be transferred from the rabbit to the fox].

Dialectical negation is not a complete negation [i.e., deletion] of the old. Rather, dialectical negation is a continuity of growth in which the old develops into the new. In processes of dialectical negation, “the new” forms and develops on its own [see Annotation 62, p. 59], through the process of filtering out unsuitable factors, while retaining suitable content. Vladimir Lenin described dialectical negation as:

“Not empty negation, not futile negation, not skeptical negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and essential in dialectics — which undoubtedly contains the element of negation and indeed as its most important element — no, but negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development, retaining the positive, i.e., without any vacillations, without any eclecticism.”^[106]

Annotation 200

The passage from Lenin above comes from Clemence Dutt’s popular English translation of one of Lenin’s notebooks. Below is our translation from the Vietnamese version of this text from the original text of this book, which we hope might be somewhat easier to understand:

Dialectical negation is not empty negation, it’s not negation without any thoughts, it’s not skeptical negation, it’s not hesitation. Skepticism is not a feature of the essence of the dialectic — of course, dialectics include the negative, it even plays as one of the important factors of a given subject — no, it is negation as the moment of development. Dialectical negation retains the positive, meaning there is no hesitation, there is no eclecticism.

In order to understand what Lenin is saying here, we should first understand what Lenin is responding to. The above notes are referring to the chapter titled “The Absolute Ideal” within Hegel’s Science of Logic [see note at the end of this Annotation]. In this chapter, Hegel recounts various critiques of dialectics and counters them.

Skepticism, here, refers to the tendency to address all human knowledge with doubt.

Philosophical skepticism never moves past two questions: 1. “Is this knowledge true?” 2. “Will human beings ever obtain true knowledge?” Skeptics of this nature engage in a sort of metaphysical inquisition in which every thesis that is ever encountered is immediately and utterly refuted and thus “negated” in the metaphysical sense of termination [see Annotation 196, p. 188].

Eclecticism refers to philosophical and ideological conceptions which draw from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas in an unsystematic manner. Lenin contends that dialectical negation is non-eclecticist because it rises above mere rhetorical combativeness and “total negation.” [This concept is explained more below within this annotation.]

With all this in mind, we see that Lenin is refuting the notion that dialectics are and can only be negative in nature. The metaphysical-skeptic conception of dialectics holds that negation takes the form of rhetorical arguing and refutation, in which one idea is presented, and a second idea is offered to counter the first idea, which completely and totally negates the first idea. According to this argument, dialectics is, therefore, a totally negative process.

A common misperception of dialectical development is that it is “fully negative,” insomuch as the initial thesis (initial subject) is completely negated by the antithesis (impacting subject). In fact, characteristics from both the thesis and antithesis are carried forward into the synthesis.

In the chapter from Science of Logic which Lenin is responding to in the referenced text, Hegel is arguing that the conception of dialectics as only negative — i.e., a system of thinking in which counter-arguments are presented to completely negate initial arguments — is inaccurate. Hegel explains that when one opposing side negates another, it thereafter “contains in general the determination of the first [opposing side] within itself.” In other words, after one opposing side negates another, it retains features and aspects from the opposing side which was negated. Lenin found this particular point to be so important that he wrote “this is very important for understanding dialectics” in the margin of his notebook.

The reason both Hegel and Lenin found this idea, that the “negator” contains elements of the “negated” after negation [see Annotation 231, p. 227], is that this counters the accusation that dialectics are “only negative.” This is why Lenin’s notes highlight the importance of the negator “retaining the positive” after negation. Lenin is pointing out the importance of the retention of features of the negated in the negator because it is this retention which prevents dialectical development from becoming a purely negative process.

In materialist dialectics, it is understood that negation is a process of retention: characteristics from both the thesis (initial subject) and antithesis (impacting subject) are retained in the resulting synthesis

We must also understand what Lenin means when he refers to “skepticism” in his notes. Lenin, here, is referring to the philosophical view that we can never know whether or not our beliefs are true. This belief was popularly known as Machism, or Empirio-Criticism, in Lenin’s time (see Annotation 32, p. 27).

A common critique of dialectics is that it is an inherently skeptical system of thought, since dialectics is seen as a process of presenting counter-arguments to suppositional arguments. Lenin, in his notes, presents the idea that such skepticism is “not a feature of dialectics” precisely because nothing is ever completely, totally, and entirely negated. In other words, the accusation that dialectical analysis is essentially skeptical is rooted in the mistaken notion that one opposing side (i.e., a counter-argument) completely negates the original supposition. In fact, according to materialist dialectics, the negator always retains features and aspects from the negated side, which counters this critique. Thus, dialectical development, which occurs through dialectical negation, is a process of forward motion — not a process of “vacillating” back and forth from one position to another — and there is no skeptical “hesitation” preventing forward progress.

This same idea (that the negator retains features from the negated) also counters another common critique of materialist dialectics: that dialectical analysis is simply a system of rhetorical sophistry [see Annotation 36, p. 33] and eclecticism.

Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that is completely unsystematic, drawing from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas without any cohesive and all-encompassing philosophical framework.

Some critics claim that dialectics must be eclecticist and sophistic in nature. These critics claim that dialectics is simply rhetorical disputation in which any given supposition is counter-argued, and that this counter-argument is negation. But materialist dialectics defines negation as one contradicting side overtaking the other while retaining traces and characteristics from the negated side — it is in no way simply an act of rhetorical dispute or refutation.

In summary, materialist dialectics upholds that nothing is ever completely and utterly deleted or erased from existence through negation. Instead, any time one opposing side negates another, aspects of the negated side are inherited by the negating side.

Note: For reference, here is Hegel’s passage which Lenin is referring to from Science and Logic in the cited notes above:

...a universal first, considered in and for itself, shows itself to be the other of itself. Taken quite generally, this determination can be taken to mean that what is at first immediate now appears as mediated, related to an other, or that the universal appears as a particular. Hence the second term that has thereby come into being is the negative of the first, and if we anticipate the subsequent progress, the first negative. The immediate, from this negative side, has been extinguished in the other, but the other is essentially not the empty negative, the nothing, that is taken to be the usual result of dialectic; rather is it the other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is therefore determined as the mediated — contains in general the determination of the first within itself. Consequently the first is essentially preserved and retained even in the other. To hold fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition; also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these.

Therefore, dialectical negation is the inevitable tendency of progression of the inner relationship between the old and the new. It is the self-driving assertive force of all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.

b. Negation of Negation

In the perpetual movement of the material world, dialectical negation is an inexhaustible process. It creates a development tendency of things from lower level to higher level, taking place in a cyclical manner in the form of a “spiral.”

Annotation 201

The concept of the “spiral” form of development in dialectical materialist philosophy stands in contrast to the metaphysical conception of “linear” development.

Metaphysical Conception of Linear Development

The metaphysical viewpoint holds that development is more or less a straight line: as one subject is negated, it is replaced by another. This subject will then be negated by another, and so on, in what is essentially conceived of as a straight line of development [see Annotation 196, p. 188].

The metaphysical “line development” model sees an initial form as being “replaced” or entirely negated into a completely distinct entity.

In the above example, metaphysical line development simply sees raw aluminum as being negated and “replaced” in the real world. Once the aluminum can is created, the “raw aluminum” as a metaphysical entity is considered no longer to exist. Likewise, when the soda can is transformed into recycled aluminum, the can is considered “replaced,” and is no longer considered to have a metaphysical existence.

This conception of metaphysical line development directly contradicts the materialist dialectical concept of historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116].

Dialectical Materialist Conception of Development

The dialectical materialist conception of cyclical development stems from essential attributes of dialectical negation processes:

1. In every dialectical negation, the negating side inherits features and characteristics from the negated side.

2. When the negating side is, itself, negated (i.e., negation of the negation), the new negating side will retain features and aspects of the old negator.

3. This development process will continue indefinitely, so that negation is not simply a straight line of complete negation, but rather takes the shape of a “spiral” of negations of negations which always inherit features from previous forms.

Note that this conception of development as a spiral is simply an abstraction to help understand the essential characteristics of dialectical development and to distinguish this form of development from metaphysical conceptions of “linear development.”

In the example below, we see a depiction of the spiral development of aluminum through various stages of development. After raw aluminum is mined from the Earth, it begins a repeating spiral development process of being refined into usable goods, then recycled into raw material.

The “Spiral Development” model of materialist dialectics sees every stage of development as a higher form of the previous stage which carries forward characteristics from previous stages.

The illustrated example on the previous page plots the spiral development of aluminum as it cycles between stages defined as raw materials and refined products. Another perspective might depict development differently. For example, if we are examining development in terms of external relations between aluminum other elements, the development pattern would look different. In reality, all subjects have countless internal and external relations and development processes which can be examined.

The “raw aluminum” stage of development pictured in the illustration is not truly the beginning of this development process; there were millions of years of development which occurred before it was first discovered by humans. Similarly, the landfill will not be the end of this development process; there will be continued development forever for as long as motion in the universe continues.

This is a simplified and abstract model of development of aluminum. A more accurate representation might show any number of interim steps between each step depicted in the graphic above. For example: it must also be recognized that in reality the molecules of aluminum which the development process began with will be scattered and mixed with other subjects throughout the development process, and various other complexities exist in terms of the mutual impacts of internal and external relationships.

Determining the amount of detail to include or exclude in materialist dialectical analysis is crucial: too much detail and analysis might become unwieldy; too little detail and analysis might become too abstract and idealized to be useful in the real world. So, the idea of development as a spiral should not be taken literally; it is simply a way of conceptualizing the differences between dialectical negation and development as opposed to “straight-line” development upheld by metaphysical conceptions of negation and development, always carrying forward traces of previous stages of development.

In the chain of negations that make up the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas, each dialectical negation creates the conditions and premises for subsequent developments. Through many iterations of negation, i.e., “negations of negations,” dialectical negation will inevitably lead to a forward tendency of motion.

Annotation 202

The forward tendency of motion describes the tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development.

As a reminder, “lower level” and “higher level,” i.e., “less advanced” and “more advanced,” should not be taken to have any connotations of “good” and “bad,” nor of “desirable” and “undesirable,” nor even of “less complex” and “more complex.”

Development from “lower levels” to “higher levels” is simply a shorthand for understanding the fact that development processes always move “forward,” that is to say, development can never happen in reverse, just as time itself can never be reversed. For example, society in Italy will never go back to the civilization of the Roman empire. It is conceivable that Italian society could develop to be more similar to Ancient Rome, but it would be impossible for Roman society to ever take on the exact characteristics of the Roman Empire ever again.

Cyclicality of development processes usually takes place in the form of a spiral, which is another result of “negation of negation.” Negations of negations lead to a development cycle in which things, phenomena, and ideas often undergo two fundamental negations carried through three basic forms. Through this negation pattern, basic features of the initial form are ultimately inherited by the “third form,” but at a higher level of development.

Annotation 203

Dialectical development tends to take place through a cyclical pattern in which development is carried through a triad of forms which develop through a pair of dialectical negation processes:

The cyclical pattern of development is an abstract pattern of dialectical change over time.

The graphic above illustrates this cyclical pattern, in which:

1. The initial form (the Assertion) begins the pattern. Contradiction within the initial subject or between it and another subject leads to the first negation.

2. The first negation leads to a second form (the Negation). This second form inherits some features or characteristics from the initial form.

3. The second form then encounters opposition, which leads to a second negation.

4. The second negation leads to a third form (Unity), which retains the features or characteristics of the second form, but now more closely resembles the first, initial form, only at a higher level of development.

Imagine a new car (initial form) crashes into another car (contradicting subject). The new car is dialectically developed (negated) into a second form: a wrecked car. This second form is now contradicted by a new subject — a recycling center — and negated into a third form: new steel. The third form possesses characteristics of the first form, but in a more developed form: after being recycled, the resulting steel it is newly made, in good condition for sale, etc., similarly to the first form of the new car.

In this example, a new car goes through a cyclical pattern of development in which the third form (new steel) possesses characteristics of the first form (a new car).

Keep in mind that this is relative to one’s perspective. If you consider the wrecked car to be the first form, then the steel would be the second form. The new steel will then need to be developed in some way (melted, hammered, cut, etc.) in order to be processed into some new product. From this perspective, the third form (i.e., molten steel) will have characteristics of the first form (i.e.: “unrefined”).

According to Marx and Engels, the development of capitalism from feudalism assumed this cyclical pattern:

The development of class structure is a dialectical process in which different classes synthesize to form the next era of class society. For example, the capitalist class emerged primarily as a synthesis of the feudal lords and peasants of the medieval era.

Note that this is only an abstract description of a tendency of dialectical development; exceptions can and do occur. Presumably, the development of communism as a stateless, classless society would constitute the negation of the “Class Society” form of human civilization. The Post-Class stage of development which follows would, itself, be a higher form — a unity — of pre-class human civilization, carrying forward traces from the Class Society stage of development.

Also note that determining which form is the “first” or “initial” pattern is entirely relative. Using the example of the development of class society: from one perspective, the Patricians may be seen as the initial form, but from another perspective the Plebeians might be considered the initial form. This depends entirely on the viewpoint and purpose of analysis. These conceptions of “spirals of development” and the pattern of “three forms through two negations” are, in essence, models which describe general tendencies and patterns of development and which help us understand the basic characteristics of dialectical negation and development.

Lenin describes this cycle of dialectical development as going “[f]rom assertion to negation — from negation to ‘unity’ with the asserted — without this, dialectics becomes empty negation, a game, skepsis [examination, observation, consideration].”^[107]

Annotation 204

Here, “assertion” simply refers to the initial form of a dialectical development cycle. The negation is the second form, and the “unity” is the third form, which resembles the first form (the assertion) at a higher stage of development. So, in this quotation, Lenin is simply recounting the “three steps” of a typical dialectical development cycle, and indicating that it is necessary to recognize this process, which is rooted in the inheritance of properties of prior forms through development into ever-higher forms, to prevent dialectics from becoming “empty negation,” or otherwise falling prey to the critiques that dialectics are purely negative, skeptical, and eclectic in nature [see Annotation 200, p. 192 and Annotation 36, p. 33].

The law of negation of negation generalizes the pervasive nature of development: dialectical development does not take the form of a straight path, but rather in the form of a spiral path. Lenin summarised that this path is “[a] development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis (‘the negation of the negation’), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line…”^[108] The tendency to develop in a spiral curve demonstrates the dialectical nature of development; i.e., the cycle of inheritance, repetition, and progression. Each new round of the spiral appears to be repeating, but at a higher level. The continuation of the loops in a spiral reflects an endless progression from lower levels to higher levels of things, phenomena, and ideas.

In short, the law of negation of negation in materialist dialectics reflects the dialectical relationship between the negative and the assertion [i.e., the second and first forms of a dialectical development cycle; see Annotation 203, p. 198] in the development process of things, phenomena and ideas. Dialectical development is driven by dialectical negation; in the development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the new is the result of inheriting characteristics from prior forms. This process of inheritance, repetition, and progression through negation leads to cyclical development. Engels wrote: “what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general — and for this reason extremely far-reaching and important — law of development of nature, history, and thought.”^[109]

Annotation 205

In the same text quoted above, Engels elaborates that dialectical development is composed of “processes which in their nature are antagonistic, contain a contradiction; transformation of one extreme into its opposite; and finally, as the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the negation.”

c. Meaning of the Methodology

The law of negation of negation is the basis for correct perception of the tendency of motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Development and motion processes do not take place in a straight line; rather, it is a winding, complex road, consisting of many stages, and each process can be broken down into many different sub-processes. However, it must be understood that this complexity of development is only the manifestation of the general tendency to move forward [see Annotation 118, p. 122]. It is important to understand the nature of motion and development so that we can systematically change the world according to our revolutionary viewpoint. In order to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, we need to know their characteristics, nature, and relationships so that we can influence their motion and development in the direction that suits our purposes. We must comprehend and leverage the tendency of forward movement — in accordance with a scientific and revolutionary worldview — in order to effectively and systematically change the world.

Annotation 206

Understanding the forward tendency of motion is vital for cultivating a worldview which is both scientific and revolutionary. Such a worldview is scientific because it recognizes the material reality that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing change and development. Nothing in our universe is static, and all things are connected and defined by internal and external relationships (which are also constantly developing). Furthermore, this development progresses with a forward tendency, meaning that no process can be completely “reversed.” For example, you can clean rust from a car [which would be forward progress], but you can’t reverse the temporal process of rust.

Once we understand that all things, phenomena, and ideas in our universe are constantly developing and moving forward, we can then begin to find ways to impact motion and development systematically to consciously change the world around us. This is the foundation of a revolutionary worldview, since revolutionary change requires us to leverage and influence development processes to suit our needs and revolutionary ambitions. Thus, materialist dialectics are an applied system of observation and practice through which we seek to understand development processes and consciously impact them to suit our needs.

According to the rule of negation of negation, in the objective world, the new must inevitably come to replace the old. In nature, the new develops according to objective laws. In social life, new things arise from the purposeful, self-conscious, and creative actions of human beings. Therefore, it is necessary to leverage subjective factors as we seek to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas.

Annotation 207

Subjective factors are factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting. This may seem confusing, since we have previously established that all external things, phenomena, and ideas have objective relationships with all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], meaning that any given subject is external to every other subject, and thus no subject can directly and completely control the motion and development of any other subject.

However, from the perspective of any given individual, there are certain things, phenomena, and ideas [as well as processes of motion and development] which we can impact. For example, if I see an apple on a table, the apple is objective to me. I can’t simply will the apple to move with my consciousness alone. However, I can impact the apple through conscious activity — I can consciously will my hand to pick up the apple and move it to another location.

Thus, factors which an individual can consciously impact are subjective factors. As revolutionists, we must focus on subjective factors. In other words, we must concentrate on that which we are capable of changing, since our purpose is to change the world. Focusing on factors which we can’t impact is a waste of time; we must simply determine what can be changed and then determine the most efficient and effective ways of impacting development processes and changing the world.

As revolutionists, we must have faith that we can introduce the “new,” faith in the success of the “new,” we must support the “new,” and fight for the victory of the “new.” Therefore, it is necessary to overcome conservative, stagnant, and dogmatic thoughts which restrain the development of the “new” and resist the law of negation of negation.

Annotation 208

Change is inevitable. All things, phenomena, and ideas undergo processes of motion and development. Any philosophy, ideology, or strategy which attempts to restrain motion and development is doomed to failure because change can neither be halted nor restrained. Thus, our strategies and actions must align with the material reality that change is inevitable, and we must seek to change the world by impacting processes of development and motion rather than attempting to reverse, restrain, or halt such processes.

Ideologies which erroneously strive to restrict change and development include rigidity (see Annotation 222, p. 218) and conservativism (see Annotation 236, p. 233).

In the process of negating the old we must leverage the principle of inheritance with discretion: we must encourage the inheritance of factors that are beneficial to our goals as we simultaneously attempt to filter out, overcome, and reform factors which would negatively impact our goals.

Annotation 209

If we understand the principle of inheritance, we can impact inheritance processes which derive from negation. For example, when repairing a car, we can seek out parts of the car which do not function properly or which do not suit the use-case of the car and add or replace parts which are more suitable.

In the same way, we can impact inheritence processes in our revolutionary political activities. We can seek to inherit characteristics from previous stages of development of our political organizations, social institutions, culture, etc., while simultaneously seeking to prevent the inheritence of traits and characteristics which are unsuitable for our revolutionary purposes. Over time, we can attempt to impact the inheritance of traits and aspects which are more conducive to our purposes while limiting and filtering out traits and aspects which are hindrances.

In an article titled “New Life” written in 1947, Ho Chi Minh wrote about the dialectical relationship between the new and the old in building a new society, writing:

Not everything old must be abandoned. We do not have to reinvent everything. What is old but bad must be abandoned. What is old but troublesome must be corrected appropriately. What is old but good must be further developed. What is new but good must be done.
... Growing up in the old society, we all carry within us more-or-less bad traces of the old society in terms of our ideas and habits... Habits are hard to change. That which is good and new is likely to be considered bad by the people because it is strange to them. On the contrary, that which is evil yet familiar is easily mistaken as normal and acceptable.

Ho Chi Minh understood the principles of development very well, as well as the difficulties we will face as revolutionaries as we try to change ourselves and our society. We must strive to develop a similar understanding as we move forward and attempt to affect the development of our world through practice and struggle.

Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism

In Marxism, epistemological reasoning (or epistemology) is the foundation of dialectics. Dialectical materialist epistemology is a theory of applying human cognitive ability to the objective world through practical activities. It explains the nature, path and general laws of the human process of perceiving truth and objective reality to serve human practical activities.

Annotation 210

Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge. It also deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what is true?”

Throughout history, philosophers have tried to determine the nature of truth and knowledge. In the era of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, there was an ongoing dispute between the materialists, who believed that truth could only be sought through sense experience of the material world, and the idealists, who believed that truth could only be sought through reasoning within the human mind.

Marx and Engels developed the philosophical system of dialectical materialism to resolve this dispute. Dialectical materialism upholds that the material and the ideal have a dialectical relationship with one another: the material determines the ideal, while the ideal impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88].

However, it’s important to understand that Marx and Engels didn’t develop the system of dialectical materialism simply to understand the world. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach:

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

So, Marxist dialectical materialist epistemology is developed specifically to enable human beings to not only perceive truth and objective reality, but to then be able to apply our conscious thought, through practical activity, in order to bring about change in the world.

1. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness

a. Praxis and Basic Forms of Praxis

Praxis includes all human material activities which have purpose and historical-social characteristics and which transform nature and society. Unlike other activities, praxis is activity in which humans attempt to materially impact the world to suit our purposes. Praxis activities define the nature of human beings and distinguish human beings from other animals. Praxis is objective activity, and praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages.

Annotation 211

In English, the words “practice” and “praxis” are often distinguished from one another. “Practice” is often used to refer to human activity which provides more information about the world around us and improves our knowledge and understanding, whereas “praxis” often refers to conscious human activity which is intended to change the world in some manner. In their original German, Marx and Engels used the same German word — Praxis — to refer to both concepts. Similarly, in the original Vietnamese text of this book, the same word — thực tiễn — is used for both “practice” and “praxis.”

One reason that these concepts are so closely related is that all conscious activity serves both rolls by simultaneously telling us more about reality and consciously changing reality in some way. For example, by pushing a heavy stone, you may be able to move the stone a small amount — constituting praxis — while simultaneously learning how heavy the stone is and how difficult it is to move — constituting practice. The main point of distinction, therefore, is intention. Virtually all conscious activity is practice, but only activity which has purpose and historical-social characteristics might be considered praxis:

Purpose simply describes a goal or desired outcome; specifically: a desired change in nature or human society. Activities with historical-social characteristics are activities which contribute in some way to the development of human society.

In this translation, we use “practice” and “praxis” interchangably to mean “conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics.” You are likely to find these words used differently (as described above, or in other ways) in other texts. Engels explains the importance of practice/praxis in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.

Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach that “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice [German: revolutionäre Praxis].” Engels further expounds upon this concept in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, writing:

The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice [original German: Praxis], viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable.

Praxis defines the nature of human beings because human beings are (to our present knowledge) the only beings which undertake actions with conscious awareness of our desired outcomes and comprehension of the historical development of our own society, which distinguishes human beings from all other animals. Praxis is objective activity, meaning that all praxis activities are performed in relation to external things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112].

Praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages, meaning that as we learn more about the nature of reality, of human society, and the laws of nature, we are able to develop our praxis to become more efficient and effective.

Praxis activities are very diverse, manifesting with ever-increasing variety, but there are only three basic forms: material production activities, socio-political activities, and scientific experimental activities.

Material production activity is the first and most basic form of praxis. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development.

Socio-political activity includes praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development.

Scientific experimental activity is a special form of praxis activity. This includes human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution.

Annotation 212

The three basic forms of praxis activities listed above obviously do not include all forms of human activity, as praxis only includes activities which have purpose and historical-social characteristics.

Material production activity has a very clear purpose: to improve the material conditions of an individual human being or a group of human beings. Material production activity has historical-social characteristics because developing material conditions for human beings leads directly to the development of human society. For example, as food production increases in terms of yield and efficiency, society can support a larger number of human beings and a wider range of human activities, which leads to the development of human society.

Socio-political activity has the purpose of promoting social development, which is obviously inherently historical-social in nature. An example of socio-political activity would include any sort of political campaign, liberation struggle, political revolutionary activity, etc.

Scientific experimental activity has the purpose of expanding our understanding of nature and human society, which leads directly to historical-social development in a variety of ways. For example, improving our scientific understanding of medicine through scientific experimental activity leads to longer lives and improved quality of life. Improving our scientific understanding of chemistry through scientific experimental activity leads to all sorts of materials which improve the quality of life and enable human beings to solve a variety of social problems.

In order to qualify as praxis activity, a given human activity must have a purpose and it must have historical-social characteristics. For instance, drawing is not always praxis in the sense of the word used in this text, but it would be praxis if it would qualify as material production activity (i.e., making art in order to sell, so as to make a living) or if the art is made with the intention of invoking social change.

Every basic praxis activity form has an important function, and these functions are not interchangeable with each other. However, they have close relationships with each other and different praxis activity forms often interact with each other. In these relationships, material production is the most important form of praxis activity, playing a decisive role in determining other praxis activities because material production is the most primitive activity and exists most commonly in human life. Material production creates the most essential, decisive material conditions for human survival and development. Without material production there cannot be other praxis activities. After all, all other praxis activities arise from material production praxis and all praxis activities ultimately aim to serve material production praxis.

Annotation 213

Without material production activity, human beings would not be able to live at all.

Thus, material production activities make all other forms of human activities possible. In addition, the primary reason we participate in socio-political activity is to ensure material security (food, water, shelter, etc.) for members of society, which ultimately relies on material production activity. Therefore, the primary reason we engage in scientific experimental activity is to improve material production activities in terms of efficiency, yield, effectiveness, etc

Of course, we engage in scientific experimental activity and material production activity for other reasons (art, entertainment, recreation, etc.), but these activities require that material security be secured first for those participating in the production and consumption of such products. In other words, material production activity is a prerequisite for all other forms of activity, since without some measure of material security humans cannot survive.

Material production activity has a dialectical relationship with all other praxis activity, with material production activity determining, while being impacted by, all other forms of praxis activity.

Thus, material production activity has a dialectical relationship with other forms of praxis activities, in which material production activity determines both socio-political and scientific experimental activity while socio-political and scientific experimental activity impact material production activity.

b. Consciousness and Levels of Consciousness

The dialectical materialist perspective sees consciousness as a process of reflecting the objective world within the human brain on a practical basis to create knowledge about the objective world. Consciousness is a self-aware process that is productive and creative.

This view stems from the following basic principles:

The dialectical materialist worldview acknowledges that the material world exists objectively and independently of human consciousness.
The dialectical materialist worldview recognizes the following human abilities:
- To perceive the objective world.
- To reflect the objective world into the human mind, which enables human subjects to learn about external objects. [see Annotation 66, p. 64]
- To admit that there are no material things nor phenomena which are unrecognizable, but only material things and phenomena that humans have not yet recognised. [see The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues, p. 48]

The dialectical materialist worldview affirms that conscious reflection [see Annotation 67, p. 64] of the objective world is a dialectical, productive, self-aware, and creative process. This reflection process develops from the unknown to the known, from knowing less to knowing more, from knowing less profoundly and less comprehensively to knowing more profoundly and more comprehensively.

Annotation 214

The above principle (that human knowledge develops from less, and less comprehensive, to more, and more comprehensive states) stands in contrast to various other philosophical systems of belief, including:

Hegel’s Absolute Idealism upholds a belief in an “absolute ideal” which constitutes an ultimate limit or “end point” of knowledge which humanity is moving towards. Dialectical materialism upholds that there is no such absolute ideal and thus no such terminal end point of human understanding. [See Annotation 234, p. 230] As Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring:

If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.

Fideism, which is the belief that knowledge is received from some higher power [i.e., God]. Fideism upholds that all knowledge is pre-existing, and that humanity simply receives it from on high. Dialectical materialism, on the other hand, argues that knowledge is developed over time through dialectical processes of consciousness and human activity.

Positivism, or empiricist materialism, which holds that there are hard limits to human knowledge, or that human knowledge — which can only be obtained from sense data — can’t be trusted. Dialectical materialism upholds that all things and phenomena can be known and understood, and that sense data can be trusted as an objective reflection of reality. For more information about skepticism about human sense data as well as positive and empiricist materialism, see Annotation 10, p. 10, and Annotation 58, p. 56].

The dialectical materialist worldview considers praxis as the primary and most direct basis of consciousness, and as the motive and the purpose of consciousness, and as the criterion for testing truth. [See: The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness, p. 216]

Annotation 215

Given the above principles — that human consciousness exists independently from the material world yet is capable of accurately perceiving and reflecting the material world, and that knowledge develops over time through a synthesis of consciousness and practical activity — we can conclude that consciousness is a self-aware process which is productive and creative.

Consciousness is productive and creative in the sense that conscious processes, in conjunction with practical experience and activity in the material world, leads to the development of knowledge and practical experience which allows humans to develop our understanding of the world as well as our own material conditions through the application of knowledge to our own labor activities.

Next, we will examine different ways of categorizing conscious activities as they pertain to developing knowledge and practical understanding of our world.

From the dialectical materialist point of view, consciousness is a process of development. Consciousness develops from empirical consciousness to theoretical consciousness; and from ordinary consciousness to scientific consciousness.

Annotation 216

In dialectical materialist philosophy, all systems of relation exist as processes of development in motion [see Annotation 120, p. 124]. Thus, consciousness can be defined as a system of relations between human brain activity and two forms of data input:

• Sense experience: observations of the external world detected by our senses.

• Knowledge: information which exists in the human mind as memories and ideas.

Consciousness is thus a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor).

In the section below, we will explore different forms of consciousness, the development of consciousness, and the relationship between consciousness and knowledge. Note that these are abstractions of consciousness and knowledge, meant to help us understand how knowledge and consciousness develop over time. Thought processes are extremely complex, so we seek to develop a fundamental understanding of how consciousness develops and how knowledge develops because these processes are fundamental to the development of human beings and human societies.

Just as consciousness is a process of developing knowledge through brain activity, consciousness itself also develops over time. The development of consciousness can be considered based on the criteria of concrete/abstract and of passive/active.

Consciousness develops from a state of direct and immediate observation of the world which results in concrete knowledge to a higher stage which constitutes a more abstract and general understanding of the world. We call consciousness which is focused on direct, immediate, concrete, empirical observation of the world empirical consciousness, and we call consciousness which is focused on forming abstract generalizations about the world theoretical consciousness.

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Empirical consciousness is a process of collecting data about the world, which we call knowledge. We can gather two forms of knowledge through empirical consciousness: ordinary knowledge, and scientific knowledge.

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Ordinary knowledge is the knowledge we accumulate through our everyday experiences in the world. Scientific knowledge is gathered through more systematic scientific observations and experiments. Scientific knowledge usually develops from ordinary knowledge, as we begin to seek a more formal and systematic understanding of the things we witness in our daily lives.

According to Themes in Soviet Marxist Philosophy, edited by T. J. Blakely:

Ordinary knowledge notes what lies on the very surface, what happens during a certain event. Scientific knowledge wants to know why it happens in just this way. The essence of scientific knowledge lies in the confirmed generalization of facts, where it becomes necessary rather than contingent, universal instead of particular, law-bound, and can serve as a basis for predicting various phenomena, events and objects...
The whole progress of scientific knowledge is bound up with growth in the force and volume of scientific prediction. Prediction makes it possible to control processes and to direct them. Scientific knowledge opens up the possibility not only of predicting the future but also of consciously forming it. The vital meaning of every science can be expressed as follows: to know in order to predict and to predict in order to act.
An essential characteristic of scientific knowledge is that it is systematic, i.e., it is a set of information which is ordered according to certain theoretical principles. A collection of unsystematized knowledge is not yet science. Certain basic premises are fundamental to scientific knowledge, i.e., the laws which make it possible to systematize the knowledge. Knowledge becomes scientific when the collection of facts and their descriptions reach the level where they are included in a theory.

Theoretical consciousness arises from conscious reflection on accumulated knowledge, as human beings seek to develop general and abstract understanding of the underlying principles of processes we experience in the world. Once general principles of natural and social law are established, human beings then test those general conclusions against empirical reality through further observation (i.e., through empirical consciousness).

Thus, there is a dialectical relationship between empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness, as one form leads to another, back and forth, again and again, continuously.

Empirical and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship in which empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness lead to and mutually develop one another.

Consciousness also develops from passive and surface-level observation and understanding of the world (i.e., simply considering what, where, and when things happen) to more active pursuit of the underlying meaning of the world (i.e., trying to understand how and why things happen).

Consciousness which passively observes the world, directly, in daily life is referred to as ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness often develops into more active consciousness. This active pursuit of understanding through systematic observation and indirect experiences (i.e., experiences that do not occur in daily activity — such as scientific experimentation) is referred to as scientific consciousness.

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These concepts will be discussed in further detail below.

Empirical consciousness is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical consciousness results in empirical knowledge.

Empirical knowledge has two types: ordinary empirical knowledge (knowledge obtained through direct observation and in productive labor) and scientific empirical knowledge (knowledge obtained by conducting scientific experiments). These two types of knowledge can be complementary, and can enrich one other.

Theoretical consciousness is the indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted.

Empirical consciousness and Theoretical consciousness are two different cognitive stages but they have a dialectical relationship with each other. In this dialectical relationship, empirical consciousness is the basis of theoretical consciousness; it provides theoretical consciousness with specific, rich material [i.e., knowledge]. Empirical consciousness is linked closely to practical activities [since practical activity in the material world is the chief method of gathering knowledge through empirical consciousness], and forms the basis for checking, correcting, and supplementing existing theories and summarizing, and generalizing them into new theories. However, empirical consciousness is still limited in that empirical consciousness stops at the description and classification of data obtained from direct observation and experimentation. Therefore, empirical consciousness only brings understanding about the separate, superficial, discrete aspects of observed subjects, without yet reflecting the essence of those subjects nor the underlying principles or laws which regulate those subjects.

Therefore, empirical consciousness, alone, is not sufficient for determining the scientific laws of nature and society. To determine such laws and abstractions, theoretical consciousness must be applied. So, theoretical consciousness does not form spontaneously, nor directly from experience, although it is formed from the summation of experiences.

Annotation 217

The knowledge we gain from our daily activity often inspires scientific inquiry and more systematic observation, which can yield scientific knowledge which will enrich and improve our daily practice and allow us to experience daily life with a deeper understanding of what we’re experiencing. Thus, the ordinary knowledge we gain through daily practice can enrich and yield scientific knowledge (and vice versa).

Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with each other in which empirical consciousness provides the basis for theoretical consciousness. Theoretical consciousness attempts to derive general abstractions and governing principles from empirical knowledge which is gained through empirical consciousness. Once theoretical principles, generalities, and abstractions are determined, they are then tested against reality through empirical consciousness (i.e., practical observation and systematic experimentation) to determine if the theory is sound.

Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with one another. Our observations of the material world lead to conscious activity which we then test in reality through conscious activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of dialectical development.

For example, a farmer may notice that plants grow better in locations where manure has been discarded — an act of empirical consciousness. The farmer might then form the theory that adding manure to the soil will help plants grow — an act of theoretical consciousness. This theory could then be tested against reality by mixing manure into the soil and observing the results, which would be another act of empirical consciousness. The farmer may then theorize that more manure will help plants grow even more — another act of theoretical consciousness — continuing the cycle of testing and observing.

This dialectical relationship between ordinary and theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to develop and improve knowledge through practical experience, observation, and theoretical abstraction and generalization of knowledge.

Theoretical consciousness is relatively independent from empirical consciousness. Therefore, theories can precede expectations and guide the formation of valuable empirical knowledge. Theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to sort and filter knowledge so as to best serve practical activities and contribute to the transformation of human life. Through this process, knowledge is organized and therefore enhanced, and develops from the level of specific, individual, and solitary knowledge to a higher form of generalized and abstract knowledge [what we might call theoretical knowledge].

Annotation 218

Knowledge which comes from empirical observations (empirical consciousness) is empirical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge is a product of theoretical consciousness. Over time, as repeated and varied observations are made through theoretical consciousness activities, knowledge becomes more generalized and abstract; this general and abstract knowledge is what we call theoretical knowledge.

Note that empirical and theoretical knowledge can be ordinary or scientific in nature; if the knowledge arises passively from daily life activities, it will be ordinary knowledge, regardless of whether or not it is empirical or theoretical in nature. If, on the other hand, the knowledge arises from methodological measurement and/or systematic observation, then it is scientific knowledge.vSo far, we have discussed ways of understanding consciousness based on the criteria of directness vs. abstractness. Next, we will discuss another way of looking at consciousness, based on the criteria of passiveness vs. activeness.

Ordinary consciousness refers to perception that is formed passively and directly from the daily activities of humans. Ordinary consciousness is a reflection of things, phenomena, and ideas, with all their observed characteristics, specific details, and nuances. Therefore, ordinary consciousness is rich, multifaceted, and associated with daily life. Therefore, ordinary consciousness has a regular and pervasive role in governing the activities of each person in society.

Scientific consciousness refers to perception formed actively and indirectly from the reflection of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. This reflection takes place in the form of logical abstraction. These logical abstractions include scientific concepts, categories, and laws. Scientific consciousness is objective, abstract, general, and systematic, and must be grounded in evidence.

Scientific consciousness utilizes systematic methodologies to profoundly describe the nature of studied subjects as well as the principles which govern them. Therefore, scientific consciousness plays an increasingly important role in practical activities, especially in the modern age of science and technology.

Annotation 219

Logical abstraction refers to an understanding of the underlying rules which govern things, phenomena, and ideas which underly objective processes, relationships, and characteristics. Logical abstraction is the result of scientific inquiry. Over time, our understanding of the rules which govern the things, phenomena, and ideas in our lives become more reliable and applicable in practical activities. This attainment of understanding and practical ability through scientific practice is scientific consciousness.

Ordinary and scientific consciousness are two different qualitative steps of cognitive processes which, together, allow humans to discover truth about our world. Ordinary and scientific consciousness have a strong dialectical relationship with each other. In this relationship, ordinary consciousness precedes scientific consciousness, as ordinary consciousness is a source of material for the development of scientific consciousness.

Although it contains the seeds of scientific knowledge, ordinary consciousness mainly stops at the reflection of superficial details, seemingly random events, and non-essential phenomena [see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156]. Ordinary consciousness, therefore, cannot transform effortlessly into scientific consciousness. To develop ordinary consciousness into scientific consciousness, we must go through the process of accurate summarizing, abstracting, and generalization using scientific methods. Likewise, once scientific consciousness has been developed, it impacts and pervades ordinary consciousness, and therefore develops ordinary consciousness. Scientific consciousness therefore enhances our everyday passive perception of the world.

Ordinary consciousness refers to the passive observation of reality which takes place in our daily lives. Scientific consciousness refers to the systematic application of consciousness to solve specific problems in a methodological manner.

Annotation 220

For example, before developing scientific consciousness of farming, a farmer might go through daily life having no idea what makes plants grow to be larger and more healthy and might have no idea how to avoid common problems such as pests. After developing scientific consciousness of farming through scientific experimentation and other systematic methodologies, the farmer will look at things differently in daily life activities. They may see signs of pest infestation and immediately recognize it for what it is, and they may see other indications that plants are unhealthy and know exactly what to do to remedy the situation.

In this way, scientific consciousness enhances ordinary consciousness. Meanwhile, ordinary consciousness — passive observation of the world during daily activities — will lead to scientific consciousness by inspiring us to actively seek understanding of the world through scientific consciousness.

c. The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness

Praxis serves as the basis, driving force, and purpose of consciousness. Praxis serves as the criterion of truth by testing the truthfulness of our thoughts. [See Annotation 230, p. 226]

Praxis is able to serve these roles because reality is the direct starting point of consciousness; it sets out the requirements, tasks, and modes of consciousness, as well as the movement and development tendencies of consciousness. Humans have an objective and inherent need to explain the world and to transform it.

Annotation 221

Remember that the material world defines consciousness while consciousness allows us to impact the material world through conscious activity [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]. Consciousness itself arose from the physical needs of the material world [see The Source of Consciousness, p. 64], and these physical needs continue to serve as the basis and driving force for all conscious activities, as we must act consciously to survive.

Our inherent need to explain the world and to transform it arises from our material needs to eat, seek shelter, cure and prevent disease, and so on. These physical needs, which stem from the material world, drive conscious activity and lead to the development of consciousness and knowledge.

Therefore, humans must necessarily impact things in the material world through our practical activities in order to survive. The impacts of our practical activities on the world cause things and phenomena to reveal their different properties, including their internal and external relationships [for example, hitting a rock will tell you properties about the rock; attempting to build something out of wood will provide data about the wood, etc.]. In this manner, praxis produces data for consciousness to process, and also helps consciousness to comprehend nature and the laws of movement and development which govern the world.

Scientific theories are formed on the basis of the dialectical relationship between practical activity and consciousness. For example: mathematics developed to allow us to count and measure things for practical activities such as agriculture, navigation, and building structures. Marxism also arose in the 1840’s from the practical activities of the struggles of the working class against the capitalist class at that time. Even recent scientific achievements arise from practical needs and activities. For example, the discovery and decoding of the human genome map was born from practical activities and needs, such as the need to develop treatments for incurable diseases. In the end, there is no field of knowledge that is not derived from reality. Ultimately, all knowledge arises from and serves practice. Therefore, if we were to break from reality or stop relying on reality, consciousness would break from the basis of reality that nurtures our growth, existence and development. Also, the cognitive subject cannot have true and profound knowledge about the world if it does not follow reality.

Practice also serves as the basis, driving force, and purpose of consciousness because, thanks to practical activities, our human ability to measure and observe reality improves increasingly over time; our logical thinking ability is constantly strengthened and developed; cognitive means become increasingly developed. All of these developments “extend” the human senses in perceiving the world [for example, by developing new tools to measure, perceive, and sense the world such as telescopes, radar, microscopes, etc.].

Reality is not only the basis, the driving force, and the purpose of discovering truth but also serves as the standard of truth. Reality also serves as the basis for examining the truthfulness of the cognitive process [i.e., we can test whether our thoughts match material reality through experimentation and practice in the real world]. This means that practice is the measure of the value of the knowledge we gain through perception. At the same time, practice is constantly supplementing, adjusting, correcting, developing, and improving human consciousness. Marx said: “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.”^[110]

Thus, practice is not only the starting point of consciousness and a decisive factor for the formation and development of consciousness, it is also a target where consciousness must always aim to test the truth. To emphasize this role which practice plays, Lenin said: “The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge.”^[111]

The role of practice in consciousness requires that we always grasp the practical point of view. This point of view requires that we derive our ideas from practice, our ideas must be based on practice, and our ideas must deeply explore practice. In our conscious activities, we must attach a lot of importance to the summarization of practice [i.e., developing theoretical knowledge through theoretical consciousness which reflects practical experience]. Theoretical research must be related to practice, and learning must go hand in hand with practicing. If we diverge from practice, it will lead to mistakes of subjectivism, idealism, dogmatism, rigidity, and bureaucracy.

Annotation 222

Subjectivism occurs when one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world. Related to subjectivism is solipsism, a form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World: “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”

Idealism has a strong connection with a failure to incorporate practical activity into theoretical consciousness, since idealism holds that conscious activity is the sole basis of discovering truth.

Dogmatism occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice [see Annotation 239, p. 235]. Dogmatists ignore practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth. This results in a breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness.

Rigidity is an unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.

Bureaucracy arises when theory becomes overly codified and formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. Bureaucracy can be avoided by incorporating practical experience and observations continuously into the development of practical systems and methodologies so that theory and practice become increasingly aligned over time to continuously improve efficiency and effectiveness of practical activities in the material world.

On the contrary, if the role of practice is absolutized [to the exclusion of conscious activity], it will fall into pragmatism and empiricism.

Annotation 223

In this context, pragmatism refers to a form of subjectivism [see Annotation 222, above] in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. For example, workers may place their own immediate needs and desires above the concerns of their fellow workers as a whole. This may offer some temporary gains, but in the long run their lack of solidarity and class consciousness will be detrimental as workers collectively suffer from division, making all workers more vulnerable to exploitation and ill treatment by the capitalist class.

Empiricism is a faulty form of materialism in which only sense experience and practical experience are considered sources of truth. This is opposed to the dialectical materialist position that the material determines consciousness, while consciousness impacts the material world through conscious labor activity. [See The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88]

Thus, the principle of the unification of practice and theory must be the basic principle in practical and theoretical activities. Theory without practice as its basis and criterion for determining its truthfulness is useless. Vice versa, practice without scientific and revolutionary theory will inevitably turn into blind practice. [As Ho Chi Minh once said: “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.”]

2. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth

a. Opinions of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin about the Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth

Annotation 224

The section below outlines and explains the Universal Law of Consciousness, which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels.

In his Philosophical Notebook, Lenin generalized the dialectical path towards the realization of truth as development from vivid visualization to abstract thinking, and then from abstraction back to practice. This process, according to Lenin, is the dialectical path towards the realization of truth, and the realization of objective reality.

According to this generalization, the dialectical path towards the realization of truth (“truth,” here, referring to a correct and accurate reflection of objective reality) is a process. It is a process that starts from “vivid visualization” (emotional consciousness) to “abstract thinking” (rational consciousness).

Annotation 225

Given that consciousness has a material basis, and that practical activities are the driving force of consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226], it follows that we must strive to align our conscious thoughts and ideas with the material world. The more accurately we can reflect reality in our consciousness, the more effectively and efficiently our practical activities can become.

For example, through learning more about the mechanical, material, and physical processes which take place inside of an automobile engine, the more we can improve engines to make them more efficient and effective for practical applications.

Lenin explained that consciousness develops from “emotional consciousness” to “rational consciousness.” Thought about a subject begins at a base level of consciousness that is rooted in emotional and sense-oriented conscious activity, i.e, “vivid visualization,” which then leads to rational, abstract reflection.

By “vivid visualization,” Lenin is referring to the active, real-time experience of seeing (and hearing, smelling, and otherwise sensing) things and phenomena in the world.

When a person experiences something through practical activity, the first conscious activity will tend to occur at the emotional and sensory level — in other words, the conscious activities which occur simultaneously along with practical activities. Only after this initial period of emotional consciousness will one be able to reflect on the experience on a more rational and abstract level.

For example, if a zoologist in the field sees a species of bird they have never encountered before, their first conscious activity will be at the sensory-emotional level: they will observe the shape, coloration, and motion of the bird. They may feel excitement, happiness, and other emotions. This is emotional conscious activity.

This emotional conscious activity will then develop into rational conscious activity, as the zoologist may begin to consider things more abstractly, attempting to interpret and understand this experience through reason and rational reflection, asking such questions as: “Where does this bird nest? What does it feed on? Is this a new discovery?” and so on.

Such abstractions are not the end point of a cognitive cycle, because consciousness must then continue to develop through practice. It is through practice that perception tests and proves its own correctness so that it can then continue on to repeat the cycle.

This is also the general rule of the human perception of objective reality.

Annotation 226

Thus there is a dialectical relationship between emotional consciousness (linked to practical activity) and rational consciousness (linked to purely conscious activity).

This dialectical relationship is a cycle, in which one engages in practical activity, which leads to emotional consciousness, which leads to rational consciousness, which then leads back to practical activity to test the correctness of the conclusions of rational conscious activity.

We call this cycle of development of consciousness the cognitive process.

The cognitive process is a continuous cycle which describes the dialectical development of consciousness and practical activity.

The cognitive process is explained in more detail below.

- Development From Emotional Consciousness to Rational Consciousness

Emotional consciousness is the lower stage of the cognitive process. In this stage of cognitive development, humans use — through practical activity — use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. During this period, consciousness only reflects the phenomena [i.e, phenomena, as opposed to essence — see Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156] — the external manifestations — of the perceived subject. At this stage, consciousness has not yet reflected the essence — the nature, and/or the regulating principles — of the subject. Therefore, this is the lowest stage of development of the cognitive process. In this stage, consciousness is carried out through three basic phases: sensation, conception, and symbolization.

Human sensation of an objective thing or phenomenon is the simplest, most primitive phase of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive processes, but without it there would not be any perception of objective things or phenomena. Every human sensation of objective things and phenomena contains objective content [see Content and Form, p. 147], even though it arises as subjective human conscious reflection. Sensation is the subjective imagining of the objective world. It is the basis from which the next phase of emotional consciousness — conception — is formed.

Conception is a relatively complete reflection within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. Conception is formed on the basis of linking and synthesizing sensational experiences of things and phenomena [i.e., sensation]. Compared with sensation, conception is a higher, fuller, richer form of consciousness, but it is still a reflection of the outward manifestations of objects. Conception does not yet reflect the essence, nature, and regulating principles of the perceived subject.

Symbolization is the representation of an objective thing or phenomenon that has been reflected by sensation and conception. It is the most advanced and most complex phase of the stage of emotional consciousness. At the same time, it also serves as the transitional step between emotional consciousness and rational consciousness. The defining characteristic of symbolism is the ability to reproduce symbolic ideas of objective things and phenomena within human consciousness. Symbolization describes the act of recreating the outward appearances of material things and phenomena within human consciousness, which is the first step of abstraction, and thus the first step towards rational consciousness.

Annotation 227

Here is an example of the three phases of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive process:

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1. Sensation: Jessica senses a cake in the window of a bakery. She sees the frosting, the shape of the cake, and the decorations which adorn the cake. She smells the cake. During this phase, objective data about the cake is received into her consciousness, developing into an immediate and subjective sense perception of the cake. The beginnings of this cognitive activity will be purely sensory in nature; she may have been thinking of other things as she walked by the bakery, but the sight and smell of the cake, upon registering in her mind, will lead to the beginning of a new cognitive process cycle.

2. Conception: Jessica begins to conceive of the cake in her mind more fully. She will associate the immediate sense experiences of seeing and smelling the cake with other experiences she has had with cake, and a complete mental image and concept of the cake will form in her mind.

3. Symbolization: The word “cake” may now form in her mind, and she may begin thinking of the cake more abstractly, as “food,” as a “temptation,” and in other ways. This is the beginning of abstraction in Jessica’s mind, which will then lead to rational conscious activities.

Note that all of these phases of emotional consciousness activity may take place very quickly, perhaps in a fraction of a second, and may coincide with other conscious activity (i.e., Jessica may simultaneously be thinking of a meeting she’s running late to and any number of other things). At this point, Jessica will transition to the rational consciousness stage of the cognitive process, which is explained in more detail below.

By the end of the emotional stage of the cognitive process, consciousness has not yet reflected the essence — the nature, regulating principles, etc. — of the perceived subject. Therefore, at the emotional stage, consciousness is not yet able to properly interpret the reflected subject. That is to say, emotional conscious activity does not meet the cognitive requirements to serve practical activities, including the need to creatively transform the objective world. To meet these requirements, emotional consciousness must develop into rational consciousness.

Rational consciousness is the higher stage of the cognitive process. It includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the essence of the perceived subject. Rational consciousness is implemented through three basic phases: definition, judgment, and reasoning.

Definition is the first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. The formation of definition is the result of the summarization and synthesis of all the different characteristics and properties of the subject, and how the subject fits into the organized structure of knowledge which exists in the mind. Definition is the basis for forming judgments in the cognitive process.

Judgment is the next phase of rational consciousness, which arises from the definition of the subject — the linking of concepts and properties together — which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject.

According to the level of development of consciousness, judgment may take one of three forms: unique judgment, general judgment, and universal judgment [see Annotation 105, p. 107]. Universal judgment is the form of judgement that expresses the broadest conception of objective reality.

Reasoning is the final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. Before reasoning can take place, judgments must be transformed into knowledge. A judgment can be transformed into knowledge through one of two logical mechanisms: deductive inference (which extrapolates the general from the specific), and inductive inference (which extrapolates the specific from the general).

Annotation 228

Here is an example of the three phases of the rational consciousness stage of the cognitive process, continuing from our previous example of the emotional consciousness stage [see Annotation 227, p. 222].

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1. Definition: Jessica’s conception of the cake will transition into the rational conscious activity of definition. Jessica will begin to define the concept of the cake more wholly and concretely, summarizing and synthesizing all of the features and characteristics of the cake into a cohesive mental reflection of the cake. The word “cake” may become more pronounced and defined in Jessica’s consciousness, prompting her to think of the object which she defines as a “cake” more fully and rationally.

2. Judgment: Jessica will begin to form basic judgments about the cake. “That cake looks good,” “that cake smells good,” and so on. Next, these judgments will begin to transform into knowledge through inductive or deductive inferences. An inductive inference might be: “I generally enjoy eating cakes, therefore, I might enjoy eating this cake!” An example of a deductive inference might be: “This cake looks very delicious, therefore, there might be other delicious things in this bakery!”

3. Reasoning: Processes of inductive and/or deductive inference will begin to transform Jessica’s judgments into the form of knowledge. For instance, she may now possess such knowledge as: “This bakery has delicious looking cakes, this is a cake I would like to eat,” and so on. With this newly acquired knowledge, Jessica can begin reasoning; that is to say, she can begin making rational conclusions and decisions. She might conclude: “I will go into this bakery and buy that cake.”

Note that this is not the “end” of the cognitive process, because the final phase of the reasoning stage of the cognitive process (reasoning) will lead directly into a new cycle of the cognitive process. In this example, Jessica might engage in the practical activity of checking her watch to see the time, which will begin a new cycle of cognitive process, beginning with the sensation phase of the emotional stage as the visual sense data of her watch and carrying through to the final reasoning phase of the rational stage, and so on.

It should also be noted that this is merely an abstraction of the cognitive process; in reality, the human mind is incredibly complex, capable of carrying out a variety of cognitive processes simultaneously. At any given moment, a person might be considering various different subjects, and each different subject might be at a different stage of the cognitive process. This abstract model of the cognitive process is presented to help us comprehend the component functions of consciousness more easily in the wider context of dialectical materialist philosophy.

Specifically, this model of the cognitive process is intended to help us understand how human consciousness leads to “truth.” And “truth,” here, refers to the alignment of human consciousness with the material world, so that our perceptions and understanding of the world is accurate and representative of actual reality.

- The Relationship Between Emotional Consciousness, Rational Consciousness, and Reality

Emotional consciousness and rational consciousness are stages that make up the cognitive cycle. In reality, they are often intertwined within the cognitive process, but they have different functions. If emotional consciousness is associated with reality, and with the impact of sense data received from observing the material world, and is the basis for cognitive reason, then rational consciousness, based on higher cognitive understanding and abstraction, allows us to understand the essence, nature, regulating principles, and development processes of things and phenomena. Rational consciousness helps direct emotional consciousness in a more efficient and effective direction and leads to more profound and accurate emotional consciousness.

Annotation 229

In other words, considering a subject at the level of rational consciousness allows us to then view the same subject, at an emotional consciousness level, with more depth and awareness.

For example, the more time we have spent rationally considering something like a bicycle, the more quickly and accurately we can examine a bicycle at the level of emotional consciousness. If someone is looking at a bicycle for the first time, they might not be able to distinguish its component parts or functions. On the other hand, if someone has spent more time considering bicycles at the level of rational consciousness, they may be able to immediately and rapidly understand and process a bicycle at the emotional conscious level, so that they can perceive and comprehend the different parts of a bicycle, as well as their functions, immediately and at the emotional-sensory level.

However, if we stop at rational consciousness, we will only have knowledge about the subjects we perceive, but we still won’t really know if that knowledge is truly accurate or not. In order to be useful in practical activity, we must consciously determine whether knowledge is truth [i.e., whether the knowledge accurately reflects reality]. In order to determine the truth of knowledge, consciousness must necessarily return to reality. Consciousness must use reality as a criterion — a measurement — of the authenticity of knowledge gained through purely cognitive processes. In other words, all consciousness is ultimately derived from practical needs, and must also return to serve practical activities.

Annotation 230

The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activities means that conscious activities develop practical activities, and vice versa, in a continuous feedback loop.

One of the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism is that the material determines the ideal, and the ideal impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness]. The fact that the material determines consciousness is reflected in the fact that material needs led to the development of consciousness, and conscious activity stems from material needs [see Social Sources of Consciousness].

The fact that the ideal impacts the material is reflected in the fact that consciousness must always return to the service of practical activities; as our consciousness develops (along with knowledge), our ability to impact and transform the material world becomes more efficient and effective.

The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is what drives the development of humanity. We imagine better ways of doing things, then test those ideas against reality through practical activity.

This dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is thus cyclical. Conscious activity arises from practical activity, and returns to practical activity, in an endless process of developing both conscious ability as well as practical ability.

Therefore, it can be seen that the general, cyclical nature of the process of movement and development of consciousness develops from practice to consciousness — from consciousness to practice — from practical activity to the continued process of cognitive development, and so on. This process is repeated continuously, without end. The development level of consciousness and practice in the next cycle are often higher than in the previous cycle, and the cognitive process gradually develops more and more accuracy, as well as fuller and deeper knowledge about objective reality.

The universal law of consciousness [see Annotation 224, p. 219] is also a concrete and vivid manifestation of the universal laws of materialist dialectics, including: the law of negation of negation, the law of transformation between quantity and quality and the law of unity and contradiction between opposites. The process of cognitive motion and development, governed by these general laws, is the process of human progress towards absolute truth [see Annotation 232, p. 228].

Annotation 231

The universal law of consciousness is governed by the three universal laws of materialist dialectics:

The Law of Negation of Negation dictates that the new will arise from the old, but will carry forward characteristics from the old. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in that conscious activity arises from practical activity. This conscious activity then develops into improved practical activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of development. Throughout this development process, characteristics of previous cycles of cognitive and practical activities are carried forward and transferred on to newer cycles of cognitive and practical activities.

The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality recognizes that quantity changes develop into changes in quality, and vice versa. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in the development of both conscious and practical activities. Conscious development also develops from quantitative changes to quality changes, and vice versa. For example, once a person accumulates a certain quantity of knowledge, the quality of their knowledge will change. For example, once a person has learned the function of every component part of a car engine, they will have a quality shift in their understanding of car engines — they will now have competency of the functioning of the engine as a whole. This is also true of practical activities. A quantity of practical experience will lead to quality shifts in practical ability. For example, once a person has practiced riding a bicycle enough that they can reliably ride the bicycle without falling, we would say that the person “knows how to ride a bicycle,” which represents a quality shift from the state of “learning how to ride a bicycle.”

The Law of Unity and Contradiction Between Opposites states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are defined by internal and external contradictions. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness by the fact that practical needs serve as the basis for conscious activity, and that cognitive processes serve, in essence, to negate contradictions between consciousness and material reality through practical experience. In other words, the cognitive process is defined by a never-ending process of contradiction between the material and the ideal, as human beings seek to negate contradictions between our conscious understanding of the world and our practical experiences in search of truth - the accurate alignment of consciousness with the material world.

b. Truth, and the Relationship Between Truth and Reality

- Definition of Truth

All cognitive processes lead to the creation of knowledge, which is what we call human understanding of objective reality. But not all knowledge has content consistent with objective reality, because consciousness exists as the subjective reflection of objective reality in the human mind. The collective cognitive practice of all of humanity throughout history, as well as the cognitive practice of each individual human being, has demonstrated that the knowledge which people have gained and are gaining is not always consistent with objective reality. On the contrary, there are many cases of misalignment between consciousness and reality, and even complete contradiction between human thought and objective reality.

Within the theoretical scope of Marxism-Leninism, the concept of truth is used to refer to knowledge which is aligned with objective reality. This alignment is tested and proven through practice. In this sense, the concept of truth is not identical with the concept of “knowledge,” nor with the concept of “hypothesis.” According to Lenin: “The coincidence of thought with the object is a process: thought (= man) must not imagine truth in the form of dead repose, in the form of a bare picture (image), pale (matte), without impulse, without motion…”^[112]

Annotation 232

Here, Lenin is dispelling Hegel’s conception of “absolute truth,” which is not to be confused with Lenin’s concept of “absolute truth” as “objective truth” which aligns consciousness with objective reality [see Annotation 58, p. 56]. For Hegel, “absolute truth” was the idea that there will eventually be some end point to the process of rational consciousness at which we will finally arrive at some final stage of knowledge and consciousness. This rational end point of consciousness, at which the dialectic ends and all contradictions are negated, is Hegel’s “absolute truth.”

Lenin is also pushing back against the metaphysical conception that all “truths” exist as static categories of information which do not change. Instead, Lenin points out that seeking truth — i.e., aligning consciousness with material reality — is a never-ending process, in particular because reality is constantly developing and changing. Thus, the alignment of consciousness with reality — the pursuit of truth — is a living and dynamic process which will never end, since the development of reality will never end.

- The Properties of Truth

All truths are objective, relative, absolute, and concrete.

The objectivity of truth is the independence of its content from the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning. Truth is not an arbitrary human construct, nor is truth inherent in consciousness. On the contrary, truth belongs to the objective world, and is determined by the objective world. The affirmation of the objectivity of truth is one of the fundamental points that distinguishes the concept of absolute truth of dialectical materialism from the concept of absolute truth of idealism and skepticism — the doctrines that deny the objective existence of the physical world and deny the possibility that humans are able to perceive the world.

Annotation 233

The Dialectical Materialist conception of objective truth stands in contrast to idealism, which states that conscious reasoning alone leads to truth, and that the subjective ideal determines material reality [see Annotation 7, p. 8].

This objectivity of truth also refutes skepticism, which states that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27].

Distinction must also be drawn between the concept of absolute truth as it is understood in dialectical materialist philosophy and the conception of absolute truth in Hegel’s idealist dialectics. Dialectical materialism defines absolute truth as “objective truth;” that is to say: a complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness (as compared to relative truth, which is a partial alignment between consciousness and objective reality).

Hegel, on the other hand, views absolute truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe (see Annotation 232, p. 228) with the ideal serving as the first basis and primary mechanism for bringing absolute truth to fruition.

Truth is not only objective, but also absolute and relative. Absolute truth [see Annotation 58, p. 56] refers to truth which reflects a full and complete alignment of consciousness and reality. Theoretically, we can reach absolute truth. This is because, in the objective world, there exists no thing nor phenomenon which human beings are completely incapable of accurately perceiving. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also relative.

Annotation 234

Dialectical materialist philosophy recognizes that it must be theoretically possible to know everything there is to know about a given subject, since we are theoretically capable of accurately perceiving, sensing, and measuring all data which pertains to a subject. However, dialectical materialism also recognizes the practical limitations of human beings. As Engels writes in Anti-Dühring:

If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.
But are there any truths which are so securely based that any doubt of them seems to us to be tantamount to insanity? That twice two makes four, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, that Paris is in France, that a man who gets no food dies of hunger, and so forth? Are there then nevertheless eternal truths, final and ultimate truths.
Certainly there are. We can divide the whole realm of knowledge in the traditional way into three great departments. The first includes all sciences that deal with inanimate nature and are to a greater or lesser degree susceptible of mathematical treatment: mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry. If it gives anyone any pleasure to use mighty words for very simple things, it can be asserted that certain results obtained by these sciences are eternal truths, final and ultimate truths; for which reason these sciences are known as the exact sciences. But very far from all their results have this validity. With the introduction of variable magnitudes and the extension of their variability to the infinitely small and infinitely large, mathematics, usually so strictly ethical, fell from grace; it ate of the tree of knowledge, which opened up to it a career of most colossal achievements, but at the same time a path of error. The virgin state of absolute validity and irrefutable proof of everything mathematical was gone forever; the realm of controversy was inaugurated, and we have reached the point where most people differentiate and integrate not because they understand what they are doing but from pure faith, because up to now it has always come out right. Things are even worse with astronomy and mechanics, and in physics and chemistry we are swamped by hypotheses as if attacked by a swarm of bees. And it must of necessity be so. In physics we are dealing with the motion of molecules, in chemistry with the formation of molecules out of atoms, and if the interference of light waves is not a myth, we have absolutely no prospect of ever seeing these interesting objects with our own eyes. As time goes on, final and ultimate truths become remarkably rare in this field.

Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment — in some (but not all) aspects — between consciousness and the material world.

Annotation 235

False consciousness is consciousness which is incorrect and misaligned from reality. Discovering and rooting out false consciousness is one of the primary concerns of dialectical materialism, as false consciousness can be a serious impediment to human progress. The term “false consciousness” was first used by Friedrich Engels in a personal letter to Franz Mehring in 1893 (a decade after the death of Karl Marx), and in this letter Engels uses the term interchangeably with the word “ideology”* to describe conscious thought processes which do not align with reality:

Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, he does not investigate further for a more remote process independent of thought; indeed its origin seems obvious to him, because as all action is produced through the medium of thought it also appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought. The ideologist who deals with history (history is here simply meant to comprise all the spheres – political, juridical, philosophical, theological – belonging to society and not only to nature), the ideologist dealing with history then, possesses in every sphere of science material which has formed itself independently out of the thought of previous generations and has gone through an independent series of developments in the brains of these successive generations. True, external facts belonging to its own or other spheres may have exercised a co-determining influence on this development, but the tacit pre-supposition is that these facts themselves are also only the fruits of a process of thought, and so we still remain within that realm of pure thought which has successfully digested the hardest facts.

Although the term “false consciousness” is not found in writing until after Marx’s death, the concept underlying the term “false consciousness” is found often in the works of Marx and Engels. For instance, in The Holy Family, Marx and Engels explain how communist, class conscious workers have been able to break free of false consciousness of capitalist society:

They (the communist workers) are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labor and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement.

This allusion to “the difference between being and thinking” recurs again and again in the works of Marx and Engels.

* Lenin also discussed the concept of false consciousness extensively, and argued that dialectical materialism was the key to negating the false consciousness of the working class, writing in What the “Friends of the People” Are:

It never has been the case, nor is it so now, that the members of society conceive the sum-total of the social relations in which they live as something definite, integral, pervaded by some principle; on the contrary, the mass of people adapt themselves to these relations unconsciously, and have so little conception of them as specific historical social relations that, for instance, an explanation of the exchange relations under which people have lived for centuries was found only in very recent times. Materialism removed this contradiction by carrying the analysis deeper, to the origin of man’s social ideas themselves; and its conclusion that the course of ideas depends on the course of things is the only one compatible with scientific psychology. Further, and from yet another aspect, this hypothesis was the first to elevate sociology to the level of a science.

Note that this convention of using the word “ideology” to mean “false consciousness” has never been common, and Marx and Engels both used the word “ideology” more often in its more usual sense of “a system of ideas,” but it is still occasionally encountered in socialist literature, as Joseph McCarney explains in Marx Myths and Legends:

Marx never calls ideology ‘false consciousness’. Indeed, he never calls anything ‘false consciousness’, a phrase that does not occur in his work... The noun is almost always accompanied by an epithet such as ‘German’, ‘republican’, ‘political’ or ‘Hegelian’, or by a qualifying phrase, as in ‘the ideology of the bourgeoisie’ or ‘the ideology of the political economist’. More typical in any case is the adjectival usage in which such varied items as ‘forms’, ‘expressions’, ‘phrases’, ’conceptions’, ‘deception’, and ‘distortion’ are said to have an ‘ideological’ character. Even more distinctive is the frequency, amounting to approximately half of all references in the relevant range, of invocations of the ‘ideologists’, the creators and purveyors of the ideological forms.

“Relative truth” and “absolute truth” do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.

Lenin wrote that “absolute truth results from the sum-total of relative truths in the course of their development; [...] relative truths represent relatively faithful reflections of an object existing independently of man; [...] these reflections become more and more faithful; [...] every scientific truth, notwithstanding its relative nature, contains an element of absolute truth.”^[113]

Correct realization of the dialectical relationship between relative and absolute truth plays a very important role in criticizing and overcoming extremism and false consciousness in perception and in action. If we exaggerate the absoluteness of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its relativity, we will fall into the false consciousness of metaphysics, dogmatism, conservativism, and stagnation.

Annotation 236

Intentional or unintentional exaggeration of the absoluteness of truth — i.e., considering our knowledge to be more complete and/or aligned with reality than it actually is — leads to incorrect viewpoints and mindsets, including:

Metaphysics is a philosophical system which seeks truth through the systematic categorization of knowledge [see Annotation 8, p. 8]. This is a flawed method of seeking knowledge because it considers truth to be essentially static and unchanging, and upholds the erroneous notion that truth can be systematically broken down into discrete, isolated categories. In addition to being fundamentally incorrect about the nature of truth and knowledge, it leads to the incorrect presumption that such static categorization of knowledge can lead to truth at all. Metaphysics fails to see truth and consciousness as a process, and instead sees truth as a static assembly of categorized facts and data.

Dogmatism occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth. Dogmatism inherently overstates the absoluteness of knowledge, as dogmatic positions uphold certain theoretical principles as complete, inviolable, and completely developed. This explicitly denies the continuously developing process of advancing knowledge and consciousness.

Conservativism includes any position that seeks to prevent change, or to undo change to return to an earlier state of development. Such positions deny the continuous development of consciousness, knowledge, and practice, and incorrectly assert incorrect positions; or mistake relative truth for absolute truth.

Stagnation is an inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability.

On the contrary, if we exaggerate the relativity of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its absoluteness, we will fall into relativism, thereby leading to subjectivism, revisionism, sophistry, and skepticism.

Annotation 237

Relativism is the belief that human consciousness can only achieve relative understanding of the world, and that truth can therefore never be objectively discovered. Relativism is, thus, the overstatement of the relative nature of truth and the denial of the existence of absolute truth. Relativism leads to such incorrect viewpoints and mindsets as:

Subjectivism: which occurs when one centers one’s own self and one’s own conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. This position denies that truth can be discovered in the external material world, falsely believing that absolute truth stems only from conscious activity.

Revisionism: a failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private [see Private and Common, p. 128]. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.

Sophistry: the use of falsehoods and fallacious arguments to deceive [see Annotation 116, p. 118]. Sophistry is, thus, the intentional denial of truth and the intentional mischaracterization of truths as either overly relative or as not truths at all.

Skepticism: the belief that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 200, p. 192]. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable.

In addition to objectivity, absoluteness, and relativity, truth also has concreteness. The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is what we call concreteness.

Knowledge, if detached from specific historical conditions, will fall into pure abstraction. Therefore, it will not be accurate — it will not align with reality — and such knowledge cannot be considered truth. When emphasizing this property, Lenin wrote: “Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”^[114] Mastering the principle of the concreteness of truth has an important methodological significance in cognitive and practical activities. It is required that consideration and evaluation of all things and phenomena must be based on a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. In developing and applying theory, we must be conscious of specific historical conditions. According to Lenin, Marxism’s nature, its essence, lies in the concrete analysis of specific situations; Marx’s method is, above all, to consider the objective content of the historical process in a specific time.

Annotation 238

In other words, Marxism is rooted in seeking truth by examining reality from a historical and comprehensive viewpoint. For more information, see Annotation 114, p. 116.

- The Role of Truth in Reality.

In order to survive and develop, humans must conduct practical activities. These activities involve transforming the environment, nature, and human society. At the same time, through these activities, humans perform — knowingly or unknowingly — the process of perfecting and developing our conscious and practical abilities. It is this process that helps human cognitive activities develop. Practical activities can only be successful and effective once humans apply accurate knowledge of objective reality to our practical activities. Therefore, truth is one of the prerequisites that ensure success and efficiency in practical activities.

The relationship between truth and practical activities is a dialectical relationship which serves as the basis for the movement and development of both truth and practical activity: truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth which people have gained through practical activities.

Annotation 239

Truth and Practical Activities have a dialectical relationship in which truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth.

Practice only develops when truth about the universe is consciously applied to practical activities. For example, farm output increases as we learn more truth about the way crops grow and how land can be properly managed. Simultaneously, truth can only be developed through practical activity, as all ideas and knowledge must be tested through methodological observation, experimentation, and other forms of practical activity.

A theory is an idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. Theories are not inherently truthful; holding incorrect theories constitutes false consciousness. Practice (or praxis) is purposeful conscious activity which improves our understanding of the world. Theory and practice have a dialectical relationship with one another which, if understood, helps us to discover truth.

Truth and practical activities mutually develop one another over time.

This dialectical relationship between theory and practical activities means that we must never favor theory over practice, nor practice over theory, but that we must rather balance development of theoretical understanding as we engage in practical activities to test our knowledge against reality and to develop our practice with ever-advancing understanding of the world. As practice and theory develop one another, our understanding of objective reality comes closer and closer to truth.

In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx summarizes the relationship between theory and practice, writing:

The problem of the external world is here put as the problem of its transformation: the problem of the cognition of the external world as an integral part of the problem of transformation: the problem of theory as a practical problem.

Here, Marx explains that theory is concerned with solving the “problem” of transforming the external world through practice, and that “cognition of the external world” is required to solve the “problem of transformation. In other words, we must improve our theory in order to improve our practical ability to transform our world, and we learn about the world (thus improving our theory) through those practical activities.

Marx also writes in Theses on Feuerbach that:

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but it is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power... of his thinking.

This point is key for understanding the dialectical relationship between practice and theory: in order to be useful, theory must be proven through practice. Thus, we must seek to develop our practice through theory, and our theory through practice.

Engels summarizes these ideas a bit more colorfully in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Before there was argument there was action... In the beginning was the deed ... And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Engels wrote in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy of the uselessness of what might be called “pure theory,” divorced from practice, and the sort of radical skepticism which refutes that any practical knowledge can ever really be obtained by human beings:

There is yet a set of different philosophers — those who question the possibility of any cognition, or at least of an exhaustive cognition of the world... The most telling refutation of this (scepticism and agnosticism) as of all other philosophical crotchets, is praxis, namely experiment and industry.

It is practice, according to Engels, which proves the merit and utility of theory.

Through experiment and industry — through practical activities in the material world — we can test our ideas and dialectically develop both theory and practice. Lenin built upon these ideas in his own work, writing in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism:

The materialist theory, the theory of the reflection of objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity: things exist outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images. Verification of these images, differentiation between true and false images, is given by practice.

Here, Lenin explains how only a proper understanding and application of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice can lead to the negation of false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] and the dialectical development of both practice and theory. Simply arguing and debating about ideas without relating them directly to practice will never lead to truth, nor will such pure-theory argumentation develop theory or practice in any meaningful way.

This brings to mind another line from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach:

The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

The philosophy of dialectical materialism and the system of materialist dialectics are designed specifically to produce action and to avoid such “scholastic questions” and “pure-theory argumentation.”

Ho Chi Minh summarized these ideas perhaps most clearly and precisely of all in the very title of his article: Practice Generates Knowledge, Understanding Advances Theory, Theory Leads to Practice:

Knowledge comes from practice. And through practice, knowledge becomes theory. That theory, again, has to be put into practice. Knowledge advances not just from thought to theory, but, above all, from applying theory to revolutionary practice. Once the world’s law is fully grasped as theory, it is critical to put that theory into practice by changing the world, by increasing production, and by practicing class struggle and struggling for national self-determination. This is a continuous process of obtaining knowledge.

“If Uncle Ho says we will win, we will win!” — Propaganda poster from the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1984).

Afterword

If it seems that this book has come to an end somewhat abruptly, it’s because this is really just the first of four major sections of the full volume from which this text is drawn. If you are reading this afterword after reading the entirety of the preceding contents, then congratulations, you have completed the equivalent to a full semester’s coursework for a class on dialectical materialist philosophy which all Vietnamese college students are required to take!

The next sections in this curriculum, each covered in the original full volume, include:

Part 2: Historical Materialism

This section covers the definition and basic principles of historical materialism, which is the field of work dedicated to applying dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to human history and human society. In the West, historical materialism and dialectical materialism are often conflated, but this is in error. Historical materialism is an applied field of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology which is used in the pursuit of understanding and interpreting human history.

Part 3: Political Economy

This section condenses the three cardinal volumes of Capital by Karl Marx and covers three primary doctrines:

1. The doctrine of value.

2. The doctrine of surplus value.

3. The doctrines of monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.

Political Economy, in this course, can be considered the application of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to the analysis and understanding of the capitalist mode of production from the perspective of the socialist revolutionary movement.

Part 4: Scientific Socialism

This section relies on an established understanding of dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and political economy as a foundation for developing socialist revolution. The three chapters of this section on Scientific Socialism are:

1. The Historical Mission of the Working Class and the Socialist Revolution

2. The Primary Social-Political Issues of the Process of Building a Socialist Revolution 3. Realistic Socialism and Potential Socialism

Moving Forward

We are already working on the translation of Part 2 of this curriculum, and we hope to complete it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we believe this book provides the reader with enough of a foundation to continue studying and to begin applying the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics in political struggle.

We highly discourage readers from self-study in isolation, just as we discourage individual political action. The best way to study socialism is alongside other socialists.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to find political education resources provided by communist parties, socialist book clubs, or other organizations. If such resources aren’t available, it should be fairly easy to find study groups, workshops, and affinity groups online where you can study with like-minded comrades. Of course, socialist revolution requires more than just study, as we hope this book has thoroughly explained. Theory must be coupled with practice. As Ho Chi Minh wrote: “If you read a thousand books, but you fail to apply theory into practice, you are nothing but a bookshelf.”

To avoid atrophying into the proverbial bookshelf, we encourage you to go out into the world and apply these ideas creatively and collectively with other socialists. Dialectical materialism is a philosophy that was developed from the ground up for application in the real world. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics provide a functional model of reality, a way of looking at highly complicated systems, with all their dynamic internal and external relations. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we see human systems as processes in motion. In order to fully comprehend such dynamic processes, we must engage with them, which is why Ho Chi Minh taught that “we are not afraid to make mistakes; we would only be afraid of making mistakes if we were not determined to correct them.”^[115]

As we mentioned in the foreword, many socialists in the West suffer from a lack of practical engagement. Far too many socialists fall into utopianism, idealism, and social chauvinism and we believe this largely stems from failures to test ideas against reality through praxis. We hope that this book has impressed upon the reader that simply arguing about pure theory is a useless and futile pursuit. Indeed, sparring verbally over such “scholastic questions,” as Marx described them, is counter-productive. Marx and Engels defined such failure to engage in theory as “critical criticism” — that is to say, criticism for the sake of criticism. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Holy Family, such critical criticism is futile, as we will never think our way to revolution:

According to Critical Criticism, the whole evil lies only in the workers’ “thinking”. It is true that the English and French workers have formed associations in which they exchange opinions not only on their immediate needs as workers, but on their needs as human beings. In their associations, moreover, they show a very thorough and comprehensive consciousness of the “enormous” and “immeasurable” power which arises from their co-operation. But these mass-minded, communist workers, employed, for instance, in the Manchester or Lyons workshops, do not believe that by “pure thinking” they will be able to argue away their industrial masters and their own practical debasement. They are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labour and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement and that therefore they must be abolished in a practical, objective way for man to become man not only in thinking, in consciousness, but in mass being, in life. Critical Criticism, on the contrary, teaches them that they cease in reality to be wage-workers if in thinking they abolish the thought of wage-labour; if in thinking they cease to regard themselves as wage-workers and, in accordance with that extravagant notion, no longer let themselves be paid for their person. As absolute idealists, as ethereal beings, they will then naturally be able to live on the ether of pure thought.

Engels expressed his frustration with such endless, utopian, idealist debates in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

Engels concludes by punctuating why he and Marx had developed dialectical materialism as a praxis-oriented philosophical foundation for scientific socialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.” We hope that the readers of this text will seek out real bases for your development in theory and praxis, and we trust that you will quickly discover that developing practice develops theory, and vice-versa.

Remember that Marx and Engels, themselves, were not just theorists who scribbled down their thoughts in an “scholarly” vacuum. They were revolutionists themselves, highly engaged in political struggle and, in so struggling, they risked their lives and freedom over the course of many decades. This struggle is what led to the change and development of their ideas over time. The same can be said for every other successful socialist revolutionary in history.

Vo Nguyen Giap, the great general who led Vietnam’s military forces through resistance wars against fascist Japan, colonialist France, and the imperialist USA, describes how he applied such principles on the battlefield in his book People’s War, People’s Army:

During the Resistance War, owing to constant fighting, the training of our troops could not be carried out continuously for a lengthy period but only between battles or campaigns. We actively implemented the guiding principles ‘To train and to learn while we fight.’ After the difficult years at the beginning of the Resistance War, we succeeded in giving good training to our army. The practical viewpoint in this training deserves to be highlighted. The content of training became most practical and rich. Training was in touch with practical fighting: the troops were trained in accordance with the next day’s fighting, and victory or defeat in the fighting was the best gauge for the control and assessment of the result of the training. On the basis of gradual unification of the organisation and its equipment, the content of training in the various units of the regular army was also systematised step by step.

Here, Vo Nguyen Giap has provided a concrete example of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, and their inseparability. This fundamental aspect of dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we think and act like scientists to change the world, rather than simply speculating and imagining ineffectually like armchair philosophers. As Marx wrote in Theses on Feuerbach “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” We encourage you to apply what you learn in this and other books to change the world.

Advice on Further Study

As you advance in your studies of socialist literature and theory, we offer the following advice:

First, you must recognize that the specific language used by revolutionary leaders and thinkers may vary widely across time and around the world. Fashions in language develop over time, and many contributions — like the text you’ve just read — come to us through translation from countless languages. This is why we believe it critical to develop an understanding of the spirit of the ideas of any particular text, and not to get bogged down in semantics and terminology. Liberal ideologists have done much to distract and divert intellectual energy with endless metaphysical altercation over the “proper” usage of this or that word. We caution strongly against this attitude, which makes us susceptible to sophistry, opportunism, and the sewing of undue conflict and division amidst the working class. We have pointed out various instances where Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different language to describe the same concepts. We also offer the reminder that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were writing in different languages at different times, just as socialists around the world have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As socialism is an international movement, we must stress the importance of avoiding linguistic barriers by engaging with one another in good faith and testing conflicting ideas and interpretations of theory against one another through practice instead of getting bogged down with “critical criticism.”

Next, we encourage students of socialist philosophy to always keep in mind that the doctrines and philosophies of revolutionary figures are products of the times and places in which they were conceived. It would be a mistake to view the works of any revolutionary figure as a road map or a set of instructions to follow by rote. Even Marx and Engels changed and developed their own ideas over the decades they were active, as they addressed in the 1872 preface to The Communist Manifesto:

The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.”

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Ho Chi Minh also frequently took pains to point out that their revolutionary theories were devised specifically to suit the particular objective conditions of their own respective times and places. For example, in What is to be Done, Lenin discusses the question of secrecy in revolutionary activity. Lenin recognizes that secrecy is not always necessary, such as in the more liberal social democracies which existed in Europe in his era. In Russia, however — with its autocratic monarchy — material conditions called for more covert activity:

In countries where political liberty exists the distinction between a trade union and a political organisation is clear enough, as is the distinction between trade unions and Social-Democracy. The relations between the latter and the former will naturally vary in each country according to historical, legal, and other conditions; they may be more or less close, complex, etc. (in our opinion they should be as close and as little complicated as possible); but there can be no question in free countries of the organisation of trade unions coinciding with the organisation of the Social-Democratic Party. In Russia, however, the yoke of the autocracy appears at first glance to obliterate all distinctions between the Social-Democratic organisation and the workers’ associations, since all workers’ associations and all study circles are prohibited, and since the principal manifestation and weapon of the workers’ economic struggle — the strike — is regarded as a criminal (and sometimes even as a political!) offence.”

Ho Chi Minh was even more explicit about the requirement to tailor theory to current and local material conditions in a speech to the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1950:

Studying Marxism-Leninism is not just a matter of repeating the slogan ‘workers of the world, unite’ like a parrot. We must unify Marxism-Leninism with the reality of Vietnam’s revolution. Talking about Marxism-Leninism in Vietnam is talking about the specific guidelines and policies of the Communist Party of Vietnam. For example, our priority now is: great solidarity!

In a 2001 document, the Communist Party of Vietnam explained how Ho Chi Minh tailored lessons learned from prior revolutionaries to the specific material conditions of revolutionary Vietnam:

Ho Chi Minh’s thought is... the creative application and development of Marxism-Leninism to the specific conditions of our country. Ho Chi Minh learned profound lessons from Lenin and the Russian October Revolution, but he did not simply use those lessons as a template, nor did he just copy that foundation. Instead, he absorbed the spirit of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin’s thesis allowed Ho Chi Minh to see what was necessary for the Vietnamese people — the path of national liberation. Ho Chi Minh had creative arguments that contributed to enriching Marxism-Leninism in the issue of national liberation revolution, building a new democratic regime and the transitional path to socialism in an Eastern, semi-feudal colony which was still very backward: Vietnam.

As you find your own revolutionary path, you must carefully examine the objective conditions of your own time and place, and work collectively and collaboratively with your fellow revolutionists to decide how theory and lessons gleaned from history apply to your own circumstances. And, of course, you must test the validity of your conclusions against reality through practice.

Creative Application of Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics

Finally, we implore you to apply dialectical materialism creatively. Don’t look at this (or any other) book as a set of static instructions. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics are living, breathing systems of thought which benefit from the ideas and imagination of comrades working and struggling together. Seek the spirit of these ideas, study revolutionary theory and history, then apply what you learn in your daily life. Combat dogmatism and avoid arguments over pure theory. Determine what works and what doesn’t through activity in the real world, and apply what you learn from practical experience to your theoretical development. Over time, you will begin to see how practice and theory impact and develop one another. When you are struggling with a particular problem in revolutionary practice, you will find yourself reading theory in a new light, discovering information and ideas which might be applicable to your immediate circumstances. And as you study theory, you will find that it also impacts your practice, giving you tools and perspective and methodologies for action which you might never have imagined on your own.

We have tried to make this book a useful companion for further study. We have also made the digital version available for free online. If you have found it useful, we hope you will share it freely and widely.

In Closing

One last time we would like to thank Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for their wonderful insights on our translation, and to acknowledge the monumental work of the Vietnamese scholars who wrote and revised the original text from which this volume is drawn. We also want to recognize once more the donors and supporters who have given us the precious resource of time to translate and annotate this work. Finally, we want to thank the teams at the Iskra Books and The International Magazine, who have provided invaluable editing and peer review services, promotion, and guidance. You can find all their publications, respectively, at:

IskraBooks.org

InternationalMagz.com

If you would like to download the free digital version of this book, support future translation work, or if you would like to get in touch, you can visit our website:

BanyanHouse.org

We will leave you, now, with the immortal words of the Manifesto:

Workers of the world, unite!

You have nothing to lose but your chains.

In Solidarity,

- Luna Nguyen, Translator & Annotations

- Emerican Johnson, Editor, Illustrator, & Annotations

“Marxism-Leninism — Long Live the Victories” — a demonstration to welcome the liberation army in the South of Vietnam on April 30, 1975.

[Appendices]

Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics

This is a summary of the basic pairs of universal categories and their characteristics which are discussed in depth starting on p. 126.

Private	Common
A specific item, event, or process.	The properties that are shared between Private things, phenomena, and ideas.

Private is commonly referred to in literature as Special/Specific while Common is commonly called General. Note: When an aspect or characteristic is not held in common with anything else in existence, it is considered Unique. The Unique can become Common, just as the Common can become Unique. Example: a Unique design for an object may be replicated, making it Common. A type of item that is Common may gradually disappear until there is only one example left, making it Unique. See p. 128.

Reason	Result
Mutual impact between things, phenomena, or ideas which causes each to change.	The change caused by a Reason.

Reason and Result may be referred to as Cause and Effect, respectively, though this should lead to confusion with metaphysical conceptions of cause and effect. Note: Reasons can be Direct or Indirect. See p. 138

Obviousness	Randomness
Refers to events that always and predictably happen due to factors of internal material structure.	Events caused by external impacts and interactions which are thus not completely predictable.

Obvious may be referred to as Necessary, while Randomness may be referred to as Accidental. See p. 145.

Content	Form
What something is made of.	The shape that contains content.

Ways in which Content and Form are discussed and perceived can can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered. See p. 145.

Essence	Phenomena
Features that make something develop a certain way.	The expression of the essence in certain conditions.

See p. 156.

Possibility	Reality
What may happen, or might exist, in the future, if certain developments take place.	What is happening, or what exists, at the present moment.

See p. 160.

Appendix B: the Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism

The Principle of General Relationships This principle states that:

“Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation.”

From this Principle, we find the characteristics of Diversity in Unity and Unity in Diversity; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist — unified — within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.

The Characteristic of Diversity in Unity is derived from the fact that there exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.

The Characteristic of Unity in Diversity is derived from the fact that when we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.

The Principle of Development This principle states that:

“Development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.”

The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Development stems from the origin of motion. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.

The Characteristic of Generality of Development stems from the fact that development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every process and stage of these things and phenomena.

The Characteristic of Diversity of Development stems from the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea.

Appendix C: the Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics

The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality

The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought. The law was formulated by Friedrich Engels in Dialectics of Nature, and states that:

“In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion.” See more on p. 163.

The Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites

The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the essence of dialectics. It states, as formulated by V. I. Lenin in Summary of Dialectics:

“The fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.” See more on p. 175.

The Law of Negation of Negation

The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through a cyclical form of development through what is termed “negation of negation.” Formulated by Friedrich Engels in Anti-Dühring, it states:

“The true, natural, historical, and dialectical negation is (formally) the moving source of all development--the division into opposites, their struggle and resolution, and what is more, on the basis of experience gained, the original point is achieved again (partly in history, fully in thought), but at a higher stage.” See more on p. 185.

Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge

Consciousness refers to the self-aware, productive, and creative motion and activity of the human brain. Practical activity is the most direct basis, motive, and purpose of consciousness, and is the criterion for testing truth. See: The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness, p. 216.

Knowledge is the content of consciousness. Knowledge includes data about the world, such as ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived by direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.

Consciousness and Knowledge have a dialectical relationship with one another: knowledge is developed within consciousness, and consciousness develops to higher levels as knowledge is accumulated and tested against reality (which also develops knowledge itself). In this manner, consciousness and knowledge develop into higher forms over time in individual consciousness and human society. Thus, consciousness and knowledge can be considered as existing in various forms which represent stages of development in dialectical processes of development.

Note that the development processes of knowledge and consciousness are dialectical in nature, not linear. For example, after empirical consciousness develops into theoretical consciousness, theoretical consciousness will then impact empirical consciousness, developing empirical consciousness into a higher stage of development. This is true for all development processes related to empirical and theoretical consciousness. These development processes and forms of consciousness and knowledge are explained in more detail in Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, starting on page 204.

Forms of Consciousness

Consciousness is a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor). The development of consciousness can be considered on the criteria of concrete/abstract and of passive/active. For more information, see Annotation 216, p. 210.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-99.png

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-100.png

The Cognitive Process

The Cognitive Process is a model developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin which represents the dialectical path of consciousness to truth. For more information, see Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth on page 219.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-101.png

Forms of Knowledge

For more information see Annotation 218, p. 214.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-102.png

Appendix E: Properties of Truth

Truth is the alignment of consciousness with objective reality. All truths are objective, relative, absolute, and concrete. Truths also have characteristics of concreteness and abstractness.

Objectivity: The content of truth is external to the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning but is objective in nature.

Absoluteness: Absolute truth^[116] is derived from the complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also relative.

Relativity: Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment — in some (but not all) aspects — between consciousness and the material world.

Dialectical Relationship Between Absolute and Relative Truth: Relative truth and absolute truth do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.

Concreteness: The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is concreteness.

Abstractness: Abstract knowledge is knowledge which is not attached (or less attached) to specific times, places, relations, etc. Some degree of abstraction is necessary to develop theoretical understanding of general laws and the nature of objective reality, but care should be taken knowledge does not become completely detached from specific historical conditions, as this will result in pure abstraction. Knowledge which is purely abstract will not align with reality, and such knowledge cannot be considered truth.

Appendix F: Common Deviations From Dialectical Materialism

Throughout the history of the development of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, there have been many philosophical and methodological deviations which have derived from incorrect analysis, interpretation, and a failure to properly link theory and practice. Below are descriptions of some of the more common deviations which the reader should be aware of.

Bureaucracy: An expression of dogmatism which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory.

Conservativism: A mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas.

Dogmatism: A breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness. Usually the result of: failure to seek commonalities; considering theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice; ignoring practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth.

Eclecticism: An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. Empiricism: A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects.

Idealism: A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that relying on human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. Various forms of idealism exist, broadly broken down into subjective idealism, which denies the existence of an external objective world, and objective idealism, which accepts that an external objective world exists, but denies that knowledge can be reliably gained about it through sense perception.

Opportunism: A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.

Revisionism: A failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.

Rigidity: An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.

Skepticism: The belief truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable. Solipsism: A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World: “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”

Sophistry: The use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.

Subjectivism: The centering of one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world.

Utilitarianism: An ethical philosophical theory founded by Jeremy Bentham which seeks to maximize “utility,” which is considered to be a metaphysical property embodying “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness.” Karl Marx dismissed utilitarianism as overly abstract, in that it reduces all social relationships to the single characteristic of “utility.” He also viewed utilitarianism as metaphysically static and tied to the status quo of current society, since utilitarianism does not address class dynamics and views all relations in the current status quo of society, making utilitarianism an essentially conservative theory. Marx also pointed out that Utilitarianism essentially views individuals as private individuals, not as social individuals, and seeks to work out solutions to the practical problems of human society through reasoning alone without examining material conditions and processes, and without taking into consideration practice and development, writing:

“The whole criticism of the existing world by the utility theory was... restricted within a narrow range. Remaining within the confines of bourgeois conditions, it could criticise only those relations which had been handed down from a past epoch and were an obstacle to the development of the bourgeoisie... the economic content gradually turned the utility theory into a mere apologia for the existing state of affairs, an attempt to prove that under existing conditions the mutual relations of people today are the most advantageous and generally useful.”

[Back Matter]

Glossary & Index

Absolute Truth	Absolute Truth can refer to: 1. The recognition that objective and accurate truth can be drawn from sense perception of the material world along with labor and practice activities in the material world. The opposite of this position is Relativism. See p. 56, 94, 194, 228–229, 232–234. 2. Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth: that there will eventually be some end point of to the process of rational consciousness at which point humanity will arrive at a final stage of knowledge and consciousness. See p. 228. See also: Relative Truth, Relativism, Stagnation, Truth.
Absolutization	To hold a belief or supposition as always true in all situations and without exception. See p. 49.
Abstract Labor	The abstract conception of expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without taking into account the value of labor output. When the value of labor output is taken into consideration, it is referred to as concrete labor. See p. 15, 17.
Adam Smith	(1723–1790) British logic professor, moral philosophy professor, and economist. Along with David Ricardo, Adam Smith was one of the founders of political economy, which Marx both drew from and critiqued in his analysis and critique of capitalism. See p. 14, 155.
Ahistoric Perspective	A perspective which considers aspects of human society without due consideration of historical processes of development. For example, Adam Smith and David Ricardo viewed political economy ahistorically, viewing capitalism as a static, universal, and eternal product of natural law rather than seeing capitalism as a product of historical processes of development which would change and develop over time. See p. 116.
Base	Also known as: Economic Base; Economic Basis. The material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment to support our ways of living. In the dialectical relationship between base and superstructure, the base refers to the relationship which humans have with the means of production, including the ownership of the means of production and the organization of labor. See p. 23. See also: Superstructure.
Biological Motion	One of the five basic forms of motion described by Engels in Dialectics of Nature. Biological motion refers to changes and development within living objects and their genetic structure. See p. 61.
Biological Reflection	A complex form of reflection found within organic subjects in the natural world and expressed by excitation, induction, and reflexes. See p. 65.
Bourgeoisie	The owners of the means of production and the ruling class under capitalism; also known as the capitalist class. See p. 3, 23, 30, 41, 50, 63, 96. See also: Proletariat, Petty Bourgeoisie.
Bureaucracy	An expression of dogmatism which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. See p. 217–218. C→→M→→C C = A Commodity M = The Money Commodity The mode of circulation described by Marx as occurring under pre-capitalist economies of simple exchange, in which the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase. See also: M→C→M’ Marx called this mode of circulation “simple commodity production.” See p. 16.
Capitalism	The current stage of human political economy, defined by private ownership of the means of production. Referenced throughout.
Capitalist Class	See: Bourgeoisie
Capitalist Commodity Production	The capitalist mode of production which utilizes the M→C→M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. Capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor. See p. 15.
Category	The most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another. See p. 126.
Category Pair	A pair of philosophical categories within materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics tend to focus on universal category pairs which can be used to examine the characteristics, relations, and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Examples of category pairs include: private and common; content and form; reason and result; essence and phenomena. See p. 127.
Characteristics	The features and attributes that exist internally — within — a given thing, phenomena, or idea. See p. 115.
Chemical Motion	Changes of organic and inorganic substances in processes of combination and separation. See p. 61.
Chemical Reflection	The reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, position, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). See p. 65–66.
Circulation	The way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another. See p. 16.
Commodity	In Marxist political economy, commodities include anything which can be bought and sold, with both a use value (i.e. it satisfies a need of any kind) and a value-form (aka. ‘Exchange value’ and understood as the average socially necessary labour time needed to produce this object). Under capitalism, more and more human activity and production is ‘commodified’ (mediated through market exchange). See p. 15, 87, 133.
Common	See: Private and Common
Common Laws	Laws (of nature and/or human society) that are applicable to a broader range of subjects than private laws, and which impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc. See p. 162.
Comprehensive Viewpoint	A viewpoint which seeks to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon, and which considers external mutual interactions with with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands a comprehensive basis in order to fully and properly understand things and phenomena in order to effectively solve problems in real life and develop humanity towards communism. See p. 115, 172, 235.
Conception	A relatively complete reflection within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. See p. 221–22.
Concrete Labor	The production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor. When labor is considered without the consideration of output value, it is referred to as abstract labor. See p. 15, 17.
Conditioned Reflex	Conditioned reflexes are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals associate previously unrelated neural stimuli with a particular reaction. See p. 66, 68.
Consciousness	The dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; the subjective image of the objective world which is produced by the human brain. See p. 68–69, 70.
Content	See: Content and Form.
Content and Form (Category Pair)	Content is the philosophical category which refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from. The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas. Content and Form have a dialectical relationship with one another, in which content determines form and form impacts back on content. See p. 115, 147155, 166.
Contradiction	A contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another, leading to mutual development. See p. 123, 159, 163, 169, 175–191.
Consciousness	The self-aware, productive, creative motion and activity of the human brain. See p. 216, 249.
Conservativism	Also referred to as Prejudice; a mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 125, 233.
David Hume	(1711 — 1776) Scottish philosopher who developed radical skepticism as a philosophy of empiricist rejection of human knowledge. See p. 11, 29, 56, 7273.
David Ricardo	(1772 — 1823) British economist who, along with Adam Smith, was one of the key figures in the development of Political Economy which was a basis for much of the work of Marx and Engels. See p. 14, 18, 155.
Deductive Inference	Logical inference which extrapolates from the general to the specific. See p. 224.
Definition	The first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. See p. 224.
Development	The change and motion of things, phenomena, and ideas with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced; and/or from a less complete to a more complete level. See p. 38, 45–46, 52, 55, 61, 65, 76–96, 105–107, 114118, 119–127, 131–132, 138–140, 143, 147, 154, 155–165, 169–175, 177–181, 183–207, 210, 213, 216–223, 225–229, 233, 235–237.
Development Viewpoint	A viewpoint which considers that, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind.
Dialectic; Dialectical; Dialectics	In Marxism-Leninism, the term dialectic (adjective: dialectical) refers to regular and mutual relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought. “Dialectics” refers to a dialectical system. See p. 3, 9–11, 47.
Dialectical Materialism	A universal philosophical and methodological system which forms the theoretical core of a scientific worldview. Dialectical Materialism was first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with the express goal of achieving communism. Dialectical Materialism has since been defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many others. See: p. 3, 6, 1011, 19–21, 27–30, 33, 38, 45–47, 48–97, 101, 104, 204, 209, 226, 228, 230–232, 237.
Dialectical Negation	A stage of development in which a new subject arises from a contradiction between two previous subjects; dialectical negation is never an endpoint of development, as every dialectical negation creates conditions for further development and negation. See p. 123, 175–176, 183, 185–195, 197–202, 227.
Dialectical Relationship	A relationship in which two things, phenomena, or ideas mutually impact one another, leading to development and negation. See p. 47, 51, 62.
(Characteristic of) Diversity	The characteristic which all things, phenomena, and ideas share, dictating that no two subjects (and no two relationships between any two subjects) are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations. See p. 114–115, 125.
Diversity in Unity	The universal principle which states that even though all relationships are diverse and different from one another, they also exist in unity, because all relationships share a foundation in the material world. See p. 109–110, 125, 130.
Dogmatism	An inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence. See p. 136–137, 174, 217–218, 233.
Duality of Labor	The Marxist economic concept which recognizes labor as having two intrinsic and inseparable aspects: abstract labor and concrete labor. See p. 15.
Dynamic and Creative Reflection	The most advanced form of reflection, which only occurs in matter that has the highest (known) level of structural complexity, such as the human brain. See p. 68–69, 79.
Eclecticism	An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. See p. 32–33, 101, 118, 192, 194.
Economic Base	See: Base
Economism	Economism is a style of political activism, typified by the ideas of German political theorist Eduard Bernstein, which stresses directing the struggle towards short-term political/economic goals (such as higher wages for workers) at the expense of the larger socialist revolutionary project. See p. 30.
Eduard Bernstein	(1850 — 1932) German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories. See p. 30, 174.
Emotional Consciousness	The lower stage of the cognitive process. In this stage of cognitive development, humans, through practical activities, use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. See p. 219224.
Empirical Consciousness	Empirical consciousness is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical Consciousness results in Empirical Knowledge. See p. 210–214.
Empirical Knowledge	Knowledge which results from processes of empirical consciousness and which is characterised by rich and detailed, but still incomplete, understanding of phenomena. It can be utilized for practical ends, but still falls short of full theoretical analysis and comprehension. See p. 212–214.
Empiricism	A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects. See p. 9–12, 29, 94, 96–97, 100, 218.
Empirio-criticism	A more developed form of empiricism, proposed by Ernst Mach, which holds that sense data and experience are the sole sources of knowledge and that no concrete knowledge of the external material world can ever be obtained due to the limitations of human senses. See p. 26–29, 32, 54, 55–57, 68.
Epistemology	The theoretical study of knowledge. It primarily deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what we know?” See p. 45, 98, 204.
Ernst Mach	(1838 — 1916) Austrian physicist who attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German philosopher Richard Avenarius’ philosophical system of Empirio-Criticism. See p. 27–29, 32, 52, 72, 193.
Equilibrium	A state of motion in which one or more subjects are not undergoing changes in position, form, and/or structure. Equilibrium is only ever a temporary stasis of development which will eventually yield to motion, development, and/or negation. See p. 62–63, 122–123, 181.
Essence	See: Essence and Phenomena
Essence and Phenomena (Category Pair)	The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things and ideas. The Phenomena category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions. Essence always determines which phenomena appear, but phenomena do not always accurately reflect essence in human perception; in other words, it is possible to misinterpret phenomena, leading to a misunderstanding of essence, or to mistake phenomena for essence. See p. 156–160.
Exchange Value	A quantity relationship which describes the ratios of exchangeability between different commodities, with Marx’s famous example of 20 yards of linen being equivalent in exchange value to one coat. Through analysis Marx shows that in reality the thing being compared is the amount of socially necessary labour required to make the commodities being compared. See p. 15, 18.
Excitation	Reactions of simple plant and animal life-forms which occur when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes in their habitat. See p. 66, 68.
External Contradictions	See: Internal and External Contradictions.
False consciousness	Forms of consciousness (ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc.) which are incorrect and misaligned from reality. Equated with ‘ideology’ by Engels, it refers to an idealistic, dogmatic perspective which will inevitably result in errors of analysis and therefore practice. See p. 231–233, 237.
First International	Also known as the International Workingmen’s Association; was founded in London and lasted from 1864–1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers. See p. 35
(Basic) Forms of Motion	Engels broke motion down into five basic forms which are dialectically linked; the different forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion and development. See p. 61–62.
Form	See: Content and Form.
Form of existence of matter	The ways in which we perceive the existence of matter in our universe; specifically, matter in our universe has the form of existing in space and time. See p. 59.
Form of Value	See: Value-Form
Forward Tendency of Motion	The tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development. See p. 197.
Friedrich Engels	(1820–1895) a German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, & co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx. Referenced throughout.
Fundamental and Non-Fundamental Contradictions	A fundamental contradiction defines the essence of a relationship. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A nonfundamental contradiction can impact a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. See p. 178–179.
(Characteristic of) Generality	A universal characteristic which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact and mutually transform one another. See p. 108–109, 111, 114, 124125.
General Relationship	Relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, within things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, between things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 106–110, 114.
Generality (of relationships)	Relationships can exist with across a spectrum of generality; this spectrum ranges from the least general relationships (unique relationships — which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas) to the most general relationships (universal relationships — which occur between or within all things/phenomena/ideas). See p. 109.
George Berkeley	(1685 — 1753) An Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “Esse est percipi” — “To be is to be perceived.” See p. 11, 27, 29.
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel	(1770 — 1831) German philosophy professor & objective idealistic philosopher; developed the system of idealist dialectics which Marx and Engels used as a basis for developing materialist dialectics. See p. 8–11, 29, 69–71, 97, 98, 100–105, 132, 157, 165, 182, 192, 193–194, 209, 228.
Historical Materialism	The application of materialist dialectics and dialectical materialism to the study of human history. See p. 21–23, 27, 36, 38, 45, 80.
Historical Viewpoint	A viewpoint which demands that subjects be considered in their current stage of motion and development, while also taking into consideration the development and transformation of the subject over time. See p. 116–118, 125–126, 143, 185, 234.
Idealism	A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. See p. 8–12, 26–29, 48–51, 53, 56–58, 69–70, 96, 101–102, 104, 157, 174, 209, 218, 228.
Immanuel Kant	(1724 — 1804) German philosopher who developed a system of idealist dialectics which were later completed by Hegel and whose metaphysical philosophies of epistemology and rationalism served as the basis for later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume. See p. 20, 29, 56, 72–74, 100–102, 205.
Induction	The reaction of animals with simple nervous systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms. See p. 66, 68.
Inductive Inference	Logical inference which extrapolates from specific observations to general conclusions. See p. 223–224.
Intelligibility	The human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.
Internal Contradictions	See: Internal and External Contradictions.
Internal and External Contradictions	Internal contradictions are contradictions which exist within the internal relations of a subject, while external contradictions exist between two or more subjects as external relations. See p. 178–179.
Judgment	The phase of rational consciousness which arises from the definition of the subject — the linking of concepts and properties together — which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject. See p. 223.
Karl Marx	(1818–1883) German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, and leader of the international working class. Referenced throughout.
Knowledge	The content of consciousness; data about the world, such as: ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived through direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.
Labor Value	The amount of value which workers produce through labor. See p. 14, 17–18, 23.
Law of Negation of Negation	A universal law of materialist dialectics which states that the fundamental and universal tendency of motion and development occurs through a cycle of dialectical negation, wherein each and every negation is, in turn, negated once more. See p. 163, 185, 195, 198, 200, 201, 202, 227.
Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality	The universal law of dialectical materialism which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought, which states that qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas, and, vice versa, quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163–165, 172–173, 227.
Law of Unification Contradiction Between Opposites	and The universal law of dialectical materialism which states that the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradictions which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163, 175, 181.
Law of Development of Capitalism	Also known as Theory of Accumulation and Theory of Surplus Value. The dynamic through which the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. See p. 18.
Laws	In dialectical materialism, laws are the regular, common, obvious, natural, objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena. See p. 162.
Laws of Nature	Laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body (and are never products of human conscious activities). Such law includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. See p. 162, 213.
Laws of Society	Laws of human activity in social relations; such laws are unable to manifest beyond the conscious activities of humans, but they are still objective. See p. 162–163.
Laws of Human Thought	Laws which govern the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness. See p. 163.
Life-Process	Processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life. See p. 69–72, 79, 88.
Ludwig Feuerbach	(1804 — 1872) German philosophy professor, materialist philosopher; Marx and Engels drew many of their ideas from the works of Feuerbach (whom they also criticized). See p. 8, 11–13, 21, 55, 74, 80, 114, 205, 237.
M→→C→→M’	The mode of circulation described by Marx as existing under capitalism, in which capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling those commodities for more money than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining more money. See p. 16. See also: C→M→C
Machism	See: Empirio-Criticism.
Manifestation	How a given thing, phenomenon, or idea is expressed externally in the material world. See p. 115.
Marxism-Leninism	A system of scientific opinions and theories focused on liberating the working class from capitalism and achieving a stateless, classless, communist society. The core ideas of this system were first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then defended and further developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. See. p. 1.
Material Conditions	The material external environment in which humans live, including the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See p. 6, 22, 40–42, 70–72, 80–81, 87, 92–95, 116–118, 161, 174, 179, 181, 206–207, 210, 229.
Material Production Activity	Material production activity is the first and most basic form of praxis. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development. See p. 206–208.
Materialism	A philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sense experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought solely through reasoning and human consciousness. See p. 10–13, 48.
Materialist Dialectics	A scientific system of philosophy concerned with motion, development, and common relationships, and with the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thought. See p. 10, 21, 45–47, 98202, 227, 237.
Matter	A philosophical category denoting things and phenomena, existing in objective external reality, which human beings access through our sense perceptions. See p. 26, 27, 32, 48, 51–52, 53–69, 72, 88–95, 97, 103, 164–165.
Means of Production	Physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including: machinery, factory buildings, tools, equipment, and anything else used in producing goods and services. See p. 2–3, 7, 14–16.
Mechanical Motion	Changes in positions of objects in space. See p. 61.
Mechanical Philosophy	A scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17^th century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices, resulting in a belief that all things — including living organisms — were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices.
Mental Reflection	Reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms through learning. See p. 65, 68, 224.
Metaphysical Materialism	Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by the metaphysical, mechanical thinking of mechanical philosophy, which was a scientific and philosophical movement which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes.
Metaphysics	A branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Generally speaking, metaphysics presents nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. See p. 52.
Methodology	A system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with philosophical methodology being the most general scope of methodology. See p. 44.
Mode	The way or manner in which something occurs or exists. See p. 19–20.
Mode of Existence of Matter	Refers to how matter exists in our universe; specifically, matter exists in our motion in a mode of motion. See p. 59.
Motion	Also known as “change;” motion/change occurs as a result of the mutual impacts which occur between two things, phenomena, or ideas in relation with one another. See p. 23, 47, 59–63. 74, 106–107, 122–127, 145, 163–165, 169-173-186, 197, 201–202.
Motion in Equilibrium	Motion in equilibrium is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things. Motion in Equlibrium is only ever temporary in nature; all motion will eventually lead to changes in position, form, and/or structure. See p. 62.
Narodnik	Agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s in the Russian Empire, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. See p. 29–30.
Natural law	See: Laws of Nature.
Natural Science	Science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc. See p. 13, 19, 26, 103.
Negation	The development process through which two contradicting objects mutually develop one another until one is overtaken by the other. In dialectical materialism, negation takes the form of dialectical negation. See p. 123, 175176, 183, 185–202.
New Economic Policy	Also known as the NEP; this early Soviet policy was devised as Vladimir Illyich Lenin to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-classdominated state. See p. 33–34.
Objective Dialectics	The dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all of the motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time. See p. 98, 102–103, 182.
Objective Existence	Existence which manifests outside of and independently of human consciousness, whether humans can perceive it or not. See p. 50, 58, 228.
Objective Idealism	A form of idealism which asserts that the ideal and consciousness are the primary existence, while also positing that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. See p. 50.
Objectiveness	An abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject, all other subjects exist as external objects. See p. 111–114, 124.
Obviousness	See: Obviousness and Randomness
Obviousness and Randomness (Category Pair)	The philosophical category of Obviousness refers to events that occur because of the essential internal aspects of a subject which become reasons for certain results in certain conditions: the obvious has to happen in a certain way, it can’t happen any other way. The Randomness category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A random outcome may occur or it may not occur, and may occur in many different ways. Obviousness and Randomness have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 144–146.
Opportunism	A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, and/or no coherent viewpoint, focusing on whatever actions or decisions might be beneficial for the opportunist in the short term. See p. 174.
Opposites	Such aspects, properties and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. See p. 61, 175–179, 181, 184, 190, 227.
Ordinary Consciousness	Perception that is formed passively, stemming from the daily activities of humans. See p. 210–216.
Period of Motion	Development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves. See p. 170.
Perspective	See: Viewpoint.
Petty Bourgeoisie	Semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Also called the petite bourgeoisie. See p. 3–6.
Petty Commodity Production	See: Simple Commodity Production.
Phenomena	Anything that is observable by the human senses. See p. 156. See also: Essence and Phenomena.
Physical Motion	Motion of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity, etc., in time and space. See p. 61.
Physical Reflection	Reflection which occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the objects are transferred to one other. See p. 67–68.
Point of View	See: Viewpoint.
Populism	The political philosophy of the Narodnik movement; this political philosophy was focused on bringing about an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. Populism overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism. See p. 30.
Positivism	The belief that we can test scientific knowledge through scientific methods, and through logic, math, etc.; positivism tends to overlap significantly with empiricism in theory and practice. See p. 32, 209.
Possibility	See: Possibility and Reality.
Possibility and Reality (Category Pair)	The philosophical category of Possibility refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions. The philosophical category of Reality refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought. See p. 160–162.
Practice	See: Praxis.
Pragmatism	Pragmatism refers to a form of subjectivism in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. See p. 218.
Praxis	Conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics. Used interchangeably with the word “practice” in this text. See p. 205–206, 235.
Prejudice	See: Conservatism.
Primary and Secondary Contradictions	In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the primary contradiction. Secondary contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative, and it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation being analyzed. See p. 178–179.
Primary Existence	Existence which precedes and determines other existences; materialists believe that the external material world is the primary existence which determines the ideal, while idealists believe that human consciousness (“the ideal”) is the primary existence from which truth is ultimately derived. See p. 50–51.
Primitive Materialism	An early form of materialism which recognizes that matter is the primary existence, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects — the origin — of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. This was later developed into Metaphysical Materialism and, later, Dialectical Materialism. See p. 52.
Principle of General Relationships	A principle of dialectical materialism which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships. See p. 106–107, 110, 114.
Private	See: Private and Common
Private and Common (Category Pair)	The Private philosophical category encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the Common philosophical category defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena. Private and Common are relative in nature and have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 128–138.
Private Laws	Laws which apply only to a specific range of things and phenomena, i.e.: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc. See p. 162.
Production Force	The combination of the means of production and workers within human society. See p. 6, 23, 36.
Proletariat	The people who provide labor under capitalism; the proletariat do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who do own means of production; also called the Working Class. See also: Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie. See p. 1–8, 22–23, 25–26, 29–31, 33–35, 40–41, 63, 231.
Quality	The unity of component parts, taken together, which defines a subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. See p. 119–121.
Quality Shift	A change in quality which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, occurring when quantity change meets a certain perceived threshold. See p. 124, 153, 164, 168–174.
Quantity	The total amount of component parts that compose a subject. See p. 119–121.
Quantity range	The range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality related to any given thing, phenomenon, or idea. See p. 168–171.
Quintessence	Original Vietnamese word: tinh hoa. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word quintessence, it has an exclusively positive connotation. See p. 8, 21, 43, 45, 52.
Randomness	See: Obviousness and Randomness.
Rational Consciousness	The higher stage of the cognitive process, which includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the essence of the perceived subject. See p. 219–225.
Reason	See: Reason and Result
Reality	See: Possibility and Reality.
Reason and Result (Category Pair)	The Reason philosophical category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes. The Result philosophical category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or externally between different things, phenomena, or ideas. Not to be confused with the metaphysical concept of “cause and effect,” which attributes a single cause to any given effect. See p. 138–144.
Reasoning	The final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. See p. 223–225, 228–229.
Reflection	The re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. See p. 64–75, 79–80, 90–92, 103, 165, 208–211, 214–215, 219–224, 228, 232, 237.
Relative and Absolute	“Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence: That which is absolute exists independently and with permanence. That which is relative is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist. See p. 56, 233. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative Truth, Relativism, Truth.
Relative Truth	Truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects; knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. See p. 230, 232. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relativism, Truth.
Relativism	A position that all truth is relative and that nothing can ever be absolutely, objectively known; that only Relative Truth can be found in our existence. See p. 56–58, 233–234. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relative Truth, Truth.
René Descartes	(1596 — 1650) French metaphysical philosopher who developed early methods of scientific inquiry. See p. 20, 53.
Result	See: Reason and Result.
Richard Avenarius	(1843 — 1896) German-Swiss philosopher who developed a system of subjective idealism known as “Empirio-Criticism.” See p. 27–29.
Rigidity	An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness. See p. 217–218.
Robert Owen	(1771 — 1858) Wealthy Welsh textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Hampshire, Indiana, in the USA by purchasing the town of New Harmony in 1825. Owen’s vision failed after two years, though many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19^th century were inspired by Owen to try similar plans, which also failed.
Scientific	An adjective which describes methodologies, approaches, and practices of gaining knowledge and insight which are methodological and/or systematic in nature. See p. 1–2.
Scientific Consciousness	Conscious activities which actively gather information from the methodological and/or systematic observations of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. Scientific consciousness is considered indirect because it takes place outside of the course of ordinary daily activities. See p. 58, 210, 212, 215–216.
Scientific	Experimental Human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society
Activity	in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution. See p. 206–208.
Scientific Materialist Viewpoint	A perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world. See p. 105.
Scientific Socialism	A body of theory and knowledge (which must be constantly tested against reality) focused on the practical pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat. See p. 1–2, 21, 37–39.
Scientific Worldview	A worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge that generally and correctly reflects the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world. See p. 3839, 44–45, 48.
Second International	Founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International; it fell apart in 1916 because members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I. See p. 35, 174.
Self-motion	In the original Vietnamese, the word “tự vận động.” Literally meaning: “it moves itself.” See p. 59–60, 124.
Sensation	The subjective reflection of the objective world in human consciousness as perceived through human senses. See p. 27, 56–58, 68–69, 72, 85, 221–222.
Sensuous Human Activity; Sensuous Activity	A description of human activity developed by Marx which acknowledges that all human activity is simultaneously active in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, as well as passive in the sense in that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world. See p. 13.
Simple Commodity Production	What Marx called the “C→M→C” mode of circulation. See p. 16–18.
Simple Exchange	When individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. See p. 16–17.
Social Being	The material existence of human society, as opposed to social consciousness. See also: Base. See p. 24, 54–55.
Social Consciousness	The collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society, as opposed to social being. See p. 22, 24, 32, 54–55, 80. See also: Superstructure.
Social Motion	Changes in the economy, politics, culture, and social life of human beings. See p. 61–62.
Socialization	The idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc. See p. 6, 36.
Socialized Production Force	A production force which has been socialized — that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. See p. 6.
Socio-Political Activity	Praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development. See p. 206–208.
Solipsism	A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. See p. 218.
Sophistry	The use of misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s’ dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. See p. 32–33, 56, 118, 182, 194.
Stage of Development	The current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into. See p. 24, 39, 125, 173–174, 179, 190, 196–197, 200, 212, 221.
Stagnation	An inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability. See p. 125, 218, 233. See also: Rigidity.
Struggle of Opposites	The tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. See p. 61, 181, 184.
Subjective Factors	Factors which, from the perspective of a given subject, that same subject is capable of impacting. See p. 162–163, 175, 202.
Subjective Dialectics; Dialectical Thought	A system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics. See: p. 98–99, 103.
Subjective Idealism	Subjective idealism asserts that consciousness is the primary existence and that truth can be obtained only or primarily through conscious activity and reasoning. Subjective idealism asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions, with some forms of subjective idealism even explicitly denying the objective existence of material reality altogether. See also: Empirio-Criticism, Objective Idealism. See p. 26–27, 50.
Subjectivism	A philosophical position in which one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality. See p. 56, 182, 217–218, 233–234.
Suitability	The applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. See p. 154.
Superstructure	The ideal (non-material) components of human society, including: media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations. See p. 23. See also: Base.
Surplus Value	The extra amount of value a capitalist is able to secure by exploiting wagelabourers (by paying workers less than the full value of their labour). Workers will spend part of their workday reproducing their own labourpower (through earning enough to eat, secure shelter and other cultural needs) and the rest of the time will be spent producing surplus value which is then appropriated by the capitalist as profit. See p. 18, 22–23, 39.
Symbolization	The representation of an objective thing or phenomenon in human consciousness which has been reflected by sensation and conception. See p. 221–222.
Systematic Structure	A structure which includes within itself a system of component parts and relationships. See p. 114.
Theoretical Consciousness	The indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted. See p. 210–214, 217–218.
Theoretical Knowledge	Knowledge which is abstract and generalized, resulting from theoretical conscious activities which include repeated and varied observations. See p. 214, 217.
Theory	An idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. See p. 235.
Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value	See: Law of Development of Capitalism.
Thing-in-Itself	The actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness, as it exists outside of our consciousness. See p. 72–74, 101, 158.
Third International	Also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short); founded in Moscow in 1919, its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II. See p. 35.
Three Component Parts	The three essential elements of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, first identified of Marxism-Leninism by Lenin in The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism. 1. The Philosophy of Marxism. 2. The Political Economy of Marxism. 3. Scientific Socialism.See p. 21, 32, 34, 38.
Threshold	The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs. Truth is primarily discovered through labor and practice in the physical world. See p. 120, 168–169, 171, 173.
Truth	A correct and accurate conscious reflection of objective reality. See p. 9–10, 49, 56, 70, 75, 94–96, 194, 204, 209, 215–219, 225–237. See also: Labor, Practice.
Unconditioned Reflex	Reactions which are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within an organism, characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. See p. 66, 68.
Unilateral Consideration	The consideration of a subject from one side only. See p. 49.
Unintelligibility	A philosophical position which denies the human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.
Unique Relationship	The least general form of relationship, which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas. See p. 109, 130.
Unity in Diversity	A concept in materialist dialectics which holds that within universal relationships exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity. See p. 42, 110–111, 114, 125, 130.
Universal Law of Consciousness	A universal law which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels. See p. 219.
Universal Laws	Laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws. See p. 15, 162–163, 227.
Universal Relationship	The most general kind of relationship; relationships that exist between and within every thing and all phenomena; along with development, universal relationships are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. See p. 80, 108, 109, 111, 165.
Use Value	A concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics which refers to tangible features of a commodity (a tradable object) that can fulfill some human requirement or desire, or which serve a useful purpose. See p. 15–18, 95.
Utopianism	1. A political and philosophical movement which held the belief that “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity could be created through education, science, technology, and communal living. See p. 18. 2. The idealist philosophical concept which mistakenly asserts that the ideal can determine the material, and that ideal forms of society can be brought about without regard for material conditions and development processes. See p. 8, 17–18, 30, 94.
Value-Form	Also known as “form of value;” the social form of a commodity. Under capitalism, through the exchange of qualitatively different commodities, the money form of value is established as the general equivalent which can functionally be exchanged for all other values; money is therefore the most universal value-form under capitalism. See p. 15, 17, 155.
Viewpoint	Also known as point of view or perspective; the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which phenomena and problems are considered. See p. 12, 20–21, 23, 25, 26, 30, 32–33, 38–39, 5559, 62, 64, 89, 93–94, 105, 111, 114–120, 122, 125–126, 130, 143, 147, 150, 172, 185–188, 195, 200–201, 233–235. See also: Comprehensive Viewpoint, Historical Viewpoint.
Viewpoint Crisis	A situation in which a specific viewpoint can’t be settled on, found, or agreed upon. See p. 26, 32–33.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin	(1870 -1924) A Russian theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Bolsheviks, the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class. Referenced throughout.
Working Class	See: Proletariat
Worldview	The whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. See p. 1, 11, 37–39, 44–45, 48, 52, 96, 138, 201, 208–209, 218, 234. See also: Scientific Worldview.

File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-2.png

For centuries, the banyan tree has been the symbol of communal life in Vietnam.

Traditionally, the entrance to a village is graced by a large and ancient banyan tree. It is in the shade of these trees that villagers gather to socialize, draw water from wells, and make collective decisions together. The drooping accessory trunks represent the longevity of villagers — and of the village itself — while the arching canopy represents the safety and protection of the village. The shape of the banyan tree is seen in the full moon, which casts peaceful light across the Earth to guide travelers in the dark of night.

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File:T-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-103.png

Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, 1818–1883 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, leader of the international working class.
Jump up ↑ Friedrich Engels, 1820–1895 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx.
Jump up ↑ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870–1924 (Russian): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class.
Jump up ↑ Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See Annotation 79, p. 81.
Jump up ↑ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 — 1831 (German): Philosophy professor, an objective idealistic philosopher — representative of German classical philosophy.
Jump up ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804 — 1872 (German): Philosophy professor, materialist philosopher.
Jump up ↑ The Holy Family is a book co-written by Marx and Engels which critiqued the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach.
Jump up ↑ Adam Smith, 1723 — 1790 (British): Logic professor, moral philosophy professor, economist.
Jump up ↑ David Ricardo, 1772 — 1823 (British): Economist.
Jump up ↑ Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, 1760 — 1825 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.
Jump up ↑ Charles Fourier, 1772 — 1837 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.
Jump up ↑ Robert Owen, 1771 — 1858 (British): Utopianist activist, owner of a cotton factory.
Jump up ↑ The Law of Development of Capitalism referenced here is the Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value, which holds that the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. Over time, this deepens the contradictions of capitalism. This concept is related to the M→C→M mode of circulation, discussed in Annotation 14, p. 16, and is discussed in detail in Part 3 of the book this text is drawn from (Political Economy) which we hope to translate in the future.
Jump up ↑ Das Kapital: Karl Marx’s most important contribution to political economy. It is composed of four volumes. It is the work of Marx’s whole career and an important part of Engels’ career, as well. Marx started writing Das Kapital in the 1840s and continued writing until he died (1883). Das Kapital I was published in 1867. After Marx’s death, Engels edited and published the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in 1894. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the USSR edited and published Das Kapital IV, also known as Theories of Surplus-Value, in the 1950s, long after the death of Marx and Engels.
Jump up ↑ Populist faction: A faction within the Russian revolution which upheld an idealist capitalist ideology with many representatives such as Mikhailovsky, Bakunin, and Plekhanov. Populists failed to recognise the important roles of the people, of the farmers and workers alliance, and of the proletariat. Instead, they completely centered the role of the individual in society. They considered the rural communes as the nucleus of “socialism.” They saw farmers under the leadership of intellectuals as the main force of the revolution. The populists advocated individual terrorism as the primary method of revolutionary struggle.
Jump up ↑ Delegate Document of the 11^th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Jump up ↑ Delegate document of the 9^th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Jump up ↑ Delegate document of the 10^th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 6, p. 8.
Jump up ↑ The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.
Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
Jump up ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.
Jump up ↑ According to the Samkhya school, Pradhana is the original form of matter in an unmanifested,indifferentiated state; Prakriti is manifested matter, differentiated in form, which contains potential for motion.
Jump up ↑ Thales, ~642 — ~547 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, politician.
Jump up ↑ Anaximene, ~585 — ~525 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher.
Jump up ↑ Heraclitus, ~540 — ~480 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, founder of ancient dialectics.
Jump up ↑ Democritus, ~460 — ~370 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, naturalist, a founder of atom theory.
Jump up ↑ Francis Bacon, 1561 — 1626 (British): Philosopher, novelist, mathematician, political activist.
Jump up ↑ Rene Descartes, 1596 — 1650 (Fench): Philosopher, mathematician, physicist.
Jump up ↑ Thomas Hobbes, 1588 — 1679 (British): Political philosopher, political activist.
Jump up ↑ Denis Diderot, 1713 — 1784 (French): Philosopher, novelist.
Jump up ↑ Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, 1845–1923 (German): Physicist.
Jump up ↑ Henri Becquerel, 1852–1908 (French): Physicist.
Jump up ↑ Sir Joseph John Thomson, 1856–1940 (British): Physicist, professor at London Royal Institute.
Jump up ↑ In the original Vietnamese, the word tự vận động is used here, which we roughly translate to the word self-motion throughout this book. Literally, tự vận động means: “it moves itself.”
Jump up ↑ Source: “Food for Thought: Was Cooking a Pivotal Step in Human Evolution?” by Alexandra Rosati, Scientific American, February 26, 2018.
Jump up ↑ Written by Professor Tracy L. Kivell and published in The Royal Society.
Jump up ↑ Stone Tools Helped Shape Human Hands by Sara Reardon, published in New Scientist Magazine.
Jump up ↑ The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1846.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 3, p. 2 and Annotation 29, p. 24.
Jump up ↑ For a discussion of the material basis of social laws, see Annotation 10, p. 10, Annotation 78, p. 80, and Annotation 79, p. 81.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 72, p. 68.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 90, p. 88.
Jump up ↑ See: The Role of Matter in Consciousness, p. 89.
Jump up ↑ See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.
Jump up ↑ See:Annotation 68, p. 65.
Jump up ↑ See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 93, below.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 10, p. 10.
Jump up ↑ For discussion of the meaning of methodology, see Methodology, p. 44.
Jump up ↑ See: Nature of Consciousness, p. 79.
Jump up ↑ See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 211, p. 205.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 114, p. 116.
Jump up ↑ See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 222, p. 218.
Jump up ↑ See: The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues, p. 48.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 10, p. 10.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 232 and The Properties of Truth, on p. 228.
Jump up ↑ See: Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness, p. 204.
Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 9, p. 10.
Jump up ↑ Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.
Jump up ↑ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.
Jump up ↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
Jump up ↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
Jump up ↑ Kant’s “transcendental dialectic” was used to critique rationalism and pure reason, but was not a fully developed dialectical system of thought. Hegel’s idealist dialectics were more universal in nature. See Annotation 9, p. 10.
Jump up ↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, On Dialectics, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
Jump up ↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin, 1914.
Jump up ↑ Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, Karl Marx, 1873.
Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, The 1885 Preface, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
Jump up ↑ See p. 107.
Jump up ↑ Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 117, p. 119.
Jump up ↑ The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 98, p. 100.
Jump up ↑ See Private and Common, p. 128; Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 117, p. 119.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 190, p. 181.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 108, p. 112.
Jump up ↑ See p. 108.
Jump up ↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 108, p. 112.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 106, p. 109.
Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 107, p. 110.
Jump up ↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921. See also: Mode and Forms of Matter, p. 59.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 62, p. 59.
Jump up ↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.
Jump up ↑ On the Question of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
Jump up ↑ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.
Jump up ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 10, p. 10 and Annotation 108, p. 112.
Jump up ↑ Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.
Jump up ↑ Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.
Jump up ↑ To N. D. Kiknadze, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, written after November 5, 1916.
Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 108, p. 112.
Jump up ↑ See Annotation 207, p. 202.
Jump up ↑ Summary of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1877.
Jump up ↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
Jump up ↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
Jump up ↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
Jump up ↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.
Jump up ↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
Jump up ↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.
Jump up ↑ Theses On Feuerbach, Karl Marx, 1845.
Jump up ↑ Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.
Jump up ↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.
Jump up ↑ Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.
Jump up ↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.
Jump up ↑ Revolutionary Ethics, Ho Chi Minh, December 1958.
Jump up ↑ Note: Absolute Truth in dialectical materialist philosophy should not be confused with Hegel’s conception of Absolute Truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe.

[1] Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, 1818–1883 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, leader of the international working class.

[2] Jump up ↑ Friedrich Engels, 1820–1895 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx.

[3] Jump up ↑ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870–1924 (Russian): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class.

[4] Jump up ↑ Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See Annotation 79, p. 81.

[5] Jump up ↑ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 — 1831 (German): Philosophy professor, an objective idealistic philosopher — representative of German classical philosophy.

[6] Jump up ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804 — 1872 (German): Philosophy professor, materialist philosopher.

[7] Jump up ↑ The Holy Family is a book co-written by Marx and Engels which critiqued the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach.

[8] Jump up ↑ Adam Smith, 1723 — 1790 (British): Logic professor, moral philosophy professor, economist.

[9] Jump up ↑ David Ricardo, 1772 — 1823 (British): Economist.

[10] Jump up ↑ Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, 1760 — 1825 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.

[11] Jump up ↑ Charles Fourier, 1772 — 1837 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.

[12] Jump up ↑ Robert Owen, 1771 — 1858 (British): Utopianist activist, owner of a cotton factory.

[13] Jump up ↑ The Law of Development of Capitalism referenced here is the Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value, which holds that the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. Over time, this deepens the contradictions of capitalism. This concept is related to the M→C→M mode of circulation, discussed in Annotation 14, p. 16, and is discussed in detail in Part 3 of the book this text is drawn from (Political Economy) which we hope to translate in the future.

[14] Jump up ↑ Das Kapital: Karl Marx’s most important contribution to political economy. It is composed of four volumes. It is the work of Marx’s whole career and an important part of Engels’ career, as well. Marx started writing Das Kapital in the 1840s and continued writing until he died (1883). Das Kapital I was published in 1867. After Marx’s death, Engels edited and published the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in 1894. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the USSR edited and published Das Kapital IV, also known as Theories of Surplus-Value, in the 1950s, long after the death of Marx and Engels.

[15] Jump up ↑ Populist faction: A faction within the Russian revolution which upheld an idealist capitalist ideology with many representatives such as Mikhailovsky, Bakunin, and Plekhanov. Populists failed to recognise the important roles of the people, of the farmers and workers alliance, and of the proletariat. Instead, they completely centered the role of the individual in society. They considered the rural communes as the nucleus of “socialism.” They saw farmers under the leadership of intellectuals as the main force of the revolution. The populists advocated individual terrorism as the primary method of revolutionary struggle.

[16] Jump up ↑ Delegate Document of the 11^th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

[17] Jump up ↑ Delegate document of the 9^th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

[18] Jump up ↑ Delegate document of the 10^th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

[19] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 6, p. 8.

[20] Jump up ↑ The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.

[21] Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[22] Jump up ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.

[23] Jump up ↑ According to the Samkhya school, Pradhana is the original form of matter in an unmanifested,indifferentiated state; Prakriti is manifested matter, differentiated in form, which contains potential for motion.

[24] Jump up ↑ Thales, ~642 — ~547 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, politician.

[25] Jump up ↑ Anaximene, ~585 — ~525 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher.

[26] Jump up ↑ Heraclitus, ~540 — ~480 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, founder of ancient dialectics.

[27] Jump up ↑ Democritus, ~460 — ~370 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, naturalist, a founder of atom theory.

[28] Jump up ↑ Francis Bacon, 1561 — 1626 (British): Philosopher, novelist, mathematician, political activist.

[29] Jump up ↑ Rene Descartes, 1596 — 1650 (Fench): Philosopher, mathematician, physicist.

[30] Jump up ↑ Thomas Hobbes, 1588 — 1679 (British): Political philosopher, political activist.

[31] Jump up ↑ Denis Diderot, 1713 — 1784 (French): Philosopher, novelist.

[32] Jump up ↑ Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, 1845–1923 (German): Physicist.

[33] Jump up ↑ Henri Becquerel, 1852–1908 (French): Physicist.

[34] Jump up ↑ Sir Joseph John Thomson, 1856–1940 (British): Physicist, professor at London Royal Institute.

[35] Jump up ↑ In the original Vietnamese, the word tự vận động is used here, which we roughly translate to the word self-motion throughout this book. Literally, tự vận động means: “it moves itself.”

[36] Jump up ↑ Source: “Food for Thought: Was Cooking a Pivotal Step in Human Evolution?” by Alexandra Rosati, Scientific American, February 26, 2018.

[37] Jump up ↑ Written by Professor Tracy L. Kivell and published in The Royal Society.

[38] Jump up ↑ Stone Tools Helped Shape Human Hands by Sara Reardon, published in New Scientist Magazine.

[39] Jump up ↑ The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1846.

[40] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 3, p. 2 and Annotation 29, p. 24.

[41] Jump up ↑ For a discussion of the material basis of social laws, see Annotation 10, p. 10, Annotation 78, p. 80, and Annotation 79, p. 81.

[42] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 72, p. 68.

[43] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 90, p. 88.

[44] Jump up ↑ See: The Role of Matter in Consciousness, p. 89.

[45] Jump up ↑ See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.

[46] Jump up ↑ See:Annotation 68, p. 65.

[47] Jump up ↑ See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.

[48] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 93, below.

[49] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 10, p. 10.

[50] Jump up ↑ For discussion of the meaning of methodology, see Methodology, p. 44.

[51] Jump up ↑ See: Nature of Consciousness, p. 79.

[52] Jump up ↑ See: The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88.

[53] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 211, p. 205.

[54] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 114, p. 116.

[55] Jump up ↑ See: Nature and Structure of Consciousness, p. 79.

[56] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 222, p. 218.

[57] Jump up ↑ See: The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues, p. 48.

[58] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 10, p. 10.

[59] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 232 and The Properties of Truth, on p. 228.

[60] Jump up ↑ See: Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness, p. 204.

[61] Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[62] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 9, p. 10.

[63] Jump up ↑ Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.

[64] Jump up ↑ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.

[65] Jump up ↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[66] Jump up ↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[67] Jump up ↑ Kant’s “transcendental dialectic” was used to critique rationalism and pure reason, but was not a fully developed dialectical system of thought. Hegel’s idealist dialectics were more universal in nature. See Annotation 9, p. 10.

[68] Jump up ↑ The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, On Dialectics, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[69] Jump up ↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin, 1914.

[70] Jump up ↑ Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I, Karl Marx, 1873.

[71] Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, The 1885 Preface, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[72] Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[73] Jump up ↑ See p. 107.

[74] Jump up ↑ Dialectics of Nature, Friedrich Engels, 1883.

[75] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 117, p. 119.

[76] Jump up ↑ The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.

[77] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 98, p. 100.

[78] Jump up ↑ See Private and Common, p. 128; Essence and Phenomenon, p. 156.

[79] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 117, p. 119.

[80] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 190, p. 181.

[81] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 108, p. 112.

[82] Jump up ↑ See p. 108.

[83] Jump up ↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.

[84] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 108, p. 112.

[85] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 106, p. 109.

[86] Jump up ↑ See: Annotation 107, p. 110.

[87] Jump up ↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921. See also: Mode and Forms of Matter, p. 59.

[88] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 62, p. 59.

[89] Jump up ↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.

[90] Jump up ↑ On the Question of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[91] Jump up ↑ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels, 1880.

[92] Jump up ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels, 1886.

[93] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 10, p. 10 and Annotation 108, p. 112.

[94] Jump up ↑ Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.

[95] Jump up ↑ Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.

[96] Jump up ↑ To N. D. Kiknadze, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, written after November 5, 1916.

[97] Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[98] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 108, p. 112.

[99] Jump up ↑ See Annotation 207, p. 202.

[100] Jump up ↑ Summary of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[101] Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1877.

[102] Jump up ↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[103] Jump up ↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[104] Jump up ↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[105] Jump up ↑ On the Questions of Dialectics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.

[106] Jump up ↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[107] Jump up ↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[108] Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[109] Jump up ↑ Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels, 1878.

[110] Jump up ↑ Theses On Feuerbach, Karl Marx, 1845.

[111] Jump up ↑ Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.

[112] Jump up ↑ Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.

[113] Jump up ↑ Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.

[114] Jump up ↑ Once Again On The Trade Unions, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.

[115] Jump up ↑ Revolutionary Ethics, Ho Chi Minh, December 1958.

[116] Jump up ↑ Note: Absolute Truth in dialectical materialist philosophy should not be confused with Hegel’s conception of Absolute Truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe.

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@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-<div style="color:#000000;">{{clear}}
+'''CURRICULUM OF'''<br />
-[[Image:cover.jpg.png|center]]</div>
+'''THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM'''<br />
+'''PART 1'''
-== Table of Contents ==
+'''THE WORLDVIEW AND PHILOSOPHICAL METHODOLOGY OF MARXISM-LENINISM'''
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook1|Dedication and Acknowledgments]]</div>
+''For University and College Students''
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook3|Introduction]]</div>
+''Not Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought''
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook4|Chapter 1: Defining Anarchism]]</div>
+'''FIRST ENGLISH EDITION'''
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook5|Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework]]</div>
+Translated and Annotated by Luna Nguyen
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook6|Chapter 3: Values, Critique, and Vision]]</div>
+Foreword by Dr. Vijay Prashad
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook7|Chapter 4: Anarchist Strategy]]</div>
+Introduction by Dr. Taimur Rahman
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook8|Chapter 5: Anarchism and State Socialism]]</div>
+Edited, Annotated, and Illustrated by Emerican Johnson
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook9|Chapter 6: Insurrectionist Anarchism]]</div>
+Proofread by David Peat
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook10|Chapter 7: Mass Anarchism]]</div>
+Additional Contributions and Editorial Support by Iskra Books
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook11|Chapter 8: The History of Syndicalist Anarchism]]</div>
+Published in association with ''The International Magazine''
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook12|Chapter 9: The Theory and Practice of Syndicalist Anarchism]]</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-2.png]]
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook13|Chapter 10: Organizational Dualism: From Bakunin to the Platform]]</div>
+=== License ===
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook14|Chapter 11: Conclusion]]</div>
+This work is licensed under a<br />
+Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook15|Bibliography]]</div>
+You are free to:
-<div style="margin-left:0cm;">[[#TopofMeansandEndsINTebook16|Copyright]]</div><div style="text-align:center;">{{anchor|MeansandEndsTheRevolution}} {{anchor|MeansandEndsTheRevolution1}} '''Means and Ends'''</div>
+'''Share''' — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
-<div style="text-align:center;">The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States</div>
+'''Adapt''' — remix, transform, and build upon the material
-<div style="text-align:center;">''by''</div>
+The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
-<div style="text-align:center;">ZOE BAKER</div>
+Under the following terms:
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+'''Attribution''' — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
-[[Image:AKPressBWLogo_NoCities_half-inch.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-== {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook1}} {{anchor|DedicationandAcknowledgments}} Dedication and Acknowledgments ==
+'''NonCommercial''' — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
-This book is dedicated to the vast number of anarchist workers whose names do not appear in history books but who nonetheless played a vital role in the struggle for universal human emancipation.
+'''ShareAlike''' — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
-This work, which began as a PhD thesis submitted to Loughborough University, greatly benefited from feedback provided by Ian Fraser, Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Paul Raekstad, Jesse Cohn, Shawn P. Wilbur, Mark Leier, David Berry, Kenyon Zimmer, Danny Evans, James Yeoman, Ruth Kinna, and Constance Bantman. Thanks to my editor Charles Weigl for making the book much nicer to read. Any errors are my responsibility.
+'''No additional restrictions''' — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
-<div style="text-align:center;margin-left:0.127cm;margin-right:0.127cm;">“The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice. . . . The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” </div>
+The full text of this license is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
-<div style="text-align:center;">''—''karl marx,'' theses on feuerbach ''(1845)</div>
+<br />
-== {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook3}} {{anchor|IntroductionThehistoryofc}} Introduction ==
+<blockquote>
+“Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.”
-The history of capitalism and the state is the history of attempts to abolish them and establish a free society without domination and exploitation. Revolutionary workers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries believed that another world was possible. It is still possible today. One of the main social movements that attempted to overthrow capitalism and the state during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was anarchism. Members of the historical anarchist movement not only attempted to change the world but also produced an elaborate body of ideas that guided their actions. This book is concerned with explaining what their ideas were. Historians sometimes unearth old ideas from the past because they are an interesting way of gaining insight into a different time and place. This is not my principal motivation. I wrote this book because I want to live in a society in which everyone is free. I am convinced that, if we are to achieve this goal, it is important to know the history of previous attempts to do so. My hope is that, through learning about how workers in the past sought to emancipate themselves, workers alive today can learn valuable lessons and develop new ideas that build on the ideas of previous generations.
+''- Ho Chi Minh''
+</blockquote>
-How to define anarchism is a contentious topic and will be discussed in depth in chapter 1. For the purposes of this book, it will be understood as a form of revolutionary antistate socialism that first emerged as a social movement in late nineteenth-century Europe within the International Workingmen’s Association between 1864 and 1872 and the subsequent Saint-Imier International between 1872 and 1878. During and after its birth as a social movement, it spread rapidly to North America, South America, Asia, Oceania, and parts of Africa through transnational networks, print media, and migration flows. I will focus exclusively on anarchist collectivists, anarchist communists, and anarchists without adjectives who were agnostic about the nature of the future society but advocated the same strategy as anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists. I do not claim that this is the one true form of anarchism. It is only the kind of anarchism I am focusing on.
+=== Support for This Work ===
-Anarchism so understood is one of the largest movements in the history of socialism. According to the historian Benedict Anderson, “international anarchism . . . was the main vehicle of global opposition to industrial capitalism, autocracy, latifundism, and imperialism” during the late nineteenth century.[[#1BenedictAndersonTheAgeof|1]] Even the hostile Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm is forced to concede that, between 1905 and 1914, “the main body of Marxists” belonged to increasingly reformist social-democratic political parties while “the bulk of the revolutionary left was anarcho-syndicalist, or at least much closer to the ideas and the mood of anarcho-syndicalism than to that of classical marxism.”[[#2EricHobsbawmRevolutionarie|2]] The vast amount of theory that the anarchist movement produced can be broken down into five main elements:# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">A theoretical framework for thinking about humans, society, and social change.</div>
+Translating, annotating, and typesetting this book has taken three years, which would not have been possible without the support of our supporters on GoFundMe. GoFundMe is also the reason we are able to make the digital version of this entire text available for free online. We would therefore like to recognize all of our supporters:
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">A set of ethical principles that form the value system of anarchism.</div>
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">An analysis and critique of existing social relations and structures in terms of their failure to promote these ethical principles.</div>
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">A vision of alternative social relations and structures that are achievable and would actually promote these ethical principles.</div>
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">A series of strategies (which are consistent with the ethical principles) for abolishing existing social relations and structures in favor of the proposed alternative social relations and structures.</div>
+{|
+| | ''Zach L.''
+| ''Jake B.''
+| ''Katia S.''
+| ''Jimi C.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Kathryn S.''
+| ''Matthew S.''
+| ''Manuel V.''
+| ''Luiza S.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Timothy P.''
+| ''Joshua E.''
+| ''Sarah K.''
+| ''Sarah F.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''De’Vonte'' ''T.''
+| ''Corey K.''
+| ''Aidan M.''
+| ''Danion S.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Douglas H.''
+| ''Justin F.''
+| ''Blake P.''
+| ''Liam H.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Ayodele E.''
+| ''Jesse T.''
+| ''Patrick O.''
+| ''Mendel A.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Stephanie P.''
+| ''Christopher R.''
+| ''Daniel H.''
+| ''Marcos F. T.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Bryan D.''
+| ''Helios A. C.''
+| ''Ryan P.''
+| ''Peter L.-D.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Jeff H.''
+| ''Michael M.''
+| ''Matthew P.''
+| ''Abby L.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Matheus G. P.''
+| ''Ellenore M.''
+| ''Duy V.''
+| ''Erin P.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Luke F.''
+| ''Jason T.''
+| ''Georgio M.''
+| ''Astor C.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Ayo E.''
+| ''Michael E.''
+| ''Noah B.''
+| ''Alex E.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''David B. G.''
+| ''Heath H.''
+| ''Ian H.''
+| ''Simon L.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Joel V.''
+| ''Boyles B.''
+| ''Jackson M.''
+| ''Andrew H.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Jake B.''
+| ''Ashley C.''
+| ''Karen N.''
+| ''Robert D.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''K. Masunungure''
+| ''Daniel S.''
+| ''Mckenzie P.''
+| ''Chandler F.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Daniel A.''
+| ''Aadil B.''
+| ''Julianna D. P.''
+| ''Audrey M.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Ville I.''
+| ''Joshua R.''
+| ''Kyle R.''
+| ''Larry V. K. III''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Ariel G.''
+| ''Maximilian H.''
+| ''Peter F.''
+| ''Zero P.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Aaron L.''
+| ''John P.''
+| ''Josh P.''
+| ''Daniel G.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Jason T.''
+| ''John M.''
+| ''Kayla D.''
+| ''Dmitri S.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Crescenzo P.''
+| ''Matthew L.''
+| ''Lindsay H.''
+| ''Jeremy A. C.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Antonio R.''
+| ''Glenn A.''
+| ''Adam M.''
+| ''Anthony M.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Roger W.''
+| ''Edward C.''
+| ''Dennis C.''
+| ''Amiad H.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Hunter S.''
+| ''Caitlin B.''
+| ''Griffin M.''
+| ''Mat C.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Joseph Z. B.''
+| ''Aaron W.''
+| ''Nicholas H.''
+| ''Pastor J.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Cam S.''
+| ''Benjamin S.''
+| ''Brandon H.''
+| ''Richard M.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Adam K.''
+| ''Michael C.''
+| ''Ashley E.''
+| ''Robert D.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Olga C.''
+| ''Megan B.''
+| ''Simon C.''
+| ''Alexandria J.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Roberto P.''
+| ''Manuel G. F.''
+| ''Jonis F.''
+| ''Darsius'' ''ACAB''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Gerard D.''
+| ''Sam W.''
+| ''John G.''
+| ''Anna N.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Voltie'' ''M.''
+| ''James H.''
+| ''Eric R.''
+| ''Anthony Z.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Kaylee C.''
+| ''Kevin P.''
+| ''Audrin'' ''T.''
+| ''Joshua B.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Edil F.''
+| ''Calum S.''
+| ''Nam T.''
+| ''Kyril W.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Zeke T.''
+| ''Jesse R.''
+| ''Orhan M.''
+| ''Morgan H.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Gideon S.''
+| ''Taylor H.''
+| ''Ross P.''
+| ''Tarana'' ''I.-M.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Saumya I.''
+| ''Siddharth P.''
+| ''Sam P.''
+| ''Dirk K.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Jason G. A., Jr.''
+| ''Melinda K.''
+| ''Jillian R.''
+| ''Jacob N.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Richard H.''
+| ''Shane F.''
+| ''Derric A.''
+| ''Robyn M.''
+|
+|-
+| | ''Lachlainn'' ''H.''
+| ''Marc G.''
+| ''Blaine H.''
+| ''The Slopstache''
+|
+|}
+There is still plenty of work to be done to complete the translation of this entire curriculum. If you would like to financially support our efforts, you can support us at:
-Fully explaining each aspect of anarchist theory, and how these ideas changed over time and varied around the world, goes far beyond the scope of what a single book can hope to achieve. The aim of this book is narrower. I shall rationally reconstruct the revolutionary strategies of anarchism within Europe and the United States between 1868 and 1939. It is important to note that this exclusive focus on one part of the world is an artificial construction. The real historical anarchist movement was constituted by transnational networks that operated at a global scale and enabled ideas and people to flow between continents. The movements in different countries were so interconnected that a complete history of anarchism in Europe and the United States necessarily includes the history of anarchism in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania—and vice versa. The true history of anarchism can only be written as a global history. My book is a contribution toward this global history but only covers a small fragment of it.[[#3DavidBerryandConstanceBan|3]]
+BanyanHouse.org
-In order to rationally reconstruct the revolutionary strategies of anarchism, it is necessary to explain the other four main elements of anarchist theory—theoretical framework, value system, critique of existing society, and vision of a future society—in depth. This is because what anarchists thought about strategy can only be understood within the context of anarchist theory as a whole. Although anarchists developed revolutionary strategies to abolish a variety of different oppressive structures, I shall primarily focus on their strategies to abolish capitalism and the state since this is what most anarchist texts discuss. I shall, when it is relevant, include anarchist views on how to abolish patriarchy, but it should be kept in mind that anarchist men, who were the majority of published anarchist authors, did not give this topic sufficient attention. When explaining anarchist ideas, I will write in the past tense because, for the purposes of this book, I am focused on anarchism during one time period. Many of the ideas I describe are still believed by anarchists today and are not exclusive to the past, such as a commitment to anticapitalism.
+=== Dedication and Gratitude ===
-I shall throughout this book refer extensively to, and quote from, a number of major anarchist authors who lived in Europe or the United States between 1868 and 1939. This includes, but is not limited to, Michael Bakunin (1814–1876), Élisée Reclus (1830–1905), Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), James Guillaume (1844–1916), Carlo Cafiero (1846–1892), Errico Malatesta (1853–1932), Émile Pouget (1860–1931), Ricardo Mella (1861–1925), Luigi Galleani (1861–1931), Max Baginski (1864–1943), Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912),[[#4DeCleyrewasinitiallyanin|4]] Emma Goldman (1869–1940), Alexander Berkman (1870–1936), Rudolf Rocker (1873–1958), Luigi Fabbri (1877–1935), and Charlotte Wilson (1854–1944). I shall supplement the quotations from major anarchist authors with quotations from sources collectively produced by the movement. These will include programs, congress resolutions, and manifestos of formal organizations or affinity groups. In order to maintain a consistent style, all quotes are rendered using American-English spelling.
+This book is dedicated to all the backers of the GoFundMe campaign that raised the funds to allow me to translate this text. What I initially believed would be a straightforward three-month process of translating ended up taking over three ''years'' of not just translation but also research, study, review, annotation, editing, proofreading, peer review, and more — with the incredible support of a full team of talented comrades — in order to make sure that everything would be digestible and intelligible for audiences outside of Vietnam. So, sincerely, thank you to everyone who backed this project for your patience, support, and encouragement.
-A key factor determining which authors I have chosen to include within this book is the fact that I can only read English. This is a significant limitation given that the majority of anarchist primary sources within Europe and the United States were originally written in languages other than English—mainly French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, and Yiddish—and have yet to be translated.[[#5FedericoFerrettiAnarchyan|5]] As a result, there are authors who were historically important but whose ideas I cannot examine in any depth due to lacking access to them, such as the Yiddish-speaking anarchist Saul Yanovsky or the Dutch anarchist Domela Nieuwenhuis. Even with authors who have been translated into English, such as Reclus, I often only have access to a small amount of their total output. It should therefore be kept in mind that generalizations I make about anarchism are based on the primary sources available in English, and these represent a small fragment of the total texts produced by the historical anarchist movement.
+Thank you to my husband and comrade, Emerican Johnson, who helped me throughout the translation process, and who did such a fantastic job editing, annotating, and illustrating this text. He was my constant dialectical companion as we grappled together with the spirit and meaning of the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Engels that are the bedrock of this text.
-I shall be quoting anarchist authors at length, rather than only rephrasing their ideas in my own words, because, in order to understand what anarchists thought historically, a modern reader must understand them on their own terms and so through their own language and exact ways of conceptualizing or expressing their ideas. Doing so will not only help ensure that my explanation of anarchist theory corresponds to what anarchists actually thought, but will also bring many obscure and not well-known passages to the reader’s attention. Although I shall sometimes have to, for the sake of clarity and consistent terminology, introduce new language when summarizing anarchist ideas in my own words, this shall only ever represent a change in language and not a change in ideas. I shall, in addition, attempt to use the same language as historical anarchists as much as possible. Throughout this book, I shall not be arguing that anarchist theory was correct or interjecting with my own personal views on which anarchist authors or ideas were best. I will instead only be concerned with establishing and explaining what anarchist authors themselves thought.
+Thank you, also, to Iskra Books for the absolutely vital work they have done in helping us to edit this book and hold it to a high standard. We literally could not have done it without you. In particular, thank you to Ben Stahnke for organizing and cheerleading us through to the end, and to David Peat, for the painstaking, meticulous, and no-doubt frustrating work of proofreading our very, very, very imperfect writing!
-Through quoting these anarchist authors, I shall be rationally reconstructing the ideas of different thinkers into a coherent system of thought. A rational reconstruction is a reorganization of a set of ideas that highlights the logical relations between its different elements.[[#6MichaelBeaneyAnalyticPhi|6]] A rational reconstruction of a political theory, in other words, not only explains what its exponents claim about various topics, such as how they think about society or the forms of action they advocate to change society. A rational reconstruction also makes the logical connections between the different elements of a political theory explicit, such as how their social theory underpins their choice of tactics. It is necessary to rationally reconstruct anarchist ideas in this manner for two main reasons. First, the vast majority of anarchist texts are short articles, speeches, or pamphlets. Even texts that were published as books are often compilations of previously published articles. Given this, an understanding of what an anarchist author thought can only be reached through assembling the many different ideas they espoused in different places. Bakunin, for example, wrote several sentences and paragraphs about freedom within texts concerned with a more general topic, but did not write an extended essay or book devoted solely to the subject of freedom. In order to establish what Bakunin thought about freedom, one must assemble a collection of short sentences and paragraphs made by him in several different texts. Even when an anarchist author did write about a topic in more detail, it is still necessary to combine different texts together because the positions advocated in one short article can be misunderstood or misrepresented when not connected to the claims made in other short articles. The ideas of the anarchist movement can likewise only be understood by assembling the ideas of a large number of different authors.
+Thanks also to ''The International Magazine'', who have provided guidance and suggestions throughout the process of developing this translation. I have had the opportunity to work with ''The International Magazine'' on various projects and I can recommend no better monthly periodical for internationalist communists to learn about socialist movements around the world.
-Second, a key reason why anarchist authors wrote political theory was that they aimed to spread revolutionary ideas to workers and inspire them to rise up against their oppressors. This led anarchists to write in a style that was accessible to a wide readership, but could also make their arguments appear simpler than they actually were. For example, on numerous occasions anarchist authors do not explicitly lay out the conceptual connections between their different beliefs. Even when anarchist authors do claim that certain ideas are connected, they do not always explain why this is the case or only explain briefly. Given this, it is necessary to rationally reconstruct anarchist ideas in order to build up the interconnected conceptual system that anarchist authors often left implicit or did not explain in sufficient depth.
+We owe a great deal of gratitude to Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for taking the time to read through our translation and, in addition to providing their feedback and encouragement, also taking the time to write the foreword and introduction to the text. I know that you are both extremely busy with your own important literary, academic, and political work, so this assistance is so very much appreciated.
-The technique of rational reconstruction is usually applied to explaining the ideas of a single individual author, such as Marx or Descartes. Such efforts must be sensitive to the fact that an individual author changed their mind or developed their ideas over time. It would therefore be a mistake to unthinkingly place ideas from one period of their life alongside ideas from another period simply because they were written by the same person. This issue becomes greater when rationally reconstructing the ideas of an international social movement over several decades. Assembling together the ideas of a large number of different authors is straightforward when explaining ideas that all anarchists advocated, such as the abolition of capitalism and the state, but is more complicated when examining areas where anarchists disagreed with one another, an idea significantly changed over time, or a whole new idea emerged during a specific historical moment and did not exist prior to this. A rational reconstruction of the ideas of anarchism as a social movement must be sensitive to the fact that anarchist theory was not a single unchanging monolith, but a cluster of different tendencies in dialogue and debate with one another.
+Finally, I would like to thank the Vietnamese intellectuals and experts who have done such an amazing job at taking hundreds of texts and distilling them down into the original volume which I have translated here. The elegance and precision with which they have been able to capture the essence of Marxism-Leninism is a monumental contribution to the workers of the world, and I only hope my translation does their work justice.
-While this study will utilize the conceptual rigor of philosophy to summarize the arguments of anarchist authors, it will not examine these ideas in a historically anachronistic manner as if they existed outside of time and space. To truly understand the political theory of historical anarchism it is necessary to understand what these authors intended to mean and communicate to their audiences and how their texts were, independently of these authorial intentions, understood by readers at the time. This requires locating texts within a specific linguistic context—inherited assumptions from previous thinkers, ongoing debates and discussions, how certain words were used at the time, etc.—and the wider social, economic, and political world that these ideas were produced within and in reaction to—the social relations through which the production and consumption of goods were organized, what kinds of domination the ruling classes engaged in, how the oppressed classes resisted and struggled against their rulers, and so on.[[#7QuentinSkinnerMeaningand|7]]
+March, 2023<br />
+Luna Nguyen
-A comprehensive study of anarchism that fully contextualizes its ideas within their historical moment goes far beyond the scope of this book. I shall, instead, be focusing on a single main context: the history of the anarchist movement itself. This will include not only the theoretical debates within the movement, but also its various actual attempts at overthrowing capitalism and the state in favor of an anarchist society. This is because the revolutionary strategy of anarchism was articulated by members of a social movement in order to be put into action. It is furthermore the case that the ideas different anarchist authors proposed were developed in response to the ongoing experiences of class struggle, such as the various actions of different working-class social movements, state repression of anarchist movements, and debates within anarchist organizations about how to act in a specific moment. In order to include this context, I shall combine a detailed textual interpretation of primary sources available in English with the secondary literature on the history of different anarchist movements in Europe and the United States.
+=== Foreword ===
-There are three limitations to this approach. First, the product of such a rational reconstruction will not correspond precisely to each individual author’s viewpoint and will contain propositions that some of the authors I cite may have objected to, because they disagreed with other anarchists on the topic. To minimize this issue, I shall, when it is relevant, point out when a view was distinct to a specific author and when there are important exceptions to a generalization.
+In December 1998, Fidel Castro addressed the Young Communist League’s 7<sup>th</sup> Congress in Havana, Cuba. The Soviet Union and the Communist state system in Eastern Europe had collapsed, which greatly weakened the cause of socialism. Not only was Cuba hit hard by the loss of its major trading partners and political ally, but socialists in general were penalised by the lethal argument made by the imperialist sections that “socialism had been defeated.” After 1991, Fidel revived the phrase “Battle of Ideas,” which was had been used in The German Ideology by Marx and Engels. To the Young Communists, Fidel said:
-Second, this rational reconstruction will not exactly correspond to what the workers who composed the bulk of the anarchist movement thought. These workers were, after all, not automatons who blindly repeated word for word the ideas expressed by the major authors of anarchism. They had thoughts of their own about what anarchism was, and about what anarchists should do. They may have, in addition to this, disagreed with my interpretation of the authors I cite, not noticed features of these texts that I have, noticed features that I have failed to, and in general gained different ideas from reading these texts than I have. It is furthermore the case that I will have read texts that individual workers within the movement were unfamiliar with, and they would have read, or if they were illiterate had read to them, texts that I am unfamiliar with.
+<blockquote>
+We must meet, in the heat of the battle, with the leading cadres to discuss, analyse, expand on, and draft plans and strategies to take up issues and elaborate ideas, as when an army’s general staff meets. We must use solid arguments to talk to members and non-members, to speak to those who may be confused or even to discuss and debate with those holding positions contrary to those of the Revolution or who are influenced by imperialist ideology in this great battle of ideas we have been waging for years now, precisely in order to carry out the heroic deed of resisting against the most politically, militarily, economically, technologically and culturally powerful empire that has ever existed. Young cadres must be well prepared for this task.
+</blockquote>
-It is difficult to find out what these anarchists thought because the majority of anarchists were not published authors and instead developed ideas through face-to-face conversations with their comrades. German anarchists in New York, to give one example, would discuss politics in a wide variety of locations, ranging from anarchist-run beer halls to singing societies to family picnics in the park.[[#8TomGoyensBeerandRevoluti|8]] The contents of these conversations have unfortunately been largely lost when those who experienced and remembered them died, since only a tiny fraction of them were ever recorded in writing. Given this, it should be kept in mind that it is often unclear whether a major anarchist author is expressing ideas that they themselves came up with or is merely repeating ideas that were developed through countless face-to-face discussions between anarchist workers. Influential anarchist authors themselves routinely pointed out that they were repeating ideas collectively developed within working-class social movements. To give one example, Malatesta wrote in 1899 that “the anarchist socialist program is the fruit of collective development which, even ignoring its forerunners, lasted several decades, and which no one individual could claim to have authored.”[[#9ErricoMalatestaTowardsAna|9]]
+Bourgeois ideology had tried to sweep aside its most fundamental critique – namely Marxism – by saying that “socialism had been defeated” and that Marxism was now obsolete. Marxist criticisms of the “casino of capitalism” – as Fidel called it – were being set aside both inside and outside the academy, with neoliberal policy confident enough to ignore each and every criticism. Fidel argued that young communists must learn the fundamentals of Marxism – including both dialectical and historical materialism – and must learn this in a way that was not religious thinking but would allow them to become “new intellectuals” of the movement, not those who repeat dogma but who learn to understand the conjuncture and become “permanent persuaders” for socialism (the two phrases in quotations are from Gramsci’s prison notebooks). The general ideological confidence of the cadre was not clear, and that confidence and their clarity needed to be developed in a project that Fidel called the Battle of Ideas.
-Third, my reconstruction of anarchist political theory draws upon a small number of women authors. This is because, although large numbers of women played a significant role in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anarchist movement, most published anarchist authors appear to have been men.[[#10Fordiscussionsofwomensp|10]] Of those anarchist authors who were women, many of them cannot be included in my rational reconstruction since either they lived outside of Europe and the United States, such as the Chinese anarchist He-Yin Zhen, or they have not been translated into English, such as the Yiddish-speaking anarchist and doctor Katherina Yevzerov.[[#11LydiaHLiuRebeccaEKar|11]] Nor can my reconstruction, due to its focus on texts, include the perspectives of those women who were active within the anarchist movement but did not (as far as I am aware) have their ideas published by the anarchist press. This includes such individuals as the militant Concha Pérez, who took up arms in the Spanish revolution of 1936 and fought against fascists in Barcelona and on the Aragon Front.[[#12AckelsbergFreeWomen939|12]]
+During this period, communists around the world conceded that the demise of the Soviet Union had created a serious dilemma for the left. Not only were we penalised by the argument that “socialism has been defeated,” but our own arguments to explain the turbo-charged drive toward globalisation and neoliberalism and to make the case for a socialist alternative were not strong enough. One indication of that weakness was the 2001 World Social Forum meeting held in Brazil, which promoted the slogan – Another World is Possible, a weak slogan in comparison to a more precise slogan, such as – Socialism is Necessary. Young people drifted into our ranks in this decade, angered by the wretched social conditions created by the permanent austerity of neoliberalism, but bewildered about how to transform the political environment. The lack of Marxist political education was felt by socialist forces across the world, which is why many parties around the world began to revive a conversation about internal political education for cadre and active engagement with other social forces regarding the pressing issues of our time. Fidel called these two processes – internal education for the Party and external engagement on the dilemmas of humanity – the Battle of Ideas.
-Despite these shortcomings, a rational reconstruction of the ideas that can be found in the major theorists of anarchism who lived in Europe and the United States will provide a useful synthesis for thinking about the ideas that were prominent within the anarchist movement during the period I am examining. It should be kept in mind throughout that this reconstruction is primarily based on sources written by a small list of people who, despite exerting great influence on the movement, should not be conflated with the movement as a whole. Given this, when I write that “anarchists thought x” or “anarchism holds that y,” I am not committing myself to the strong position that every person within the anarchist movement held these views, since this is not something I could possibly know. I am instead using these phrases as shorthand for the more modest claim that the major anarchist authors, newspapers, and programs of organizations I cite did adhere to these views.
+In line with this broad direction, the government of Vietnam worked with the national publishing house Sự Thật (The Truth) to develop a curriculum for universities and colleges in the country. They developed this order of study along five subject areas: Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism, Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This project worked to educate an entire population that would be able to understand the world in a rational and factual manner, outside the illusions of bourgeois ideology. Four years later, Communist Party of Vietnam adopted a resolution to take this work forward, and – under the leadership of Professor Nguyễn Viết Thông – produced this textbook that brought together the many themes of Marxism into focus for the introductory student and cadre. A book such as this is never easy to create, since it must introduce a form of thought that is critical of the foundations of bourgeois ideology – so it is a critique – but at the same time it provides a worldview to understand the actual world in which we live – so it is a science. The text must, therefore, show how bourgeois thought is partial and at the same time how socialist thought, creatively applied, will allow one to have a firmer grip of reality and be able to participate in fighting to transcend the obstinate facts of human indignity that are reproduced by capitalism. No manual such as this is without its flaws and without its limitations, but no education can start without a manual such as this one. The Vietnamese comrades have done a great service to the left movement by producing a text such as this, which can be used for study and then used as a model to develop similar texts in different parts of the world.
-The central argument of this book is that the reasons anarchists gave for supporting or opposing particular strategies were grounded in a theoretical framework—the theory of practice—which maintained that, as people engage in activity, they simultaneously change the world and themselves. This theoretical framework was the foundation for the anarchist commitment to the unity of means and ends: the means that revolutionaries proposed to achieve social change had to be constituted by forms of activity that would develop people into the kinds of individuals who were capable of, and were driven to, (a) overthrow capitalism and the state, and (b) construct and reproduce the end goal of an anarchist society.
+Ho Chi Minh, whose interpretation of Marxism and whose ideas about the Vietnamese Revolution, are all over this text once said: “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.” There can be no better injunction to get to work, to study and develop one’s theoretical armour and to use that theory as the guide to one’s work in the Battle of Ideas and in the battle for the streets, because this unity between theory and action is indeed praxis (thực tiễn), not just practice, but conscious human activity. That is what Fidel encouraged in his lectures on the Battle of Ideas.
-The structure of this book is as follows. In chapter 1, I define anarchism in depth. In chapter 2, I explain anarchism’s theoretical framework—the theory of practice. With this in place, I rationally reconstruct anarchism’s value system, critique of existing society, and vision of a future society in chapter 3. The core ideas on strategy that were in general shared by the anarchist movement are described in chapter 4. Chapter 5 reconstructs the anarchist critique of state socialism. Chapters 6 and 7 provide an overview of the two main schools of anarchist strategy: insurrectionist anarchism and mass anarchism. Chapters 8 and 9 expand the discussion of mass anarchism by explaining the history, theory, and practice of one of its main forms: syndicalist anarchism, which is a kind of revolutionary trade unionism. Chapter 10 continues the discussion of mass anarchism by describing the history and theory of organizational dualism, which was the idea that anarchists should simultaneously form mass organizations open to all workers and smaller organizations composed exclusively of anarchists. Chapter 11 summarizes the main ideas of anarchist political theory and reaffirms my central argument that the revolutionary strategy of anarchism was grounded in the theory of practice.
+Dr. Vijay Prashad.<br />
+March 2023<br />
+Caracas, Venezuela.
-[[#1|1]]. Benedict Anderson, ''The Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anti-Colonial Imagination'' (London: Verso 2013), 54.
+=== Preface to the First English Edition ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#2|2]]. Eric Hobsbawm, ''Revolutionaries ''(London: Phoenix, 1994), 61.</div>
+The text of this book constitutes part one of a four-part curriculum on Marxism-Leninism developed and published by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam. This curriculum is intended for students who are not specializing in the study of Marxism-Leninism, and is intended to give every Vietnamese student a firm grounding in the political philosophy of scientific socialism.
-[[#3|3]]. David Berry and Constance Bantman, eds., ''New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational'' (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Constance Bantman and Bert Altena, eds., ''Reassessing the Transnational Turn: Scales of Analysis in Anarchist and Syndicalist Studies ''(Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017); Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt, eds., ''Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World'', ''1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation'','' Internationalism'','' and Social Revolution'' (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
+The entire curriculum consists of:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#4|4]]. De Cleyre was initially an individualist anarchist and mutualist but came to reject this position during the 1890s. Between 1897 and 1900, she came to identify as an anarchist without adjectives who was agnostic about the nature of the future society, while advocating the same strategies as anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists. I shall only be including texts by her from this later period. See “Vision of an Alternative Society” in chapter 3 for a discussion of this view and the supporting references.</div>
+Part 1: Dialectical Materialism (this text)
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#5|5]]. Federico Ferretti, ''Anarchy and Geography: Reclus and Kropotkin in the UK ''(London: Routledge, 2019), 61–62; Kenyon Zimmer, “Archiving the American Anarchist Press: Reflections on Format, Accessibility, and Language,” ''American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism'' 29, no. 1 (2019): 10–11.</div>
+Part 2: Historical Materialism
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#6|6]]. Michael Beaney, “Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy: The Development of the Idea of Rational Reconstruction,” in ''The Historical Turn in Analytic Philosophy'', ed. Erich H. Reck (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 253.</div>
+Part 3: Political Economy
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#7|7]]. Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” in ''Visions of Politics'','' ''vol. 1,'' Regarding Method ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 82–87; Skinner, “Interpretation and the Understanding of Speech Acts,” in ''Visions'', 110–14; Skinner, ''The Foundations of Modern Political Thought'','' ''vol. 1,'' The Renaissance'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), x–xiv; Ellen Meiksins Wood, ''Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages'' (London: Verso, 2011), 7–16.</div>
+Part 4: Scientific Socialism
-[[#8|8]]. Tom Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City'','' 1880–1914'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007),'' ''34–51, 168–82.
+In Vietnam, each part of the curriculum encompasses one full semester of mandatory study for all college students. Each part builds upon the previous, meaning that this text is the foundation for all political theory education for most college students in Vietnam.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#9|9]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''65.</div>
+However, it is important to note that this is not the first encounter with dialectical materialism which Vietnamese students wil have had with these ideas, because Vietnamese students also study dialectical materialism, historical materialism, political economy, and scientific socialism from primary school all the way through high school.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#10|10]]. For discussions of women’s participation in historical anarchist movements see David Berry, ''A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917 to 1945'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009),'' ''313–17; Jennifer Guglielmo, ''Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City'','' 1880–1945 ''(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 139–75; Martha Ackelsberg, ''Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005); Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution'','' ''155–8; Kenyon Zimmer, ''Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 43–47, 66–70; Ferretti, ''Anarchy and Geography'', 91–111.</div>
+As such, the text of this book — in and of itself — would probably seem overwhelmingly condensed to most foreign readers who are new to studying dialectical materialism. Therefore, we have decided to extensively annotate and illustrate this text with the information which would have been previously obtained in a basic Vietnamese high school education and/or provided by college lecturers in the classroom.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#11|11]]. Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko, eds., ''The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); Zimmer, ''Immigrants'', 21, 44.</div>
+It is our desire that these annotations will be helpful for students who hope to learn these principles for application in political activity, but we should also make it clear to academic researchers and the like that our annotations and illustrations are ''not'' present in the original Vietnamese work.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#12|12]]. Ackelsberg, ''Free Women'', 93–95.</div>
+We hope that this book will be useful in at least three ways:
-== {{anchor|Chapter1DefiningAnarchism}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook4}} {{anchor|Chapter1DefiningAnarchism1}} Chapter 1: Defining Anarchism ==
+* As a comprehensive introductory textbook on dialectical materialism and for selfstudy, group study, classroom use, cadre training, etc.
+* As a quick and easy to reference handbook for reviewing the basic concepts of dialectical materialism for students of theory who are already familiar with dialectical materialism.
+* As a companion book for further reading of theory and political texts rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.
-Overviews of anarchism often begin by claiming that it is incredibly broad, incoherent, and inherently difficult to define.[[#1ForexamplePeterMarshallD|1]] Being difficult to define is not a unique feature of anarchism. It is a general problem facing the intellectual historian because, as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “only something which has no history can be defined.”[[#2FriedrichNietzscheOntheG|2]] That is to say, the reason why one can define hydrogen in terms of essential and unchanging necessary and jointly sufficient conditions is that it lies outside of history and so does not vary within and between human societies. What hydrogen is does not change between tenth-century France and twentieth-century Alaska. This remains true even though how humans have understood or thought about hydrogen has changed over time. But the same is not true of things that are historical in the sense of being inherently connected to and concerned with human activity, such as Christianity or anarchism.
+Also, please note: because this book is intended to be used as a quick reference and handbook for further study, there are many instances where we duplicate references, quotations, and other such information. We hope that this repetition may be an aid for study by reinforcing important concepts and quotations.
-Such historical entities have a beginning and boundaries that distinguish them from other parts of human existence, but the elements that compose them nonetheless change over time. Christianity, for example, emerged during the first century CE and was characterized by a set of beliefs and practices that made it different from other religions. It was subsequently modified numerous times during its history, such as by the invention of Catholicism and Protestantism. Historical entities are fluid and ever-changing because they are produced by and are about humans who are themselves constantly changing as they engage in activity within constantly evolving social structures. At any given moment in history, people will think and act differently in response to the same wider context. The consequence of this is that, as people articulate distinct perspectives, argue with one another, and act to ensure that their understanding remains dominant or becomes so, they also produce competing and contradictory versions of the same historically produced entity. Over time, this process of contestation causes the widespread version of a historically produced entity to change as some elements arise to prominence or fade into obscurity, whole new elements are added, and other elements are removed. There is no one true version of a historically produced entity. Instead, there is only what elements do or do not compose it according to different individuals or groups of people at the various stages of its development.
+This book — Part 1 of the curriculum, which focuses on the universal philosophical system of dialectical materialism — serves as the foundation of all political theory and practice in the Vietnamese educational system as well as in the Communist Party of Vietnam and other organizations such as the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, the Women’s Union, the Farmer’s Union, the Worker’s Union, etc. Dialectical materialism is the framework for theory and practice as well as the common lens through which Vietnamese socialists relate, communicate, and work together.
-This should not be mistaken for the claim that there are no characteristics that distinguish one historically produced entity from another. Christianity may be a constellation of disparate elements that changes over time, but it is nonetheless distinct from the religion of the Aztecs. Nor does Nietzsche’s view entail that all definitions of a historical entity are equally good and cannot be better or worse than another definition. A person who defined Christianity as a religion that believes in a single God would be failing to construct a useful definition, because it includes belief systems that should be excluded, such as other monotheistic religions like Islam, and fails to specify the distinct elements that compose Christianity historically and within modern society, such as the belief that Jesus was resurrected.
+This book focuses almost exclusively on the written works of three historical figures:
-Nietzsche’s views on historically produced entities have several consequences for thinking about how to define anarchism. Although anarchism will have an origin and some conceptual boundaries that have historically demarcated it from other ideologies, there will not be a single, unified body of thought called ''anarchism''. At a given historical moment, there will be a series of distinct individuals or groups of people who all happen to call themselves anarchists and are in a process of contestation with one another over what anarchism means or should mean. Since what anarchism means is historically variable, the best we can expect from a definition is that it provides a snapshot of how specific individuals or groups of people understood anarchism at a given moment of its historical development. Such a definition may be rendered incomplete by unexpected developments within anarchism, such as whole new elements arising or previously important elements fading into obscurity. The point is not to establish what anarchism truly means once and for all, but to construct a definition of anarchism that is useful for investigating a particular historical period, topic, or type of anarchism.
+''Karl Marx'' and ''Friedrich Engels''... who initially developed the universal philosophy of dialectical materialism by synthesizing various pre-existing philosophical, political, economic, and historical tendencies including the idealist dialectical system of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the political economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the materialist positions of Ludwig Feuerbach, and countless others.
-There are two main views on what anarchism is. Transhistoricists generally define anarchism as referring to any political theory in history that advocates the abolition of the state, or systems of rulership in general, in favor of a free stateless society without rulers.[[#3MarshallDemandingtheImpos|3]] In response to this way of thinking about anarchism, historicists have argued that anarchism should instead be defined as a historically specific form of antistate socialism that first emerged in nineteenth-century Europe and rapidly spread, during and after its birth as a social movement, to North America, South America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa through transnational networks, print media, and migration flows.[[#4MarieFlemingTheAnarchist|4]]
+''...and Vladimir Illyich Lenin'', who further developed and defended dialectical materialism, expanded the analysis of imperialism, demonstrated how to apply dialectical materialism to local material conditions specific to Russia at the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, and made many other important contributions to dialectical materialist theory and practice.
-The disagreement over when to date the birth of anarchism partly stems from the fact that how modern authors think about the history of anarchism has been shaped by the earliest historiographies of anarchism, which were written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by members of the anarchist movement. These anarchists, like modern historians of anarchism, disagreed with one another about how anarchism should be defined and when anarchism first emerged. Some authors defined anarchism transhistorically. Peter Kropotkin, for example, remarked in 1913 that “there have always been anarchists and statists” and claimed to have found “anarchist ideas among the philosophers of antiquity, notably in Lao Tzu in China and in some of the earliest Greek philosophers.”[[#5PeterKropotkinModernScien|5]] This view was shared by Rudolf Rocker, who wrote in 1938 that anarchists advocate the abolition of “all political and social coercive institutions which stand in the way of the development of free humanity” and that, given this, “anarchist ideas are to be found in every period of known history.”[[#6RudolfRockerAnarchoSyndic|6]]
+Obviously, there are countless other writers, revolutionaries, philosophers, and scientists who have contributed to dialectical materialism and scientific socialism. This book focuses primarily on Marx, Engels, and Lenin, because these figures laid the foundations and formulated the basic principles of the philosophy of dialectical materialism and the methodology of materialist dialectics which are most universally applicable in all endeavors.
-Other anarchists adopted a historicist account of anarchism in which it referred exclusively to a historically specific form of antistate socialism that first emerged in the nineteenth century as a response to the oppression of capitalism and the state. In 1884, Charlotte Wilson claimed that “Anarchism is a new faith” and “the name assumed by a certain school of socialists” who advocated the simultaneous abolition of capitalism and the state.[[#7CharlotteWilsonAnarchistE|7]] Decades later, Errico Malatesta wrote in 1925 that there was a distinction between “Anarchy,” which is a cooperative society without oppression and exploitation, and “Anarchism,” which “is the method of reaching anarchy, through freedom, without government.”[[#8ErricoMalatestaTheAnarchi|8]] The latter “was born” when people “sought to overthrow” both “capitalistic property and the State” and therefore did not exist prior to this.[[#9ErricoMalatestaLifeandId|9]]
+It is our desire that translating this important work into English will lead to further study, understanding, and appreciation of dialectical materialism as an applied philosophy which socialists can find value in returning to periodically. At the end of the book, we offer a glossary of terms which doubles as an index, appendices with summaries of important concepts and principles, and an afterword, in which we offer advice for further study and application of dialectical materialism.
-Importantly, this was not an exclusively European perspective. The Chinese anarchist Li Yaotang, who wrote under the pen name Ba Jin, argued in 1927 that “Anarchism is a product of the mass movement . . . not an idle dream that transcends time. It could not have emerged before the Industrial Revolution, and . . . the French revolution.”[[#10BaJinAnarchismandtheQ|10]] To him, it shared nothing with Daoism and the ideas of Lao Tzu. The Japanese anarchist Kubo Yuzuru likewise wrote in 1928 that “Anarchism originated from the fact of the struggle of the workers. Without that, there would be no anarchism.”[[#11KuboYuzuruOnClassStrug|11]]
+At the time of publication, we are already in the process of translating and annotating Part 2 of this curriculum, which focuses on historical materialism, with the hopes of eventually releasing the full curriculum. Once it is complete, it will also be made available at ''BanyanHouse.org'' — where we also invite questions, constructive feedback, and suggestions.
-Given my commitment to Nietzsche’s way of thinking about definitions, I shall be taking a historicist approach and defining anarchism as a historically specific form of antistate socialism that first emerged in nineteenth-century Europe. It is of course the case that the idea of a free stateless society existed before people in nineteenth-century Europe decided to start calling themselves anarchists. The Chinese Daoist Bao Jingyan argued in the third<sup> </sup>century that the state was created by the strong to oppress the weak, and became the means through which the wealthy reproduced the servitude of the poor. He thought that prior to the rise of states there existed a free, harmonious society with “neither lord nor subject” and claimed that it would be better if the state ceased to exist. Although his one surviving text proposed no strategies to achieve this goal, he did believe that the poor would revolt against the wealthy.[[#12RappDaoismandAnarchism|12]] Even within Europe one can point to earlier authors who advocated the abolition of the state and property in favor of a free society based on communal ownership, such as the radical Christian Gerrard Winstanley in the seventeenth century.[[#13GerrardWinstanleyTheLaw|13]]
+=== Introduction ===
-The history of anti-statist thought includes not only a long list of dead authors, but also the large numbers of people who have lived in, or do live in, stateless societies around the world. This is something that historical anarchists were themselves aware of.[[#14EliseeReclusAnarchyGeog|14]] The available anthropological evidence indicates that these people do not live in stateless societies by chance. They have, just like people who live under states, developed political philosophies about the kind of society they want to live in, and intentionally implemented these ideas throughout the course of their lives. They are aware that someone could establish themselves as ruler of the group and have, within the limits established by their ecological and social context, consciously and deliberately created social structures to prevent this from happening. This generally goes alongside an awareness of nearby societies with states. A striking illustration of this point is that, on numerous occasions, stateless societies have been created by people who have deliberately fled processes of state formation or expansion, such as stateless societies in the uplands of Southeast Asia.[[#15ChristopherBoehmHierarchy|15]]
+Just a generation ago, Vietnam was the site of the most brutal war of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. More tonnage of bombs were dropped on the Vietnamese people than were dropped by all sides combined throughout the Second World War. In addition, countless acts of cruelty were used to scorch the very soil of the nation. By the end of Vietnam’s Resistance War Against Imperialist USA (known to the world as “the Vietnam War”), Agent Orange, napalm, and unexploded munitions had left a land deeply scarred and a people traumatised by decades of death and murder. The impression one had was that although Vietnam had won the war, it was so badly devastated that it could not hope to win the peace. But, miraculously, Vietnam is winning this war today, as the Vietnamese economy has become one of the fastest growing in the world and quality of life for the people is improving at a pace which could scarcely have been predicted in 1975.
-Members of stateless societies have developed a variety of complex social relations and arrangements in order to realize their conscious political goals and ethical values. These include: making collective decisions through consensus, between all involved; ensuring that leaders lack the power to impose decisions on others through coercion and must instead persuade people to act in a certain way, through oratory skill alone; and utilizing various forms of social sanction to respond to behavior that threatens the freedom or equality of the group, such as bullying, being greedy, issuing orders, taking on airs of superiority, engaging in acts of physical violence, and so on. These social sanctions include, but are not limited to, criticism, gossiping, public ridicule, ignoring what they say, ostracism, expulsion from the group, and even, in some extreme cases, execution.[[#16BoehmHierarchyintheFore|16]]
+No one could have imagined that Vietnam would turn around so dynamically and rapidly. How did they achieve this economic miracle? How could this nation — so recently devastated by imperialism and war — possibly be able to reconstruct, revive, rejuvenate, and rebuild? That story is now unfolding before our eyes.
-The many different forms of stateless societies that have existed, and continue to exist, around the world should not be romanticized and viewed as utopias. Even societies without a state or a ruling class can contain other kinds of oppressive social relations, such as the oppression of children by adults or women by men. Nor should the stateless societies that anthropologists have studied be viewed as straightforward windows into the past or living fossils of what human life was like prior to the emergence of states. The members of these societies do not live in the paleolithic or the neolithic but the modern world. Their social relations have been shaped by, and are part of, modern history, including the history of colonialism.[[#17RobertLKellyTheLifeway|17]] Matters are only made more complicated by the fact that a significant number of stateless societies move between very different forms of social organization on a seasonal basis.[[#18DavidGraeberandDavidWeng|18]]
+Vietnam’s development has not come without hardship, struggle, setbacks, and mistakes. The people of Vietnam have had to learn hard lessons through struggle and practice to develop and strengthen ideological and theoretical positions. In this manner, the philosophical development of Vietnam deserves study and attention from socialists around the world. To outsiders, Vietnam can appear to be rife with contradictions. As depicted by Western journalists, Vietnam is simultaneously a success story driven by capitalist markets and a failing socialist state. Every victory is chalked up to private enterprise, while every setback is attributed to socialism. In this sense, the media has failed to understand the essential character of the core contradictions which drive the development of Vietnam politically, socially, and economically.
-In claiming that “anarchism” refers to a form of anti-state socialism that first emerged in nineteenth-century Europe, I am not denying the existence of other political philosophies that have advocated a free, stateless society prior to, in parallel with, or after the emergence of anarchism. Although this book aims to demonstrate the intellectual sophistication of historical anarchist political theory, I also believe that modern anarchism can greatly improve through engaging with these other political traditions and learning valuable insights and lessons from them. My point is only that the term “anarchism” should not be used to refer to any political theory in history that advocates the abolition of the state, or systems of rulership in general, in favor of a free stateless society without rulers.
+Luna Nguyen has used social media and played an incredibly important role in helping the English speaking world understand the complexities of such contradictions that beguile so many academics and experts. She has helped to give an insider’s perspective on her own country’s path of development towards socialism.
-This is motivated by two main reasons. First, throughout the history of socialism, multiple theorists and social movements have advocated the long-term goal of abolishing the state and all systems of class rule in favor of a society of free producers, such as Louis Auguste Blanqui or all of Marxism.[[#19AlanBSpitzerTheRevolut|19]] If a transhistoricist wishes to label such figures as Bao Jingyan an “anarchist” due to their advocacy of a free stateless society without rulers, then they must, in order to be consistent, also refer to Blanqui and all of Marxism as “anarchists.” Doing so would be a mistake given that self-identified anarchists opposed these other forms of socialism on the grounds that they, unlike anarchists, advocated the conquest of state power as a means to achieve human emancipation. This includes not only individuals who anarchists had polemical debates with, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but also leaders of states who were responsible for the imprisonment, deportation, murder, and repression of anarchists, such as Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin. Given this, any definition of anarchism must include strategies to achieve social change within its criteria and cannot define anarchism solely in terms of its goal.
+Nguyen’s translation of Part 1 of this influential work, ''Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism'', a textbook studied by university and college students across Vietnam, is yet another big step in the direction of making Vietnam’s understanding of their own country’s development available to the English reading world.
-The second reason to reject transhistorical definitions of anarchism is that they are historically anachronistic. The many different people who have advocated the abolition of the state or rulership throughout human history did not refer to themselves as “anarchists” or belong to a social movement that called itself “anarchist.” At no point did they establish a historically contingent configuration of elements that were understood by people at the time to be what “anarchism” is. An author like Winstanley will not tell a historian anything about what “anarchism” as a historically produced entity means. A study of Winstanley’s 1649 ''The True Levellers Standard Advanced'' instead informs a historian about the political ideology that Winstanley understood himself to be an advocate of: the Diggers. To categorize Winstanley as an “anarchist ” is to anachronistically impose a later category onto him rather than understand him on his own terms.[[#20Forasummaryofthelanguag|20]]
+For me, as an outsider, it is fascinating not only to see how deeply Vietnamese society takes an interest in European philosophical development (referencing Hume, Hegel, Descartes, Marx, Engels, and so many other Europeans, almost as if they are figures seated in some ancient monastery in Fansipan), but, even more importantly, how they have assimilated that knowledge into the wider context of their own history, society, and culture. The textbook truly comes alive in all the parts where these ideas are shown to be relevant to Vietnam itself. For instance, the textbook stands out with discussions of Ho Chi Minh’s concept of “proletarian piety,” which artfully blends elements of Vietnamese culture with Marxist concepts of class consciousness, or the story of Chi Pheo, who stands as a sympathetic stand-in for the interpretation of the unique characteristics of the Vietnamese Lumpenproletariat. The book itself is an instance of the dialectic of the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete.
-Although adopting a historicist approach significantly limits the scope of who can be considered an anarchist, it is not sufficient to develop a useful definition of anarchism for the purposes of studying it as a coherent political theory. This is because, during its history as a concept, people with fundamentally different commitments have called themselves anarchists and engaged in processes of contestation with one another over what anarchism is or should be. A brief and condensed summary of this history is as follows.
+Just as importantly, it shows that, in Vietnam, Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought are not mere perfunctory rituals that are repeated like a learnt formula for this or that exam; but that although the Vietnamese political economy in its current form certainly contains contradictions which must be negated in the process of building the lower stage of socialism, the government remains seriously committed to the goals, theory, and practice of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.
-'''From Anarchy to Anarchism'''
+Hence, I highly recommend this book, not merely because it is a well-illustrated and easy-to-read book on the principles of dialectical materialism, but more importantly because it offers an insight into how the Vietnamese government collects and synthesises the philosophical developments that are, on the one hand, the collective legacy of all of humanity, and, on the other hand, the concrete manifestations of a revolutionary theory of (and for the oppressed yearning for) freedom in every corner of the world.
-The term “anarchist” was sometimes used as an insult during the English Civil War and the French Revolution.[[#21WoodcockAnarchism1241|21]] It did not refer to a distinct political ideology until it was adopted by antistate socialists in the nineteenth century within the context of industrialization, and the rise of capitalism and the modern nation-state (henceforth referred to as the state) as a global economic and political system. The earliest known occurrence of this was in 1840, when the French socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon declared himself an “anarchist” in his book ''What is Property?'' He defined “''Anarchy''” as “the absence of a master” and argued that the “highest perfection of society is found in the union of order and anarchy.”[[#22PierreJosephProudhonWhat|22]] It is important to note that Proudhon was not consistent with his vocabulary and sometimes used the word “anarchy” to signify chaos and disorder.[[#23ProudhonPropertyisTheft|23]] On other occasions, Proudhon labeled himself an advocate of “mutuality,” “mutualism,” and “the mutualist system.”[[#24ProudhonPropertyisTheft|24]] This was a term that Proudhon borrowed from a previously existing social movement among silkworkers in Lyon.[[#25Forthehistoryoftheterm|25]]
+March, 2023
-During the 1840s, Proudhon advocated the abolition of capitalism and the state in favor of a decentralized market socialist society in which the means of production and land were owned in common. In such a society, workers, either as individual producers or voluntary collective associations, would possess, but not own, the means of production and land that they personally used or occupied. To possess a resource was to have the right to control it. As a result, Proudhon envisioned a society where workers self-managed the organization of production and exchanged the products of their labor with one another.[[#26ProudhonWhatisProperty|26]] This was to be achieved through a process of gradual and peaceful social change. From the late 1840s onward, Proudhon advocated the strategy of workers forming cooperatives with the aid of loans provided by a people’s bank, at low or no interest. He thought that, over time, these cooperatives could grow in number, trade with one another, and take on more and more social functions until socialism as a society-wide economic system had been established.[[#27ProudhonPropertyisTheft|27]]
+Dr. Taimur Rahman<br />
-Between the 1840s and 1860s, Proudhon’s version of anti-state market socialism influenced a number of individuals in the United States and Europe who also came to refer to themselves as mutualists.[[#28DavidBerryAHistoryofth|28]] Although these mutualists agreed with Proudhon’s broad vision of socialism and his strategy of forming cooperatives funded by loans from a people’s bank, they also had ideas of their own, were influenced by other authors such as Josiah Warren, and argued with one another about a wide variety of topics.[[#29JosiahWarrenThePractical|29]] Some of those influenced by Proudhon adopted the language of “anarchy” and “anarchist.” For example, in France the journalist Anselme Bellegarrigue wrote and published a short-lived journal called ''Anarchy, A Journal of Order ''in 1850. In the first issue of the journal he wrote, “I am an anarchist,” and insisted that “anarchy is order, whereas government is civil war.”[[#30AnselmeBellegarrigueAnar|30]] Around the same time a young Élisée Reclus, who would go onto become an important geographer and member of the anarchist movement, wrote an unpublished essay in order to clarify his thoughts. In it, he advocated the abolition of economic competition and “the tutelage of a government” in favor of socialism and “the absence of government . . . anarchy, the highest expression of order.”[[#31EliseeReclusTheDevelopm|31]]
+=== Editor’s Note ===
-An especially significant contribution was made by Joseph Déjacque, who was born in France and moved to the United States in the early 1850s. He not only repeated Proudhon’s language of “anarchy” and “anarchist” but was also the earliest known person to self-identify as an advocate of “anarchism.” Déjacque was the first person to use the word “libertarian” as a synonym for “anarchist” as well. In the August 18, 1859, edition of his paper ''Le Libertaire'', he defined “anarchism” as the abolition of government, property, religion, and the family in favor of liberty, equality, solidarity, and the right to work and love.[[#32MaxNettlauAShortHistory|32]] In contrast to Proudhon and mutualism in general, Déjacque advocated the long-term goals of common ownership of the products of labor, distribution according to need, and the emancipation of women from patriarchy.[[#33JosephDejacqueDownwitht|33]]
+Working on this project has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life. In translating this work, Luna has opened a door for English speakers into the wide world of Vietnamese scholarship and pedagogy as it relates to socialist theory and philosophy.
-In order to achieve these goals, the ruling classes had to be overthrown. Déjacque proposed that this could be achieved via the violent strategy of mass armed insurrections and small secret societies assassinating capitalists and governors.[[#34DejacqueDownwiththeBoss|34]] Although Déjacque advocated the abolition of government, he thought that, given the current ideas and abilities of workers, a revolution would not establish anarchy immediately. There would instead be a period of transition in which decisions were made by workers themselves through universal and “direct legislation” within “the most democratic form of government.”[[#35DejacqueTheRevolutionary|35]] Déjacque’s proposed democratic government was constituted by self-governing communes of 50,000 people in which laws were passed by majority vote and government administrators were elected and recallable. The police were to be randomly selected by lottery and rotated over time such that everyone would engage in policing and there would be “no police outside the people.”[[#36DejacqueTheRevolutionary|36]] Those who broke the law would be subject to trial by jury and an elected magistrate. A person found guilty by an unanimous decision of the jury would not be executed or imprisoned—since the “prison” and the “scaffold” were “government monstrosities”—but would instead only be subject to “moral or material reparation” or “banishment.”[[#37DejacqueTheRevolutionary|37]] Over time, people would develop new and better ways of organizing society until government had been completely abolished and anarchy had been realized.
+Luna and I have done our best to capture the original meaning and spirit of the text. Furthermore, as we have mentioned elsewhere, our annotations and illustrations are intended only to contextualize and expand on the core information of the original text similarly to the class/lecture setting for which the curriculum is intended.
-In parallel to these ideological developments, various organizations were formed by the working classes to achieve their emancipation and foster cooperation between workers of different countries.[[#38ArthurLehningFromBuonarr|38]] In September 1864, this culminated in the founding of the International Workingmen’s Association (henceforth referred to as the First International) at a meeting in St. Martin’s Hall, London. The International included a wide variety of different kinds of socialists, and this led to a great deal of debate about what aims and strategies the organization should adopt. At the 1869 Basel Congress, the majority of delegates voted in favor of the collective ownership of land as a goal. This was opposed by a minority of mutualists who, while advocating the collective ownership of the means of production, thought that land should be individually owned by those who occupied it. The socialists who advocated the collective ownership of land referred to themselves as collectivists or advocates of collectivism. Some collectivists continued to think of themselves as mutualists.[[#39ArcherFirstInternational|39]]
+In their lives, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were never able to finish clarifying and systematically describing the philosophy of dialectical materialism which their work was built upon. Engels attempted to structurally define the philosophy in Dialectics of Nature, but unfortunately that work was never completed since he decided to prioritize publishing the unfinished works of Marx after his untimely death.
-During this period, a tendency emerged within the collectivist wing of the International that rejected participation in parliamentary politics and attempting to achieve socialism via the conquest of state power. They, despite being influenced by Proudhon, dithered from mutualism and advocated revolutionary trade unionism and the simultaneous abolition of capitalism and the state through an armed insurrection, which would forcefully expropriate the capitalist class.[[#40Forageneraloverviewofho|40]] This tendency referred to itself, and was referred to by others, using a variety of labels. This included not only ''collectivist'' but also ''federalist'', ''revolutionary socialist'', and ''anarchist''. Between the mid-1870s and early 1880s, the labels of ''anarchist'' and ''anarchism'' became increasingly prominent until they were the dominant terms for this social movement.[[#41BerryFrenchAnarchistMove|41]] A number of individuals and groups continued to also use alternative language, such as ''autonomist'', ''libertarian'', ''libertarian socialist'', and ''libertarian communist''.[[#42PaulAvrichandKarenAvrich|42]]
+I believe that this text is a great step forward in that work of systematically describing the philosophical system of dialectical materialism and the methodological system of materialist dialectics. I also believe it’s worth noting how the Vietnamese scholars who crafted this curriculum have embedded the urgent necessity of action — of creative application of these ideas — throughout the text in a way that I find refreshing and reflective of the works of Marx and Engels themselves.
-The anarchist tendency within the First International was primarily located within Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, and the Jura region of Switzerland. It began to form a distinct social movement during a series of congresses held in Spain (Barcelona June 1870, Valencia September 1871), Switzerland (La Chaux-de-Fonds April 1870, Sonvilier November 1871), and Italy (Rimini August 1872). During these congresses, delegates passed resolutions that rejected the strategy of achieving socialism via parliamentarism specifically and the conquest of state power in general. From November 1871 onward, congress resolutions were passed that opposed Marx and Engels’s attempt to convert the General Council of the First International, which was supposed to perform only an administrative role, into a governing body that imposed state-socialist decisions and policies on the organization’s previously autonomous sections. Marx and Engels thought this was necessary due to their false belief that Bakunin was secretly conspiring to take over the International and impose his anarchist program onto it.[[#43WolfgangEckhardtTheFirst|43]]
+As the text will explain, dialectical materialism is a universal system of philosophy which can be utilized to grapple with any and every conceivable problem which we humans might encounter in this universe. In Vietnam, dialectical materialism has been used to delve into matters of art, ethics, military science, and countless other fields of inquiry and endeavor. It is my hope that this book will, likewise, lead to a wider and fuller understanding and (more importantly) application of dialectical materialism in the Western world.
-The conflict between the opponents and supporters of the General Council culminated in the International’s September 1872 Hague Congress.[[#44Foracondensedsummaryoft|44]] During this congress, resolutions were passed by majority vote that expelled the anarchists Bakunin and James Guillaume from the International, relocated the General Council from London to New York, and committed the organization to the goal of constituting the working class into a political party aimed at the conquest of political power. Marx and Engels achieved this majority by nefarious means. This included requesting blank mandates from various sections that did not specify who the delegate was or how they should vote. These blank mandates were then sent to supporters of the General Council. In multiple instances, these supporters even had their travel expenses paid for by Marx and Engels in order to ensure that they attended the congress. Several of the groups that issued blank mandates or pro–General Council mandates did not really exist as actual sections of the International, and had been created for the sole purpose of issuing a mandate at Marx and Engels’s request. The resolutions of the Hague Congress were subsequently rejected by the Jura, French, Belgian, Italian, Dutch, English, and Spanish sections of the International on the grounds that they had been passed by a fake majority and violated each section’s autonomy to determine its own strategy and program.[[#45ReneBerthierSocialDemocr|45]]
+March, 2023
-Shortly after the end of the Hague Congress, delegates representing the Spanish, French, Italian, Jura, and American sections of the International met at a congress in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. In organizing this congress, which was held on September 15 and 16, 1872, the sections did not think they were forming a new distinct organization that split from the First International. They were rather, from their point of view, merely reorganizing or reconstituting the International on its original federalist basis. In order to avoid confusion, I shall refer to this organization as the Saint-Imier International but it should be kept in mind that this is anachronistic.[[#46BerthierSocialDemocracya|46]]
+Emerican Johnson
-During this congress, the delegates voted in favor of four resolutions. The first resolution rejected every resolution of the Hague Congress and the authority of the new General Council in New York. The second resolution declared a pact of mutual defense, solidarity, and friendship between the sections that attended the meeting and any section that subsequently wished to join. This pact consisted of a commitment to be in regular correspondence with one another and to stand in solidarity with any section whose freedom was violated by either government repression or the impositions of an authoritarian General Council. The only distinctly anarchist resolutions were the third and fourth. They advocated a social revolution that abolished capitalism and the state simultaneously and established the free federation of free producers. This transformation of society was to be achieved by workers themselves organized within trade unions and autonomous communes. It was proposed that workers in the present should build toward the social revolution by organizing strikes. These forms of class struggle were advocated because they caused workers to develop an awareness of their distinct class interests, taught workers to act for themselves, and increased the power of workers against capitalists. Strikes prepared workers for the social revolution and established, or expanded, the systems of organization through which workers could successfully overthrow the ruling classes and reorganize production and distribution. The resolutions rejected the strategy of attempting to achieve socialism via the conquest of state power, because it would result in workers being dominated and exploited by a new minority of rulers who actually exercised state power, rather than the abolition of all systems of class rule.[[#47ResolutionsoftheSaintIm|47]]
+=== A Message From ''The International Magazine'' ===
-For several members of the historical anarchist movement, anarchism did not exist during the 1840s and 50s. Instead anarchism, as they understood it, first emerged within the First International and Saint-Imier International. In 1922, Luigi Fabbri referred to “the whole fifty-year history of anarchism” and so dated the birth of anarchism to 1872.[[#48LuigiFabbriAnarchyand|48]] A similar position was articulated by Malatesta on numerous occasions. In 1899, he wrote that “we, anarchist socialists, have existed as a separate party, with essentially the same program, since 1868, when Bakunin founded the ''Alliance'' . . . and we were the founders and soul of the anti-authoritarian wing of the ‘International Working Men’s Association.’”[[#49ErricoMalatestaTowardsAn|49]] In 1907, Malatesta claimed that “the first anarchists” belonged to “the international.”[[#50MaurizioAntonioliedThe|50]] He later wrote that “Anarchism was born” with the adoption of the resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress in September 1872 and thereby transitioned from the “individual thought of a few isolated men” into “the collective principle of groups distributed all over the world.”[[#51QuotedinDavideTurcatoMa|51]]
+''The International Magazine'' began in 2020 to connect international socialist movements and to strengthen the voice of oppressed people across the globe. We have been following the work of Vietnamese communists in their unique path towards peace, prosperity, and the construction of socialist values with a keen eye and much interest. It is with this spirit of international solidarity and a deep desire to learn from and share wisdom from our comrades around the world that we celebrate the release of this First English Edition of The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism Part 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism.
-It should nonetheless be kept in mind that the Saint-Imier International was not an exclusively anarchist organization. The founding congress was attended by anarchist delegates representing Spain, France, Italy, and the Jura region of Switzerland, but it also included the delegate for America, Gustave Lefrançais, who, despite being a survivor of the Paris Commune, was not strictly speaking an anarchist. The organization soon grew to include a minority of state socialists from England, Germany, and Belgium. This led to a series of heated debates about strategy and the vision of the future society at the 1873, 1874, and 1876 congresses.[[#52BerthierSocialDemocracya|52]]
+Ho Chi Minh once said: “In order to build socialism, first and foremost, we need to have socialist people who understand socialist ideology and have socialist values.”
-The pluralist nature of the organization can be seen in the fact that the founding 1872 resolutions declared that each section had the right to decide for itself what form of political struggle they engaged in and that it was “presumptuous,” “reactionary,” and “absurd” to impose “one line of conduct as the single path that might lead to its social emancipation.”[[#53ResolutionsoftheSaintIm|53]] This position was reaffirmed at the 1874 congress, where the delegates voted unanimously in favor of a resolution that each section should decide for itself whether or not to engage in parliamentary struggle. It was not until the final 1877 Verviers Congress of the Saint-Imier International, which was attended by delegates representing anarchist groups in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Greece, and Egypt, that the delegates were exclusively anarchist due to state socialists having left the organization. Anarchist-led sections in Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay had affiliated with the Saint-Imier International but did not send delegates to the congress due to the distance.[[#54BerthierSocialDemocracya|54]]
+To this end, Vietnamese communists have expended tremendous resources building a curriculum on Marxist-Leninist philosophy and analysis which includes dialectical materialism, materialist dialectics, scientific socialism, historical materialism, and political economy. These topics are taught in primary and secondary schools and are mandatory subjects for all students attending public universities in Vietnam. Beyond that, Vietnam offers free degrees to students who wish to study Marxist theory and philosophy and Ho Chi Minh Thought (defined as the application of Marxist philosophy to the unique material conditions of Vietnam). In this manner, Vietnam has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to developing “socialist people” “with socialist values.”
-During the Verviers Congress, the anarchist delegates passed a series of resolutions that completely separated them from state socialism and thereby established anarchism as a fully distinct social movement, rather than one tendency within a pluralist International.[[#55BerthierSocialDemocracya|55]] The anarchist delegates declared that their goal was the self-abolition of the proletariat through an international social revolution that overthrew capitalism, via the forceful expropriation of the ruling classes. They proposed that the private property of capitalism should be replaced by the collective ownership of land and the means of production by federations of producers themselves, rather than state ownership and control of the economy. To achieve this, they advocated revolutionary trade unionism and rejected forming political parties that engaged in parliamentary politics.[[#56ResolutionsoftheCongress|56]]
+We are, therefore, extremely excited to have worked with Luna Nguyen on the translation and annotation of Part 1 of the Vietnamese university curriculum on the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism into English, which will make this unique perspective of socialist theory available to comrades around the world for the first time.
-In many respects, the Verviers resolutions were almost the same as the resolutions adopted five years previously at Saint-Imier. There was one crucial difference. The delegates at Saint-Imier had qualified their critique of achieving socialism via the conquest of state power with a commitment to different views on political struggle coexisting within the same pluralist International. The resolutions of Verviers were, in comparison, actively hostile to state socialism. They declared that society is divided into two main classes with distinct class interests: workers and capitalists. The state exists to defend the interests of capitalists and economic privilege in general. As a result, the state, irrespective of which political party wields its power, cannot be used to abolish class society and will instead reproduce it. The goal of emancipation can only be achieved by workers themselves directly engaging in class struggle.[[#57ResolutionsoftheCongress|57]] Given this: “Congress declares that there is no difference between ''political'' parties, whether they are called socialist or not, all these parties without distinction forming in its eyes one reactionary mass and it sees its duty as fighting all of them. It hopes that workers who still travel in the ranks of these various parties, instructed by lessons from experience and by revolutionary propaganda, will open their eyes and abandon the way of politics to adopt that of revolutionary socialism.”[[#58ResolutionsoftheCongress|58]]
+After having read through this volume, which outlines the fundamentals of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, we find the most important lesson to be the relationship between theory and practice. According to the Vietnamese scholars who authored the original text, Marxist-Leninist philosophy must be considered a living, breathing philosophy which requires application in the real world — through practice — in order to be made fully manifest.
-The theory and practice of the anarchist movement were not invented by a single founding father who developed the ideology in full and then transmitted it to workers. Anarchism was instead cocreated over several years by an international social network that formulated its common program through a process of debate and discussion in newspapers, pamphlets, books, formal congresses, informal meetings, and letters between key militants. This social network was mostly composed of workers, such as Jean-Louis Pindy and Adhémar Schwitzguébel, and a few formally educated individuals from privileged backgrounds, such as Bakunin and Carlo Cafiero.[[#59Accountsoftheanarchistle|59]] This point was understood by later anarchists. In 1926, the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad declared that “anarchism was born, not of the abstract deliberations of some sage or philosopher, but out of the direct struggle waged by the toilers against Capital, out of the toilers’ needs and requirements, their aspirations toward liberty and equality. . . . Anarchism’s leading thinkers: Bakunin, Kropotkin, and others, did not invent the idea of anarchism, but, having discovered it among the masses, they merely helped refine and propagate it through the excellence of their thinking and their learning.”[[#60TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|60]]
+We hope that readers of this volume will carry forward this guidance through practice which suits your material conditions, wherever you are in the world.
-'''How Collectivists Became Anarchists'''
+If you would like to learn the perspective of socialists from other nations around the world, we invite you to visit our website at InternationalMagz.com — the home of ''The International Magazine'' online. There, you will find articles written by comrades from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities with a clear bias towards anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism!
-The history of how anarchism as a social movement arose is not only the history of how its program was formulated. It also includes the history of how, and why, a tendency within the First International came to refer to themselves as “anarchists” in the first place. It is necessary to establish in detail how this happened because it clarifies the relationship between the anarchism of Proudhon, who in 1840 was the first person to self-identify as an anarchist, and the anarchism of the social movement that emerged from the late 1860s onward. In 1880, Kropotkin claimed that:
+In solidarity,
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">When in the heart of the International there rose up a party that fought against authority in all its forms, that party first took on the name of the federalist party, then called itself ''anti-statist ''or ''anti-authoritarian''. At that epoch it even avoided assuming the name of anarchist. The word ''an-archy ''(as it was written then) might have attached the party too closely to the Proudhonians, whose ideas of economic reform the International then combated. But it was precisely to create confusion that the adversaries of the anti-authoritarians took pleasure in using the name.[[#61PeterKropotkinWordsofa|61]]</div>
+The Editorial Team of ''The International Magazine''
-Nonetheless, as Kropotkin noted, anarchists came to accept the name. As he pointed out in 1910, “the name of ‘anarchists,’ which their adversaries insisted upon applying to them, prevailed, and finally it was revindicated.”[[#62PeterKropotkinDirectStru|62]]
+=== Notes on Translation ===
-One potential problem with Kropotkin’s narrative is that Bakunin first publicly called himself an “anarchist” in August 1867 in “The Slavic Question,”'' ''which was printed in the Italian paper ''Freedom and Justice''. He wrote in response to Pan-Slavists that “they are unitarians at all costs, always preferring public order to freedom and I am an anarchist and prefer freedom to public order.”[[#63QuotedinEckhardtFirstSo|63]] Crucially, this was written before Bakunin had even joined the First International in June or July 1868.[[#64EHCarrMichaelBakunin|64]] A few years later, Bakunin referred to himself as an “anarchist” in private in his 1870 letter to Sergei Nechaev and his unsent October 1872 letter to the editors of ''La Liberté''.[[#65MichaelBakuninSelectedWr|65]]
+Vietnamese is a very different language from English, which has presented many challenges in translating this book. Whenever possible, I have tried to let the “spirit” of the language guide me, without altering the structure, tone, and formatting of the book.
-Bakunin continued to use this language in his published 1873 book ''Statism and Anarchy''. In it, he labeled the opponents of German state communists as “anti-state socialists, or anarchists” and endorsed what he called “the ''anarchist'' social revolution.”[[#66MichaelBakuninStatismand|66]] He wrote that “we revolutionary anarchists are proponents of universal popular education, liberation, and the broad development of social life, and hence are enemies of the state and of any form of statehood. . . . Those are the convictions of social revolutionaries, and for them we are called anarchists. We do not object to this term because we are in fact the enemies of all power, knowing that power corrupts those invested with it just as much as those compelled to submit to it.”[[#67BakuninStatismandAnarchy|67]]
+One thing you will likely notice right away: this book is highly condensed! This is because most Vietnamese students are already familiar with these concepts. We have added annotations to try to make the book more digestible for those of you who are new to Marxism-Leninism, and these annotations are explained on the next page.
-It is difficult to determine how much impact Bakunin’s decision in ''Statism and Anarchy'' to refer to himself and the movement he belonged to as “anarchist” had on the language of anti-state socialists within the Saint-Imier International. This is because ''Statism and Anarchy'' was the only major revolutionary socialist text written by Bakunin in Russian, rather than French, and almost all of the 1,200 copies that were printed in Switzerland were smuggled to St. Petersburg and distributed among Russian revolutionary circles.[[#68MarshallShatzIntroductio|68]] In other texts, Bakunin used different language. For example, in “The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State,” which was written in 1871 and published posthumously in 1878, he referred to the movement he belonged to as “collectivists” and “revolutionary socialists.”[[#69BakuninSelectedWritings|69]] Even in ''Statism and Anarchy'' he also referred to anarchists as “revolutionary socialists.”[[#70BakuninStatismandAnarchy|70]]
+I have worked hard to try to make the language in this book consistent with the language used in popular translations of works from Marx, Lenin, etc., that would be familiar to English-language students of Marxism-Leninism. That said, different translators have been translating these texts into English for over a century, such that different word choices have been used to relate the same concepts, and even Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different terms to describe the same concepts in many instances (not to mention the fact that Marx and Engels wrote primarily in German, whereas Lenin wrote primarily in Russian).
-It is rare to find other examples of people identifying as “anarchists” between 1867–1871. One notable example is the September 1871 declaration of principles written by the Geneva Section of Socialist Atheists. Its members referred to themselves as “Anarchists” who sought the abolition of the state and “the autonomy of the individual and of the commune,” which were to be achieved without “participation in politics, for to destroy the state, we cannot use the same means as those who support it.”[[#71QuotedinEckhardtFirstSo|71]] On other occasions, the term “anarchist” was used to refer to federalist systems of organization, rather than a specific ideology or movement. For example, on December 31, 1871, the Spanish section of the First International reprinted the Jura Federation’s “Sonvilier Circular” with their own preface. This preface claimed that the First International had an “anarchist constitution,” despite the fact that the constitution was not committed to what would soon be regarded as core anarchist principles, such as the abolition of the state or abstention from parliamentary politics.[[#72QuotedinEckhardtFirstSo|72]]
+As such, I have made it my first priority to keep the language of this translation internally consistent to avoid confusion and, again, to match the spirit of the original text as much as possible. As a result, you may find differences between the translation choices made in this text and other translations, but it is my hope that the underlying meaning of each translation is properly conveyed.
-The fact that people did not widely refer to themselves as “anarchist” during this period is demonstrated by the resolutions of the September 1871 London conference of the First International. The resolutions forbid sections from designating “themselves by sectarian names such as Positivists, Mutualists, Collectivists, Communists, etc.,” but did not include “Anarchists” within the list.[[#73KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|73]] If the label “anarchist” was already being widely used by anti-state socialists in late 1871, Marx and Engels, who wrote the resolutions, would have included the term in their list of forbidden section names, especially since they did include the anti-state socialist label “collectivist.” That the term “anarchist” was not widely used in early 1870s Switzerland is confirmed by Kropotkin’s eyewitness testimony in his autobiography. He recalled that, in early 1872, when he visited the Swiss sections of the First International, “the name ‘anarchist’ was not much in use then.”[[#74PeterKropotkinMemoirsof|74]] In 1899, Malatesta similarly remembered that, around 1868, “Bakunin came onto the scene, bringing with him the ideas that would later be called anarchist.”[[#75MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|75]] Anarchists in Italy initially just referred to themselves as socialists, because they were the first socialist movement in the country.[[#76MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|76]]
+March, 2023
-The adoption of the term “anarchist” became increasingly common in the build up to and aftermath of the First International’s September 1872 Hague Congress. In Spain, Francisco Tomás wrote, on September 8, 1872, that the First International was divided between two main factions:
+Luna Nguyen
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">one founded in unitary and centralist principles, and the other in the principles of anti-authoritarianism and federalism. The former has as its aim the organization of the International as a political party and as its purpose the conquest of political power. The latter has as its aim the organization of all workers to demolish all the institutions of this corrupt society and the abolition of political-legal-authoritarian conditions providing a free worldwide federation of free associations of free producers. The Spanish Federation is in the ranks of the latter, that is, anarchist collectivism.[[#77QuotedinEckhardtFirstSo|77]]</div>
+=== Guide to Annotations ===
-This is not to say that all anti-state socialists adopted the term “anarchist” when the Saint-Imier International was founded in September 1872. There was a great deal of debate and discussion around labels. Reclus, who first publicly called himself an anarchist in March 1876, argued in 1878 that the terms “anarchy” and “anarchist” should be adopted by the movement due to the etymology of the words, and the fact that supporters and opponents were already using the words to refer to them. This is an argument Reclus would not have felt the need to make if there was already a consensus within the movement about the terms.[[#78FlemingAnarchistWay126|78]]
+This book was written as a textbook for Vietnamese students who are not specializing in Marxism-Leninism, and so it is meant to be a simple and condensed survey of the most fundamental principles of dialectical materialism to be used in a classroom environment with the guide of an experienced lecturer. That said, a typical Vietnamese college student will already have been exposed to many of the concepts presented herein throughout twelve years of primary and secondary education. As such, in translating and preparing this book for a foreign audience who are likely to be reading it without the benefit of a lecturer’s in-person instruction, we realized that we would need to add a significant amount of annotations to the text.
-One of the main opponents of the term was Guillaume. Although he had declared his socialism to be “an-archist” in August 1870, he had changed his mind by January 1872. He wrote: “We have been wrong to use, without closely examining it, the terminology of Proudhon, from which we drew those famous words, ''abstention'' and ''an-archy''. . . . As to the word ''anarchy'', I have never liked it, and I have always asked that it be replaced by ''federation of autonomous communes''.”[[#79QuotedinEckhardtFirstSo|79]] Guillaume rejected “anarchist” because of its negative connotations and preferred to continue to use the term “collectivists,” which had been used during the First International’s congresses in Brussels (1868) and Basel (1869) to refer to advocates of the collective ownership of land.[[#80Forasummaryofthesecongr|80]] The first usage of the word “collectivism” had itself, according to Guillaume, been in the early September 1869 issue of his paper ''Le Progrès''.[[#81CastletonTheOriginsof|81]] In 1876, Guillaume wrote in the ''Bulletin of the Jura Federation'':
+These annotations will take the following forms:
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">The words ''anarchy'' and ''anarchists'' are, in our eyes and in those of many of our friends, words we should stop using, because they only express a negative idea without giving any positive theory, and they lend themselves to unfortunate misrepresentations. No “anarchist program” has ever been formulated, as far as we know. . . . But there is a ''collectivist'' theory, articulated in the congresses of the International, and that’s the one we associate with, as do our friends from Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Russia.[[#82Ihaveassembledthisquote|82]]</div>
+* Short annotations which we insert into the text itself [will be included in square brackets like these].
-The label “anarchist” became increasingly common despite Guillaume’s opposition. In December 1876, Malatesta and Carlo Cafiero wrote a letter to the ''Bulletin of the Jura Federation'' in which they reported that the Italian section of the Saint-Imier International was committed to an “anarchist, collectivist, revolutionary program.”[[#83MalatestaTheMethodofFre|83]] In his history of the International, Guillaume revealed that the ''Bulletin of the Jura Federation'' did not consciously adopt the label “anarchist” until April 1877.[[#84CahmKropotkin38|84]] A few months later, in July, the ''Bulletin'' referred to itself as belonging to “the revolutionary anarchist party.” In August, the French section of the Saint-Imier International held a congress where they adopted what they referred to as a “collectivist and anarchist program.”[[#85QuotedinGrahamWeDoNot|85]]
+-----
-Even after 1876, the widespread adoption of the terms “anarchist” and “anarchism” did not happen overnight but took several years. As late as 1880, what would become the German-speaking anarchist movement in the United States had yet to adopt the label of anarchism. They instead referred to themselves as social revolutionaries in order to distinguish themselves from parliamentary social democrats. By December 1882, they had altered their language and were now declaring themselves in favor of anarchism.[[#86TomGoyensBeerandRevolut|86]] The widespread decision to adopt this language in the 1880s appears to have occurred independently of Déjacque’s previous usage of the term during the 1850s. The available evidence indicates that Déjacque was not widely known among anarchists until the 1890s. This can be seen in the fact that Max Nettlau’s first article on Déjacque was only published in 1890 in the German anarchist paper ''Freiheit''.[[#87LehningFromBuonarrotito|87]] Jean Grave’s republication of Déjacque’s'' ''book ''L’Humanisphère ''did not occur until 1899.[[#88WoodcockAnarchism233|88]] In 1910, Kropotkin referred to this text as having been only “lately discovered and reprinted.”[[#89KropotkinDirectStruggle|89]]
+Longer annotations which add further context and background information will be included in boxes like this.
-The social movement that emerged within the First International came to adopt the labels “anarchist” and “anarchism” through a complex and contingent historical process. This, in turn, raises the question: why did they end up adopting these words? They could, after all, have invented a new term or continued to use other terms, such as federalist, collectivist, or revolutionary socialist. A clue to this puzzle can be found in the September 3, 1876, edition of the ''Bulletin of the Jura Federation''.'' ''An article distinguished between “those whose ideal is a popular state” and “the fraction that is called anarchist,” rather than the fraction that calls itself anarchist.[[#90QuotedinBerthierAnarchis|90]] A month later, the editor of the paper, Guillaume, gave a speech at the October 1876 Berne Congress of the Saint-Imier International. In it, he claimed that they were usually called “anarchists or Bakuninists” by their political opponents.[[#91JamesGuillaumeOntheAbo|91]]
+-----
-Two of their main political opponents were Marx and Engels. Throughout their correspondence during the 1870s they usually referred to the collectivists as “Bakuninists.”[[#92ForexampleKarlMarxandF|92]] This label was rejected by the collectivists because, as Malatesta explained in 1876, “we do not share all the practical and theoretical ideas of Bakunin” and “follow ideas, not men . . . we reject the habit of incarnating a principle in a man.”[[#93QuotedinGeorgesHauptAsp|93]] Bakunin himself agreed. He wrote in his 1873 resignation letter from the Jura Federation that “the ‘Bakuninist label’ . . . was thrown in your face” by “our enemies,” but “you always knew, perfectly well, that your tendencies, opinions and actions arose entirely consciously, in spontaneous independence.”[[#94MichaelBakuninSelectedTe|94]]
+We have also added diagrams to our annotations, as well as a detailed glossary/index and appendices, which are located in the back of the book. We hope these will resources will also be of use in studying other texts which are rooted in dialectical materialist philosophy.<br />
-The other term Marx and Engels publicly used during the early 1870s was “anarchists.” To take a few examples: in their May 1872 pamphlet ''Fictitious Split in the International'','' ''they labeled the Jura Federation’s “Sonvilier Circular”'' ''as “the anarchist decree”; Engels described the Italian section of the Saint-Imier International as “anarchists” in his July 1873 article, “From the International”; they sarcastically referred to “Saint-Michael Bakunin” as an “anarchist” and his ideas as “the anarchist gospel” in ''The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Workingmen’s Association'', which was published between August and September 1873.[[#95KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|95]]
+=== Original Vietnamese Publisher’s Note ===
-It is important to note that Marx and Engels referred to the Jura Federation as “anarchists” in May 1872, which was prior to most collectivists referring to themselves with the term. A key reason why Marx and Engels referred to the self-described federalists, collectivists, or revolutionary socialists as “anarchists” was because they wrongly believed their views to be a simple rehashing of Proudhon. In November 1871, Marx wrote a letter to Friedrich Bolte in which he claimed that Bakunin’s views were “scraped together from Proudhon, St. Simon, etc.” and that Bakunin’s “main dogma” was “(Proudhonist) abstention from the political movement.”[[#96KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|96]] In January 1872, Engels described Bakunin’s ideas as “a potpourri of Proudhonism and communism” in a letter to Theodor Cuno.[[#97KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|97]]
+In 2004, under the direction of the Central Government, the Ministry of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật [Vietnamese for “The Truth,” the name of a National Political Publishing House], published a [political science and philosophy] curriculum for universities and colleges in Vietnam. This curriculum includes 5 subjects: Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, Scientific Socialism, Vietnamese Communist Party History, and Ho Chi Minh Thought. This curriculum has been an important contribution towards educating our students — the young intellectuals of the country — in political reasoning, so that the next generation will be able to successfully conduct national innovation.
-The decision by individuals within the movement to adopt the “anarchist” label was not inevitable and occurred to a significant extent by chance. They could have continued to call themselves the federalist, collectivist, or revolutionary socialist movement. Guillaume could have successfully persuaded a large number of people to not refer to themselves as anarchists. They could have called themselves Bakuninists or invented a whole new label. One of the main reasons they adopted the term “anarchist” was that they were borrowing language from Proudhon. But this was not the only reason. Other people within the First International, in particular Marx and Engels, choose to call them “anarchists” due to the belief that they had the same politics as Proudhon. This led to a situation where the federalists, collectivists, or revolutionary socialists had to decide if they were going to adopt the label as their own.
+With the new practice of education and training, in order to thoroughly grasp the reform of the Party’s ideological work and theory, and to advocate for reform in both teaching and learning at universities and colleges in general, on September 18<sup>th</sup>, 2008, the Minister of Education and Training, in collaboration with Sự Thật, have issued a new program and published a textbook of political theory subjects for university and college students who are not specialized in Marxism — Leninism with Associate Professor and Doctor of Philosophy Nguyen Viet Thong as chief editor. There are three subjects:
-It should not be automatically assumed that Proudhon and the collectivists of the First International belonged to the same political tradition because they both called themselves “anarchists.” It cannot be assumed that the collectivists would have ever used the term in such large numbers if it had not been imposed on them by their political opponents, and if there had been no feud with the General Council. If they are to be viewed as belonging to the same political tradition, it must be because of the ideas, rather than just the language that they held in common.
+Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism
-It is true that both Proudhon and the collectivists advocated the abolition of capitalism and the state in favor of the free federation of free producers.[[#98Thistopicismadeconfusing|98]] Anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin were deeply influenced by Proudhon.[[#99CastletonTheOriginsof|99]] The fact that Proudhon and the collectivists were both anti-state socialists does not, however, entail that they belonged to a single political tradition. Malatesta remarked in 1897 that although “Proudhon . . . first popularized, though amid a thousand contradictions, the idea of abolishing the State and organizing society anarchically,” it was “Bakunin to whom we anarchists of today trace most directly our lineage.”[[#100ErricoMalatestaALongan|100]] Bakunin had himself been careful to describe the politics of First International collectivism as being “the widely developed and pushed to the limit Proudhonism,” rather than a mere repetition.[[#101BakuninSelectedTexts10|101]] He was deeply critical of what he took to be aspects of Proudhon’s thought.[[#102Bakuninwasalsocriticalo|102]] In ''Statism and Anarchy ''he asserted that “there is a good deal of truth in the merciless critique” Marx “directed against Proudhon.”[[#103BakuninStatismandAnarch|103]] He described his own politics as “the anarchic system of Proudhon broadened and developed by us and freed from all its metaphysical, idealist and doctrinaire baggage, accepting matter and social economy as the basis of all development in science and history.”[[#104QuotedinJamesJollTheA|104]]
+Curriculum of Ho Chi Minh Thought
-One of the main topics on which the collectivists differed from Proudhon was strategy. This is extremely important because, as noted above, socialists who called themselves “anarchists” were not distinguished from other kinds of socialism by advocating the abolition of the state. This was a long-term goal of several different kinds of state socialists, including Blanqui, Marx, and Engels. Anarchism must be defined in terms of both its goal and the strategies it proposed to reach this goal.
+Curriculum of the Revolutionary Path of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
-Proudhon, like mutualists in general, rejected the idea of transforming society through violent insurrection while nonetheless viewing himself as a revolutionary. During the late 1840s, as already mentioned, he held that capitalism and the state could be gradually abolished through a process of workers forming cooperatives that would, with the aid of loans provided by a people’s bank at low or no interest, grow in number, trade with one another and take on more and more social functions until socialism as a society-wide economic system had been established. The collectivists, in contrast, viewed Proudhon’s strategy to achieve fundamental social change as misguided, since cooperatives would be out-competed by larger capitalist businesses (aided by government economic intervention); become like capitalist businesses due to pressure from market forces; or merely improve the living conditions of a small number of workers. If a cooperative movement became so successful that it was a genuine threat to ruling class power, then it would simply be crushed by state violence. According to collectivists, class society could only be abolished through the working classes launching a violent armed insurrection that smashed the state and forcefully expropriated the means of production and land from the ruling classes.[[#105BakuninStatismandAnarch|105]]
+Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism was compiled by a collective of scientists and experienced lecturers from a number of universities, with Pham Van Sinh, Ph.D and Pham Quang Phan, Ph.D as co-editors. This curriculum has been designed to meet the practical educational requirements of students.
-This key difference on strategy could justify three distinct ways of conceptualizing anarchism: (a) Proudhon and the collectivists represent subdivisions within anarchism as a single political tradition; (b) Proudhon was an anarchist and the collectivists were not anarchists due to diverging from Proudhon; (c) Proudhon was not an anarchist and the term “anarchism” should only be used to refer to the social movement that emerged in the First International. These three potential conceptualizations of Proudhon’s relationship to anarchism rest on the implicit premise that there is one true anarchism that Proudhon is or is not a part of. There is no one true anarchism. There is instead a series of distinct “anarchisms” that arose during the nineteenth century as different people at different historical moments articulated what they thought the words “anarchist” and/or “anarchism” meant or should mean.
+We hope this book will be of use to you.
-In 1840, the term “anarchist” picked out Proudhon’s political theory for the simple reason that Proudhon decided to call himself an anarchist. The term was subsequently used by a variety of socialists in the 1840s and 1850s to refer to the goal of a society without government or authority. This included Déjacque referring to his ideas as “anarchism” in the late 1850s while advocating what he regarded as a democratic government during the transition to a fully stateless society. Between 1868 and 1880, what the words “anarchist” and “anarchism” were understood to mean changed. This occurred due to an international social network within the First International and Saint-Imier International who were influenced by Proudhon, developing a distinct revolutionary political theory that they called anarchism but could have continued calling federalism, collectivism, autonomism, or revolutionary socialism.
+April, 2016
-What matters for the purposes of studying anarchism as a historical concept is that Proudhon’s anarchism and the anarchism of the movement are viewed as distinct entities. Whether one chooses to conceptualize this as: (a) different phases of a single political tradition, or (b) a new political tradition developing out of a previous one does not change the differences between them. These are only alternative ways of viewing the differences. Given my focus on the revolutionary strategy of anarchism, I shall from now on be using the term “anarchism” to refer exclusively to the theory and practice of the anarchist movement, and not its intellectual precursors that can be found during the 1840s and 1850s.
+NATIONAL POLITICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE — SỰ THẬT
-'''The Anarchist Movement'''
+=== Original Vietnamese Preface ===
-Who did and did not belong to the anarchist movement is itself a controversial topic. This is because the social movement that emerged within the First International and the Saint-Imier International between 1864 and 1878 was not the only group of people to adopt the term during this period. In parallel to these developments, a small group of mutualists in the United States continued to advocate anti-state market socialism achieved through gradual peaceful means. From the early 1880s onward, they consciously adopted Proudhon’s label of “anarchist” as their own.[[#106BenjaminTuckerInsteadof|106]] Although they were largely an American phenomenon, they did also gain a few adherents in Europe.[[#107Forasummaryofthishisto|107]]
+To implement the resolutions of the Communist Party of Vietnam, especially the 5<sup>th</sup>
-This led to a situation in which two forms of anti-state socialism, which had both been influenced by Proudhon’s ideas and referred to themselves as “anarchists,” coexisted with one another. On the one side, anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists, and on the other side, individualist anarchists. The fact that they fundamentally disagreed with one another on such topics as their visions of a future society and strategies to achieve social change led to further contestation over what “anarchism” should mean. Both sides sometimes argued that they alone were the true anarchists, and their opponents were fake, pseudo, or inconsistent anarchists. The influential individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker, for example, gave a talk at the Boston Anarchist Club in November 1887. He drew a distinction between “real Anarchists like P. J. Proudhon, Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner” and “miscalled Anarchists like Kropotkine,” who had wrongly “usurped the name of Anarchism for its own propaganda.”[[#108BenjaminTuckerInsteadof|108]] The German individualist anarchist John Henry Mackay shared this attitude and argued that anarchism and communism were incompatible with one another.[[#109JohnHenryMackayTheAnar|109]]
+Central Resolution on ideological work, theory, and press, on September 18<sup>th</sup>, 2008, The Ministry of Education and Training has issued Decision Number 52/2008/QD-BGDDT, issuing the subject program: The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. In collaboration with Truth — the National Political Publishing House — we published the Curriculum of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism for Students Non-Specialised in MarxismLeninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought.
-Similar remarks can be found among anarchist communists. The English paper ''Freedom'' published an editorial in 1892 that argued that “individualists,” such as Tucker, “are not Anarchists” because they advocate market competition and so “lack the fundamental principle of Socialism and Anarchism—solidarity.”[[#110QuotedinRyleyMakingAno|110]] Reclus wrote in an 1895 letter that “the only resemblance between individualist anarchists and us is that of a name.”[[#111QuotedinFlemingAnarchis|111]] In 1914, Kropotkin argued that “an Individualist, if he intends to remain Individualist, cannot be an Anarchist” because “Anarchy necessarily is ''Communist''.”[[#112KropotkinDirectStruggle|112]]
+The authors of this text have drawn from the contents of the Central Council’s previous programs (Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Marxist-Leninist Political Economy, and Scientific Socialism) and compiled them into national textbooks for Marxist-Leninist science subjects and Ho Chi Minh Thought, as well as other curriculums for the Ministry of Education and Training. The authors have received comments from many collectives, such as the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Administration, the Central Propaganda Department, as well as individual scientists and lecturers at universities and colleges throughout the country. Notably:
-On other occasions, there were attempts at tolerance, cooperation, and even combining collectivist/communist anarchism and individualist anarchism together. To give a few examples, Kropotkin and Rocker included individualist anarchists in their summaries of anarchist history.[[#113KropotkinDirectStruggle|113]] The American bookbinder Dyer D. Lum advocated the broad goal of American individualist anarchists—stateless market socialism—achieved via the strategy of anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists—trade unionism and armed insurrection.[[#114DyerDLumOnAnarchy|114]] The anarchist paper ''The Alarm'', which Lum edited, published both individualist anarchist and anarchist-communist authors. In 1889, the anarchist-communist Johann Most reacted to this by verbally attacking Lum for publishing individualist anarchist views and insisted that, as a result of this, German workers should cancel their subscriptions to the paper.[[#115GoyensBeerandRevolution|115]] In response to these kinds of conflicts, Max Nettlau argued in 1914 that anarchist communists and individualist anarchists should cease to be dogmatic and learn to coexist and cooperate with one another, rather than “being divided into little chapels.”[[#116MaxNettlauAnarchismCo|116]] This idea was repeated in the 1920s, when Sébastian Faure and Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum, who wrote under the pen name Voline, attempted to form anarchist federations that would unite individualist anarchists, anarchist communists, and anarcho-syndicalists into a single organization and develop a new form of anarchism that would be a synthesis of each tendency’s best ideas.[[#117SebastienFaureTheAnarc|117]]
+Associate Professor To Huy Rua, Ph.D, Professor Phung Huu Phu, Ph.D, Professor Nguyen Duc Binh, Professor Le Huu Nghia, Ph.D, Professor Le Huu Tang, Ph.D,
-This topic is only made more complicated by the fact that what “individualist anarchism” even meant varied between contexts. Within Italian anarchism, a tendency developed during the 1880s and 1890s that referred to itself as “individualist anarchism.” In contrast to other self-described individualist anarchists, it was committed to the goal of anarchist communism, opposed formal organization, and advocated the strategy of individuals engaging in robberies, assassinations, and bombings.[[#118PerniconeItalianAnarchis|118]] This distinction can be seen in Malatesta’s 1897 remark that there are “the individualist anarchists of Tucker’s school” and “the individualist anarchists of the communist school.”[[#119MalatestaPatientWork80|119]]
+Professor Vo Dai Luoc, Ph.D, Professor Tran Phuc Thang, Ph.D, Professor Hoang
-The different varieties of individualist anarchism in Europe and the United States also changed over time. For example, during the 1890s, the individualist anarchist writer Mackay popularized the previously obscure German philosopher Max Stirner. These ideas, in turn, influenced wider circles of individualist anarchists when editions of Stirner’s 1844 book ''The Unique and Its Property ''appeared in multiple languages from the early 1900s onward, including English, Italian, French, and Russian.[[#120RockerPioneersofAmerica|120]] Mackay went so far as to rewrite the history of anarchism and claim that Stirner, who never referred to himself as an anarchist, was one of its main founders alongside Proudhon.[[#121MackayTheAnarchistsix|121]]
+Chi Bao, Ph.D, Professor Tran Ngoc Hien, Ph.D, Professor Ho Van Thong, Associate
-The fact that several different and incompatible tendencies adopted the language of “individualist anarchism” is important for understanding Malatesta’s various remarks on the topic. In 1897, he critiqued “those who, in calling themselves individualists, see that as justification for any repugnant action, and who have about as much to do with anarchism as the police do with the public order they boast to protect.”[[#122MalatestaPatientWork77|122]] In response to such self-appointed “individualist anarchists,” Malatesta had argued a year earlier that, since “we cannot stop others adopting whatever title they choose,” our only option is to “differentiate ourselves clearly from those whose notion of anarchy differs from our own.”[[#123MalatestaMethodofFreedo|123]] In 1924, Malatesta continued to claim that some self-appointed “individualist anarchists” were not in fact anarchists, while advocating tolerance toward “individualists” who “are really anarchists.”[[#124MalatestaLifeandIdeas|124]] He even recommended a book by the French individualist anarchist E. Armand and described him as “one of the ablest individualist anarchists.”[[#125MalatestaLifeandIdeas|125]]
+Professor Duong Van Thinh, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Van Oanh, Ph.D,
-Given this history, there is no neutral and uncontested definition of the anarchist movement. What people in the nineteenth and early twentieth century took anarchism to mean was a product of ongoing debates and discussion between groups who all claimed to be anarchists but had conflicting and incompatible views on both what anarchism meant and who was and was not a genuine anarchist. Although it is impossible to find a neutral and entirely uncontested definition of anarchism, it is possible to pick out contingents that represented one side within the process of contestation over what anarchism meant and to view anarchism from their point of view.
+Associate Professor Nguyen Van Hao, Ph.D, Associate Professor Nguyen Duc Bach, PhD. Pham Van Chin, Phung Thanh Thuy, M.A., and Nghiem Thi Chau Giang, M.A.
-For the purposes of this book, anarchism will be defined as a form of revolutionary anti-state socialism that first emerged as a social movement in late nineteenth-century Europe within the First International between 1864 and 1872 and the subsequent Saint-Imier International, which included anarchist groups in Europe, South America, and Egypt, between 1872 and 1878. I will focus exclusively on anarchist collectivists, anarchist communists, and anarchists without adjectives who advocated the same strategy as anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists.
+After a period of implementation, the contents of the textbooks have been supplemented and corrected on the basis of receiving appropriate suggestions from universities, colleges, the contingent of lecturers of political theory, and scientists. However, due to objective and subjective limitations, there are still contents that need to be added and modified, and we would love to receive more comments to make the next edition of the curriculum more complete.
-I will not examine the ideas of the intellectual precursors of the anarchist movement who wrote during the 1840s and 50s, such as Proudhon, or the individualist anarchists who operated in parallel with anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists from the 1880s onward. This is motivated by the fact that both Proudhon and individualist anarchists advocated distinct visions of a future society and strategies to achieve the abolition of capitalism and the state. Examining the ideas proposed by every single individual or movement who called themselves anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is not possible within the limited space of this book. I am not committing myself to the strong view that Proudhon and the individualist anarchists were not anarchists. My definition of anarchism only specifies the kind of anarchism I will be examining, and does not claim to establish the one true version of anarchism.
+MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#11|1]]. For example Peter Marshall, ''Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism'' (London: Harper Perennial, 2008),'' ''3; David Miller, ''Anarchism'' (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1984), 2–3; George Woodcock, ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements,'' 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986), 17–18.</div>
+=== Table of Contents ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#21|2]]. Friedrich Nietzsche, ''On the Genealogy of Morality'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 53. For discussions of Nietzsche’s views on definitions, see Lawrence J. Hatab, ''Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’: An Introduction ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 97–99; Raymond Geuss, ''History and Illusion in Politics'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 6–8, 69–72; ''Morality'','' Culture and History: Essays on German Philosophy'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 9–14.</div>
+'''Introduction to The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism'''
-[[#31|3]]. Marshall, ''Demanding the Impossible'', xiii–xiv, 3–5, 96–99; John A. Rapp, ''Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomy in Ancient and Modern China'' (London: Continuum Books, 2012), 3–5; Robert Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'','' We Invoke It: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015), 2–3.
+'''I. Brief History of Marxism Leninism'''
-[[#41|4]]. Marie Fleming, ''The Anarchist Way to Socialism:'' Élisée'' Reclus and Nineteenth-Century European Anarchism ''(London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1979),'' ''15–23; Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt, eds., ''Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World'', ''1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation'','' Internationalism'','' and Social Revolution'' (Leiden: Brill, 2010), xxxvi–lv; Lucien van der Walt, “Anarchism and Marxism,” in ''Brill’s Companion to Anarchist Philosophy'', ed. Nathan Jun'' ''(Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2017), 510–15.
+. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#51|5]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Modern Science and Anarchy'', ed. Iain McKay'' ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018),'' ''84, 136. On other occasions, Kropotkin appears to adopt a historicist perspective and defines anarchism as a historically specific form of antistate socialism. For an overview of this topic, see Zoe Baker, ''Kropotkin’s Definition of Anarchism ''(forthcoming).</div>
+. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#61|6]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 9, 3.</div>
+'''II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#71|7]]. Charlotte Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'', ed. Nicolas Walter (London: Freedom Press, 2000), 28, 19. See also, 78.</div>
+. Objects and Purposes of Study
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#81|8]]. Errico Malatesta, ''The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles, 1924–1931'', ed. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1995), 52.</div>
+. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#91|9]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta'', ed. Vernon Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 13.</div>
+. Excerpt from ''Modifying the Working Style''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#101|10]]. Ba Jin, “Anarchism and the Question of Practice,” in ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas'','' ''vol. 1,'' From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'','' ''ed. Robert Graham (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005), 362.</div>
+'''Chapter I: Dialectical Materialism'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#111|11]]. Kubo Yuzuru, “On Class Struggle and the Daily Struggle,” in Graham, ed.,'' Anarchism'','' ''vol. 1, 380.</div>
+'''I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#121|12]]. Rapp, ''Daoism and Anarchism'', 37–40, 227–29.</div>
+. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#13|13]]. Gerrard Winstanley, ''“The Law of Freedom” and other Writings'', ed. Christopher Hill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 77–95.</div>
+. Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#14|14]]. Élisée Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' Geography'','' Modernity: Selected Writings of Élisée Reclus'', ed. John Clark and Camille Martin (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013), 120, 127.</div>
+'''II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness, and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'''
-[[#15|15]]. Christopher Boehm, ''Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 10–12; James C. Scott, ''The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
+. Matter
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#16|16]]. Boehm, ''Hierarchy in the For''est, 43–88, 101–24. This point was previously made, but with less empirical evidence, by Pierre Clastres, ''Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology ''(New York: Zone Books, 1989), 7–47, 189–218; Clastres, ''Archeology of Violence ''(New York: Semiotext(e), 1994), 87–92.</div>
+. Consciousness
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#17|17]]. Robert L. Kelly, ''The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum'', 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4–7, 15–18, 241–48. There is limited knowledge of what gender relations were like prior to the emergence of writing due to the nature of archaeological evidence. See Marcia-Anne Dobres, “Digging Up Gender in the Earliest Human Societies,” in ''A Companion to Gender History'', ed. Teresa A. Meade and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks'' ''(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 211–26.</div>
+. The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#18|18]]. David Graeber and David Wengrow, ''The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity ''(London: Allen Lane, 2021), 106–15.</div>
+. Meaning of the methodology
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#19|19]]. Alan B. Spitzer, ''The Revolutionary Theories of Louis Auguste Blanqui ''(New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 173n37; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Karl Marx, ''Later Political Writings'','' ''ed. Terrell Carver'' ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 20; Vladimir Lenin, ''Selected Works ''(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 320, 335; Joseph Stalin, ''Works'','' ''vol. 1,'' 1901–1907'' (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), 336–37.</div>
+'''Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#20|20]]. For a summary of the language Winstanley used to refer to himself and his companions, see John Gurney, ''Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger’s Life and Legacy'' (London: Pluto Press, 2013), 59–64.</div>
+'''I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#21|21]]. Woodcock, ''Anarchism'', 12, 41. Some historical anarchists were themselves aware of its usage during the French Revolution. See Peter Kropotkin, ''The Great French Revolution'' (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 346–47, 350–60.</div>
+. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#22|22]]. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, ''What is Property?'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 205, 209, 216. See also Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, ''Property Is Theft: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology'', ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2011), 205, 254, 480, 711. For an overview of Proudhon’s life and ideas see Steven K. Vincent, ''Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); George Woodcock, ''Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography'' (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1987).</div>
+. Materialist Dialectics
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#23|23]]. Proudhon, ''Property is Theft'', 61, 609–10, 742, 766.</div>
+'''II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#24|24]]. Proudhon, ''Property is Theft'','' ''254–55, 291–92, 348, 615–16, 718, 725.</div>
+. The Principle of General Relationships
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#25|25]]. For the history of the term, see Shawn P. Wilbur, “Mutualism,” in ''The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism'', ed. Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 213–24; Vincent, ''Proudhon'','' ''162–64.</div>
+. Principle of Development
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#26|26]]. Proudhon, ''What is Property'', 65–66, 73, 86, 94, 214–16. For a summary of Proudhon’s vision of a postcapitalist society, see Iain McKay, “Introduction,” in Proudhon, ''Property is Theft'','' ''28–35.</div>
+'''III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#27|27]]. Proudhon, ''Property is Theft'','' ''164, 281–93''<nowiki>; </nowiki>''McKay, “Introduction,” in Proudhon, ''Property is Theft'', 23–28; Vincent, ''Proudhon'', 142–51, 170–74. For the wider context and how Proudhon’s ideas developed during this period, see Edward Castleton, “The Many Revolutions of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,” in ''The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought ''ed. Douglas Moggach and Gareth Stedman Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 39–69.</div>
+. Private and Common
-[[#28|28]]. ''David Berry, A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917 to 1945 (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009)'','' ''16–17; Julian P.W. Archer, ''The First International in France, 1864–1872: Its Origins, Theories, and Impact'' (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997), 41–47, 66–75; James J. Martin, ''Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America'', 1827–1908 (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1970), 103–66; Bernard H. Moss, ''The Origins of the French Labor Movement: The Socialism of Skilled Workers ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 31–52.
+. Reason and Result
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#29|29]]. Josiah Warren, ''The Practical Anarchist: Writings of Josiah Warren'','' ''ed. Crispin Sartwell'' ''(New York: Fordham University Press, 2011); Martin, ''Men Against the State'', 1–102.</div>
+. Obviousness and Randomness
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#30|30]]. Anselme Bellegarrigue, “Anarchy, A Journal of Order,” trans. Paul Sharkey, Anarchist Library website, http://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anselme-bellegarrigue-the-world-s-first-anarchist-manifesto.</div>
+. Content and Form
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#31|31]]. Élisée Reclus, “The Development of Liberty in the World,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth website, September 2, 2016, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/elisee-reclus-the-development-of-liberty-in-the-world-c-1850.</div>
+. Essence and Phenomenon
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#32|32]]. Max Nettlau, ''A Short History of Anarchism'', ed. Heiner M. Becker (London: Freedom Press, 1996),'' ''74–76; Shawn P. Wilbur, “Joseph Déjacque and the First Emergence of Anarchism,” in ''Contr’un 5: Our Lost Continent ''(2016).</div>
+. Possibility and Reality
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#33|33]]. Joseph Déjacque, ''Down with the Bosses and Other Writings, 1859–1861'' (Gresham, OR: Corvus Editions, 2013), 11–17, 40–41; Joseph Déjacque, “On the Human Being, Male and Female,” trans. Jonathan Mayo Crane, Libertarian Labyrinth website, April 4, 2011, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/from-the-archives/joseph-dejacque-the-human-being-i.</div>
+'''IV. Basic Laws of Materialist Dialectics'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#34|34]]. Déjacque, ''Down with the Bosses'','' ''20–21, 42–44.</div>
+. Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#35|35]]. Déjacque, “The Revolutionary Question,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth website, May 13, 2012, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-translations/joseph-dejacque-the-revolutionary-question.</div>
+. Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#36|36]]. Déjacque, “The Revolutionary Question.”</div>
+. Law of Negation of Negation
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#37|37]]. Déjacque, “The Revolutionary Question.”</div>
+'''Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism'''
-[[#38|38]]. Arthur Lehning, ''From Buonarroti to Bakunin: Studies in International Socialism'' (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 150–210.
+. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#39|39]]. Archer, ''First International in France'', 100–101, 126–28, 168–72; Edward Castleton, “The Origins of ‘Collectivism’: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s Contested Legacy and the Debate About Property in the International Workingmen’s Association and the League of Peace and Freedom,” ''Global Intellectual History'' 2, no. 2 (2017): 169–95.</div>
+. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#40|40]]. For a general overview of how this happened, see Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy''.'' ''For greater detail, see Archer, ''First International in France''<nowiki>; Moss, </nowiki>''Origins of the French Labor Movement'','' ''52–82.</div>
+'''Afterword'''
-[[#41|41]]. Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'','' ''19; Fleming, ''Anarchist Way'','' ''119, 126; Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'','' ''225, 262.
+'''Appendices'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#42|42]]. Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, ''Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012),'' ''44–47; Nettlau, ''Short History'','' ''144–45, 161–62, 184–85.</div>
+Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#43|43]]. Wolfgang Eckhardt, ''The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association'' (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016),'' ''53–55, 104–9, 159–64, 166; Nunzio Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),'' ''57–59; T.R. Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'' (Kingston and Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 176–78.</div>
+Appendix B: The Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#44|44]]. For a condensed summary of the conflict within the International see Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'', 167–92. For a detailed examination, see Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism''.</div>
+Appendix C: The Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics
-[[#45|45]]. René Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism in the International Workers’ Association, 1864–1877'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2015), 73–75; Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'', 187–92, 199; Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'', 283–352, 357–68, 383–97.
+Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge
-[[#46|46]]. Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 77–81; Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'', 354–7.
+Appendix E: Properties of Truth
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#47|47]]. “Resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress of the International Workers’ Association, 15–16 September, 1872,” in Appendix to Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 179–83.</div>
+Appendix F: Common Deviations from Dialectical Materialism
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#48|48]]. Luigi Fabbri, “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism,” in ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', ed. Friends of Aron Baron (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 18.</div>
+'''Glossary and Index'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#49|49]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019), 150. In the original, Malatesta gives the incorrect date of 1867 for the founding of the Alliance. I have corrected this in order to avoid confusing the reader. In the nineteenth century, the word ''party'' was often used in a broad sense to refer to a social movement or a group of people who shared the same principles. For Malatesta’s definition, see Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 65.</div>
+<br />
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#50|50]]. Maurizio Antonioli, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam (1907)'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press 2009), 122.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-3.png|''“Great Victory for the People and Army of South Vietnam!”'']]
-[[#51|51]]. Quoted in Davide Turcato, ''Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution'','' 1889–1900 ''(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 18.
+<br />
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#52|52]]. Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 80–81, 104–129; Caroline Cahm, ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism'','' 1872–1886'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),'' ''29–34; Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'','' ''197–220.</div>
+= Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism =
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#53|53]]. “Resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress of the International Workers’ Association,” 181.</div>
+== I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#54|54]]. Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 130–40; Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'','' ''225–27. For more information about the anarchist sections in Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, and Egypt see Ángel J. Cappelletti, ''Anarchism in Latin America ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 47–50, 115–18, 351–55; Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'','' ''252–54; Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, ''The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism'','' 1860–1914 ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 114–15.</div>
+=== 1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts ===
-[[#55|55]]. Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'','' ''153; Moss, ''The Origins of the French Labor Movement'','' ''79; A.W. Zurbrugg, ''Anarchist Perspectives in Peace and War, 1900–1918'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2018), 6n*.
+Marxism-Leninism is a system of scientific opinions and theories which were built by Karl Marx<ref>Karl Marx, 1818–1883 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, leader of the international working class.</ref> and Friedrich Engels<ref>Friedrich Engels, 1820–1895 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx.</ref>, and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin<ref>Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870–1924 (Russian): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class.</ref>. Marxism-Leninism was formed and developed by interpreting reality as well as building on preceding ideas. It provides the fundamental worldview* and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice. It is a science that concerns the work of liberating the proletariat from all exploitative regimes with the ambition of liberating all of humanity from all forms of oppression.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#56|56]]. “Resolutions of the Congresses of Verviers, 5 to 8 September 1877, and Ghent, 9 to 14 September 1877,” in Appendix to Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 188–91.</div>
+Marxism-Leninism is made up of three basic theories which have strong relationships with each other. They are: ''Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist Political Economics,'' and ''Scientific Socialism''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#57|57]]. “Resolutions of the Congresses of Verviers,” 189.</div>
+''Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism'' studies the basic principles of the movement and development of nature, society and human thought. It provides the fundamental worldview and methodology of scientific awareness and revolutionary practice.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#58|58]]. “Resolutions of the Congresses of Verviers,” 189.</div>
+Based on this philosophical worldview and methodology, ''Marxist-Leninist Political Economics'' studies the economic rules of society, especially the economic rules of the birth, development, and decay of the capitalist mode of production, as well as the birth and development of a new mode of production: the communist mode of production.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#59|59]]. Accounts of the anarchist-led sections of the International typically refer to named delegates representing various workers’ associations, but do not specify the trade these anonymous workers were involved in. For detailed information on occupations in the Italian and Swiss movements, see Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 76–80; Eckhardt, ''First Socialism Schism'', 13–15.</div>
+''Scientific Socialism''** is the inevitable result of applying the philosophical worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism, as well as Marxist-Leninist Political Economics, to reveal the objective rules of the socialist revolution process: the historical step from capitalism into socialism, and then communism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#60|60]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “The Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft),” in Alexandre Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968 ''(Oakland CA: AK Press, 2002), 196.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#61|61]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Words of a'' ''Rebel ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992), 77. For a summary of the strategies proposed by mutualists in the First International see Archer, ''First International in France'', 44–47, 79–82.</div>
+==== Annotation 1 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#62|62]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 170.</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> A ''worldview'' encompasses the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about ourselves as human beings, and about life and the position of human beings in the world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#63|63]]. Quoted in Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''453n47.</div>
+<nowiki>**</nowiki> The word “science,” and, by extension, “scientific” in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning. Friedrich Engels was the first to describe the philosophy which he developed with Marx as “Scientific Socialism” in his book Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#64|64]]. E. H. Carr, ''Michael Bakunin'' (London: The Macmillan Press, 1975), 307, 337.</div>
+However, it should be noted that the English phrase “scientific socialism” comes from
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#65|65]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', ed. Arthur Lehning (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 191, 238.</div>
+Engels’ use of the German phrase “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#66|66]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,'' ''1990), ed. Marshall Shatz, 179, 133.</div>
+“Wissenschaft” is a word which can be directly translated as “knowledge craft” in German, and this word encompasses a much more broad and general concept than the word “science” as it’s usually used in English.
-[[#67|67]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'','' ''135–36.
+In common usage, the word “science” in English has a relatively narrow definition, referring to systematically acquired, objective knowledge pertaining to a particular subject. But “wissenschaft” refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding. “Wissenschaft” is used in any study that involves systematic investigation. And so, “scientific socialism” is only an approximate translation of “wissenschaftlich sozialismus.” So, “scientific socialism” can be understood as a body of theory which analyzes and interprets the natural world to develop a body of knowledge, which must be constantly tested against reality, with the pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#68|68]]. Marshall Shatz, “Introduction” in Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', xxxv.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#69|69]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 197–98.</div>
+Even though these three basic theories of Marxism-Leninism deal with different subjects, they are all parts of a unified scientific theory system: the science of liberating the proletariat from exploitative regimes and moving toward human liberation.
-[[#70|70]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 186.
+=== 2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#71|71]]. Quoted in Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''375–76.</div>
+There have been two main stages of the birth and development of Marxism-Leninism:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#72|72]]. Quoted in Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'', 175. For the 1867 English edition of the rules of the First International, see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 20'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), 441–46.</div>
+''1.'' ''Stage of formation and development of Marxism'', as developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#73|73]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 22 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986), 429.</div>
+''2.'' ''Stage of defense and developing Marxism into Marxism-Leninism'', as developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#74|74]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Memoirs of a Revolutionist ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 260.</div>
+==== a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#75|75]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''11.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#76|76]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 43n36, 150.</div>
+==== Annotation 2 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#77|77]]. Quoted in Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''375. For other examples, see 180, 218–19, 252, 272, 278, 290, 334, 357, 362–63, 376–77, 387–88; Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'','' ''72–73.</div>
+The following sections will explain the conditions which led to the birth of Marxism. First, we will examine the Social-Economic conditions which lead to the birth of Marxism, and then we will examine the theoretical premises upon which Marxism was built. Later, we will also discuss the impact which 18<sup>th</sup> and 19<sup>th</sup> century advances in natural science had on the development of Marxism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#78|78]]. Fleming, ''Anarchist Way'', 126.</div>
+''- Social-Economical Conditions''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#79|79]]. Quoted in Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''376.</div>
+Marxism was born in the 1840s. This was a time when the capitalist mode of production was developing strongly in Western Europe on the foundation of the industrial revolution which succeeded first in England at the end of the 18<sup>th</sup> century. Not only did this industrial revolution mark an important step forward in changing from handicraft cottage industry capitalism into a more greatly mechanized and industrialized capitalism, it also deeply changed society, and, above all, it caused the birth and development of the proletariat.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#80|80]]. For a summary of these congresses, see Archer, ''First International in France'','' ''119–29, 166–75.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#81|81]]. Castleton, “The Origins of ‘Collectivism,’” 169.</div>
+==== Annotation 3 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#82|82]]. I have assembled this quote from extracts in Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''376 and Marianne Enckell, “Bakunin and the Jura Federation,” in ''Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth: The First International in Global Perspective'','' ''ed. Fabrice Bensimon, Quentin Deluermoz, and Jeanne Moisand'' ''(Leiden: Brill, 2018), 363n26.</div>
+Marx saw human society under capitalism divided into classes based on their relation to the means of production.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#83|83]]. Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''11.</div>
+''Means of production'' are physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including machinery, factory buildings, tools, and anything else used in producing goods and services. ''Capitalism'' is a political economy defined by private ownership of the means of production.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#84|84]]. Cahm, ''Kropotkin'','' ''38.</div>
+Within the framework of Dialectical Materialism, all classes are defined by internal and external relationships [see ''The Principle of General Relationships'', p. 107]; chiefly, classes are defined by their relations to the means of production and to one another.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#85|85]]. Quoted in Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'', 225.</div>
+The ''proletariat'' are the working class — the people who provide labor under capitalism, but who do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who ''do'' own means of production: the ''bourgeoisie''. As the owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie are the ruling class under capitalism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#86|86]]. Tom Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City'','' 1880–1914'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 11–13, 71–5,'' ''80–83, 96–97.</div>
+According to Marx and Engels, there are other classes within the capitalist political economy. Specifically, Marx named the ''petty'' ''bourgeoisie'' and the ''lumpenproletariat''. Marx defined the ''petty bourgeoisie'' as including semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
-[[#87|87]]. Lehning, ''From Buonarroti to Bakunin'','' ''16–17.
+In the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party,'' Marx described the petty bourgeoisie as:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#88|88]]. Woodcock, ''Anarchism'','' ''233.</div>
+<blockquote>
+... fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society... The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#89|89]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 170.</div>
+Vietnam’s Textbook of History for High School Students gives this definition of the petty bourgeoisie in the specific context of Vietnamese history:
-[[#90|90]]. Quoted in Berthier, ''Anarchism and Social Democracy'', 109.
+<blockquote>
+The petty bourgeois class includes: intellectuals, scientists, and small business owners, handicraftsmen, doctors, lawyers, and civil servants. The vast majority of contemporary intellectuals before the August Revolution of 1945, including students, belonged to the petty bourgeoisie. In general, they were also oppressed by imperialism and feudalism, often unemployed and uneducated.
-[[#91|91]]. James Guillaume, “On the Abolition of the State,” in'' Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later'', ed. Marcello Musto (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 192.
+The petty bourgeoisie were intellectually and politically sensitive. They did not directly exploit labor. Therefore, they easily absorbed revolutionary education and went along with the workers and peasants.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#92|92]]. For example, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'','' ''vol. 43'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 437, 479–80, 494.</div>
+However, the intelligentsia and students often suffer from great weaknesses, such as: theory not being coupled with practice, contempt for labor, vague ideas, unstable stances, and erratic behavior in political action.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#93|93]]. Quoted in Georges Haupt, ''Aspects of International Socialism'','' 1871–1914 ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 4.</div>
+Some other petty bourgeoisie (scientists and small businessmen, freelancers, etc.) were also exploited by imperialism and feudalism. Their economic circumstances were precarious, and they often found themselves unemployed and bankrupt. Therefore, the majority also participated in and supported the resistance war and revolution. They are also important allies of the working class.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#94|94]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', ed. A. W. Zurbrugg (London: Merlin Books, 2016),'' ''247–48.</div>
+In general, these members of the petty bourgeoisie had a number of weaknesses: self-interest, fragmentation, and a lack of determination. Therefore, the working class has a duty to agitate and spread propaganda to such members of the petty bourgeoisie, organize them, and help them to develop their strong points while correcting their weaknesses. It is necessary to skillfully lead them, make them determined to serve the people, reform their ideology, and unite with the workers and peasants in order to become one cohesive movement. Then, they will become a great asset for the public in resistance war and revolution.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#95|95]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 23'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 102, 450, 466, 468.</div>
+Marx defined the “lumpenproletariat” as another class which includes the segments of society with the least privilege — most exploited by capitalism — such as thieves, houseless people, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#96|96]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 44'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989), 255.</div>
+In the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party,'' Marx defined the lumpenproletariat as: “The ‘dangerous class’ (''lumpenproletariat''), the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society.” Marx did not have much hope for the revolutionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, writing that they “may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#97|97]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 44, 306. In 1886, Engels claimed, in comparison to his previous statement, that what Bakunin labeled anarchism was a blend of Proudhon and Max Stirner. See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 26 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 382.</div>
+''Political Theories'', an official journal of the Ho Chi Minh National Institute of Politics, discussed the lumpenproletariat in the specific context of Vietnamese revolutionary history:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#98|98]]. This topic is made confusing by the fact that, during the 1850s, Proudhon’s ideas and terminology underwent a complicated process of development. By the 1860s, he called for the abolition of government in favor of a federated society while claiming that the state in the sense of the “power of collectivity” would be a part of a free society and lack “authority.” See Shawn P. Wilbur, “Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: Self-Government and the Citizen-State,” Libertarian Labyrinth website, June 5, 2013, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/contrun/pierre-joseph-proudhon-self-government-and-the-citizen-state-2.</div>
+<blockquote>
+It should be noted that Marxism-Leninism has never held that the historical mission of the working class is rooted in poverty and impoverishment. Poverty and low standards of living make workers hate the regime of capitalism, and causes disaster for workers, but the basic driving force behind the revolutionary struggle of the working class lies in the very nature of capitalist production and from the irreconcilable contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#99|99]]. Castleton, “The Origins of ‘Collectivism,’” 184; Martin A. Miller, ''Kropotkin'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 279n30. For Proudhon and Bakunin’s friendship see Woodcock, ''Proudhon'', 87–89, 266; Carr, ''Bakunin'', 130–31.</div>
+Moreover, it should not be conceived that a class is capable of leading the revolution because it is the poorest class. In the old societies, there were classes that were extremely poor and had to go through many struggles against the ruling class, but they could never win and keep power, and did not become the ruling class of society.
-[[#100|100]]. Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 296.
+History has proven that the class that represents newly emerging productive forces which are able to build a more advanced mode of production than the old ones can lead the revolution and organize society into the regime they represent. Fetishizing poverty and misery is a corruption of Marxism-Leninism...
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#101|101]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 105–6.</div>
+The very existence of the lumpenproletariat is strong evidence of the inhumane nature of capitalist society, which regularly recreates a large class of outcasts at the bottom of society.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#102|102]]. Bakunin was also critical of mutualists within the First International who viewed themselves, and not the collectivists, as the true successors of Proudhon. In April 1869, he wrote a letter to Guillaume in which he referred to Tolain and Chemallé, who were leading members of the French section of the First International, as “Proudhon-ians of the second and bad sort” who “want individual property” and to “debate and parade along with the bourgeoisie.” See Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 38.</div>
+In the late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> centuries, millions of Vietnamese people were forced to leave their homes in rural farmlands to work for plantations and factories which were owned by French colonialists. These workers were functionally enslaved, being regularly physically abused by colonial masters, barred from any education whatsoever, and receiving only the bare minimum to survive. As a result, under French colonial rule, about 90% of Vietnamese were illiterate and the French aimed to indoctrinate Vietnamese people into believing that they were inferior to the French.
-[[#103|103]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 142.
+The French colonialists also worked with Vietnamese landlords to exploit peasants in rural areas. Those peasants received barely enough to survive and, like the plantation slaves, were prohibited from receiving education. Because Vietnamese peasants and colonial slaves composed the majority of workers while being so severely oppressed and living in conditions of such abject poverty, it was difficult to fully distinguish between the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat in Vietnam during the colonial era.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#104|104]]. Quoted in James Joll, ''The Anarchists'' (London: Methuen, 1969), 108. I have corrected Joll’s translation such that the German word anarchische is translated as anarchic, rather than anarchist.</div>
+During this time, Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists developed the philosophy of “Proletarian Piety.” The word “piety,” here, is a translation of the Vietnamese word ''hiếu'', which originally comes from the Confucianist philosophy of “filial piety.” Filial piety demanded children to deeply respect, honor, and obey their parents. Through the concept of Proletarian Piety, Ho Chi Minh adapted this concept to proletarian revolution, calling for communists to deeply love, respect, and tirelessly serve the oppressed masses. This philosophical concept sought to unite the proletariat, lumpenproletariat, and petty bourgeoisie into one united revolutionary class. Even some feudal landlords and capitalists — who were, themselves, oppressed by the colonizing French — were willing to fight for communist revolution and were welcomed into the revolutionary movement if they were willing to adhere to the principle of proletarian piety. The working class and peasantry would lead the revolution, the more privileged classes would follow, and all communist revolutionists would serve the oppressed masses through sacrifice and struggle.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#105|105]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'','' ''200–202; Michael Bakunin, ''The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869–1871'', ed. and trans. Robert M. Cutler (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), 151–54. This shift in strategy from advocating gradual change via co-ops in the 1840s to violent revolution in the 1870s was part of a wider process of development within French socialism. It included individuals who held similar views to anarchists but did not use the label, such as Eugène Varlin. See Moss, ''The Origins of the French Labor Movement'', 4–6, 31–102.</div>
+During this period, many novels were written and circulated widely which featured main characters who were members of the lumpenproletariat or enslaved by the French, such as ''Bỉ'' ''Vỏ,'' a story about a beautiful peasant girl who was forced to become a thief in the city, and ''Chí Phèo'', the story of a peasant who worked as a servant in a feudal landlord’s house who was sent to prison and became a destitute alcoholic after being released. The purpose of these stories was to show the cruelty of the colonialist-capitalist society of Vietnam in the 1930’s and to inspire proletarian piety, including empathy and respect for the extreme suffering and oppression of the lumpenproletariat, peasantry, and colonial slaves. These stories also presented sympathetic views of intellectuals and members of the petty bourgeoisie: for instance, in the novel ''Lão'' ''Hạc'', the son of a peasant leaves to work for a French plantation and the father never sees him again. The aged peasant becomes extremely poor and sick without the support of his son, and the only person in the village who helps him is a teacher, representing the intellectual segment of the petty bourgeoisie.
-[[#106|106]]. Benjamin Tucker, ''Instead of a Book'','' by a Man Too Busy to Write One: A Fragmentary Exposition of Philosophical Anarchism'', 2nd ed. (New York: Benj. R. Tucker, Publisher, 1897),'' ''ix, 14.
+The writers of these novels were communists who wanted to promote the principles of proletarian piety. Rather than looking down on the most oppressed members of society, and rather than sewing distrust and contempt for the petty bourgeoisie, Vietnamese communists inspired solidarity and collaboration between all of the oppressed peoples of Vietnam to overthrow French colonialism, feudalism, and capitalism. Proletarian piety was crucial for uniting the divided and conquered masses of Vietnam and successfully overthrowing colonialism. Note that these strategies were developed specifically for colonial Vietnam. Every revolutionary struggle will take place in unique ''material conditions''<ref>Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See Annotation 79, p. 81.</ref>, and the composition and characteristics of each class will vary over time and from one place to another. It is important for revolutionists to carefully apply the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to accurately analyze class conditions in order to develop strategies and plans which will most suitably and efficiently lead to successful revolution.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#107|107]]. For a summary of this history, see Nettlau, ''Short History'','' ''30–42; Rudolf Rocker, ''Pioneers of American Freedom: Origin of Liberal and Radical Thought in America ''(Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1949), 145–54. For individualist anarchism in Britain, see Peter Ryley, ''Making Another World Possible: Anarchism, Anti-Capitalism and Ecology in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain ''(New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 87–111.</div>
+The deep contradictions* between the socialized production force** and the capitalist relations of production*** were first revealed by the economic depression of 1825 and the series of struggles between workers and the capitalist class which followed.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#108|108]]. Benjamin Tucker, ''Instead of a Book'', 390. See also, 15–16, 111–12, 383–404.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#109|109]]. John Henry Mackay, ''The Anarchists: A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century'' (Benj. R. Tucker, Publisher, 1891), ix. For Mackay’s fictional debate between an individualist anarchist and anarchist communist, see, 116–50.</div>
+==== Annotation 4 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#110|110]]. Quoted in Ryley, ''Making Another World'', 108.</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> See: ''Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction'', p. 175.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#111|111]]. Quoted in Fleming, ''Anarchist Way'','' ''153.</div>
+<nowiki>**</nowiki> In Marxism, “socialization” is simply the idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#112|112]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 203. See also Peter Kropotkin, ''Modern Science and Anarchy'', ed. Iain McKay'' ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018),'' ''139, 173.</div>
+The production force is the combination of the means of production and workers within any society. The “Socialized Production Force,” therefore, is a production force which has been socialized — that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. Under capitalism, the “Socialized Production Force” consists of the proletariat, or the working class, as well as means of production which are owned by capitalists.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#113|113]]. Kropotkin,'' Direct Struggle'', 169,'' ''171–72; Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 6, 9.</div>
+<nowiki>***</nowiki> Marx and Engels defined “relations of production” as the social relationships that human beings must accept in order to survive. Relations of production are, by definition, not voluntary, because human beings must enter into them in order to receive material needs in order to survive within a given society. Under capitalism, the relations of production require the working class to rent their labor to capitalists to receive wages which they need to procure material needs like food and shelter. This is an inherent contradiction because a small minority of society (the capitalist class) own the means of production while the vast majority of society (the working class) must submit to exploitation through wage servitude in order to survive.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#114|114]]. Dyer D. Lum, “On Anarchy,” in ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis'', ed. Albert Parsons (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2003), 149–58; Dyer D. Lum, ''Philosophy of Trade Unions'' (New York: American Federation of Labor, 1892); Dyer D. Lum, “Why I Am a Social Revolutionist,” ''Twentieth Century ''5, no. 18 (October 1890). See also, Paul Avrich, ''An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre'' (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018), 56–66.</div>
+Examples of such early struggles include: the resistance of workers in Lyon, France in 1831 and 1834; the Chartist movement in Britain from 1835 to 1848; the workers’ movement in Silesia (Germany) in 1844, etc. These events prove as historical evidence that the proletariat had become an independent political force which pioneered the fight for a democratic, equal, and progressive society.
-[[#115|115]]. Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution'','' ''214.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#116|116]]. Max Nettlau, “Anarchism: Communist or Individualist? Both,” in ''Anarchy: An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth'', ed. Peter Glassgold (New York: Counterpoint, 2000), 79–83.</div>
+==== Annotation 5 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#117|117]]. Sébastien Faure, “The Anarchist Synthesis: The Three Great Anarchist Currents,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur. Libertarian Labyrinth website, August 3, 2017, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/sebastien-faure-the-anarchist-synthesis-1828; Voline, “Synthesis (anarchist),” in ''The Anarchist Encyclopedia Abridged'', ed. Mitchell Abidor (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019), 197–205.</div>
+Here are some brief descriptions of the early working class movements mentioned above:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#118|118]]. Pernicone,'' Italian Anarchism'', 239–41, 270–72; Pietro Di Paola, ''The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora, 1880–1917 ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 63–78; Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''357, 415–7. For an overview of different strains of individualist anarchism in Milan, see Fausto Buttà, ''Living Like Nomads: The Milanese Anarchist Movement Before Fascism ''(New Castle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 66–91.</div>
+'''Resistance of Workers in Lyon, France:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#119|119]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 80.</div>
+In 1831 in France, due to heavy exploitation and hardship, textile workers in Lyon revolted to demand higher wages and shorter working hours. The rebels took control of the city for ten days. Their determination to fight is reflected in the slogan: “Live working or die fighting!”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#120|120]]. Rocker, ''Pioneers of American Freedom'','' ''152–53; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''169; Laurence S. Stepelevitch, “The Revival of Max Stirner,” ''Journal of the History of Ideas ''35, no. 2 (1974): 324; Buttà, ''Living Like Nomads'','' ''75–6. For a summary of Stirner’s life see David Leopold, “A Solitary Life,” in ''Max Stirner'','' ''ed. Saul Newman'' ''(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 21–41.</div>
+This resistance was brutally crushed by the government, which supported the factory owners. In 1834, silk mill workers in Lyon revolted again to demand the establishment of a republic. The fierce struggle went on for four days, but was extinguished in a bloody battle against the French army. About 10,000 insurgents were imprisoned or deported.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#121|121]]. Mackay, ''The Anarchists'', ix. Stirner also influenced a few anarchist communists, but the majority rejected his ideas. For a review of Stirner’s book by a syndicalist anarchist, see Max Baginski, “Stirner: ‘The Ego and His Own,’” ''Mother Earth'' 2, no. 3 (1907),'' ''142–51. Bakunin briefly mentions Stirner on at least one occasion but does not claim that he was an anarchist or influenced anarchism. See Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'','' ''141–42.</div>
+'''The Chartist Movement in Britain:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#122|122]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 77.</div>
+Chartism was a working class movement in the United Kingdom which rose up in response to anti-worker laws such as the Poor Law Amendment of 1834, which drove poor people into workhouses and removed other social programs for the working poor. Legislative failure to address the demands of the working poor led to a broadly popular mass movement which would go on to organize around the People’s Charter of 1838, which was a list of six demands which included extension of the vote and granting the working class the right to hold office in the House of Commons.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#123|123]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 199. See also ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''151.</div>
+In 1845, Karl Marx visited Britain for the first time, along with Friedrich Engels, to meet with the leaders of the Chartist movement (with whom Engels had already established a close relationship). After various conflicts and struggles, Chartism ultimately began to decline in 1848 as more socialist-oriented movements rose up in prominence.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#124|124]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'', 23.</div>
+'''Workers’ Movement in Silesia, Germany:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#125|125]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'', 24.Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework</div>
+In June, 1844, disturbances and riots occurred in the Prussian province of Silesia, a major center of textile manufacturing. In response, the Prussian army was called upon to restore order in the region. In a confrontation between the weavers and troops, shots were fired into the crowd, killing 11 protesters and wounding many others. The leaders of the disturbances were arrested, flogged, and imprisoned. This event has gained enormous significance in the history of the German labor movement.
-== {{anchor|Chapter2TheoreticalFramework1}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook5}} {{anchor|Chapter2TheoreticalFramework}} Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework ==
+In particular, Karl Marx regarded the uprising as evidence of the birth of a German workers’ movement. The weavers’ rebellion served as an important symbol for later generations concerned with poverty and oppression of the working class in German society.
-To understand anarchist political theory, one must first understand the theoretical framework that anarchists used for thinking about humans, society, and social change. This is the theory of practice.[[#1Forpreviousreconstructions|1]] It is important to note that the theory of practice was often implicit in anarchist texts and not laid out in great detail. The vast majority of anarchist texts were short articles or pamphlets that focused on other topics, such as why capitalism should be abolished or concrete discussions about how to achieve anarchist goals. In addition, anarchist authors did not, in general, feel the need to write an explicit and detailed statement of their social theory’s foundational premises because it was already accepted as the common ground that underpinned their theorizing. A rational reconstruction of the theory of practice has to be made by piecing together different brief statements that anarchist authors made, and then supplementing these brief statements with my own examples in order to clearly illustrate what they thought.
+It quickly became apparent that the revolutionary practice of the proletariat needed the guidance of scientific theories. The birth of Marxism was to meet that objective requirement; in the meantime, the revolutionary practice itself became the practical premise for Marxism to continuously develop.
-'''Materialism and Human Nature'''
+''- Theoretical Premises''
-Anarchists were, in general, materialists in the broad sense that they viewed matter as the fundamental building block of reality.[[#2MichaelBakuninThePolitica|2]] This materialism went alongside the view that the natural world must be conceptualized as a process that undergoes changes over time, rather than as a static entity. For Bakunin, the universe is the “infinite totality of the ceaseless transformations of all existing things.”[[#3BakuninPoliticalPhilosophy|3]] Cafiero similarly referred to the “continuous processes of transformation” that occur to the “infinity of matter” that constitutes the universe.[[#4CarloCafieroRevolutionEd|4]] The natural world so understood included human society. As Malatesta noted, “the social world” is “nothing but the continuing development of natural forms.”[[#5MalatestaMethodofFreedom|5]]
+The birth of Marxism not only resulted from the objective requirement of history, it was also the result of inheriting the ''quintessence''* of various previously established frameworks of human philosophical theory such as German classical philosophy, British classical political economics, and utopianism in France and Britain.
-Anarchists thought that the natural world, which included society, must be conceptualized as a totality or whole. This totality was constituted by interconnected parts that stand in relation to, and mutually shape, one another. Bakunin thought that the universe was a “totality” in which “each point acts upon the Whole” and “the Whole acts upon every point.”[[#6BakuninPoliticalPhilosophy|6]] As a result, he viewed the purpose of science as establishing the “related connections and mutual interaction and causality that really exist among real things and phenomena.”[[#7MichaelBakuninSelectedWri|7]] Reclus wrote that individuals living in society “are part of a whole” and that when “groups of men encounter one another, direct and indirect relations arise.”[[#8EliseeReclusAnarchyGeogr|8]] Kropotkin similarly held that the goal of his history of the French Revolution was “to reveal the intimate connection and interdependence of the various events that combined to produce the climax of the eighteenth century’s epic.”[[#9PeterKropotkinTheGreatFr|9]]
+-----
-Society, this totality of interconnected and mutually determining parts, changes over time due to the action of humans. According to Bakunin, “history is made, not by abstract individuals, but by acting, living and passing individuals. Abstractions advance only when borne forward by real men.”[[#10BakuninSelectedWritings|10]] For Rocker, since “every social process . . . arises from human intentions and human goal-setting and occurs within the limits of our volition” it follows that “history is . . . nothing but the great arena of human aims and ends.”[[#11RudolfRockerNationalisma|11]] Anarchist social theory rested on a particular understanding of what humans are, what human activity is, and how human activity both shapes and is shaped by society.
+==== Annotation 6 ====
-Anarchists viewed humans as unchanging and changing at the same time. They are unchanging in that there are certain characteristics that all humans across all societies have in common: they need food, water, and sleep to survive; reproduce through sex; have brains; are social animals who communicate through language; experience emotions; and so on.[[#12BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|12]] As Rocker wrote: “We are born, absorb nourishment, discard the waste material, move, procreate and approach dissolution without being able to change any part of the process. Necessities eventuate here which transcend our will. . . . We are not compelled to consume our food in the shape nature offers it to us or to lie down to rest in the first convenient place, but we cannot keep from eating or sleeping, lest our physical existence should come to a sudden end.”[[#13RockerNationalismandCult|13]]
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> In the original Vietnamese, the word ''tinh'' ''hoa'' is used, which we roughly translate to the word ''quintessence'' throughout this book. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word ''quintessence'', it has an exclusively positive connotation. ''Quintessence'' should not be confused with the universal category of ''Essence'', which is discussed on p. 156.
-One of the distinguishing characteristics of humans as a species is their consciousness. Bakunin argued that, since this is the product “of the cerebral activity of man” and “our brain is wholly an organization of the material order . . . it follows that what we call ''matter'', or ''the material world'', does not by any means exclude, but, on the contrary, necessarily embraces the ideal world as well.”[[#14BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|14]] With this consciousness, humans think about themselves, other people, the world in which they live, and worlds that they have imagined. They make plans for the future and reflect on past events. They direct and alter their behavior. In short, humans are able to mentally stand apart from their immediate experience and make their own life an object of their thought.[[#15BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|15]] According to Reclus, “humanity is nature becoming self-conscious.”[[#16QuotedinJohnClarkAnIn|16]] Cafiero wrote that “the feeling of one’s ''self'' is without doubt the dominant sentiment of the human soul. The awareness of one’s being, its development and betterment, the satisfaction of its needs, these make up the essence of human life.”[[#17CafieroRevolution3|17]] Each individual human always possesses a particular form of consciousness, by which I mean the specific ways in which they experience, conceptualize, and understand the world in which they live. I will refer to this as “consciousness” for short.
+German classical philosophy, especially the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel<ref>Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 — 1831 (German): Philosophy professor, an objective idealistic philosopher — representative of German classical philosophy.</ref> and Ludwig Feuerbach<ref>Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804 — 1872 (German): Philosophy professor, materialist philosopher.</ref>, had deeply influenced the formation of the Marxist worldview and philosophical methodology.
-Since these characteristics are constant across all humans, they must stem from certain basic facts about human biology. Human biology and the natural environment are the starting points for human activity and the parameters in which it occurs. Crucially, human nature was not viewed by anarchists as a fixed, entirely static entity or an abstract essence that exists outside of history. They distinguished between the fundamental raw materials of human nature that constitute all humans and what these materials are shaped into during a person’s life within a historically specific society. Bakunin distinguished between innate “faculties and dispositions” and “the organization of society” that “develops them, or on the other hand halts, or falsifies their development.”[[#18BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|18]] Given this, “all individuals, with no exception, are at every moment of their lives what Nature and society have made them.”[[#19BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|19]]
+-----
-Kropotkin, who was a geographer, similarly thought that “man is a result of both his inherited instincts and his education.”[[#20PeterKropotkinMutualAid|20]] Although there are “fundamental features of human character” that “can only be mediated by a very slow evolution,” the extent and manner in which these characteristics are expressed, Kropotkin claimed, is a result of a person’s social environment and the forms of activity they engage in.[[#21PeterKropotkinProposedC|21]] One of these fundamental characteristics with a strong biological basis, he believed, was the tendency for humans to cooperate with one another and engage in mutual aid in order to survive. Yet he also held that “the relative amounts of individualist and mutual aid spirit are among the most changeable features of man.”[[#22KropotkinProposedCommuni|22]]
+==== Annotation 7 ====
-Similar views were expressed by other anarchist authors. Emma Goldman declared that “those who insist that human nature remains the same at all times have learned nothing. . . . Human nature is by no means a fixed quantity. Rather, it is fluid and responsive to new conditions.”[[#23EmmaGoldmanRedEmmaSpeak|23]] The extent to which anarchists thought that the expression of human nature was malleable or plastic can be seen in the fact that several anarchists claim that there is an infinite number of different kinds of person. Malatesta, for example, wrote that in an anarchist society “the full potential of human nature could develop in its infinite variations.”[[#24MalatestaMethodofFreedom|24]]
+German classical philosophy was a movement of ''idealist'' philosophers of the 18<sup>th</sup> and 19<sup>th</sup> centuries. Idealism is a philosophical position that holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within the human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason is the best way to seek truth, and that consciousness is thus the only reliable source of knowledge and information.
-This was not to say that humans could transform themselves into anything they wanted. The nature of the raw materials that constitute humans places definite limits on what they can be shaped into. Humans cannot morph their arms into wings or lay eggs like a chicken. This is because, although a human can become an incredibly wide variety of different things during the course of their finite existence, the scope is predetermined by the kind of animal they are. As Rocker wrote, “man is unconditionally subject only to the laws of his physical being. He cannot change his constitution. He cannot suspend the fundamental conditions of his physical being nor alter them according to his wish.”[[#25RockerNationalismandCult|25]]
+One of Hegel’s important achievements was his critique of the metaphysical method.
-Stereotypes of anarchists depict them as having naive conceptions of human nature in which it is imagined that humans are innately good and kind. In reality, anarchists held that humans were defined by two main distinct tendencies: struggle/strife and sociability/solidarity.[[#26CafieroRevolution58Ma|26]] Malatesta thought that humans possessed both the “harsh instinct of wanting to predominate and to profit at the expense of others” and “another feeling which draws him closer to his neighbor, the feeling of sympathy, tolerance, of love.”[[#27ErricoMalatestaLifeandI|27]] As a result, human history contained “violence, wars, carnage (besides the ruthless exploitation of the labor of others) and innumerable tyrannies and slavery” alongside “mutual aid, unceasing and voluntary exchange of services, affection, love, friendship and all that which draws people closer together in brotherhood.”[[#28MalatestaLifeandIdeas6|28]] This position was shared by Kropotkin, who wrote in his ''Ethics'' that there are “two sets of diametrically opposed feelings which exist in man. . . . In one set are the feelings which induce man to subdue other men in order to utilize them for his individual ends, while those in the other set induce human beings to unite for attaining common ends by common effort: the first answering to that fundamental need of human nature—struggle, and the second representing another equally fundamental tendency—the desire of unity and mutual sympathy.”[[#29KropotkinEthics22Seea|29]]
+-----
-'''The Theory of Practice'''
+==== Annotation 8 ====
-One of the main processes that modifies and develops the raw materials of human nature is human activity itself. This makes fundamental social change possible. If humans are conscious creatures who are able to modify themselves significantly through activity, then how humans are today is not inevitable or fixed but something that they can consciously change themselves. Human activity is conceptualized by anarchist social theory in terms of practice. By practice I mean the process whereby people with particular consciousness engage in activity—deploy their ''capacities'' to satisfy a psychological ''drive''—and through doing so, change the world and themselves simultaneously.
+Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality by classifying things, phenomena, and ideas into various categories. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Metaphysical positions view nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. Engels explained the problems of metaphysics in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-A ''capacity'' is a person’s real possibility to do and/or to be, such as playing tennis or being physically fit. It is composed of two elements: (a) a set of external conditions which enable a person to do and/or be certain things, and (b) a set of internal abilities which the person requires in order to be able to take advantage of said external conditions. For example, a person’s capacity to play tennis consists of external conditions like a tennis court, a tennis racket, someone to play against, and so on. Internally, it consists of abilities such as being able to hold a racket, hit a ball, and know the rules of the game. In the absence of either the external or internal conditions, a person lacks the real possibility to achieve the doing of playing tennis and therefore lacks the capacity to play. A ''drive'', in comparison, is a person’s particular desires, intentions, motivations, goals, values, or concerns—such as wanting to play tennis.[[#30Thisinterpretationofcapac|30]]
+<blockquote>
+The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — hese were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years.
+</blockquote>
-Anarchists used a variety of different terms to describe this process. They mostly referred to the deployment of “capacities,” “powers,” or “capabilities” in order to satisfy “drives,” “urges,” “wants,” “desires,” or “needs.”[[#31ForexamplesseeBakuninPo|31]] Malatesta, for example, wrote that “social life became the necessary condition of man’s existence, in consequence of his capacity to modify his external surroundings and adapt them to his own wants, by the exercise of his primeval powers in co-operation with a greater or less number of associates. His desires have multiplied with the means of satisfying them, and they have become needs.”[[#32MalatestaMethodofFreedom|32]] In order to avoid confusion, I shall generally refer to capacities and drives.
+<blockquote>
+But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.
+</blockquote>
-As humans exercise their capacities to satisfy their drives, they continually develop and shape their existing capacities and drives, while also developing entirely new ones. A person who frequently plays the guitar will become better at playing a particular chord and finds their preexisting motivation to play grows. They learn whole new guitar techniques and discover drives that they did not have when they started, such as the desire to play heavy metal. As Alexander Berkman wrote, “the satisfaction of our wants creates new needs, gives birth to new desires and aspirations.”[[#33AlexanderBerkmanWhatisA|33]] Were they to stop playing, their capacity to play guitar would diminish over time along, perhaps, with their inclination to do so. Capacities and drives are not fixed or static, but are rather in constant motion as human action maintains, alters, erodes, destroys, and creates them over time. When humans produce anything, they engage in an act of double-production. They simultaneously produce a particular thing, such as a good or service, and the capacities and drives exercised, developed, or created during the activity of production itself. When people engage in practice, they are also changing themselves. This theory can be seen in Kropotkin’s advocacy of “teaching which, by the practice of the hand on wood, stone, metal, will speak to the brain and help to develop it” and thereby produce a child whose brain is “developed at once by the work of hand and mind.”[[#34KropotkinDirectStruggle|34]]
+Francis Bacon (1561 — 1626) is considered the father of empiricism, which is the belief that knowledge can only be derived from human sensory experience [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. Bacon argued that scientific knowledge could only be derived through inductive reasoning in which specific observations are used to form general conclusions. John Locke (1632 — 1704) was another early empiricist, who was heavily influenced by Francis Bacon. Locke, too, was an empiricist, and is considered to be the “father of liberalism.”
-Engaging in practice not only affects a person’s capacities and drives, but also has a significant impact on their consciousness. Learning music theory will not only, for example, make us better at reading sheet music or acquire the motivation to learn more about the subject. It also changes how we experience, conceptualize, and understand music—or life in general—such as noticing a feature of a song or thinking of oneself as a person of culture and sophistication.
+Engels was highly critical of the application of metaphysical philosophy to natural science. As Engels continues in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:''
-This is not to say that anarchists viewed the process of development as automatic or predetermined. Different people can develop different drives in response to the exact same kinds of practice. One person might eat dark chocolate and want to consume it daily, while another wants to avoid it at all costs. Two people can read the same book and develop distinct thoughts and feelings in response to it. Despite this, generalizations can still be made, such as the fact that people socialized to reproduce patriarchal gender roles will in general do so or that the activity of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan or the police (or both) will, in general, bring out the worst in someone.
+<blockquote>
+To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes — ideas — are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses... For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.
-This theory of practice can be clearly seen in the writings of Bakunin. He wrote that “all civilization, with all the marvels of industry, science, and the arts; with all the developments of humanity—religious, esthetic, philosophic, political, economic, and social” was created by humans through “the exercise of an active power . . . which tends to assimilate and transform the external world in accordance with everyone’s needs.”[[#35BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|35]] Bakunin thought that, as humans exercise their capacities, they develop them. Whereas “ants, bees, beavers, and other animals which live in societies do now precisely the same thing which they were doing 3,000 years ago,” humans have developed their powers such that they have invented new technology and gone from living in “huts” and using bows or spears to building “palaces” and manufacturing guns and artillery.[[#36BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|36]]
+At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.
+</blockquote>
-Such processes of development are, of course, not an entirely individual matter. Humans are, in Malatesta’s words, “a social animal whose existence depends on the continued physical and spiritual relations between human beings,” which are “based either on affinity, solidarity and love, or on hostility and struggle.”[[#37MalatestaLifeandIdeas6|37]] Humans experience life immersed in the actions, emotions, and ideas of other people, which in turn conditions and alters how people develop as individuals. A child will be taught to read and write by adults who are already literate, while a dancer may develop the desire to dance in a new style after watching a ballet performance. We adopt a particular perspective on the world due to reading books written by other people or by thinking with concepts that have been collectively produced and reproduced by our culture.[[#38BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|38]]
+Dialectical Materialism stands in contrast to metaphysics in many ways. Rather than splitting the world into distinct, isolated categories, Dialectical Materialist philosophy seeks to view the world in terms of relationships, motion, and change. Dialectical Materialism also refutes the hard empiricism of Bacon and Locke by describing a dialectical relationship between the material world and consciousness [see: ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].
-What capacities, drives, and consciousness people develop varies across social and historical contexts. The capacity to sail a longboat and the drive to die heroically in battle so that you will go to Valhalla developed from living as a warrior in a ninth-century Norse society. These traits are not widespread in modern Nordic societies because people are no longer engaging in that sort of Viking practice. Instead, people engage in practices that develop their capacity to assemble flat-pack furniture or their drive to go to melodic death metal concerts. The social and historical situation in which one lives also determines how universal aspects of human nature are experienced. For example, the universal drive of hunger may be experienced as hunger for beef burgers in a modern North American fast food restaurant, but as hunger for seal meat in a nineteenth-century Inuit house.
+-----
-Anarchist authors emphasized these points again and again. They generally conceptualized human history in terms of a series of economic periods characterized by specific kinds of technology and ways of organizing production. Their descriptive model held that humans had gone from living in hunter-gatherer societies to living in ancient agricultural societies based on slavery, feudal agricultural societies based on serfdom, and finally modern industrial societies based on wage labor.[[#39BakuninSelectedWritings|39]] This view of history included an awareness of the fact that European colonialism, and so the development of industrial societies, involved the enslavement of Black people.[[#40KropotkinDirectStruggle|40]] Anarchists were also aware that hunter-gatherer societies existed at the same time as industrial societies.[[#41BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|41]]
+For the first time in the history of human philosophy, Hegel expressed the content of dialectics in strict arguments with a system of rules and categories.
-Anarchists inherited the broad model of human history as a series of economic stages from the French and Scottish Enlightenment and read it in early anthropology.[[#42Foranoverviewofhowthis|42]] Although the specifics of this model are outdated in light of the latest research, they nonetheless highlight what anarchists thought about capacities, drives, and consciousness. Different economic systems were constituted by specific kinds of practice, such as hunting with a bow and arrow as a nomad, collecting the harvest as a peasant, or working in a car factory as a wage laborer, and so developed distinct characteristics within people. This way of thinking can especially be seen in anarchist discussions of drives. Luigi Galleani, for example, thought that when a human develops themselves they acquire “a series of ever-more, growing and varied needs claiming satisfaction.”[[#43LuigiGalleaniTheEndofA|43]] These “needs vary, not only according to time and place, but also according to the temperament, disposition, and development of each individual.”[[#44GalleaniEndofAnarchism|44]] He wrote,
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">A farmer who lives in an Alpine valley, in the present conditions of his development, may have satisfied all his needs—eaten, drunk, and rested to his heart’s content; while a worker who lives in London, in Paris, or in Berlin, may willingly give up a quarter of his salary and several hours of his rest, in order to satisfy a whole category of needs totally unknown to the farmer stranded among the gorges of the Alps or the peaks of the Apennine mountains—to spend an hour of intense and moving life at the theater, at the museum or at the library, to buy a recently published book or the latest issue of a newspaper, to enjoy a performance of Wagner or a lecture at the Sorbonne.[[#45GalleaniEndofAnarchism|45]]</div>
+-----
-The social environment in which capacities, drives, and consciousness develop is itself produced by practice. Society is the totality of social relations that individual and collective actions continuously constitute, reproduce, and transform. As Bakunin noted, “the real life of society, at every instant of its existence, is nothing but the sum total of all the lives, developments, relations, and actions of all the individuals comprising it.”[[#46BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|46]] Kropotkin likewise held that “humanity is not a rolling ball, nor even a marching column. It is a whole that evolves simultaneously in the multitude of millions of which it is composed. . . . The fact is that each phase of development of society is a resultant of all the activities of the intellects which compose that society; it bears the imprint of all those millions of wills.”[[#47KropotkinFugitiveWritings|47]] An implication of this, as Malatesta saw, is that social action “is not the negation, nor the complement of individual initiative, but it is the sum total of the initiatives, thoughts and actions of all the individuals composing society: a result which, other things equal, is more or less great according as the individual forces tend toward the same aim, or are divergent and opposed.”[[#48MalatestaMethodofFreedom|48]]
+==== Annotation 9 ====
-Imagine a group of hunters who cooperate to find and kill animals for food. During this process, these hunters produce social relations among themselves, such as the most experienced member leading the hunt or everyone singing a song in victory afterward. The social relations that collective practice produce, in turn, determine the nature of the practice, since the practice is itself performed through these social relations. How hunters hunt both produces the social relation of singing songs in victory and is altered by this social relation. Importantly, collective practice is not necessarily friendly or egalitarian practice. The slave master owns and controls the slave. They nonetheless both engage in the collective practice of a cotton plantation, albeit in very different roles.
+Dialectics is a philosophical methodology which searches for truth by examining contradictions and relationships between things, objects, and ideas. Ancient dialecticians such as Aristotle and Socrates explored dialectics primarily through rhetorical discourse between two or more different points of view about a subject with the intention of finding truth.
-This interplay between practice producing social relations and practice being performed through social relations results in the formation of relatively stable and enduring social structures. These social structures simultaneously enable and constrain practice. They enable it by developing in people the necessary internal abilities, drives, and consciousness for practice and by producing many of the external conditions that the exercise of the internal abilities is preconditioned on. They teach people how to hunt and they organize the manufacture of hunting equipment. Social structures constrain practice by imposing limits and exerting pressure on which and how capacities are deployed, what drives are satisfied, and the direction in which new capacities, drives, and consciousness are developed. A hunter is unlikely to develop the desire to become a vegetarian.
+In this classical form of dialectics, a thesis is presented. This thesis is an opening argument about the subject at hand. An antithesis, or counter-argument, is then presented. Finally, the thesis and antithesis are combined into a synthesis, which is an improvement on both the thesis and antithesis which brings us closer to truth.
-Social structures are relatively stable, but they are not fixed entities. They are processes reproduced over time by the practice of humans, who are continually modifying themselves through action, and being modified by the action of others. In Bakunin’s words, “every man . . . is nothing else but the result of the countless actions, circumstances, and conditions, material and social, which continue shaping him as long as he lives.”[[#49BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|49]] Berkman also emphasized the manner in which people are shaped by simultaneous three-way interactions between social structures, consciousness, and their actions: “the life we lead, the environment we live in, the thoughts we think, and the deeds we do—all subtly fashion our character and make us what we are.”[[#50BerkmanAnarchism99|50]]
+Hegel resurrected dialectics to the forefront of philosophical inquiry for the German Idealists. As Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-These changes to the humans that compose the social structure can, in turn, lead to the modification of the social structure itself. The group of hunters who sing songs to celebrate could, over time, become primarily concerned with their music and sing more often during hunts. They could even create a whole new social structure, such as deciding to form a band. As Rocker noted, “every form of his social existence, every social institution . . . is the work of men and can be changed by human will and action or made to serve new ends.”[[#51RockerNationalismandCult|51]]
+<blockquote>
+Hegel’s work’s greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought.
+</blockquote>
-The kinds of practice that people within social structures engage in is significantly determined by the social structure in question, due to its enabling and constraining aspects. People engage in the practices that turn them into people capable of, and driven to, reproduce the social structure itself. In Malatesta’s words: “Between man and his social environment there is a reciprocal action. Men make society what it is and society makes men what they are.”[[#52MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|52]] Given this, “man, like all living beings, adapts and habituates himself to the conditions in which he lives, and transmits by inheritance his acquired habits. Thus being born and having lived in bondage, being the descendant of a long line of slaves, man . . . believed that slavery was an essential condition of life, and liberty seemed to him an impossible thing.”[[#53MalatestaMethodofFreedom|53]] Social structures that consistently shape people in this manner come to be dominant structures when they underpin the reproduction and relative stability of the society in which they are embedded.
+Hegel’s great contribution to dialectics was to develop dialectics from a simple method of examining truth based on discourse into an organized, systematic model of nature and of history. Unfortunately, Hegel’s dialectics were idealist in nature. Hegel believed that the ideal served as the primary basis of reality. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels strongly rejected Hegel’s idealism, as well as the strong influences of Christian theology on Hegel’s work, but they also saw great potential in his system of dialectics, as Marx explained in ''Capital (Volume 1)'':
-Anarchist authors disagreed with one another about which dominant structures played the most important role in history or contemporary society. They also had distinct views on how to conceptualize the manner in which dominant structures interact with, shape, and mutually constitute one another. A significant number of historical anarchists endorsed various forms of economic determinism. Malatesta, who would later reject economic determinism, wrote in 1884 that, since “man’s primary need and the essential prerequisite of existence is that he is able to eat, it is only natural that the character of a society is determined primarily by the manner in which man secures the means of survival, how wealth is produced and distributed.”[[#54MalatestaMethodofFreedom|54]] He went so far as to claim that “''the economic question is fundamental'' in Sociology” and “other matters—political, religious, etc.—are merely its reflections, perhaps even the shadows it casts.”[[#55MalatestaMethodofFreedom|55]] If “political institutions and moral sentiments derive their raison d’être from economic conditions,” then it followed that “''economic inequality is the source of all moral, intellectual, political, etc. inequalities''.”[[#56MalatestaMethodofFreedom|56]]
+<blockquote>
+The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
+</blockquote>
-Anarchists who advocated economic determinism appear to have done so due to the influence of inaccurate interpretations of Marx’s theory of history, which were popularized by socialist parties at the time. In 1887, the American anarchist Albert Parsons claimed that “the mode and manner of procuring our livelihood affects our whole life; the all-pervading cause is economic . . . and social institutions of every kind and degree result from, grow out of, and are created by the economic or industrial regulations of society.”[[#57AlbertParsonsAnarchismI|57]] The fact that Parsons was influenced by Marx can be seen in the fact that he quotes large sections of Marx’s ''Capital ''and ''Manifesto of the Communist Party''.[[#58AlbertParsonsAnarchism2|58]] Parsons was not unique in this respect. Rocker claimed that, in London during the 1880s, “the Jewish anarchists at that time and for some time after accepted the idea of economic materialism” and “the Marxist conception of history.”[[#59RudolfRockerTheLondonYe|59]] Malatesta noted in 1897 that, prior to the period in which anarchists discarded the mistakes of Marxism, they had been “more consistent or even more orthodox advocates” of Marxist theory “than those who professed to be Marxists and, perhaps, than Marx himself.”[[#60ErricoMalatestaALongand|60]] Elsewhere, he claimed that in Italy during the early 1870s, “though none of us had read Marx, we were still too Marxist” due to the influence of Bakunin’s views on political economy and history.[[#61MalatestaLifeandIdeas1|61]] The Italian anarchist Cafiero subsequently read Marx while in prison and published a summary of Marx’s ''Capital ''in 1879,'' ''which Marx himself approved of.[[#62NunzioPerniconeItalianAn|62]]
-Bakunin had a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward what he regarded as Marx’s social theory. In 1872, he simultaneously praised Marx for drawing attention to the importance of economic factors in history, while arguing that Marx wrongly ignored “other elements in history, such as the effect—obvious though it is—of political, judicial and religious institutions on the economic situation.”[[#63BakuninSelectedWritings|63]] This included the manner in which the temperament of specific cultures, which were “the product of a host of ethnographic, climatological and economic, as well as historical causes . . . exert a considerable influence over the destinies and even the development of a country’s economic forces, outside and independent of its economic conditions.”[[#64BakuninSelectedWritings|64]] Rocker and Kropotkin later developed a model in which a range of social structures—economic, political, religious, cultural etc.—were taken to mutually determine one another but no social structure or causal factor was thought to be necessarily primary. Which causal factor played the most important role varied among different moments and so could only be established through empirical investigation on a case-by-case basis.[[#65RockerNationalismandCult|65]]
+-----
-Irrespective of where anarchists stood on the question of economic determinism, they thought in terms of multicausal explanations in which events were the products of the relations between several social structures. Goldman, for example, insisted in 1910 that “it would be one-sided and extremely superficial to maintain that the economic factor is the only cause of prostitution. There are others no less important and vital,” such as gender relations or cultural norms around sex.[[#66GoldmanRedEmma181|66]] Rocker similarly argued that “all social phenomena are the result of a series of various causes, in most cases so inwardly related that it is quite impossible clearly to separate one from the other. We are always dealing with the interplay of various causes.”[[#67RockerNationalismandCult|67]]
+Starting with a critique of the mysterious idealism of Hegel’s philosophy, Marx and Engels inherited the “rational kernel” of Hegelian dialectics and successfully built materialist dialectics.
-This commitment to multicausality accompanied the view that dominant structures do not ever include or exhaust all the elements that constitute a particular society. Rather, they exist alongside a wide variety of less influential or smaller social structures that are constituted by and reproduced through distinct kinds of practice and their accompanying capacities, drives, and consciousness. These smaller social structures include ways of life as diverse as Romanticism, punk, Scientology, and the microstructure of a particular family. It is because of the existence of these less influential or smaller social structures that it is possible for alternative practices to emerge and modify or replace existing dominant structures. As Kropotkin argued, even within capitalist societies based on hierarchical social relations, production for profit, and economic competition, there are also numerous instances of people organizing horizontally to satisfy each other’s needs and engage in mutual aid. Such voluntary associations are “the seeds” of a “new life.”[[#68KropotkinModernScience3|68]] I will describe these forces that are fundamentally at odds with existing dominant structures as ''radical'': if universalized they would transform society and replace one dominant structure with another. The drive to not oppress women, for instance, is radical within a patriarchal society because its universalization is incompatible with the ongoing existence of patriarchy.[[#69Thislanguageisborrowedfr|69]]
+-----
-Anarchists held that a crucial factor in the modification or replacement of dominant structures are the attempts by both dominant and oppressed groups to shape society in their interests. Kropotkin noted that “history is nothing but a struggle between the rulers and the ruled, the oppressors and the oppressed.”[[#70KropotkinDirectStruggle|70]] Malatesta likewise held that “through a most complicated series of struggles of every description, of invasions, wars, rebellions, repressions, concessions won by struggle, associations of the oppressed united for defense and of the conquerors for attack, we have arrived at the present state of society.”[[#71MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|71]] Such conflicts between the oppressors and the oppressed are conflicts over how practice, and so the development of capacities, drives, and consciousness, is organized. They are, in short, struggles to determine what kinds of humans society produces.
+-----
-Ultimately, according to anarchists, to change society, it is necessary to engage in forms of practice that develop radical capacities, drives, and consciousness and thereby replace existing dominant social structures with alternative social structures that produce fundamentally different kinds of people. This, of course, raises the question: why did anarchists think society should be changed, and what did they want it changed into?
+==== Annotation 10 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#12|1]]. For previous reconstructions of the theory of practice, see Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, ''We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism'' (London: Pluto Press, 2014), 21–59; Paul Raekstad and Sofa Saio Gradin, ''Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today ''(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), 40–59.</div>
+In order to understand the ways in which the critique of Hegel’s philosophy by Marx and Engels led to the development of dialectical materialism, some background information on materialism — and the conflicts between idealist and materialist philosophy in the era of Marx and Engels — is needed.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#22|2]]. Michael Bakunin, ''The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism'', ed. G.P.'' ''Maximoff'' ''(New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964),'' ''57, 60–68; Peter Kropotkin, ''Modern Science and Anarchy'', ed. Iain McKay'' ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018),'' ''89–92, 100–101, 125; Peter Kropotkin, ''Ethics: Origin and Development ''(London: George G. Harrap & Co, 1924), 1, 3–4;'' ''Lucy Parsons, ''Freedom'','' Equality and Solidarity: Writings and Speeches'','' 1878–1937'','' ''ed. Gale Ahrens (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2004), 137; Errico Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''38, 132. For examples of Christian anarchists who rejected materialism, see Peter Ryley, ''Making Another World Possible: Anarchism, Anti-Capitalism and Ecology in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain ''(New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 135–47.</div>
+Materialism is a philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sensory experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought through reasoning and human consciousness. The history and development of both idealism and materialism are discussed more in the section ''The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues'' on page 48.
-[[#32|3]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'', 54.
+In the era of Marx and Engels, the leading philosophical school of materialism was known as ''empiricism''. Empiricism holds that we can ''only'' obtain knowledge through human sense perception. Marx and Engels were materialists, but they rejected empiricism (see Engels’ critique of empiricism in Annotation 8, p. 8).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#42|4]]. Carlo Cafiero, ''Revolution'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2012), 3. See also Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 163; Peter Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'', ed. George Woodcock (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1993),'' ''100–104; Ricardo Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: A Ricardo Mella Anthology'','' ''ed. Stephen Luis Vilaseca (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 3–4.</div>
+One reason Marx and Engels opposed the strict empiricist view was that it made materialism vulnerable to attack from idealists, because it ignored objective relations and knowledge that went beyond sense data. The empiricist point of view also provided the basis for the ''subjective idealism'' of George Berkeley [see Annotation 32, p. 27] and the ''skepticism'' of David Hume. Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism is empiricist in that it supports the idea that humans can only discover knowledge through direct sense experience. Therefore, Berkeley argues, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#52|5]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''39. See also Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'', 57, 69, 83–91; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'','' ''125.</div>
+Similarly, David Hume’s radical skepticism, which Engels called “agnosticism,” denied the possibility of possessing any concrete knowledge. As Hume wrote in ''A Treatise on Human Nature'': “I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.” Hume’s radical skepticism lay in his empiricist belief that the only source of knowledge is sense experience; but Hume went a step further, doubting that even sense experience could be reliable, adding: “The essence and composition of external bodies are so obscure, that we mustnecessarily, in our reasonings, or rather conjectures concerning them, involveourselves in contradictions and absurdities.”
-[[#62|6]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'', 54.
+Later, in the appendix of the same text, Hume argues that conscious reasoning suffers from the same unreliability: “I had entertained some hopes (that) the intellectual world ... would be free from those contradictions, and absurdities, whichseem to attend every explication, that human reason can give of the material world.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#72|7]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', ed. Arthur Lehning (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 155.</div>
+Engels dismissed radical skepticism as “scientifically a regression and practically merely a shamefaced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world.” Engels directly refutes radical skepticism in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#82|8]]. Élisée Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' Geography'','' Modernity: Selected Writings of Élisée Reclus'', ed. John Clark and Camille Martin (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013), 232,'' ''217.</div>
+<blockquote>
+... how do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? ... whenever we speak of objects, or their qualities, of which (we) cannot know anything for certain, but merely the impressions which they have produced on (our) senses. Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to beat by mere argumentation. But before there was argumentation, there was action... And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#92|9]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''The Great French Revolution'' (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), xxx.</div>
+This concept of determining the truth of knowledge and perception through practical experience is fundamental to dialectical materialist philosophy and the methodology of materialist dialectics, and is discussed in further detail in Chapter 3, p. 204.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#102|10]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''162. See also Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''76.</div>
+Another weakness of empiricism is that it denies the objectiveness of ''social relations'', which cannot be fully and properly analyzed through sensory experience and observation alone. Marx saw that social relations are, indeed, objective in nature and can be understood despite their lack of sensory observability, and that doing so is vital in comprehending subjects such as political economy, as he observes in ''Capital Volume I'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#112|11]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''Nationalism and Culture ''(Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1937),'' ''25, 26.</div>
+<blockquote>
+(The true) reality of the value of commodities contrasts with the gross material reality of these same commodities (the reality of which is perceived by our bodily senses) in that not an atom of matter enters into the reality of value. We may twist and turn a commodity this way and that — as a thing of value it still remains unappreciable by our bodily senses.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#122|12]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''85–86, 92–93, 100; Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''19, 121–22, 446–47, 456; Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' ''184; Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism'', 6, 21.</div>
+In other words, Marx pointed out that no amount of sense data about a commodity will fully explain its value. One can know the size, weight, hardness, etc., of a commodity, but without analyzing the social relations and other aspects of the commodity which can’t be directly observed with the senses, one can never know or understand the true value of the commodity. The materialism of Marx and Engels acknowledges the physical, material world as the ''first basis'' for reality, but Marx and Engels also understood that it was vital to account for other aspects of rational knowledge (such as social relations). Marx and Engels believed that empiricist materialism had roughly the same flaw as idealism: a lack of a connection between the material and consciousness. While the idealists completely dismissed sense data and relied exclusively on reasoning and consciousness, the empiricists dismissed conscious thought to focus solely on what could be sensed.
-[[#131|13]]. Rocker, ''Nationalism and Culture'','' ''24.
+It is important to note that, while Marx and Engels rejected ''empiricism,'' they did not reject ''empirical knowledge'' nor ''empirical data'' which is collected from scientific observation [see Annotation 216, p. 210]. On the contrary, empirical data was key to the works of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism. As Lenin explained: “(Marx) took one of the economic formations of society – the system of commodity production – and on the basis of a vast mass of data which he studied for not less than twenty-five years gave a most detailed analysis of the laws governing this formation and its development.” And so, the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels served to bridge the gap between idealism and materialism. They believed that our conscious thoughts are derived from ''material'' processes, but that consciousness can also influence the material world. This is discussed in more detail in the section ''“Materialism and Dialectical Materialism”'' on page 48.
-[[#141|14]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''67.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#151|15]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''84–85,'' ''92–94, 100–101, 108.</div>
+Marx and Engels also criticized many limitations of Feuerbach’s methodology and viewpoint* — especially Feuerbach’s prescriptions for how to deal with social problems — but they also highly appreciated the role of Feuerbach’s thought in the fight against idealism and religion to assert that nature comes first, and that nature is permanent and independent from human willpower.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#161|16]]. Quoted in John Clark, “An Introduction to Reclus’ Social Thought” in Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' ''3.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#171|17]]. Cafiero, ''Revolution'','' ''3.</div>
+==== Annotation 11 ====
-[[#181|18]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''155.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Viewpoint, point of view, or perspective, is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which problems are considered. Marx and Engels were critical of Feurbach’s hyper-focused ''humanist'' viewpoint.
-[[#191|19]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''155.
+Feuerbach’s atheism and materialism offered an important foundation for Marx and Engels to develop from an idealist worldview into a materialist worldview, which led them directly to developing the philosophical foundation of communism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#201|20]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution ''(Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006),'' ''228.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#211|21]]. Peter Kropotkin, “Proposed Communist Settlement: A New Colony for Tyneside or Wearside,” ''The Newcastle Daily Chronicle'', February 20, 1895.</div>
+==== Annotation 12 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#221|22]]. Kropotkin, “Proposed Communist Settlement.” See also Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'','' ''77–78.</div>
+Ludwig Feuerbach was one of the “Young Hegelians” who adapted and developed the ideals of Hegel and other German Idealists. Feuerbach was a humanist materialist: he focused on humans and human nature and the role of humans in the material world. Like Marx and Engels, Feuerbach dismissed the religious mysticism of Hegel. Importantly, Feuerbach broke from Hegel’s religious-mystical belief that humans descended from supernatural origins, instead describing humans as originating from the natural, material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#231|23]]. Emma Goldman, ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader'', ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 438. See also, 73.</div>
+Feuerbach also distinguished between the objectivity of the material external world and the subjectivity of human conscious thought, and he drew a distinction between external reality as it really exists and external reality as humans perceive it. Feuerbach believed that human nature was rooted in specific, intrinsic human attributes and activities. As Feuerbach explains in ''The Essence of Christianity'': “What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is conscious, or what constitutes the specific distinction, the proper humanity of man? Reason, Will, Affection.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#241|24]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''402. See also Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''149–50, 153–54, 330–31; Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'','' ''105.</div>
+Feuerbach explained that the actions of “thinking, willing, and loving,” which correspond to the essential characteristics of “reason, will, and love,” are what define humanity, continuing: “Reason, Will, Love, are not powers which man possesses, for he is nothing without them, he is what he is only by them; they are the constituent elements of his nature, which he neither has nor makes, the animating, determining, governing powers — divine, absolute powers — to which he can oppose no resistance.”
-[[#251|25]]. Rocker, ''Nationalism and Culture'', 27.
+In his ''Collected Works'', Feuerbach further explains that materialism is supported by the fact that nature predates human consciousness:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#261|26]]. Cafiero, ''Revolution'','' ''5–8; Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''121.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Natural science, at least in its present state, necessarily leads us back to a point when the conditions for human existence were still absent, when nature, i.e., the earth, was not yet an object of the human eye and mind, when, consequently, nature was an absolutely non-human entity (''absolut'' ''unmenschliches Wesen''). Idealism may retort: but nature also is something thought of by you (''von dir gedachte''). Certainly, but from this it does not follow that this nature did not at one time actually exist, just as from the fact that Socrates and Plato do not exist for me if I do not think of them, it does not follow that Socrates and Plato did not actually at one time exist without me.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#271|27]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta'','' ''ed. Vernon Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 65–6.</div>
+Marx and Engels were heavily influenced by Feuerbach’s materialism, but they took issue with Feuerbach’s sharp focus on human attributes and activities in isolation from the external material world. As Marx wrote in ''Theses on Feuerbach:'' “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that... reality... is conceived only in the form of the object... but not as sensuous human activity.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#281|28]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''65,'' ''68.</div>
+“Sensuous human activity” has a very specific meaning to Marx; it grew from two conflicting schools of thought:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#291|29]]. Kropotkin, ''Ethics'','' ''22. See also Charlotte Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'', ed. Nicolas Walter (London: Freedom Press, 2000), 38–39.</div>
+The idealists believed the external world can only be understood through the ''active'' subjective thought processes of human beings, while the empiricist materialists believed that human beings are ''passive'' subjects of the material world. Marx synthesized these contradicting ideas into what he called “sensuous activity,” which balanced idealist and materialist philosophical concepts.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#301|30]]. This interpretation of capacities and drives is based on Paul Raekstad and Sofa Saio Gradin, ''Prefigurative Politics'', 41–9; Paul Raekstad, ''Karl Marx’s Realist Critique of Capitalism: Freedom, Alienation, and Socialism'' (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 23–41.</div>
+According to Marx, humans are simultaneously ''active'' in the world in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, and ''passive'' in the sense that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world (see Chapter 2, p. 53). So, Marx and Engels believed that Feuerbach was misguided in defining human nature by our traits alone, portraying “the essence of man” as isolated from the material world and from social relations. In addition, Feuerbach’s humanism was based on an abstract, ideal version of human beings, whereas the humanism of Marx and Engels is firmly rooted in the reality of “real men living real lives.” As Engels wrote in ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#311|31]]. For examples see Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''86–88, 93–95; Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism'', 21, 26, 85; Peter Kropotkin, ''The Conquest of Bread'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007),'' ''137–8, 206; ''Direct Struggle'','' ''651–52.</div>
+<blockquote>
+He (Feuerbach) clings fiercely to nature and man; but nature and man remain mere words with him. He is incapable of telling us anything definite either about real nature or real men. But from the abstract man of Feuerbach, one arrives at real living men only when one considers them as participants in history... The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development. This further development of Feuerbach’s standpoint beyond Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in ''The Holy Family''.<ref>''The Holy Family'' is a book co-written by Marx and Engels which critiqued the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach.</ref>
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#321|32]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''122.</div>
+Marx and Engels believed that human nature could only be understood by examining the reality of actual humans in the real world through our relationships with each other, with nature, and with the external material world. Importantly, it was Marx’s critique of Feuerbach which led him to define political action as the key pursuit of philosophy with these immortal words from ''Theses on Feuerbach:'' “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#331|33]]. Alexander Berkman, ''What is Anarchism? ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003),'' ''175.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#341|34]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 645.</div>
+The British classical political economics, represented by such economists as Adam Smith<ref>Adam Smith, 1723 — 1790 (British): Logic professor, moral philosophy professor, economist.</ref> and David Ricardo<ref>David Ricardo, 1772 — 1823 (British): Economist.</ref>, also contributed to the formation of Marxism’s historical materialist conception [see p. 23].
-[[#351|35]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''86.
+Smith and Ricardo were some of the first to form theories about labor value in the study of political economics. They made important conclusions about value and the origin of profit, and about the importance of material production and rules that govern economies. However, because there were still many limitations in the study methodology of Smith and Ricardo, these British classical political economists failed to recognise the historical characteristic of value*; the internal contradictions of commodity production**; and the duality of commodity production labor***.
-[[#361|36]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''88.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#371|37]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''65.</div>
+==== Annotation 13 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#381|38]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''159, 164, 167–68.</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> '''Historical Characteristic of Value'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#391|39]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 121; Michael Bakunin, ''The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869–1871'', ed. and trans. Robert M. Cutler (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), 174, 188–91; Cafiero, ''Revolution'','' ''5–34; Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''44. Kropotkin had a more complicated model but the basic point remains the same. See Kropotkin, ''Mutual Aid'', 62–247; Kropotkin, ''Ethics'','' ''17–18; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'','' ''276–77.</div>
+Marx generally admired the work of Smith and Ricardo, but saw major flaws which undermined the utility of their classical economic theories. Perhaps chief among these flaws, according to Marx, was a tendency for Smith and Ricardo to uphold an ''ahistoric'' view of society and capitalism. In other words, classical economists see capitalism as existing in harmony with the eternal and universal laws of nature, rather than seeing capitalism as a result of historical processes of development [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Marx did not believe that the economic principles of capitalism resulted from nature, but rather, from historical conflict between different classes. He believed that the principles of political economies changed over time, and would continue to change into the future, whereas Smith and Ricardo saw economic principles as fixed, static concepts that were not subject to change over time. As Marx explains in ''The Poverty of Philosophy:''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#401|40]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 609–10; Reclus, ''Anarchy'', 150, 153; Federico Ferretti, ''Anarchy and Geography: Reclus and Kropotkin in the UK ''(London: Routledge, 2019), 125.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Economists express the relations of bourgeois production, the division of labour, credit, money, etc. as fixed, immutable, eternal categories... Economists explain how production takes place in the above mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement that gave them birth... these categories are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#411|41]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'', 229, 231; Kropotkin, ''Mutual Aid'', 64, 68–69; Reclus, ''Anarchy'', 213–18.</div>
+<nowiki>**</nowiki> '''Internal Contradictions of Commodity Production'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#421|42]]. For an overview of how this view of history developed, see Ronald L. Meek, ''Smith, Marx, and After: Ten Essays in the Development of Economic Thought ''(Dordrecht, NL: Springer, 1977), 18–32; Christopher J. Berry, ''The Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 91–115; Adam Kuper, ''The Reinvention of Primitive Society: Transformations of a Myth ''(London: Routledge, 2005), 3–81.</div>
+In Marxist terms, a commodity is specifically something that has both a use value and a value-form (see Annotation 14, p. 16), but in simpler terms, a commodity is anything that can be bought or sold. Importantly, capitalism transforms human labor into a commodity, as workers must sell their labor to capitalists in exchange for wages. Marx pointed out that contradictions arise when commodities are produced under capitalism: because capitalists, who own the means of production, decide what to produce based solely on what they believe to be most profitable, the commodities that are being produced do not always meet the actual needs of society. Certain commodities are under-produced while others are over-produced, which leads to crisis and instability.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#431|43]]. Luigi Galleani, ''The End of Anarchism?'' (London: Elephant Editions, 2012), 43.</div>
+<nowiki>***</nowiki> Duality of Commodity Production Labor
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#441|44]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 45. See also Cafiero, ''Revolution'','' ''4; Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 122, 456; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''163, 598; ''Conquest of Bread'','' ''137–9.</div>
+In ''Capital'', Marx describes commodity production labor as existing in a duality — that is to say, it exists with two distinct aspects:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#451|45]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'','' ''44–45.</div>
+First, there is ''abstract labor'', which Marx describes as “labor-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure.” This is simply the expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without any regard to production or value of the labor output. Second, there is ''concrete labor'', which is the aspect of labor that refers to the production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor.
-[[#461|46]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''158.
+Marx argues that human labor, therefore, is simultaneously, an activity which will produce some specific kind of product, and also an activity that generates value in the abstract. Marx and Engels were the first economists to discuss the duality of labor, and their observations on the duality of labor were closely tied to their theories of the different aspects of value (use value, exchange value, etc.), which was key to their analysis of capitalism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#471|47]]. Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'','' ''119–20.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#481|48]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''132–33. See also Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' ''208.</div>
+Smith and Ricardo also failed to distinguish between simple commodity production and capitalist commodity production*, and could not accurately analyse the form of value** in capitalist commodity production.
-[[#491|49]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''95.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#501|50]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 99.</div>
+==== Annotation 14 ====
-[[#511|51]]. Rocker, ''Nationalism and Culture'','' ''27.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> '''Commodity Production'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#521|52]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''48.</div>
+''Simple commodity production'' (also known as ''petty commodity production'') is the production of commodities under the conditions which Marx called the “Simple Exchange” of commodities. ''Simple exchange'' occurs when individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. Under simple exchange, workers directly own their own means of production and sell products which they have made with their own labor.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#531|53]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''110. See also Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'','' ''272; Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism'','' ''66–68.</div>
+Simple commodity production and simple exchange use what Marx referred to as “C'''→'''M'''→'''C mode of circulation” [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. Circulation is simply the way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#541|54]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 19.</div>
+'''C→M→C stands for:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#551|55]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 23.</div>
+Commodity '''→''' Money '''→''' Commodity
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#561|56]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' 24, ''39. For Malatesta’s later rejection of this position see Errico Malatesta, ''The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles, 1924–1931'', ed. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1995), 45–57; ''Method of Freedom'', 363–73, 445–48.</div>
+So, with simple commodity production and simple exchange, workers produce commodities, which they then sell for money, which they use to buy other commodities which they need. For example, a brewer might make beer, which they sell for money, which they use to buy food, housing, and other commodities which they need to live.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#571|57]]. Albert Parsons, ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis'' (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2003), 97.</div>
+In the C'''→'''M'''→'''C mode of circulation, the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities sold with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase with the money thus obtained.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#581|58]]. Albert Parsons, ''Anarchism'','' ''22–48.</div>
+''Capitalist commodity production'' and ''capitalist exchange'', on the other hand, are based on the M'''→'''C'''→'''M’ mode of circulation.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#591|59]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''The London Years ''(Nottingham, UK: Five Leaves, 2005), 58.</div>
+'''M→C→M’ stands for:'''
-[[#601|60]]. Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 302.
+Money '''→''' Commodity '''→''' More Money
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#611|61]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'', 198–99.</div>
+Under this mode of circulation, capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling commodities for MORE MONEY than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining ''more money.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#621|62]]. Nunzio Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),'' ''135; Carlo Cafiero, ''Compendium of Capital'', trans. Paul M. Perrone (London: The Anarchist Communist Group, 2020).</div>
+Capitalist commodity production, therefore, uses the M'''→'''C'''→'''M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. The capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor which produced the commodities.
-[[#631|63]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''256.
+<nowiki>**</nowiki> '''Value-Form'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#641|64]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''256. See also Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'','' ''64–65; Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'','' ''142. It is important to note that Bakunin is critiquing a strawman, since Marx held that the economy and other aspects of society mutually determined one another. In later editions of ''Capital'', which appeared just before Bakunin wrote his October 1872 critique,'' ''Marx added a footnote that clarified that during certain historical periods aspects of the superstructure could play a chief causal role, such as politics in ancient Athens and Rome or religion in the Middle Ages. The economy was nonetheless primary since it enabled politics or religion to play a chief part, such as by producing the food necessary for survival. See Karl Marx, ''Capital, A Critique of Political Economy'','' ''vol. 1'' ''(London: Penguin Books, 1990), 175–76n35.</div>
+This is one of the most important, and potentially most confusing, concepts in all of Marx’s analysis of capitalism. Marx explains these principles at length in ''Appendix of the 1<sup>st</sup> German Edition of Capital, Volume 1'', but here are some of the fundamentals:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#651|65]]. Rocker, ''Nationalism and Culture'', 23–41; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 125–28, 183–84, 197–99.</div>
+One of Marx’s key breakthroughs was understanding that commodities have many different properties which have different effects in political economies.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#661|66]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'','' ''181.</div>
+Just as Commodity Production Labor exists in a duality of Concrete Labor and Abstract Labor (see Annotation 13, p. 15), commodities themselves also exist in duality according to Marx:
-[[#671|67]]. Rocker, ''Nationalism and Culture'','' ''28.
+Commodities have both “use-value” and “value.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#681|68]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 367. See also 212–15; ''Mutual Aid ''188–89, 219–41.</div>
+Use-Value (which corresponds to Concrete Labor) is the commodity’s ''tangible form'' of existence; it is what we can physically sense when we observe a commodity. By extension, use-value encompasses how a commodity can be used in the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#691|69]]. This language is borrowed from Cox and Nilsen, ''We Make Our Own History'', 42–44, 53.</div>
+Value, or the Value-Form, is the ''social form'' of a commodity, which is to say, it represents the stable relationships intrinsic to the commodity [see ''Content and Form'', p. 147].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#701|70]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 611.</div>
+Note that this relates to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#711|71]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''44.Chapter 3: Values, Critique, and Vision</div>
+Value-forms represent relational equivalencies of commodities, i.e.: '''20 yards of linen = 10 pounds of tea'''
-== {{anchor|Chapter3ValuesCritiqueand}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook6}} {{anchor|Chapter3ValuesCritiqueand1}} Chapter 3: Values, Critique, and Vision ==
+These relational equivalencies are tied to the equivalent labor value (see Annotation 15 below, and Annotation 26, p. 23) used to produce these commodities. The value-form of a commodity is the ''social form'' because it embodies relational equivalencies:
-Anarchists were antistate socialists. They sought the emancipation of humanity and the abolition of all structures of domination and exploitation through the self-emancipation of the working classes. This position was grounded in a set of ethical principles that forms the value system of anarchism, an analysis and critique of existing social relations and structures in terms of their failure to promote these ethical principles, and a vision of alternative, achievable social relations and structures that promote these ethical principles.
+. The value-form represents the relationship between the commodity and the labor which was used to produce the commodity.
-'''The Value System'''
+. The value-form represents the relationship between a commodity and one or more other commodities.
-Anarchism’s central ethical value is that individuals should lead free lives. Although anarchists focused on the freedom of the individual, they did not conceptualize this freedom in terms of an isolated, abstract entity who stands outside of society. For anarchists, an individual can, given the kind of animal that humans are, only be free if they belong to a community of equals bonded together through relations of solidarity.[[#1MichaelBakuninSelectedWri|1]] As the Black anarchist Lucy Parsons’s put it, “emancipation will inaugurate liberty, equality, fraternity.”[[#2LucyParsonsFreedomEquali|2]] Anarchists viewed the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity as interdependent such that they cannot be understood in isolation from one another. The realization of one of these values can only be achieved through the realization of all three at once.
+As Marx explains in ''Appendix to the 1<sup>st</sup> German Edition of Capital'': “Hence by virtue of its value-form the (commodity) now stands also in a social relation no longer to only a single other type of commodity, but to the world of commodities. As a commodity it is a citizen of this world.”
-Anarchists conceptualized freedom in two main ways: not being subject to domination or having the real possibility to do and/or to be. Although anarchist authors consistently valued both of these things, they did not all label them as freedom. Wilson, for example, defined freedom as nondomination, while at the same time arguing that having the real possibility to do and/or to be is important for human development and flourishing.
+Understanding the social form of commodities — the value-form — was crucial for Marx to develop a deeper understanding of money and capitalism. Marx argued that classical economists like Ricardo and Smith conflated economic categories such as “exchange value,” “value,” “price,” “money,” etc., which meant that they could not possibly fully understand or analyze capitalist economies.
-Freedom as nondomination holds that individuals are free if and only if they are not subordinate to someone who wields the power to impose their will on them. If a person is subject to the arbitrary power of another then, even if it is not currently being exercised, they are being dominated. To be free is to be able to live in accordance with one’s own will, rather than being subject to the will of another.[[#3Anarchismsharesthisemphasi|3]] In 1869, Bakunin claimed that freedom consists in “the full independence of the will of the individual with respect to the will of others.”[[#4MichaelBakuninTheBasicBa|4]] In the same text, he defines “freedom” as “independence … with respect to all laws that other human wills—collective and isolated [from the collectivity] impose.”[[#5BakuninBasicBakunin124|5]] During his subsequent 1871 lectures to Swiss members of the International, he said that “the negative condition of freedom is that no person owe obedience to another; the individual is free only if his will and his own convictions, and not those of others, determine his acts.”[[#6BakuninBasicBakunin46S|6]] In 1870, Bakunin explicitly connected this idea with nondomination when he advocated “''self-determination''” and “''the fullest human freedom in every direction, without the least interference from any sort of domination''.”[[#7BakuninSelectedWritings1|7]]
+-----
-The same position was expressed by other anarchist authors. Wilson referred to the “impulse in men to dominate their fellows, i.e., impose their will upon them and assert their own superiority.”[[#8CharlotteWilsonAnarchistE|8]] She advocated the abolition of domination in favor of freedom such that every person had an equal claim to “direct his life from within by the light of his own consciousness,” rather than be subordinate to “the will of any other individual or collection of individuals.”[[#9WilsonAnarchistEssays54|9]] Galleani similarly defined “the broadest individual autonomy” in terms of “absolute independence from any domination by either a majority or a minority.”[[#10LuigiGalleaniTheEndofA|10]]
+British classical political economists like Ricardo and Smith outlined the scientific factors of the theories of labor value* and contributed many progressive thoughts which Marx adapted and further developed.
-According to the real possibilities view of freedom, an individual becomes more free as what they can do and/or be increases, that is, the activities they can perform and the states they can experience. The possible beings and doings available to a person, and so the extent to which they are free, are a product of (a) the external conditions within their social and natural environment and (b) their internal abilities, which enable them to take advantage of external conditions. In order to have the real possibility to read ''The Very Hungry Caterpillar'','' ''a child must, among many other requirements, know how to read (internal ability), live in a society where ''The Very Hungry Caterpillar ''is produced, and possess a copy of the book (external conditions). As they grow older, they become better at reading (development of internal ability) and acquire a greater number of books (expansion of external conditions). This marks an increase in their freedom, since their range of possible beings and doings has increased. They can now become an expert on the history of the potato or read the ''Poetic Edda''.
+==== Annotation 15 ====
-An individual’s freedom is restricted when obstacles decrease the number of real possibilities open to them. A slave owner who prevents their slaves from reading, further limits what possibilities they have and thereby makes them even less free. Such obstacles do not have to be directly established by the threat or exercise of violence. The cultural norm that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral can, by itself, limit a person’s opportunity to be gay, due to them internalizing these ideas and sensitizing them to the judgement of others. Crucially, though, obstacles can be removed or overcome. For instance, slaves can rise up and kill their slave masters, or gay people can gain the confidence to be themselves, and not care what homophobes think.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Adam Smith and David Ricardo revolutionized the labor theory of value, which held that the value of a good or service is determined by the amount of human labor required to produce it.
-This emphasis on having the actual means to lead a specific kind of life can be seen in Malatesta’s claim in 1884 that “true freedom is not the right but the opportunity, the strength to do what one will” and in his observation, decades later, that “freedom is a hollow word unless it is wedded to ability, which is to say, to the means whereby one can freely carry on his own activity.”[[#11ErricoMalatestaTheMethod|11]] Yet, people’s real possibility to do and/or to be can be restricted through domination by others. Malatesta also wrote that freedom “presupposes that everybody has the means to live and to act without being subjected to the wishes of others.”[[#12MalatestaLifeandIdeas4|12]] As a result, he advocated “the complete destruction of the domination and exploitation of man by man.”[[#13ErricoMalatestaTowardsAn|13]]
+Thus, Marx was able to solve the contradictions that these economists could not solve and he was able to establish the theory of surplus value*, scientific evidence for the exploitative nature of capitalism, and the economic factors which will lead to the eventual fall of capitalism and the birth of socialism.
-Malatesta was not the only anarchist to define freedom as a person’s real possibility to do and/or to be. In 1927, Berkman distinguished between “negative liberty,” which is freedom from something, and “positive freedom,” which is “the opportunity to do, to act.”[[#14AlexanderBerkmanADecade|14]] Two years later, he wrote that “freedom really means opportunity to satisfy your needs and wants. If your freedom does not give you that opportunity, then it does you no good. Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing.”[[#15AlexanderBerkmanWhatisA|15]] His comrade Goldman similarly wrote in 1914 that “true liberty . . . is not a negative thing of being free from something. . . . Real freedom, true liberty is positive: it is freedom to something; it is the liberty to be, to do; in short, the liberty of actual and active opportunity.”[[#16EmmaGoldmanRedEmmaSpeak|16]]
+==== Annotation 16 ====
-All anarchists thought that one of the main reasons why freedom is valuable is that it is a prerequisite for full human development in the sense of people improving their internal abilities in multiple directions and, in so doing, truly realizing their potential. Rocker claimed that “freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him.”[[#17RudolfRockerAnarchoSyndi|17]] Goldman argued that “authority stultifies human development, while full freedom assures it.”[[#18GoldmanRedEmma438See|18]] Elsewhere she declared that “only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very best in him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds which knit men together, and which are the true foundations of a normal social life.”[[#19GoldmanRedEmma7273|19]]
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> David Ricardo developed the concept of surplus value. Surplus value is the difference between the amount of income made from selling a product and the amount it costs to produce it. Marx would go on to expand on the concept of surplus value considerably.
-The same position was articulated by anarchists who defined freedom in terms of nondomination. Wilson thought that “the creed of Anarchism is the cultus of Liberty, not for itself, but for what it renders possible. Authority, as exercised by men over their fellows, it holds accursed, depraving those who rule and those who submit, and blocking the path of human progress. Liberty indeed is not all, but it is the foundation of all that is good and noble, it is essential to that many-sided advance of man’s nature, expanding in numberless and ever-conflicting directions.”[[#20WilsonAnarchistEssays27|20]]
+Utopianism'''' had been developing for a long time and reached its peak in the late 18<sup>th</sup> century with famous thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon<ref>Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, 1760 — 1825 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.</ref>, François Marie Charles Fourier<ref>Charles Fourier, 1772 — 1837 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.</ref> and Robert Owen<ref>Robert Owen, 1771 — 1858 (British): Utopianist activist, owner of a cotton factory.</ref>. Utopianism sought to elevate the humanitarian spirit and strongly criticised capitalism by calling attention to the misery of the working class under capitalism. It also offered many far-ranging opinions and analyses of the development of human history and laid out some basic foundational factors and principles for a new society. However, Utopianism could not scientifically address the nature of capitalism. It failed to detect the Law of Development of Capitalism<ref>The Law of Development of Capitalism referenced here is the Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value, which holds that the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. Over time, this deepens the contradictions of capitalism. This concept is related to the M'''→'''C'''→'''M mode of circulation, discussed in Annotation 14, p. 16, and is discussed in detail in Part 3 of the book this text is drawn from (Political Economy) which we hope to translate in the future.</ref> and also failed to recognise the roles and missions of the working class as a social force that can eliminate capitalism to build an equal, non-exploitative society.
-Although anarchist authors used different definitions of freedom, they agreed that not being dominated, having the real possibility to do and/or to be a broad range of things, and developing oneself as a human, were all valuable. This is because they feed off one another. In order to develop one’s internal abilities in multiple directions, a person must have the real possibility to do so, and in order to have this real possibility they must, among other things, not be subject to domination that deprives them of these real possibilities.
+==== Annotation 17 ====
-Anarchists held that the freedom of the individual, however defined, is only possible in and through society. Humans are by nature social animals and so cannot achieve freedom outside of a social context. To quote Bakunin, “man completely realizes his individual freedom as well as his personality only through the individuals that surround him, and thanks to the labor and the collective power of society. . . . Society, far from decreasing his freedom, on the contrary creates the individual freedom of all human beings. Society is the root, the tree, and liberty is its fruit.”[[#21MichaelBakuninBakuninon|21]] Furthermore, “being free for man means being acknowledged, considered and treated as such by another man, and by all the men around him. Liberty is therefore a feature not of isolation but of interaction, not of exclusion but rather of connection.”[[#22BakuninSelectedWritings|22]]
+The early industrial working class existed in miserable conditions, and the political movement of utopianism was developed by people who believed that a better world could be built. The utopianists believed they could create “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity through education, science, technology, and communal living. For instance, Robert Owen was a wealthy textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Harmony, Indiana, in the USA. Owen purchased the entire town of New Harmony in 1825 as a place to build an ideal society. Owen’s vision failed after two years for a variety of reasons, and many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century drew up similar plans which also failed.
-For anarchists, in order for a society to be free over an extended period of time, it must be structured so that it both enables the freedom of the people who comprise it and prevents individuals from being able to oppress others. The social structures and relations that ensure the ongoing freedom of individuals are necessarily egalitarian ones. Anarchists thought that freedom and equality are so interconnected that it is in practice impossible to have one without the other. Bakunin wrote, “I am a convinced supporter of ''economic and social equality'', because I know that, outside that equality, freedom . . . will never be anything but lies.”[[#23BakuninSelectedWritings|23]] Kropotkin echoed this sentiment: “to have the individual free, they must strive to constitute a ''society of equals''.”[[#24KropotkinDirectStruggle|24]]
+Utopianism was one of the first political and industrial movements that criticized the conditions of capitalism by exposing the miserable situations of poor workers and offering a vision of a better society, and was one of the first movements to attempt to mitigate the faults of capitalism in practice.
-It is apparent that anarchists advocated equality, but it is not yet clear what exactly they meant by the term. My interpretation is that anarchists conceptualized equality as the ''equality of freedom'', or as Malatesta phrased it, the “equal freedom for all.”[[#25MalatestaLifeandIdeas4|25]] This is the idea that society should be structured such that there is, as far as is possible, equality of self-determination and equality of opportunity. Equality of self-determination was connected with nondomination, while equality of opportunity was connected to human development and the real possibility to do and/or to be.
+Unfortunately, the utopianists were not ideologically prepared to replace capitalism, and all of their attempts to build a better alternative to capitalism failed. Marx and Engels admired the efforts of the utopianist movement, and studied their attempts and failures closely in developing their own political theories, concluding that the utopianists failed in large part because they did not understand how capitalism developed, nor the role of the working class in the revolution against capitalism.
-Equality of self-determination was conceptualized as having two components. First, each individual is equally free to live in accordance with their own will, unless they subject another person to their will through coercion—because doing so would establish a relation of domination, and thereby violate the equal freedom of all. As Berkman put it, “you are to be entirely free, and everybody else is to enjoy equal liberty, which means that no one has a right to compel or force another, for coercion of any kind is interference with your liberty.”[[#26BerkmanAnarchism156|26]] Malatesta similarly argued that anarchists advocate “freedom for all and in everything, with no limit other than the equal freedom of others: which does not mean . . . that we embrace and wish to respect the ‘freedom’ to exploit, oppress, command, which is oppression and not freedom.”[[#27MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|27]]
+As Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:''
-Second, organizations are structured in a horizontal, rather than hierarchical, manner such that there are no divisions between rulers who make decisions and subordinates who do as instructed and lack decision-making power. In horizontal organizations, each member has an equal say in collective decisions and so codetermines the organization with every other member.[[#28MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|28]] According to Malatesta, this kind of equality emerges from the fact that individuals within a group have three choices. Either they “submit to the will of others (be enslaved) or subject others to his will (be in authority) or live with others in fraternal agreement in the interests of the greatest good of all (be an associate).”[[#29MalatestaLifeandIdeas7|29]] Anarchists choose to be associates.
+<blockquote>
+(The) historical situation also dominated the founders of Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.
+</blockquote>
-These two components of equality of self-determination can be seen in Bakunin’s remark that domination must be prevented by not giving anyone the opportunity, which should be achieved “''by the actual organization of the social environment, so constituted that while leaving each man to enjoy the utmost possible liberty it gives no one the power to set himself above others or to dominate them, except through the natural influence of his own intellectual or moral qualities'', which must never be allowed either to convert itself into a right or to be backed by any kind of political institution.”[[#30BakuninSelectedWritings|30]]
+Engels is explaining, here, that — in a sense — the utopian socialists were victims of arriving ''too early''. Capitalism had not yet developed enough for its opponents to formulate plans based on actual material conditions, since capitalism was only just emerging into a stable form. Without a significant objective, material basis, the utopians were forced to rely upon reasoning alone to confront capitalism.
-Equality of opportunity, or what Bakunin termed “''equality at the outset'',” was understood by anarchists to refer to a situation in which each individual had equal access to the external conditions necessary for the real possibility to do and/or to be, such as food, healthcare, and education.[[#31BakuninSelectedWritings|31]] According to Malatesta, anarchists “call liberty the possibility of doing something,” and, in order for this to be realized, society must “be constituted for the purpose of supplying everybody with the means for achieving the maximum well-being, the maximum possible moral and spiritual development.”[[#32ErricoMalatestaAttheCaf|32]] In the opinion of Berkman, “far from leveling, such equality opens the door for the greatest possible variety of activity and development.”[[#33BerkmanAnarchism165|33]] It would, in other words, result in an expansion of human development.
+In this sense, the early historical utopianists fell into ''philosophical utopianism'' in its broader sense — defined by the mistaken assertion that the ideal can determine the material [see Annotation 95, p. 94]. In believing that they could build a perfect society based on ideals and “pure fantasy” alone without a material basis for development, the utopians were, in essence, idealists. As Engels explained: “from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism.” Engels concluded that in order to successfully overthrow capitalism, revolution would need to be grounded in materialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.”
-Anarchists held that freedom and equality are generally maintained over time by solidarity between individuals and groups.[[#34Thefollowinginterpretation|34]] By ''solidarity'', anarchists meant two different kinds of social relation. The first consisted in individuals cooperating with one another in pursuit of a common goal. This is the concrete means through which the external conditions necessary for people to exercise capacities and satisfy drives are established, such as the organization of a school where children can develop and transform themselves or the coordination of an economy that provides the materials a school needs. As Kropotkin noted, a free society “could not live even for a few months if the constant and daily co-operation of all did not uphold it.”[[#35PeterKropotkinModernScie|35]] According to Malatesta, “liberty,” in the sense of one’s real possibility to do and/or to be, “becomes greater as the agreement among men and the support they give each other grows.”[[#36MalatestaCafe57|36]]
+-----
-The second kind of solidarity anarchists advocated was individuals forming reciprocal caring relationships, in which each individual acts to ensure the ongoing freedom and equality of those around them. Malatesta praised solidarity in the sense of “affection, love, friendship and all that which draws people closer together in brotherhood.”[[#37MalatestaLifeandIdeas61|37]] For him, “''solidarity'', that is, harmony of interests and sentiments, the sharing of each in the good of all, and of all in the good of each, is the state in which alone man can be true to his own nature. . . . It causes the liberty of each to find not its limits, but its complement, the necessary condition of its continual existence—in the liberty of all.”[[#38MalatestaMethodofFreedom|38]] In short, anarchists understood that, in order to be free, an individual needs positive social relationships, such as loving parents, a supportive teacher, and good friends. For anarchists, such reciprocal caring relationships could only genuinely occur between equals who horizontally associate with one another. As Reclus wrote, “between him who commands and him who obeys . . . there is no possibility of friendship” since “above is either pitying condescension or haughty contempt, below either envious admiration or hidden hate.”[[#39EliseeReclusAnAnarchist|39]]
+The humanitarian spirit and compassionate analysis which the utopians embodied in their efforts to lay out concrete features of a better future society became important theory premises for the birth of the scientific theory of socialism in Marxism.
-'''Critique of Existing Society'''
+''- Natural Science Premise:''
-Equipped with this value system, anarchists critiqued existing society on the grounds that it systematically fails to promote freedom, equality, and solidarity. They understood that society is not the way it is merely because of the negative personality traits of some bad rulers. Rather, it is the consequence of the fundamental structure of society and the forms of practice that constitute and reproduce it over time. As Malatesta explained to a jury while on trial in 1921, “social wrongs do not depend on the wickedness of one master or the other, one governor or the other, but rather on masters and governments as institutions; therefore, the remedy does not lie in changing the individual rulers, instead it is necessary to demolish the principle itself by which men dominate over men.”[[#40MalatestaMethodofFreedom|40]]
+Along with social-economic conditions and theory premises, the achievements of the natural sciences were also foundational to the development of arguments and evidence which assert the correctness of Marxism’s viewpoints and methodology.
-Anarchists are best known for advocating the abolition of the state. While it is true that anarchists are anti-statists, it must also be emphasized that they do not view the state as the main oppressive social structure, or the singular root cause of social problems. Anarchists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries critiqued three main dominant structures: capitalism, landlordism, and the state. The structures of economic oppression (capitalism and landlordism) and political oppression (the state) were taken to constitute an interconnected global social system that I shall call ''class society''. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on the anarchist opposition to capitalism and the state and not discuss landlordism in the sense of feudal or semi-feudal economic relations.
+==== Annotation 18 ====
-Anarchists viewed capitalism as a social system constituted by: (a) private ownership of land, raw materials, and the means of production; (b) wage labor; and (c) production of commodities for profit within a competitive market. Under capitalism, society is divided into two main economic classes: a minority of capitalists and landowners who privately own land, raw materials, and the means of production; and a majority of workers who do not own private property and who sell their labor to capitalists and landowners. The labor of workers produces goods and services that are sold by capitalists and landowners on the market in order to generate profit and thereby expand their wealth. Workers, in comparison, receive only a wage, which they then use to buy the necessities of life—food, shelter, and clothing—and thereby reproduce themselves.[[#41BerkmanAnarchism78Pet|41]]
+''Natural science'' is science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc.
-The terms ''working class'' and ''proletariat'' are sometimes used only to refer to industrial wage laborers who engage in manual labor, especially within factories. Anarchists often used these words in a much broader sense. In 1884, Malatesta wrote that humanity is divided “into two castes: one caste of haves, born with an entitlement to live without working; the other of proletarians whose lot from birth is wretchedness; subjection; exhausting, unrewarded toil.”[[#42MalatestaMethodofFreedom|42]] He defined a worker as “anybody plying a useful trade who does not exploit another person’s labors.”[[#43MalatestaMethodofFreedom|43]] Anarchists who claimed that society was divided into two main economic classes did not think that there were no subdivisions within the working class or proletariat broadly construed. They generally distinguished between urban wage laborers, rural wage laborers, artisans, and landless peasants.
+Three major scientific breakthroughs which were important to the development of Marxism include:
-Which specific classes anarchists referred to varied depending upon the context they were writing in. In 1873, Bakunin wrote that “Italy has a huge proletariat. . . . It consists of 2 or 3 million urban factory workers and small artisans, and some 20 million landless peasants.”[[#44MichaelBakuninStatismand|44]] He went onto claim that “the Slavic proletariat . . . must enter the International en masse [and] form factory, artisan, and agrarian sections.”[[#45BakuninStatismandAnarchy|45]] As capitalism developed, and the number of artisans dramatically declined due to their inability to compete with large-scale industry, anarchists updated their language and began to refer only to urban wage laborers, rural wage laborers, and landless peasants. In 1926, the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, who came from a society where peasants were still the majority of the population, claimed that capitalist society is split into “two very distinct camps . . . the proletariat (in the broadest sense of the word) and the bourgeoisie.”[[#46TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|46]] The proletariat so understood included “the urban working class” and “the peasant masses.”[[#47TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|47]]
+''•'' ''The law of conservation and transformation of energy'' scientifically proved the inseparable relationships and the mutual transformation and conservation of all the forms of motion of matter in nature.
-Berkman, in an analysis for a predominantly North American audience, adopted a narrower definition of the working class or proletariat in 1929. He defined them as those people employed by capitalists in a range of industries—in mills and mines, in factories and shops, in transportation, and on the land.[[#48BerkmanAnarchism4|48]] For him, “the working class consists of the industrial wage earners and the agricultural toilers” or “farm laborers.”[[#49BerkmanAnarchism190|49]] Berkman only used the word “peasant” in descriptions of classes in Russia and continental Europe and consistently framed them as being distinct from “the proletariat” or “workers.” When Berkman referred to wage laborers and peasants as a group, he did so with such expressions as “the toilers” or “the masses.” Artisans, who were defined as skilled, self-employed laborers who own their own tools and small workshops, only featured as part of Berkman’s description of how the development of capitalism forced them to become wage laborers.[[#50BerkmanAnarchism125181|50]]
+''•'' ''The theory of evolution'' offered a scientific basis for the development of diverse forms of life through natural selection.
-In this book, I will use the phrase ''the working classes'' to refer to urban wage laborers, rural wage laborers, artisans who did not exploit anybody else’s labor, and landless peasants. It should be kept in mind that these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A person born into the peasantry could, for example, work as a wage laborer in a city during one season, and as a small farmer in the countryside during another.[[#51ThehistorianBernardMossh|51]]
+''•'' ''Cell theory'' was a scientific basis proving unity in terms of origins, physical forms and material structures of living creatures. It also explained the development of life through those relationships.
-Anarchists advocated the abolition of capitalism because it is based on the oppression and exploitation of the working classes. Wage laborers allegedly choose to sell their labor to capitalists and landowners, but only do so because they have no other option. Under capitalism, a small minority owns the land, raw materials, and the means of production. Workers own personal possessions, such as their hat or sewing kit, but they do not own private property like a factory or mine. As a result, the majority of the population lacks the means to survive independently through their own labor. In order to gain access to the goods and services they need to survive—such as food, clothing, and shelter—workers have to purchase them with money. Given their social position, the only realistic way to earn this money is to sell their labor to capitalists and landowners in exchange for a wage.[[#52MalatestaMethodofFreedom|52]] Workers choose to engage in wage labor in the same manner that a person might choose to hand over their possessions to an armed robber. The robbery victim makes this choice because the only realistic alternative is being attacked. Workers similarly sell their labor to capitalists and landowners because the only realistic alternative is extreme poverty, homelessness, starvation, and so on. It is an involuntary decision forced upon workers by the fundamental structure of capitalist society.[[#53BerkmanAnarchism1112M|53]]
+These scientific discoveries led to the rejection of theological and metaphysical viewpoints which centered the role of the “creator” in the pursuit of truth.
-Wage labor is not only involuntary. It is based on a relationship of domination and subordination in which capitalists and landowners have the power to command workers to do as instructed. Malatesta described capitalism as a society in which “a few individuals have hoarded the land and all the instruments of production and can impose their will on the workers, in such a fashion that instead of producing to satisfy people’s needs and with these needs in view, production is geared toward making a profit for the employers.”[[#54MalatestaCafe32|54]] Goldman similarly wrote that, under capitalism, workers “are subordinated to the will of a master.”[[#55GoldmanRedEmma50|55]]
+==== Annotation 19 ====
-The economic ruling classes also determine what forms of labor workers engage in and so the kind of capacities, drives, and consciousness they develop during the process of production itself. Workers lack control over the kind of people they develop into. They engage in forms of labor that maximize profit but actively harm them. The process of capitalist production produces not only goods and services, but also broken people unable to develop in a positive direction and fulfill their human potential. This point was frequently made by anarchists through the metaphor of workers being turned into machines.[[#56RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|56]] Wilson thought that capitalism had a tendency to transform workers into a “steam-engine with wages for coal.”[[#57WilsonAnarchistEssays63|57]] For Goldman, each worker became “a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality and the interests in, or desire for, the things he is making.”[[#58GoldmanRedEmma67|58]] As a result, workers are reduced to being “living corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a grey, dull, and wretched existence for themselves.”[[#59GoldmanRedEmma50|59]]
+For centuries in Europe, natural science and philosophy had been heavily dominated by theological viewpoints which centered God in the pursuit of truth. Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, and many other metaphysical philosophers who developed the earliest theories of modern natural science centered their religious beliefs in their philosophies. These theological viewpoints varied in many ways, but all shared a characteristic of centering a “creator” in the pursuit of philosophical and scientific inquiry.
-Under capitalism, labor is but one commodity for sale. Capitalism is a market economy in which “the whole economic life of society . . . [is] regulated by the ''competition'' and ''profit'' principle.”[[#60MalatestaMethodofFreedom|60]] The negative consequences of this are numerous. Capitalists hire a small number of workers and force them to work long hours in order to reduce costs, maximize profit, and out-compete rival companies. Improvements in technology make workers unemployed rather than enabling them to work less. Companies produce more commodities than they can sell and are then forced by this overproduction to close down and fire their workforce. This, in turn, leads to regular economic crises. Even when the capitalist market is operating more smoothly, it is based on an irrational organization of production in which a vast number of human needs that society has the means to fulfill are not satisfied because there is no profit in doing so, such as housing homeless people or adequately feeding poor people. On the international scale, economic competition, alongside a range of other factors like ambition and greed, results in states engaging in colonialism, imperialism, and war in order to find new markets, establish monopolies, maximize capital accumulation, and serve the interests of capitalists in their respective countries, especially those involved in the manufacturing of weapons, ammunition, warships etc.[[#61MalatestaMethodofFreedom|61]]
+Together, the law of conservation and transformation of energy, the theory of evolution, and cell theory provided an alternative viewpoint which allowed scientists to remove the “creator” from the scientific equation. For the first time, natural scientists and philosophers had concrete theoretical explanations for the origin and development of the universe, life, and reality which did not rely on a supernatural creator.
-According to anarchists, the oppression and exploitation of capitalism is maintained over time by the violence of the modern state.[[#62Anarchistsdidnotalluset|62]] Bakunin claimed that “the historical formation of the modern concept of the state” occurred “in the mid-sixteenth century” and consisted in an ongoing process of “military, police, and bureaucratic centralization.”[[#63BakuninStatismandAnarchy|63]] This process of state formation occurred due to the requirements of “modern capitalist production,” which needed “enormous centralized states” in order to subject “many millions of laborers to their exploitation.”[[#64BakuninStatismandAnarchy|64]]
+Marx and Engels closely observed and studied the groundbreaking scientific progress of their era. They believed strongly in materialist scientific methods and the data which they produced, and based their analysis and philosophical doctrines on such observations. They recognized the importance and validity of the scientific achievements of their era, and they developed the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism into a system which would help humans study and understand the whole material world.
-Kropotkin later expanded upon this narrative by arguing that, the modern state developed as “a mutual insurance company formed by the landlord, the military, the judge, the priest, and later on the capitalist in order to assure each of them authority over the people and the exploitation of [their] poverty.”[[#65KropotkinModernScience1|65]] As a result, “the State, as a political and military power, along with modern governmental Justice, the Church, and Capitalism appear in our eyes as institutions that are impossible to separate from each other. In history these four institutions developed while supporting and reinforcing each other. . . . They are linked together by the bonds of cause and effect.”[[#66KropotkinModernScience1|66]] Rather than positing a one-sided perspective in which the modern state was created by capitalism, anarchists held that the modern state and capitalism cocreated one another.[[#67KropotkinModernScience2|67]]
+In ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Engels explained that ancient Greek dialecticians had correctly realized that the world is “an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away.”
-Through an analysis of the modern state (henceforth referred to as the state) as an actually-existing social structure, anarchists came to define it in terms of both its functions and its particular organizational forms and characteristics. The primary function of the state is to reproduce the power of the economic ruling classes through violence. For Malatesta, its “essential function is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, and of defending the oppressors and exploiters,” and, even when it performs other functions—such as acknowledging certain legal rights, maintaining roads, and organizing healthcare—it does so “with the spirit of domination” and remains a committed defender of the economic ruling classes.[[#68MalatestaMethodofFreedom|68]] The same point was made by Reclus, who held that “the present function of the state consists foremost of defending the interests of landowners and the ‘rights of capital.’”[[#69EliseeReclusAnarchyGeog|69]]
+Engels goes on to explain that it was understandable for early natural scientists to break their inquiries and analysis down into specialized fields and categories of science to focus on precise, specific, narrow subject matters so that they could build up a body of empirical data. However, as data accumulated, it became clear that all of these isolated, individual fields of study must somehow be unified back together coherently and cohesively in order to obtain a deeper and more useful understanding of reality.
-The capitalist state performs its essential function through many different means. Most obviously, it enforces private property rights. In Malatesta’s words, “the landowners are able to claim the land and its produce as theirs and the capitalists are able to claim as theirs the instruments of labor and other capital created by human activity” because “the dominant class . . . has created laws to legitimize the usurpations that it has already perpetrated, and has made them a means of new appropriations.”[[#70MalatestaCafe45|70]] The state, in addition to this, aids the economic ruling classes by establishing monopolies, subsidizing private companies, repressing social movements via the police and prisons, and maintaining an army in order to keep “the people in bondage” and conquer “new markets and new territory, to exploit them in the interests of the few.”[[#71KropotkinModernScience3|71]]
+As Engels wrote in ''On Dialectics:''
-The state can nonetheless not be defined solely in terms of its essential function. The state as a really existing institution is also characterized by a specific organizational form. Actual states are institutions that (i) perform the function of reproducing the power of the economic ruling classes; (ii) are hierarchically and centrally organized; (iii) are wielded by a minority political ruling class who sit at the top of the state hierarchy and possess the authority to make laws and issue commands at a societal level that others must obey due to the threat or exercise of institutionalized force.[[#72MichaelBakuninThePolitic|72]]
+<blockquote>
+Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative. It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical ''thinking'' can be of assistance.
+</blockquote>
-This definition of the state was mostly clearly expressed by Kropotkin and Malatesta. According to Kropotkin, the state “not only includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a ''territorial concentration'' and a ''concentration of many functions in the life of societies in the hands of a few''. . . . A whole mechanism of legislation and of policing is developed to subject some classes to the domination of other classes.”[[#73KropotkinModernScience2|73]] The state is therefore the “perfect example of a hierarchical institution, developed over centuries to subject all individuals and all of their possible groupings to the central will. The State is necessarily hierarchical, authoritarian—or it ceases to be the State.”[[#74KropotkinModernScience2|74]] Malatesta, in comparison, wrote that
+As science grows increasingly complex, a necessity develops for a philosophical and cognitive framework which can be used to make sense of the influx of information from disparate fields. In ''Dialectics of Nature,'' Engels explains how dialectical materialism is the perfect philosophical foundation for unifying scientific fields into one cohesive framework'':''
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">For us, the government is the aggregate of the governors, and the governors—kings, presidents, ministers, members of parliament, and what not—are those who have the power to make laws, to regulate the relations between men, and to force obedience to these laws. . . . In short, the governors are those who have the power, in a greater or lesser degree, to make use of the collective force of society, that is, of the physical, intellectual, and economic force of all, to oblige each to do the said governors’ wish. And this power constitutes, in our opinion, the very principle of government, the principle of authority.[[#75MalatestaMethodofFreedom|75]]</div>
+<blockquote>
+Dialectics divested of mysticism becomes an absolute necessity for natural science, which has forsaken the field where rigid categories sufficed, which represent as it were the lower mathematics of logic, its everyday weapons.
+</blockquote>
-Given this, anarchists did not define class solely in terms of a person’s relationship to the means of production. Class is also about a person’s relationship to the means of institutionalized coercion. Those who directly controlled state power, such as politicians, monarchs, heads of the police, etc., were taken by anarchists to constitute a distinct political ruling class with interests of their own. As Malatesta wrote, while “the State is the defender, the agent, and the servant of the propertied class,” it “also constitutes a class by itself, with its own interests and passions. When the State, the Government, is not helping the propertied to oppress and rob people, it oppresses and robs them on its own behalf.”[[#76MalatestaPatientWork212|76]] This is not to say that these two classes are mutually exclusive. An individual can, for example, be a capitalist and a politician at the same time.
+So, Marx and Engels developed Dialectical Materialism not in opposition to science, but as a way to make better use of scientific data, and to analyze the complex, dynamic, constantly changing systems of the world in motion. While distinct scientific discoveries and empirical data are invaluable, each data point only provides a small amount of information within a single narrow, specific field of science. Dialectical Materialism allows humans to view reality — as a whole — in motion, and to examine the interconnections and mutual developments between different fields and categories of human knowledge.
-Anarchists opposed the state, to quote Bakunin, because it “is placed by its very nature and position above and outside the people and must inevitably work to subordinate the people under rules and for objectives foreign to them.”[[#77QuotedinZurbruggIntrodu|77]] In short, it “''means'' coercion, domination by means of coercion.”[[#78BakuninStatismandAnarchy|78]] Through this domination, the state not only prevents the working classes from living in accordance with their own wills, but also hinders their development as people and limits their real possibility to do and/or to be. It oppresses humanity in two main ways: either directly by physical violence, or indirectly, by enforcing private property rights and thereby depriving the majority of the population of access to the means of existence such that they are forced to work for the economic ruling classes.[[#79PeterKropotkinWordsofa|79]] In so doing, the state violates the equal freedom of all and promotes social relations of strife over solidarity because, “''so long as political power exists, there will be persons who dominate and persons dominated, masters and slaves, exploiters and the exploited.''”[[#80BakuninSelectedTexts63|80]]
+-----
-Anarchists thought that this critique of the state applied not only to monarchies and dictatorships but also democratic republics in which a segment of the political ruling class were elected by the citizenry. Even if a state was somehow genuinely democratic, in the sense that it was one in which the majority ruled, it was still a state and so incompatible with freedom, equality, and solidarity. All states are social structures in which those who rule have the power to impose decisions on everyone within a given territory via institutionalized methods of coercion, such as the legal system, police, prisons, and the army. The rule of the majority would, even if it was preferable to the rule of the few, result in the domination of various minorities due to them being subject to this coercive power.[[#81GalleaniEndofAnarchism|81]] In a fundamentalist Christian society, for example, majority rule would most likely result in laws oppressing atheists, scientists, and gays. Anarchists did not, however, think that actual states have ever been based on majority rule. They consistently described them as institutions based on minority rule by a political ruling class in their interests and the interests of the economic ruling class. Malatesta, to give one example, wrote in 1924 that “even in the most democratic of democracies it is always a small minority that rules and imposes its will and interests by force.”[[#82MalatestaAnarchistRevolut|82]] As a result “Democracy is a lie, it is oppression and is in reality, oligarchy; that is, government by the few to the advantage of a privileged class.”[[#83MalatestaAnarchistRevolut|83]]
+These scientific principles confirmed the correctness of the dialectical materialist view of the material world, with such features as: endlessness, self-existence, self-motivation, and self-transformation. They also confirmed the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in both material processes and thought processes.
-Although capitalism and the state were two of the main social structures anarchists sought to abolish, they were not the only ones. Wilson concluded that “the solution of the social problem can only be wrought out from the equal consideration of the whole of the experience at our command, individual as well as social, internal as well as external.”[[#84WilsonAnarchistEssays50|84]] Kropotkin similarly thought “that the whole of the life of human societies, everything, from daily individual relationships between people to broader relationships between races across oceans, could and should be reformulated.”[[#85KropotkinDirectStruggle|85]] As a result, anarchists understood that humans are oppressed by a myriad of other social structures that must also be abolished if the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity are to be truly realized. These included racism,[[#86BerkmanAnarchism18990|86]] patriarchy,[[#87BakuninSelectedWritings|87]] homophobia,[[#88TerenceKissackFreeComrad|88]] hierarchically organized religion,[[#89BakuninSelectedWritings|89]] and authoritarian modes of education.[[#90GoldmanRedEmma13149P|90]] Some anarchists, such as Reclus, went beyond a singular focus on human emancipation and advocated vegetarianism, animal liberation, and the protection of the natural environment.[[#91ReclusAnarchy1367156|91]]
+-----
-Unfortunately, a significant number of anarchists failed to put the theoretical opposition to racism, sexism, and homophobia into practice or, on occasion, even support it in theory. To give a few examples: Bakunin was an antisemite,[[#92ZoeBakerBakuninwasaRa|92]] most male anarchists were sexist toward women in the movement,[[#93MarthaAckelsbergFreeWome|93]] and some anarchists opposed Goldman giving talks on homosexuality for fear it would damage the reputation of the movement to discuss “perverted sex-forms.”[[#94EmmaGoldmanLivingMyLife|94]]
+==== Annotation 20 ====
-'''Vision of an Alternative Society'''
+''Endlessness'' refers to the infinite span of space and time in our universe. ''Self-existence'' means that our universe exists irrespective of human consciousness; it existed before human consciousness evolved and it will continue to exist after human consciousness becomes extinct. ''Self-motivation'' and ''Self-transformation'' refer to the fact that motion and transformation exist within the universe independent of human consciousness.
-Anarchists argued that capitalism and the state should be abolished in favor of a society in which humanity as a whole was free, equal, and bonded together through relations of solidarity. They called this society anarchy. In advocating anarchy as their ultimate end goal, anarchists were not using the term in the sense of a disorganized and chaotic society, a war of all against all. They were instead referring to a stateless, classless, and nonhierarchical society. In 1897, Malatesta wrote that “anarchy signifies ''society organized without authority'', authority being understood as the ability to ''impose'' one’s own wishes” on others through “coercion.”[[#95MalatestaPatientWork150|95]] A few years later in 1899, Malatesta defined “Anarchy” as “a society based on free and voluntary accord—a society in which no one can force his wishes on another and in which everyone can do as he pleases and together all will voluntarily contribute to the well-being of the community.”[[#96MalatestaMethodofFreedom|96]]
+Engels wrote of the scientific nature of the dialectical materialist viewpoint in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-Anarchist authors outlined visions of what anarchy would look like in numerous texts. They did not view themselves as utopians in the style of Charles Fourier who elaborated incredibly detailed blueprints of what a postcapitalist society would look like. Bakunin himself explicitly critiqued “Fourierists” for wrongly assuming “that it was theoretically and ''a priori'' possible to build a social paradise in which all of future humanity could recline. They had not realized that while we may well define the great principles of its future development we must leave the practical expression of those principles to the experience of the future.”[[#97BakuninSelectedWritings|97]] This way of thinking was shared by Malatesta, who wrote in 1891 that anarchists cannot, “in the name of Anarchy, prescribe for the coming man what time he should go to bed, or on what days he should cut his nails!”[[#98MalatestaMethodofFreedom|98]] Such practical questions can only be answered by those who actually live in and self-managed the future classless society. All any present-day anarchist can do is desire “that a society be constituted in which the exploitation and domination of man by man are impossible” and “indicate a method” to achieve this.[[#99MalatestaMethodofFreedom|99]] By this, Malatesta meant that anarchists should:# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">envision anarchy as a society that successfully instantiates certain social conditions, such as people being free from domination, people having access to the external conditions that are necessary to develop themselves, or social relations being infused with a sense of solidarity.</div>
+<blockquote>
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">articulate general anarchist methods of organization and association that could successfully actualize these conditions, such as each person in a group having a vote, smaller groups federating together to form larger groups, or organizations electing instantly recallable mandated delegates to perform administrative tasks.</div>
+Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that... Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution.
+</blockquote>
+-----
-According to this view, anarchists could not know with absolute certainty how, say, the education of children would be organized under anarchy, but they were in a position to indicate the method through which it would be organized. Parents, teachers, and other adults interested in the positive development of children would come together as equals within general assemblies to “meet, discuss, agree and differ, and then divide according to their various opinions, putting into practice the methods which they respectively hold to be best” and, in so doing, establish through a process of experimentation what the best system of education was.[[#100MalatestaMethodofFreedo|100]] How anarchy was organized would “be modified and improved as circumstances were modified and changed, according to the teachings of experience.”[[#101MalatestaMethodofFreedo|101]] It was for this reason that Malatesta saw anarchist ideals as “the experimental system brought from the field of research to that of social realization.”[[#102MalatestaMethodofFreedo|102]]
+In conclusion, the birth of Marxism is a phenomenon which is compatible with scientific principles; it is the product of the social-economic conditions of its time of origin, of the human knowledge expressed in science at that time, and it is also the result of its founders’ creative thinking and humanitarian spirit.
-Some anarchist authors did articulate detailed models of how an anarchist society would function. They generally focused on how workers should reorganize production and distribution during a revolution and, as a result, largely discussed practical issues. The Russian anarcho-syndicalist Gregori Maximoff, for example, developed proposals for how an anarchist revolution could reorganize agriculture, cattle rearing, fishing, hunting, manufacturing, forest management, mining, construction, transportation, healthcare, sanitation, and education. These proposals largely specify (a) how organizations should be structured, make decisions, and coordinate with one another; (b) what kind of organization is responsible for a specific aspect of the economy; and (c) general principles that should be implemented, such as the abolition of rent or both men and women receiving an education.[[#103GregoriPMaximoffProgra|103]]
+==== b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism ====
-The theorists of anarchism were not naive and understood that it would not be possible to establish anarchy as an ideal during or immediately after the abolition of capitalism and the state. Cafiero distinguished between anarchy today and anarchy in the future: “Anarchy today is indignation, deadly hatred and eternal war against every oppressor and exploiter on the face of the earth. . . . But tomorrow, once the obstacles have been overcome, anarchy will be solidarity and love—complete freedom for all.”[[#104CafieroRevolution41|104]] He thought it would take a significant amount of time to achieve full anarchy. This can be seen in his claim that one generation would fight in the revolution and the next generation would work toward full anarchy in a postrevolutionary world. He wrote that contemporary anarchists would:
+Marx and Engels initiated the birth and development stage of Marxism from around 1842~1843 through around 1847~1848. Later, from 1849 to 1895, Marxism was developed to be more thorough and comprehensive, but in this early period of birth and development, Marx and Engels engaged in practical activities [Marx and Engels were not just theorists, but also actively supported and participated with various revolutionary and working class organizations including the Chartists, the League of the Just, the Communist League, the International Workingmen’s Association, etc.] and studied a wide range of human thought from ancient times on through to their contemporaries in order to methodically reinforce, complement and improve their ideas.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">perhaps perish in a skirmish or during the first shots of the great day; some perhaps will be fortunate enough to see the first dawning of humanity’s great event. In all cases, we shall fall satisfied. Satisfied with having contributed to the certain ruin of this unjust, cruel and rotten world, whose collapse will bury us in the most glorious tomb ever made for a fighter.</div>
+Many famous works such as ''The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts'' (Marx, 1844), ''The Holy Family'' (Marx and Engels, 1845), ''Thesis on Feuerbach'' (Marx, 1845), ''The German Ideology'' (Marx and Engels, 1845–1846), and so on, clearly showed that Marx and Engels inherited the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of the dialectical and materialist methods which they received from many predecessors. This philosophical heritage led to the development of the dialectical materialist viewpoint and materialist dialectics.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Other men will be born from the very entrails of the fertile revolution and take on the task of carrying out the positive, organic part of anarchy.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">For us—hatred, war and destruction; for them—love, peace and happiness.[[#105CafieroRevolution49|105]]</div>
+==== Annotation 21 ====
-Malatesta, in comparison, conceded that “some comrades” mistakenly “expect Anarchy to come with one stroke—as the immediate result of an insurrection which violently attacks all that which exists and replaces it with institutions that are really new.”[[#106MalatestaMethodofFreedo|106]] These comrades, he said, were wrong, because the full achievement of anarchy requires that “all men will not only not want to be commanded but will not want to command . . . [and] have understood the advantages of solidarity and know how to organize a plan of social life wherein there will no longer be traces of violence and imposition.”[[#107MalatestaMethodofFreedo|107]] Such a significant transformation of individuals and social structures would take a long time to achieve.
+There is a subtle, but important, distinction between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics. This will be explained further in chapters I (p. 48) and II (p. 98).
-Malatesta thought that society immediately after the abolition of capitalism and the state “would not be Anarchy, yet, or it would be only for those few who want it, and only in those things they can accomplish without the cooperation of the non-anarchists.”[[#108MalatestaMethodofFreedo|108]] The development toward anarchy would be a product of “peaceful evolution” in which anarchist “ideas . . . extend to more men and more things until it will have embraced all mankind and all life’s manifestations.”[[#109MalatestaMethodofFreedo|109]] For Malatesta, “Anarchy cannot come but little by little—slowly, but surely, growing in intensity and extension. Therefore, the subject is not whether we accomplish Anarchy today, tomorrow or within ten centuries, but that we walk toward Anarchy today, tomorrow and always.”[[#110MalatestaMethodofFreedo|110]]
+With works such as ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' (Marx, 1847) and ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (Marx and Engels, 1848), Marxism was presented as a complete system of fundamental views with three theoretical component parts.
-Similar points were made by other anarchist authors. Berkman argued that the “revolution is the ''means'' of bringing Anarchy about but it is not Anarchy itself. It is to pave the road for Anarchy, to establish conditions which will make a life of liberty possible.”[[#111BerkmanAnarchism231|111]] Maximoff likewise thought that, during the process of abolishing capitalism and the state, there would be a transitional phase that laid the foundations from which anarchy would eventually arise. As a result, he was careful to distinguish between the “communal structure, which is the transitory step” and “the structure of full communism and anarchy.”[[#112MaximoffProgramofAnarch|112]]
+-----
-Anarchists, in other words, viewed the abolition of capitalism and the state as an act that created the preconditions for the achievement of anarchy and moved society closer to it but would not alone create anarchy as an ideal, universal social system. The task of anarchists during and immediately after the social revolution was to establish the basic forms of organization and association that would exist under anarchy and thereby establish the social conditions from which anarchy could emerge. In order to clearly differentiate these basic social structures from anarchy, I shall refer to the totality of these social structures as an anarchist society.
+==== Annotation 22 ====
-Anarchists generally envisioned an anarchist society as having four main components.[[#113CafieroRevolution4962|113]] These were:# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">Humanity as a whole collectively owns land, raw materials, and the means of production. The division of society into economic classes is abolished such that there are no longer workers or proletarians but only people who engage in acts of production and consumption. Those who occupy or use a piece of land, raw materials, or the means of production on a daily basis directly control and self-manage the relevant sphere of production or distribution. Individuals can only own possessions they personally use without exploiting the labor of others. In other words, humanity owns the watch factory, those who labor in the watch factory directly control and self-manage watch production, and individuals own their personal watches.</div>
+According to Lenin, the three component parts of Marxism (and, by extension, of Marxism-Leninism) are:
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">Workplaces and communities are self-managed by the people who constitute them through general assemblies in which everyone involved has an equal say in collective decisions.[[#114Thissystemofdecisionmak|114]]</div>
+<blockquote>
+. The Philosophy of Marxism: Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">Markets and money are replaced by a system of decentralized planning.</div>
+. The Political Economy of Marxism: A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">The rigid capitalist division of labor is abolished such that people do a combination of mental and physical labor, and unsatisfying labor is either removed, automated, or shared among producers. Individuals would still specialize in specific skills, such as learning how to drive a train or build a house, but they would not be limited to one sphere of activity such that they only drove trains or built houses. This would go alongside a significant reduction to the length of the working day, such as four hours instead of ten.</div>
+. Scientific Socialism: The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.
+</blockquote>
+These are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, p. 38.
+In the book ''The Poverty of Philosophy'', Marx proposed the basic principles of Dialectical Materialism and Scientific Socialism,* and gave some initial thoughts about surplus value. ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' laid the first doctrinal foundation of communism. In this book, the philosophical basis was expressed through the organic unity between the economical viewpoint and socio-political viewpoint.
-In an anarchist society, “the relations between its members are regulated, not by laws . . . not by any authorities—whether they are elected or derive their power by right of inheritance—but by mutual agreements, freely made and always revocable, as well as [social] customs and habits, also freely accepted.”[[#115KropotkinModernScience|115]] Such statements are not advocating a society in which people are free to do absolutely anything, including acts that oppress others. Anarchists argued that, if a person imposes their will on another via violence or coercion, they are engaging in an act of domination and should be prevented from doing so, by force if necessary. Such force, providing it is proportionate and does not reconstitute the state, would not be a form of authority or a violation of the equal freedom of all. It would rather defend the freedom of all in a manner compatible with the goal of anarchy.[[#116MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|116]]
+-----
-Collective decisions within an anarchist society would be made within workplace and community assemblies via either unanimous agreement, majority vote, or a combination of the two.[[#117Anarchistauthorsusedava|117]] Malatesta personally thought that in an anarchist society, “everything is done to reach unanimity, and when this is impossible, one would vote and do what the majority wanted, or else put the decision in the hands of a third party who would act as arbitrator.”[[#118ErricoMalatestaBetweenP|118]] This is not to say that an anarchist society was based on the rule of the majority over the minority. Anarchists believed in free association and so held that decisions should not be imposed on others via the exercise or threat of violence. Given this, they rejected both the rule of the minority over the majority and the rule of the majority over the minority. Within a free association that makes collective decisions via majority vote, the majority and minority positions would coexist with one another when this was possible. If a collective decision required everyone involved to agree on a single course of action, such as when the next meeting would take place or what color a room would be painted, then minorities would voluntarily defer to the majority decision. If the minority strongly disagreed with this decision then they were free, not only to persuade others of their point of view, but also to leave and voluntarily disassociate. This freedom of association also included the freedom of majorities to voluntarily dissociate from minorities, such as a person who constantly shouted at and bullied other people during meetings being expelled from a group.[[#119MalatestaMethodofFreedo|119]]
+==== Annotation 23 ====
-Although anarchists thought that collective decisions should be made in general assemblies, they also understood that it is often necessary or practical for an individual, or small group of people, to complete a specific task. As Malatesta wrote, “in every collective undertaking on a large scale there is need for division of labor, for technical direction, administration, etc.”[[#120MalatestaMethodofFreedo|120]] In such circumstances, anarchists proposed that general assemblies would elect mandated delegates to complete a task or perform a role, such as corresponding with other groups, editing a newspaper, or drawing up plans for a new public transportation system. These delegates would not be governors who wielded authority, since they did not have the right to command others and force people to obey them. Decision-making power would remain in the hands of the general assembly who elected them and retained the right to recall delegates, give them new instructions, accept or reject their suggestions, and so on.[[#121MalatestaBetweenPeasants|121]]
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Scientific Socialism is a series of socio-political-economic theories intended to build socialism on a foundation of science within society’s current ''material conditions'' [see Annotation 79, p. 81]. Scientific Socialism is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.
-In an anarchist society, decision-making would flow “from the bottom upwards and from the circumference inwards, in accordance with the principle of liberty, and not from the top downwards and from the center outwards, as is the way of all authority.”[[#122BakuninSelectedWritings|122]] Within such a society, “the free association of all” would establish “a social organization” structured “from the low to the high, from the simple to the complex, starting from the more immediate to arrive at the more distant and general interests.”[[#123MalatestaMethodofFreedo1|123]] Anarchists envisioned a decentralized and bottom-up system of decision-making in which workplace and community assemblies made their own decisions about how they operated at a local level. They then associated with one another via free agreement in order to form a network capable of achieving coordination and cooperation on a large scale. As will be explained in more detail in Chapters 6 and 7, there were two main positions on how to achieve large-scale coordination and cooperation during both the struggle against class society and the reproduction of an anarchist society. Antiorganizationalists, who appear to have been in the minority during the period I am examining, argued that coordination should only be achieved through free agreements between groups that were nodes of informal social networks. Galleani, for example, endorsed “a society functioning on the basis of mutual agreement” between “free social groupings,” while rejecting formal organizations that had administrative committees, congresses, and constitutions.[[#124GalleaniEndofAnarchism|124]]
+''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' outlined the laws of movement in history,* as well as the basic theory of socio-economic forms.
-Organizationalists, in comparison, also advocated the establishment of formal federations.[[#125Thefollowingaccountisba|125]] These federations took three main forms: federations of producers belonging to the same branch of production; federations of all the workplace assemblies, regardless of industry, in a given geographical area; and federations of community assemblies in a given geographical area. Federations are free associations of autonomous groups that are formed in order to achieve shared objectives. Within a federation, these autonomous groups are formally linked together through a common program, a bottom-up organizational structure, and the various agreements made at meetings and congresses. In an anarchist society, the basic unit of a federation would be a group in which collective decisions were made in a general assembly. The different assemblies in a given area would voluntarily associate with one another to form a local federation. The local federations in a given region would then voluntarily associate with one another to form a regional federation. The regional federations would associate to form a national federation and the national federations of the world would form an international federation. Federations of federations were often called confederations. Although organizationalist anarchists advocated creating national confederations before and during a social revolution, it is likely that, in a stateless society without borders, new labels would be used to refer to a federation of this size.[[#126AnarchiststhroughoutLatin|126]]
+-----
-Federations would enable coordination at various scales. Collective agreements between different groups would be made at regular congresses held at local, regional, national, and international levels, each attended by delegates from smaller groups comprising the federation. Proponents of federations disagreed about whether resolutions passed at congresses by majority vote should be binding on every individual or group involved in the decision-making process, or on only those who voted in favor of the majority position.[[#127CompareMalatestaMethodo|127]] Between congresses, the day-to-day administration of a federation would be organized by a committee composed of elected delegates. What tasks these administrative committees performed would vary depending upon the kind of federation but would include such things as facilitating the exchange of information between sections, publishing bulletins on behalf of the federation, or compiling statistics.
+==== Annotation 24 ====
-The delegates of a federation, in contrast to representatives in capitalist parliaments, are not granted the power to make decisions independently and impose them on others. They can only act as spokespeople for the group that elected and mandated them on what to say and how to vote. If they fail to implement the group’s mandate, they can be instantly recalled and replaced by a newly elected delegate. The same principle would apply to delegates who perform other roles for the federation, such as the members of the administrative committees. As Kropotkin explained, within a federation, the members of a local group discuss “every aspect of the question that concerns them,” reach a decision, and then “choose someone and send him to reach an agreement with other delegates of the same kind.”[[#128KropotkinRebel133|128]] At this meeting “the delegate is not authorized to do more than explain to other delegates the considerations that have led his colleagues to their conclusion. Not being able to impose anything, he will seek an understanding and will return with a simple proposition which his mandatories can accept or refuse.”[[#129KropotkinRebel133See|129]] Malatesta similarly claimed that “the respective delegates would take their given mandates to the relative meetings and try to harmonize their various needs and desires. The deliberations would always be subject to the control and approval of those who delegated them.”[[#130MalatestaBetweenPeasants|130]]
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> The laws of movement in history are the core principles of ''historical materialism'', which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.
-All anarchists, regardless of where they stood on the topic of federations, did not think that workplace and community assemblies would be the only organs of self-management in an anarchist society. Kropotkin, for example, advocated a society constituted by an “interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national, and international—temporary or more or less permanent—for all possible purposes,” including not only production and consumption but also “communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection,” and “the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs.”[[#131KropotkinDirectStruggle|131]]
+The basic theory of socio-economic forms dictates that material production plays a decisive role in the existence and development of a society, and that the material production methods decide both the political and ''social consciousness'' of a society.
-The forms of organization and decision-making that anarchists advocated were not invented by isolated theorists imagining abstract social possibilities from their studies. The anarchist vision of a future society was instead the generalization of the forms of association that working-class social movements had themselves developed and implemented during the course of the class struggle. As Kropotkin argued, “Anarchy” is an “ideal society” based upon “''the study of tendencies already emerging in the evolution of society''.”[[#132KropotkinModernScience|132]] One of the main tendencies Kropotkin focused on was the labor movement. He noted that the anarchist vision of a future society was “worked out, in theory and practice, from beneath” by workers themselves within the local sections, national federations, and international congresses of the First and Saint-Imier Internationals.[[#133PeterKropotkinMemoirsof|133]] This occurred through a process of workers collectively generating ideas via discussion, dialogue, and drawing upon their knowledge of a specific trade or region. They not only made proposals about how the future society should be organized, but based these proposals on their own experiences of participating in “a vast federation of workers groups representing the seeds of a society regenerated by social revolution.”[[#134KropotkinModernScience|134]]
+-----
-Although anarchists agreed that land, raw materials, and the means of production should be owned in common by humanity as a whole, they disagreed about how the products of labor should be distributed in an anarchist society. Anarchist collectivists argued that the products of labor should be owned by those who produced them so that, as they saw it, each producer enjoyed the full product of their labor.[[#135BakuninSelectedWritings|135]] Bakunin, the most famous anarchist collectivist, proposed in 1868 that society should be structured such that it “allows each to share in the enjoyment of social wealth—which in fact is produced only by labor—only to the extent that he has contributed his own to its production.”[[#136BakuninSelectedWritings|136]] Anarchist collectivists within the First International did not initially specify how the products of collective labor would be distributed to those who produced them and argued that the question would be resolved in various ways by communities themselves depending upon their circumstances.[[#137GuillaumequotedinBakunin|137]] For example, at the 1877 Verviers Congress of the Saint-Imier International, Spanish anarchist collectivists advocated a society based on the collective ownership of the means of production and land, which “gives autonomy to each community of producers and each receives according to his production.”[[#138QuotedinCarolineCahmKr|138]] They did not, however, specify how this system of distribution would actually be organized.
+==== Annotation 25 ====
-A more concrete proposal was made by the anarchist collectivist Guillaume in 1874. He reaffirmed the collectivist position that each community should decide for itself how to distribute the products of labor, while suggesting a system of labor vouchers in which individuals receive a certain number of vouchers per hour of work or per type of work performed and then use them to acquire items at stores. Once the postrevolutionary society had stabilized and abundance was achieved, he thought this should be replaced by the principle of “from each according to ability, to each according to needs.”[[#139GuillaumeIdeasonSocial|139]]
+''Social consciousness'' refers to the collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society. This is related to the concept of base and superstructure, which is discussed later in this chapter.
-From 1876 onward, a number of prominent anarchists, including Malatesta, Cafiero, and Reclus, rejected anarchist collectivism in favor of anarchist communism. This soon came to be the dominant position within the anarchist movement, although anarchist collectivism continued to be advocated by a significant segment of anarchists in Spain during the 1880s. Anarchist communism was seen as a society in which each person voluntarily contributes to production according to their abilities and the products of labor are collectively owned by humanity as a whole and distributed according to need. This would, during and immediately after the social revolution, be organized through a system of rationing. Once the economy was sufficiently developed and stable, rationing would be abolished in favor of free access to the products of labor. In contrast to Guillaume, who had previously proposed distribution according to need as the long-term goal, anarchist communists rejected the idea of distribution via labor vouchers as an intermediary system.[[#140MalatestaMethodofFreedo|140]]
+''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' also showed that for as long as classes have existed, the history of the development of human society is the history of class struggle. Through class struggle, the proletariat can liberate ourselves only if we simultaneously and forever liberate the whole of humanity. With these basic opinions, Marx and Engels founded Historical Materialism.
-Over time, the debate between anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists became increasingly hostile, most notably in Spain during the 1880s where it was entangled with wider strategic debates.[[#141GeorgeRichardEsenweinAn|141]] In response, Fernando Tarrida del Mármol and Ricardo Mella formulated the idea of “anarchism without adjectives” in 1889. They argued that it was not possible for people living in class society to know with certainty which specific system of distribution would best realize anarchist values after the revolution. As a result, anarchists existing under capitalism should adopt a nondogmatic stance whereby collectivism and communism would coexist in the postrevolutionary society and the argument over which system was superior would be settled through actual experimentation in different economic arrangements. Until this had occurred, anarchists could make proposals about how they personally thought the economy would best be organized, but they would not be in a position to identify as either collectivist or communist. So long as anarchists lived within class society, they should simply call themselves anarchists who advocated socialism and not add to this label any particular adjective denoting a future system of distribution.[[#142MellaAnarchistSocialism|142]]
+By applying Historical Materialism to the comprehensive study of the capitalist production method, Marx made an important discovery: separating workers from the ownership of the means of production through violence was the starting point of the establishment of the capitalist production method. Workers do not own the means of production to perform their labor activities for themselves, so, in order to make income and survive, workers have to sell their labor to capitalists. Labor thus becomes a special commodity, and the sellers of labor become workers for labor-buyers [the proletariat and capitalist class respectively]. The value that workers create through their labor is higher than their wage. And this is how surplus value* is formed. Importantly, this means that the surplus value belongs to people who own the means of production — the capitalists — instead of the workers who provide the labor.
-This position would go onto influence some anarchists outside of Spain. A notable example is the American anarchist de Cleyre, who was initially an individualist anarchist and advocate of market socialism. Her perspective on anarchism changed due to her four-month visit to England and Scotland in 1897. During her lecture tour, she met and conversed with a variety of anarchist communists. This included both groups of English, Scottish, French, Spanish, and Jewish anarchist workers, and prominent anarchist authors and public speakers, such as Kropotkin, Nettlau, Grave, and Louise Michel. De Cleyre claimed that one of the most impressive people she met was Tarrida del Mármol, the advocate of anarchism without adjectives.[[#143PaulAvrichAnAmericanAn|143]] From at least 1900 onward, she advocated a stateless socialist society in which the means of production were owned in common, while referring to herself as an anarchist without economic label attached. In contrast to early Spanish advocates of anarchism without adjectives, de Cleyre claimed that experiments in different socialist economic arrangements would not only settle the debate between collectivists and communists. It would also establish an answer to the largely American debate between proponents of market socialism and advocates of a planned economy.[[#144AvrichAnAmericanAnarchi|144]]
+-----
-For Kropotkin, who played a significant role in theorizing and popularizing anarchist communism, it was important to describe the nature of the future society, because how one envisions the future shapes how one acts in the present. A socialist who envisions a society based on producers owning and self-managing the means of production themselves will act differently, both under capitalism and during a revolution, from a socialist who envisions a society based on the state owning and managing the means of production through a vast bureaucracy. They each have a different vision and so will act differently to try and create very different worlds.[[#145KropotkinRebel2014|145]] This perspective can be seen in Kropotkin’s 1913 remark that the anarchist vision of a future society “soon separated the anarchists in their means of action from all political parties, as well as, to a large extent, from the socialist parties which thought they could retain the ancient Roman and Canonical idea of the State and carry it into the future society of their dreams.”[[#146KropotkinModernScience|146]]
+==== Annotation 26 ====
-If the achievement of anarchy required that the working classes engage in forms of practice that actually produce an anarchist society, such as establishing workplace or community assemblies, then the working classes must first develop both the awareness of what an anarchist society would look like and the motivation to create such a society. As Kropotkin wrote, “no struggle can be successful . . . if it does not produce a concrete account of its actual aim. No destruction of what exists is possible without, during the struggles leading to the destruction and during the period of destruction itself, already visualizing mentally what will take the place of what you want to destroy.”[[#147KropotkinModernScience|147]]
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Surplus value is equal to labor value (the amount of value workers produce through labor) minus wages paid to workers. Under capitalism, this surplus value is appropriated as profit by capitalists after the products which workers created are sold.
-The role of anarchist authors like Kropotkin or Cafiero was to articulate and spread this vision among the working classes, and thereby instill in them the radical drives that were necessary for achieving an anarchist society. Anarchists had to decide not only on “the ''aim'' which we ourselves propose to attain” but must also “make it known, by words and deeds, in such a way as to make it notably popular, so popular that on the day of action it will be on everybody’s lips.”[[#148KropotkinRebel203|148]] In outlining these visions of what an anarchist society would look like, anarchists did not think that they were establishing the permanent means through which society would be organized after the social revolution. Instead, they assumed that people living in a future anarchist society would develop new and better ways of organizing that they had not considered, and had not even been in a position to conceive.[[#149RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|149]]
+So, in discovering the origin of surplus value, Marx pointed out the exploitative nature of capitalism [because capitalists essentially steal surplus labor value from workers which is then transformed into profits], though this exploitative nature is concealed by the money-commodity relationship.
-'''The Problem of Socialist Transformation'''
+-----
-Anarchists not only advocated the abolition of capitalism and the state in favor of an anarchist society. They also constructed effective strategies for how to set about achieving their goals. One of the central problems that their strategies had to overcome was that both the abolition of class society in favor of an anarchist society and the day-to-day reproduction of an anarchist society require the bulk of the population to have developed a vast array of different capacities, drives, and consciousness, such as the ability to make collective decisions in general assemblies, the desire to not dominate or exploit others, and the understanding that capitalism and the state make people unfree. The dominant structures of class society, however, produce people fit for the reproduction of that oppressive and unequal society, rather than its abolition. Class society cannot, by itself, produce the kinds of people that an anarchist revolution and an anarchist society need.
+==== Annotation 27 ====
-Such individuals would arise in a properly functioning anarchist society due to the forms of practice they engaged in on a daily basis, such as participating in a workplace assembly or being taught how to horizontally associate as a child. These are exactly the kinds of people that anarchist social movements need in order to succeed. Anarchists, unfortunately, live in a class society. They therefore have a problem: in order to transform society they need transformed people. In order to have transformed people, they need a new society. How then could anarchist social movements effectively transform society? This problem was succinctly expressed by Malatesta:
+Under capitalism, a worker’s labor is a commodity which capitalists pay for with money in the form of wages. Workers never know how much of their labor value is being withheld by employers, which conceals the nature of capitalist wage-theft.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Between man and his social environment there is a reciprocal action. Men make society what it is and society makes men what they are, and the result is therefore a kind of vicious circle. To transform society men must be changed, and to transform men, society must be changed. Poverty brutalizes man, and to abolish poverty men must have a social conscience and determination. Slavery teaches men to be slaves, and to free oneself from slavery there is a need for men who aspire to liberty. . . . Governments accustom people to submit to the Law and to believe that Law is essential to society; and to abolish government men must be convinced of the uselessness and the harmfulness of government.[[#150MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|150]]</div>
+The theory of surplus value was deeply and comprehensively researched and presented in ''Capital''<ref>''Das Kapital:'' Karl Marx’s most important contribution to political economy. It is composed of four volumes. It is the work of Marx’s whole career and an important part of Engels’ career, as well. Marx started writing ''Das Kapital'' in the 1840s and continued writing until he died (1883). ''Das Kapital I'' was published in 1867. After Marx’s death, Engels edited and published the second volume in 1885 and the third volume in 1894. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the USSR edited and published ''Das Kapital IV'', also known as ''Theories of Surplus-Value'', in the 1950s, long after the death of Marx and Engels.</ref> by Marx and Engels. This work not only paves the way to form a new political-economic theory system based on the working class’s viewpoint, it also firmly consolidates and develops the historical-materialist viewpoint through the theory of socio-economic forms.
-Despite the self-reproducing nature of dominant structures, social change remains a possibility. This is because existing society is not solely the product of the “will of a dominating class” but is also “the result of a thousand internecine struggles, of a thousand human and natural factors acting indifferently, without directive criteria.”[[#151MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|151]] Social structures are not fixed monoliths, but webs of interconnected processes that “contain organic contradictions and are like the germs of death, which, as they develop, result in the dissolution of institutions and the need for transformation.”[[#152MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|152]] This can be seen in the history of class struggle, which contains numerous examples of the oppressed and exploited choosing to rebel against, modify, and sometimes overthrow, self-reproducing social structures. Given this, anarchists who “are besieged and buffeted on every side by hostile realities” must not “accept everything, and defer to everything because this is the situation in which history has placed us,” but should instead choose to “combat these realities” and thereby change what reality is.[[#153MalatestaMethodofFreedo|153]] De Cleyre said much the same. She argued in 1910 that, although humans are shaped by their circumstances, they are also at the same time “an active modifying agent, reacting on its environment and transforming circumstances, sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly, sometimes, though not often, entirely.”[[#154DeCleyreReader37|154]]
+-----
-It is therefore possible for one segment of society to choose to engage in actions that, given the theory of practice, would simultaneously change social relations and themselves, constructing new social structures. To quote Mella,
+==== Annotation 28 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">We must realize that we will not suddenly find ourselves, one day, with men made in accordance with the future, suitable to realize the content of new ideals. And we must surrender to the evidence that, without the continual and growing exercise of individual faculties, without the habit of autonomy, as broad as possible, free men or at least men in conditions to be free will not be made so that the social deed changes the face of things. External and internal revolutions presuppose one another and should be simultaneous in order to be fruitful.[[#155MellaAnarchistSocialism|155]]</div>
+Karl Marx explained that the goal of writing ''Capital'' was “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society.” By “laws of motion,” Marx refers to the origins and motivations for change within human society. Historical materialism holds that human society develops based on internal and external relationships within and between aspects of society. Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.
-For example, workers choose to go on strike and win. In so doing, they change social relations—wages increase and workers gain more power over their bosses—and change people—workers learn how to organize a strike, acquire an increased sense of solidarity with one another and see the economy in a fundamentally different way. During the course of the strike, they construct a new social structure that did not exist before—a trade union. Long-term participation in this trade union would, in turn, cause workers to develop their capacities, drives, and consciousness in new directions. This would make the organization of new actions possible, such as strikes that mobilize workers in multiple industries. These kinds of action could continue and multiply over time as increasingly large numbers of workers engage in the process of simultaneously transforming social relations and themselves. This would eventually culminate in a shift from workers only modifying the dominant structures of class society, to workers abolishing them and replacing them with new ones. The anarchist solution to the problem of socialist transformation was, in short, that the working classes could become capable of, and driven to, overthrow capitalism and the state, and establish and reproduce an anarchist society through engaging in revolutionary practice. As Malatesta put it, “progress must advance contemporaneously and along parallel lines between men and their environment.”[[#156MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|156]]
+According to the theory of socio-economic forms [which is the basis of historical materialism], the movements and developments of human society are natural-historical processes based on dialectical interactions between forces of production and relations of production; between infrastructure basis [commonly referred to as “base” in English] and superstructure.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#13|1]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', ed. Arthur Lehning (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 148–49; Nestor Makhno, ''The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays'','' ''ed. Alexandre Skirda (San Francisco: AK Press, 1996), 70.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#23|2]]. Lucy Parsons, ''Freedom'','' Equality and Solidarity: Writings and Speeches'','' 1878–1937'','' ''ed. Gale Ahrens (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2004), 38.</div>
+==== Annotation 29 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#33|3]]. Anarchism shares this emphasis on nondomination with republicanism. See Kinna and Alex Prichard, “Anarchism and Non-domination,” ''Journal of Political Ideologies'' 24, no. 3 (2019): 221–40.</div>
+The forces of production consist of the combination of means of production and workers within society. Under capitalism, the production force consists of the proletariat (working class) and means of production which are owned by the bourgeoisie (capitalist class).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#43|4]]. Michael Bakunin, ''The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869–1871'', ed. and trans. Robert M. Cutler (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985),'' ''121.</div>
+Marx viewed society as composed of an ''economic base'' and a ''social superstructure''. The base of society includes the material relationships between humans and the means of productions and the material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment. The superstructure of society includes all components of society not directly relating to production, such as media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#53|5]]. Bakunin, ''Basic Bakunin'','' ''124.</div>
+In the preface to ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx explained:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#63|6]]. Bakunin, ''Basic Bakunin'','' ''46. See also Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''64, 148.</div>
+<blockquote>
+In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#73|7]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''191. Bakunin labels restrictions on freedom as domination on multiple occasions. See ibid., 136, 150, 167, 192, 212, 254.</div>
+RELIGION GOVERNMENT EDUCATION
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#83|8]]. Charlotte Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'', ed. Nicolas Walter (London: Freedom Press, 2000), 54.</div>
+POLITICAL ECONOMY NATURE
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#93|9]]. Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'', 54, 58–59.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-4.png|''The base of society includes material-based elements and relations including political economy, means of production, class relations, etc. The superstructure includes human-consciousness-based elements and relations including government, culture, religion, etc.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#103|10]]. Luigi Galleani, ''The End of Anarchism?'' (London: Elephant Editions, 2012), 50. See also, 61, 62–63. 68.</div>
+In other words, Marx argued that superstructure (which includes social consciousness) is shaped by the infrastructural basis, or base, of society. This reflects the more general dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness, in which the material, as the first basis of reality, determines consciousness, while consciousness mutually impacts the material [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88]. So, the base of society — being material in nature — ''determines'' the superstructure, while the superstructure ''impacts'' the base. It couldn’t possibly be the other way around, according to the dialectical materialist worldview, because the primary driving forces of conscious activity are rooted in material needs.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#113|11]]. Errico Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''40, 446. See also Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 249, 366; Errico Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta'','' ''ed. Vernon Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 38.</div>
+The theory of socio-economic forms proves that the materialist viewpoint of history is not just a hypothesis, but a scientifically-proven principle.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#123|12]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'', 41.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#132|13]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''56.</div>
+==== Annotation 30 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#142|14]]. Alexander Berkman, “A Decade of Bolshevism,” in ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', ed. Friends of Aron Baron (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 119.</div>
+As Lenin explains in ''What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats:''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#152|15]]. Alexander Berkman, ''What is Anarchism? ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003),'' ''13.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Now — since the appearance of Capital — the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society — formation of society, mind you, and not the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc. — another attempt just as capable of introducing order into the “pertinent facts” as materialism is, that is just as capable of presenting a living picture of a definite formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation -until then the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not ‘primarily a scientific conception of history’... but the only scientific conception of it.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#162|16]]. Emma Goldman, ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader'', ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 121.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#172|17]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 16.</div>
+''Capital'' is Marx’s main work which presents Marxism as a social science by illuminating the inevitable processes of birth, development, and decay of capitalism; the replacement of capitalism with socialism; and the historical mission of the working class — the social force that can implement this replacement. Marx’s materialist conception of history and proletarian revolution continued to be developed in ''Critique of Gotha Programme'' (Marx, 1875). This book discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, and phases of the communism building process, and several other premises. Together, these premises formed the scientific basis for Marx’s theoretical guidance for the future revolutionary activity of the proletariat.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#182|18]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 438. See also Peter Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'', ed. George Woodcock (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1993), 119; Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'', ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 164; Makhno, ''Struggle'', 62.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#192|19]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 72–73.</div>
+-----
-[[#202|20]]. Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'', 27.
+==== Annotation 31 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#212|21]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Bakunin on Anarchism'', ed. Sam Dolgoff (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1980), 236.</div>
+When Marx refers to a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” he does ''not'' mean “dictatorship” to mean “totalitarian” or “authoritarian.” Rather, here “dictatorship” simply refers to a situation in which political power is held by the working class (which constitutes the vast majority of society). “Dictatorship,” here, refers to full control of the means of production and government. This stands in contrast to capitalism, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in which capitalists (a small minority of society) have full control of the means of production and government.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#222|22]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 147.</div>
+==== c. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism ====
-[[#232|23]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''197.
+''- Historical Background and the Need for Defending and Developing Marxism''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#242|24]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 202–3. This exact same language was used by Mella. See Ricardo Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: A Ricardo Mella Anthology'','' ''ed. Stephen Luis Vilaseca (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 117–18.</div>
+In the late 19<sup>th</sup> century and early 20<sup>th</sup> century, capitalism developed into a new stage, called imperialism. The dominant and exploitative nature of capitalism became increasingly obvious. Contradictions in capitalist societies became increasingly serious — especially the class struggles between the proletariat and capitalists. In many colonised countries, the resistance against imperialism created a unity between national liberation and proletarian revolution, uniting people in colonised countries with the working class in colonial countries. The core of such revolutionary struggles at this time was in Russia. The Russian proletariat and working class under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party became the leader of the whole international revolutionary movement.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#252|25]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'', 40.</div>
+During this time, both capitalist industry and natural sciences developed rapidly. Some natural scientists, especially physicists, lacked a grounding in materialist philosophical methodology and therefore fell into a viewpoint crisis. Idealist philosophers used this crisis to directly influence the perspective and activities of many revolutionary movements.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#262|26]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 156.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#272|27]]. Malatesta,'' Towards Anarchy'','' ''149. See also, 141.</div>
+==== Annotation 32 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#282|28]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''73, 93–94, 130, 133.</div>
+==== Imperialism ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#292|29]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''78.</div>
+Lenin defined imperialism as “the monopoly stage of capitalism,” listing its essential characteristics as “finance capital (serving) a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists” and “a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.”
-[[#302|30]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''153.
+==== Subjective and Empiricist Idealism ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#312|31]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 76–77.</div>
+In the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, natural scientists were exploring various philosophical bases for scientific inquiry. One Austrian physicist, Ernst Mach, attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German-Swiss philosopher Richard Avenarius known as “Empirio-Criticism.” Empirio-Criticism, which also came to be known as Machism, has many parallels with the philosophy of George Berkeley. Berkeley (1685 — 1753) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “''Esse est percipi''” — “To be is to be perceived.” Subjective Idealism holds that individuals can only directly perceive and know about physical objects through direct sense experience. Therefore, individuals are unable to obtain any real knowledge about abstract concepts such as “matter”.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#322|32]]. Errico Malatesta, ''At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism'' (London: Freedom Press, 2005), 57; ''Towards Anarchy'', 56.</div>
+The philosophy of Empirio-Criticism, which was developed by Avenarius and Mach, also holds that the only reliable human knowledge we can hold comes from our sensations and experiences. Mach argued that the only source of knowledge is sense data and “experience,” but that we can’t develop any actual knowledge of the actual external world. In other words, Mach’s conception of empirio-criticism holds all knowledge as essentially subjective in nature, and limited to (and by) human sense experience. Mach’s development of Empirio-Criticism (which can also be referred to as ''empirical idealism'' or ''Machism'')'''' was therefore a continuation of Berkeley’s subjective idealism. Both Berkeley’s Immaterialism and Empirio-Criticism are considered to be ''subjective idealism'' because these philosophies deny that the external world exists — or otherwise assert that it is unknowable — and, as such, hold that all knowledge stems from experiences which are essentially ''subjective'' in nature.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#332|33]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 165.</div>
+Mach argued that reality can only be defined by our sensual experiences of reality, and that we can never concretely know anything about the objective external world due to the limitations of sense experience. This stands in direct contradiction to dialectical materialism, which holds that we can develop accurate knowledge of the material world through observation and practice. Whereas Berkeley developed subjective idealist theological arguments to defend the Christian faith, Mach employed subjective idealism for purely secular purposes as a basis for scientific inquiry.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#342|34]]. The following interpretation of solidarity differs from but is indebted to the discussion of Bakunin’s and Kropotkin’s understanding of solidarity in John Nightingale, “The Concept of Solidarity in Anarchist Thought” (PhD diss., Loughborough University, 2015), 34–108.</div>
+''Note: all quotations below come from Lenin’s book:'' Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#352|35]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Modern Science and Anarchy'', ed. Iain McKay'' ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018),'' ''478.</div>
+Vladimir Lenin strongly opposed Empirio-Criticism and, by extension, Machism, which was becoming popular among communist revolutionists in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, because it pushed forward idealist principles which directly opposed the core tenets of dialectical materialism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#362|36]]. Malatesta, ''Café'','' ''57.</div>
+Lenin believed that revolutionaries should be guided not by idealism, but by dialectical materialism. He believed that Empirio-Criticism and Machism consisted of mysticism which would mislead political revolutionaries.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#372|37]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''68.</div>
+Lenin outlined Machian arguments against materialism:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#382|38]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 124.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The materialists, we are told, recognise something unthinkable and unknowable — ’things-in-themselves’ — matter ‘outside of experience’ and outside of our knowledge [see: Annotation 72, p. 68]. They lapse into genuine mysticism by admitting the existence of something beyond, something transcending the bounds of ‘experience’... When they say that matter, by acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensations, the materialists take as their basis the ‘unknown,’ nothingness; for do they not themselves declare our sensations to be the only source of knowledge?
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#392|39]]. Élisée Reclus, “An Anarchist on Anarchy,” in Albert Parsons, ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis'' (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2003), 144.</div>
+Lenin argued that this new form of Machist subjective idealism was, in fact, simply a rehashing of “old errors of idealism,” disguised and dressed up with new terminology. As such, Lenin simply reiterated the longstanding, bedrock dialectical materialist arguments against idealism [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. He was especially upset that contemporary Marxists of his era were being swayed by Machist Empirio-Criticism because he found it to be in direct conflict with dialectical materialism, writing: “(These) would-be Marxists… try in every way to assure their readers that Machism is compatible with the historical materialism of Marx and Engels.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#402|40]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 415. See also Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''400; Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'','' ''74; Reclus, “An Anarchist on Anarchy,” 147.</div>
+Lenin goes on to describe the work of philosophers such as Franz Blei, who critiqued Marxism with Machist arguments, as “quasi-scientific tomfoolery decked out in the terminology of Avenarius.” He saw Empirio-Criticism as completely incompatible with communist revolution, since idealism had historically been used by the ruling class to deceive and control the lower classes. In particular, he believed that Machist idealism was being used by the capitalist class to preach bourgeois economics, writing that “the professors of economics are nothing but learned salesmen of the capitalist class.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#412|41]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'','' ''7–8; Peter Kropotkin, ''The Conquest of Bread'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007),'' ''58–60, 100–101.</div>
+Lenin was deeply concerned that prominent Russian socialist philosophers were adopting Machist ideas and claiming them to be compatible with Marxism, writing:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#422|42]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 38–39.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The task of Marxists in both cases is to be able to master and adapt the achievements of these ‘salesmen’... and to be able to lop off their reactionary tendency, to pursue your own line and to combat the whole alignment of forces and classes hostile to us. And this is just what our Machians were unable to do, they slavishly follow the lead of the reactionary professorial philosophy.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#432|43]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 63. See also Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 109–10.</div>
+Lenin further explains how Empirio-Criticism serves the interests of the capitalist class:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#442|44]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,'' ''1990), ed. Marshall Shatz, 7.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The empirio-criticists as a whole... claim to be non-partisan both in philosophy and in social science. They are neither for socialism nor for liberalism. They make no differentiation between the fundamental and irreconcilable trends of materialism and idealism in philosophy, but endeavor to rise above them. We have traced this tendency of Machism through a long series of problems of epistemology, and we ought not to be surprised when we encounter it in sociology.
+</blockquote>
-[[#452|45]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 51.
+In the conclusion of the same text, Lenin explains why communists should reject Empirio-Criticism and Machism with four “standpoints,” summarized here:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#462|46]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “The Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft),” in Alexandre Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968 ''(Oakland CA: AK Press, 2002), 195.</div>
+. The theoretical foundations of Empirio-Criticism can’t withstand comparison with those of dialectical materialism. Empirio-Criticism differs little from older forms of idealism, and the tired old errors of idealism clash directly with Marxist dialectical materialism. As Lenin puts it: “only utter ignorance of the nature of philosophical materialism generally and of the nature of Marx’s and Engels’ dialectical method can lead one to speak of ‘combining’ empirio-criticism and Marxism.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#472|47]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 199.</div>
+. The philosophical foundations of Empirio-Criticism are flawed. “Both Mach and Avenarius started with Kant (see: Annotation 72, p. 68) and, leaving him, proceeded not towards materialism, but in the opposite direction, towards Hume and Berkeley (see: Annotation 10, p. 10)... The whole school of Mach and Avenarius is moving more and more definitely towards idealism.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#482|48]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 4.</div>
+. Machism is little more than a relatively obscure trend which has not been adopted by most scientists; a “reactionary (and) transitory infatuation.” As Lenin puts it: “the vast majority of scientists, both generally and in this special branch of science... are invariably on the side of materialism.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#492|49]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 190.</div>
+. Empirio-Criticism and Machism reflect the “tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society.” Idealism represents the interests of the ruling class in modern society, and is used to subjugate the majority of society. Idealist philosophy “stands fully armed, commands vast organizations and steadily continues to exercise influence on the masses, turning the slightest vacillation in philosophical thought to its own advantage.” In other words, idealism is used by the ruling class to manipulate our understanding of the world, as opposed to materialism (and especially dialectical materialism) which illuminates the true nature of reality which would lead to the liberation of the working class.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#502|50]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 125,'' ''181, 211, 218, 229, 7. The exact same class analysis features in Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 19–26, 47–48, 66, 72.</div>
+At this time, Marxism was widely disseminating throughout Russia, which challenged the social positions and benefits of capitalists. In reaction to Marxism, many ideological movements such as empiricism, utilitarianism, revisionism, etc. [see: Appendix F, p. 252] rose up and claimed to renew Marxism, while in fact they misrepresented and denied Marxism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#512|51]]. The historian Bernard Moss has argued that the term “artisan” is misleading, due to it conflating “independent artisans, master artisans and skilled wage earners” into one social group. See Bernard H. Moss, ''The Origins of the French Labor Movement: The Socialism of Skilled Workers ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 13. To avoid this misunderstanding, I have added the qualification that the artisans anarchists referred to did not exploit the labor of others.</div>
+In this context, new achievements of natural science needed to be analyzed and summarized in order to continue the authentic development of Marxist viewpoints and methodologies. Theoretical principles to fight against the misrepresentation of Marxism needed to be developed in order to bring Marxism into the new era. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin would fulfill this historical requirement with his theoretical developments.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#522|52]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 493.</div>
+''- The Role of Lenin in Defending and Developing Marxism.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#532|53]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 11–12; Malatesta, ''Café'', 45.</div>
+Lenin’s process of defending and developing Marxism can be separated into three periods: first, from 1893 to 1907; next, from 1907 to 1917; and finally from the success of the October socialist revolution in 1917 until Lenin’s death in 1924.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#542|54]]. Malatesta, ''Café'', 32.</div>
+From 1893 to 1907, Lenin focused on fighting against populists<ref>Populist faction: A faction within the Russian revolution which upheld an idealist capitalist ideology with many representatives such as Mikhailovsky, Bakunin, and Plekhanov. Populists failed to recognise the important roles of the people, of the farmers and workers alliance, and of the proletariat. Instead, they completely centered the role of the individual in society. They considered the rural communes as the nucleus of “socialism.” They saw farmers under the leadership of intellectuals as the main force of the revolution. The populists advocated individual terrorism as the primary method of revolutionary struggle.</ref>. His book ''What the Friends of the People are and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats (1894)'' criticized the serious mistakes of this faction in regards to socio-historical issues and also exposed their scheme of distorting Marxism by erasing the boundaries between Marxism’s materialist dialectics and Hegel’s idealist dialectics. In the same book, Lenin also shared many thoughts about the important roles of theory, reality, and the relationship between the two.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#552|55]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 50.</div>
+==== Annotation 33 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#562|56]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'','' ''25; Max Baginski, ''What Does Syndicalism Want? Living'','' Not Dead Unions'' (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2015), 10.</div>
+The ''populist'' philosophy was born in Russia in the 19<sup>th</sup> century with roots going back to the Narodnik agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. In the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, a new political movement emerged rooted in Narodnik ideas and a new party called the Socialist Revolutionary Party was formed. The political philosophy of this movement, now commonly translated into English as “populism,” focused on an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. This movement overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism (see Annotation 95, p. 94).
-[[#572|57]]. Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'','' ''63.
+With the book ''What is to be Done?'' (1902), Lenin developed Marxist viewpoints on the methods for the proletariat to take power. He discussed economic, political, and ideological struggles. In particular, he emphasized the ideological formation process of the proletariat.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#582|58]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 67.</div>
+==== Annotation 34 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#592|59]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 50.</div>
+In ''What is to be Done?,'' Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously attain class consciousness and push for political revolution simply due to economic conflict with employers and spontaneous actions like demonstrations and workers’ strikes. He instead insists that a political party of dedicated revolutionaries is needed to educate workers in Marxist principles and to organize and push forward revolutionary activity. He also pushed back strongly against the ideas of what he called “economism,” as typified by the ideas of Eduard Bernstein, a German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories.
-[[#602|60]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''49.
+Bernstein opposed a working class revolution and instead focused on reform and compromise. He believed that socialism could be achieved within the capitalist economy and the system of bourgeois democracy. Lenin argued that Bernstein and his economist philosophy was opportunistic, and accused economists of seeking positions within bourgeois democracies to further their own personal interests and to quell revolutionary tendencies. As Lenin explained in ''A Talk With Defenders of Economism:''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#612|61]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''49–50, 149, 151–53; Berkman, ''Anarchism'','' ''25–38; Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'','' ''79.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The Economists limited the tasks of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, etc., asserting that the political struggle was the business of the liberal bourgeoisie. They denied the leading role of the party of the working class, considering that the party should merely observe the spontaneous process of the movement and register events. In their deference to spontaneity in the working-class movement, the Economists belittled the significance of revolutionary theory and class-consciousness, asserted that socialist ideology could emerge from the spontaneous movement, denied the need for a Marxist party to instill socialist consciousness into the working-class movement, and thereby cleared the way for bourgeois ideology. The Economists, who opposed the need to create a centralized working-class party, stood for the sporadic and amateurish character of individual circles. Economism threatened to divert the working class from the class revolutionary path and turn it into a political appendage of the bourgeoisie.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#622|62]]. Anarchists did not all use the same terminology. Malatesta argued in 1891 that anarchists should use the term “government,” instead of “the state.” To avoid confusion, I shall consistently refer to the state. See Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 111–12.</div>
+''The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Vietnam'', published by the National Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, defines opportunism, in this context, as “a system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#632|63]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 9, 26. In 1871, two years before the publication of ''Statism and Anarchy'', Bakunin had dated the “foundation of modern States” to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Kropotkin dated the rise of the modern state to the sixteenth century. See Bakunin, ''Basic Bakunin'', 137; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 183, 234, 252.</div>
+Lenin critiques opportunist socialism — referring to it as a “critical” trend in socialism — in ''What is to be Done?:''
-[[#642|64]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 13.
+<blockquote>
+He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new “critical” trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people... by their actions and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means “freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#652|65]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 184.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#662|66]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 183–84.</div>
+The first revolution of the Russian working class, from 1905 to 1907, failed. Lenin summarized the reality of this revolution in the book ''Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution'' (1905). In this book, Lenin explains that the capitalist class in Russia was actively engaged in its own revolution against Czarist feudalism. In this context of this ongoing bourgeois revolution, Lenin deeply developed Marxist concepts related to revolutionary methodologies, objective and subjective factors that will affect the working class revolution, the role of the people, the role of political parties etc.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#672|67]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'','' ''299, 317–19.</div>
+==== Annotation 35 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#682|68]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''118.</div>
+From 1905 to 1907, Russia was beset by political unrest and radical activity including workers’ strikes, military mutinies, and peasant uprisings. Russia had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese war which cost tens of thousands of Russian lives without any benefits to the Russian people. In addition, the economic and political systems of Czarist Russia placed a severe burden on industrial workers and peasant farmers.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#692|69]]. Élisée Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' Geography'','' Modernity: Selected Writings of Élisée Reclus'', ed. John Clark and Camille Martin (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013), 147. See also Bakunin, ''Basic Bakunin'','' ''140; Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'','' ''11–15.</div>
+In response, the Russian proletariat rose up in various uprisings, demonstrations, and clashes against government forces, landlords, and factory owners. In the end, this revolutionary activity failed to overthrow the Czar’s government, and the Czar remained firmly in power until the communist revolution of 1917.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#702|70]]. Malatesta, ''Café'', 45.</div>
+Lenin wrote ''Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution'' in 1905 in
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#712|71]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 306. See also, 313–17, 234 and, for anarchist critiques of the police and prisons, 499–508; Berkman, ''Anarchism'','' ''42–59; Goldman, ''Red Emma'','' ''332–46; Voltairine de Cleyre, ''The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader'' ed. A. J. Brigati (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004),'' ''151–72.</div>
+Geneva, Switzerland. In it, he argues forcefully against the political faction within the Russian socialist movement that came to be known as the “Mensheviks.” The Mensheviks, as well as the Bolsheviks (Lenin’s contemporary faction) emerged from a dispute within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which took place in 1903.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#721|72]]. Michael Bakunin, ''The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism'', ed. G.P.'' ''Maximoff'' ''(New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964),'' ''210–11; ''Bakunin'' ''on Anarchism'', 317–20; Makhno, ''Struggle'','' ''56.</div>
+In the same text, Lenin argued that the Mensheviks misunderstood the forces that were driving revolutionary activity in Russia. While the Mensheviks believed that the situation in Russia would develop along similar lines to previous revolutionary activity in Western Europe, Lenin argued that Russia’s situation was unique and that Russian Marxists should therefore adopt different strategies and activities which reflected Russia’s unique circumstances and material conditions.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#731|73]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 234.</div>
+Specifically, the Mensheviks believed that the working class should ally with the bourgeoisie to overthrow the Czar’s feudalist regime, and then allow the bourgeoisie to build a fully functioning capitalist economy before workers should attempt their own revolution.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#741|74]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 226–27. Kropotkin claims that the state is necessarily centralized and hierarchical multiple times in this text and others. See ibid., 199, 275, 310; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''566.</div>
+Lenin, on the other hand, presented a completely different analysis of class forces in Russia. He believed the bourgeoisie would seek a compromise with the Czar, as both feudal and bourgeois classes in Russia feared a proletarian revolution.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#751|75]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''113. See also, 136.</div>
+It’s important to note that Russia’s industrial workforce was very small at this time, and most Russians were peasant farmers. The Mensheviks believed Russian peasants would not be useful in a proletarian revolution, which is why they argued for allowing capitalism to be fully established in Russia before pushing for a working class revolution. They believed it was prudent to wait until the working class became larger and more dominant in Russia before attempting to overthrow capitalism. They believed that the peasant class would not be useful in any such revolution.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#761|76]]. Malatesta,'' Patient Work'', 212–13. See also Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 29, 44.</div>
+In contrast, Lenin believed that the peasants and industrial workers would have to work together to have any hope of a successful revolution. He further argued that an uprising of armed peasants and workers, fighting side by side, would be necessary for overthrowing the Czar.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#771|77]]. Quoted in Zurbrugg, “Introduction,” in Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', ed. A. W. Zurbrugg (London: Merlin Books, 2016),'' ''15.</div>
+From 1907 to 1917, there was a viewpoint crisis among many physicists. This strongly affected the birth of many idealist ideologies following Mach’s Positivism that attempted to negate Marxism [See: Annotation 32, p. 27]. Lenin summarized the achievements of natural science as well as historical events of the late 19<sup>th</sup> century and early 20<sup>th</sup> century in his book ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'' (1909). By giving the classical definitions of matter, proving the relationships between matter and consciousness and between social existence and social consciousness, and pointing out the basic rules of consciousness, etc., Lenin defended Marxism and carried it forward to a new level. Lenin clearly expressed his thoughts on the history, nature, and structure of Marxism in the book ''The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism'' (1913). He also talked about dialectics in ''Philosophical Notebooks'' (1914–1916) and expressed his thoughts about the proletarian dictatorship, the role of the Communist Party, and the path to socialism in his book ''The State and Revolution'' (1919).
-[[#781|78]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'','' ''24.
+The success of the October revolution in Russia in 1917 brought about a new era: the transitional period from capitalism to socialism on an international scale. This event presented new theoretical requirements that had not existed in the time of Marx and Engels’ time.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#791|79]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Words of a'' ''Rebel ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992), 25, 27; Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''115, 118.</div>
+In a series of works including: “''Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder'' (1920),
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#801|80]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 63.</div>
+''Once Again on the Trade Unions'', ''The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin'' (1921), ''The Tax in Kind'' (1921), etc., Lenin summarized the revolutionary practice of the people, continued defending Marxist dialectics, and uncompromisingly fought against eclecticism and sophistry.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#811|81]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 42, 50, 61; Errico Malatesta, ''The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles, 1924–1931'', ed. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1995), 73–79.</div>
+==== Annotation 36 ====
-[[#821|82]]. Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'', 78.
+In ''Anti-Dühring'', Engels identifies the historical missions of the working class as:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#831|83]]. Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'', 77. See also Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 13, 23.</div>
+. Becoming the ruling class by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#841|84]]. Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'', 50. This idea was later repeated almost word for word by Goldman. See Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 64.</div>
+. Seizing the means of production from the ruling class to end class society.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#851|85]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 197–98.</div>
+''Eclecticism'' is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the ''comprehensive'' and ''historical'' viewpoints [see p. 116]. Eclecticism bears superficial resemblance to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#861|86]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'','' ''189–90, 203, 207; Lucy Parsons, ''Writings and Speeches'','' ''70; Rudolf Rocker, ''Nationalism and Culture ''(Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1937),'' ''298–339; Kenyon Zimmer, ''Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 71–72, 182, 188; Federico Ferretti, ''Anarchy and Geography: Reclus and Kropotkin in the UK ''(London: Routledge, 2019), 120–143.</div>
+''Sophistry'' is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.
-[[#871|87]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''174; ''Bakunin on Anarchism'','' ''396–7; Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 175–189; Emma Goldman, ''Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation'','' 1896–1926'','' ''ed. Shawn P. Wilbur (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016); Lucy Parsons, ''Writings and Speeches'','' ''79, 92–93.
+Simultaneously, Lenin also developed his Marxist viewpoint of the factors deciding the victory of a social regime, about class, about the two basic missions of the proletariat, about the strategies and tactics of proletarian parties in new historical conditions, about the transitional period, and about the plans of building socialism following the New Economic Policy (NEP), etc.
-[[#881|88]]. Terence Kissack, ''Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States'','' 1895–1917'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2008); Ferretti, ''Anarchy and Geography'','' ''169–180.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#891|89]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 111–135; Goldman, ''Red Emma'','' ''150–57.</div>
+==== Annotation 37 ====
-[[#901|90]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 131–49; Paul Avrich, ''The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006), 6–18.
+The early 1920s were a period of great internal conflict in revolutionary Russia, with various figures and factions wanting to take the revolution in different directions. As such, Lenin wrote extensively on the direction he believed the revolution should be carried forth to ensure lasting victory against both feudalism and capitalism. He believed that the October, 1917 revolution represented the complete defeat of the Czar, however he believed the proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie would take more time. Russia was a poor, agrarian society. The vast majority of Russians under the Czar were poor peasants. Industry — and thus, the proletariat — was highly undeveloped compared to Western Europe. According to Lenin, a full and lasting proletarian victory over the bourgeoisie could only be won after the means of production were properly developed. In ''Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution'', Lenin wrote:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#911|91]]. Reclus, ''Anarchy'', 136–7, 156–62, 233; Ferretti, ''Anarchy and Geography'','' ''160–1; Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'', 136. For a discussion of vegetarianism in the Spanish anarchist movement see Jerome R. Mintz, ''The Anarchists of Casas Viejas ''(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 87–8, 161–2.</div>
+<blockquote>
+This first victory [the October, 1917 revolution] is not yet the final victory, and it was achieved by our October Revolution at the price of incredible difficulties and hardships... We have made the start... The important thing is that the ice has been broken; the road is open, the way has been shown.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#921|92]]. Zoe Baker, “Bakunin was a Racist,” Anarchopac.com, October 31, 2021, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-baker-bakunin-was-a-racist.</div>
+So, Lenin knew that the victory over the Czar and feudalism was only a partial victory, and that more work needed to be done to defeat the bourgeoisie entirely. He believed the key to this victory over the capitalist class would be economic development, since Russia was still a largely agrarian society with very little industrial or economic development compared to Western Europe:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#931|93]]. Martha Ackelsberg, ''Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 115–8; A.W. Zurbrugg, ''Anarchist Perspectives in Peace and War, 1900–1918'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2018), 34–5. See also endnote 10 in the introduction.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Our last, but most important and most difficult task, the one we have done least about, is economic development, the laying of economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice on the site of the demolished feudal edifice and the semi-demolished capitalist edifice.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#941|94]]. Emma Goldman, ''Living My Life'','' ''vol. 2 (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 555.</div>
+Lenin’s plan for rapidly developing the means of production was his New Economic Policy, or the NEP. The New Economic Policy was proposed to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-class-dominated state. As Lenin explains in ''Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#951|95]]. Malatesta,'' Patient Work'', 150, 151.</div>
+<blockquote>
+At this very moment we are, by our New Economic Policy, correcting a number of our mistakes. We are learning how to continue erecting the socialist edifice in a small-peasant country.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#961|96]]. Malatesta,'' Method of Freedom'', 299. For other definitions of anarchy, see Reclus, ''Anarchy'', 120–21; Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 144; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 133–34; Carlo Cafiero, ''Revolution'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2012), 40; Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 26, 58; Lucy Parsons, ''Writings and Speeches'', 38.</div>
+He continues later in the text:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#971|97]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 99. See also Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 15–16.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The proletarian state must become a cautious, assiduous and shrewd “businessman,” a punctilious wholesale merchant — otherwise it will never succeed in putting this small-peasant country economically on its feet. Under existing conditions, living as we are side by side with the capitalist (for the time being capitalist) West, there is no other way of progressing to communism. A wholesale merchant seems to be an economic type as remote from communism as heaven from earth. But that is one of the contradictions which, in actual life, lead from a small-peasant economy via state capitalism to socialism. Personal incentive will step up production; we must increase production first and foremost and at all costs. Wholesale trade economically unites millions of small peasants: it gives them a personal incentive, links them up and leads them to the next step, namely, to various forms of association and alliance in the process of production itself. We have already started the necessary changes in our economic policy and already have some successes to our credit; true, they are small and partial, but nonetheless they are successes. In this new field of “tuition” we are already finishing our preparatory class. By persistent and assiduous study, by making practical experience the test of every step we take, by not fearing to alter over and over again what we have already begun, by correcting our mistakes and most carefully analyzing their significance, we shall pass to the higher classes. We shall go through the whole “course,” although the present state of world economics and world politics has made that course much longer and much more difficult than we would have liked. No matter at what cost, no matter how severe the hardships of the transition period may be — despite disaster, famine and ruin — we shall not flinch; we shall triumphantly carry our cause to its goal.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#981|98]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 140</div>
+With these great works dedicated to the three component parts of Marxism [see Annotation 42, p. 38], the name Vladimir Ilyich Lenin became an important part of Marxism. It marked a comprehensive developing step from Marxism to Marxism-Leninism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#991|99]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 141.</div>
+==== d. Marxism-Leninism and the Reality of the International Revolutionary Movement ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1001|100]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 142.</div>
+The birth of Marxism greatly affected both the international worker movements and communist movements. The revolution in March 1871 in France could be considered as a great experiment of Marxism in the real world. For the first time in human history, a new kind of state — the dictatorship of the proletariat state (Paris Commune) was established.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1011|101]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 128.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1021|102]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 302. See also Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''304. The same point is made by Mella,'' Anarchist Socialism'', 1–9, 27.</div>
+==== Annotation 38 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1031|103]]. Gregori P. Maximoff, ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism ''(n.p., Guillotine Press, 2015). For other examples, see James Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization,” in ''No Gods'','' No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'','' ''ed. Daniel Guérin (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005),'' ''247–67; Kropotkin, ''Conquest of Bread''<nowiki>; Diego Abad de Santillán, </nowiki>''After the Revolution: Economic Reconstruction in Spain'', trans. Louis Frank (New York: Greenberg, 1937).</div>
+The Paris Commune was an important but short-lived revolutionary victory of the working class which saw a revolutionary socialist government controlling Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1041|104]]. Cafiero, ''Revolution'', 41.</div>
+During the brief existence of the Paris Commune, many important policies were set forth, including a separation of church and state, abolishment of rent, an end to child labor, and the right of employees to take over any business which had been abandoned by its owner. Unfortunately, the Paris Commune was brutally toppled by the French army, which killed between 6,000 and 7,000 revolutionaries in battle and by execution. The events of the Paris Commune heavily influenced many revolutionary thinkers and leaders, including Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and was referenced frequently in their works.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1051|105]]. Cafiero, ''Revolution'', 49</div>
+In August 1903, the very first Marxist proletariat party was established — the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. It was a true Marxist party that led the revolution in Russia in 1905. In October 1917, the victory of the socialist revolution of the proletariat in Russia opened a new era for human history.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1061|106]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 299.</div>
+In 1919, the Communist International* was held; in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic was established. It marked the alliance of the proletariat of many countries. With the power of this alliance, the fight against Fascism not only protected the achievements of the proletariat’s revolution, but also spread socialism beyond the borders of Russia. Following the lead of the Soviet Union, a community of socialist countries was built, with revolutions leading to the establishment of socialism in the following countries [and years of establishment]: Mongolia [1921], Vietnam [1945], the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [1945], Yugoslavia [1945], Albania [1946], Romania [1947], Czechoslovakia [1948], East Germany [1949], China [1949], Hungary [1949], Poland [1956], and Cuba [1959].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1071|107]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 300.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1081|108]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 302.</div>
+==== Annotation 39 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1091|109]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 301, 302.</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> The First International, also known as the International Workingmen’s Association, was founded in London and lasted from 1864–1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1101|110]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 300.</div>
+The Second International was founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International. It fell apart in 1916 because the members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1111|111]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 231.</div>
+The Third International, also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short), was founded in Moscow in 1919 (though many nations didn’t join until later in the 1920s). Its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II.
-[[#1121|112]]. Maximoff, ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 47.
+These great historical events strongly enhanced the revolutionary movement of the working class all around the whole world. The people awakened and encouraged the liberation resistance of many colonised countries. The guiding role of Marxism-Leninism brought many great results for a world of peace, independence, democracy, and social progress.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1131|113]]. Cafiero, ''Revolution'', 49–62; Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 156–68, 215–30.</div>
+However, because of many internal and external factors, in the late 1980s, the socialist alliance faced a crisis and fell into a recession period. Even though the socialist system fell into crisis and was weakened, the socialist ideology still survived internationally. The determination of successfully building socialism was still very strong in many countries and the desire to follow the socialist path still spread widely in South America.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1141|114]]. This system of decision-making is often referred to as direct democracy without the state by modern anarchists. This language was largely not used by historical anarchists because they used the word “democracy” to refer to systems of government that were incompatible with anarchism, such as bourgeois parliamentary representative democracy or Ancient Athens. For an overview of this topic, see Baker, “Anarchism and Democracy,” Anarchopac.com, April 15, 2022, https://anarchopac.com/2022/04/15/anarchism-and-democracy.</div>
+Nowadays, the main feature of our modern society is fast and varied change in many social aspects caused by technology and scientific revolution. But, no matter how quickly and diversely our society changes, the nature of the capitalist production method never changes. So, in order to protect the socialist achievements earned by the flesh and blood of many previous generations; and in order to have a tremendous development step in the career of liberating human beings, it is very urgent to protect, inherit and develop Marxism-Leninism and also innovate the work of building socialism in both theory and practice.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1151|115]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 133.</div>
+The Communist Party of Vietnam declared: “Nowadays, capitalism still has potential for development, but in nature, it’s still an unjust, exploitative, and oppressive regime. The basic and inherent contradictions of capitalism, especially the contradictions between the increasing socialization of the production force and the capitalist private ownership regime, will never be solved and will even become increasingly serious. The feature of the current period of our modern society is: countries with different social regimes and different development levels co-exist, co-operate, struggle and compete fiercely for the interests of their own nations. The struggles for peace, independence, democracy, development, and social progress of many countries will still have to cope with hardship and challenges but we will achieve new progress. ''According to the principles of historical development, human beings will almost certainly go forward to socialism.”''<ref>''Delegate Document of the 11<sup>th</sup> National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.''</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1161|116]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 148–49; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 614. For a few different proposals on how an anarchist society could respond to people who engaged in acts of violent oppression, see Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization,” 260–61; Malatesta, ''Café'', 130–35; Maximoff, ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism'','' ''46–48.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1171|117]]. Anarchist authors used a variety of different terms when referring to assemblies, such as associations of production and consumption, labor councils, popular assemblies, communal assemblies, and communes. To avoid confusion I have chosen to use the language of workplace, community, and general assemblies.</div>
+==== Annotation 40 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1181|118]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Between Peasants: A Dialogue on Anarchy ''(Johannesburg: Zabalaza Books, n.d.),'' ''30. See also Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''17–19, 390–91; ''Towards Anarchy'', 74; ''Method of Freedom'', 488.</div>
+Historical materialism is the application of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology to the analysis of human history, society, and development. The principles of historical materialism, as developed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, indicate that human society is moving towards socialism and will almost certainly — in time — develop into socialism, and then proceed towards a stateless, classless form of society (communism). These principles of historical materialism were initially formulated and discussed in several books by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, including:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1191|119]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''488; Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'','' ''67, 69–70.</div>
+''•'' ''The German Ideology'', by Marx and Engels
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1201|120]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 136.</div>
+''•'' ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', by Marx and Engels
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1211|121]]. Malatesta, ''Between Peasants'', 28–29.</div>
+''•'' ''Karl Marx'', by Lenin
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1221|122]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 170.</div>
+The Communist Party of Vietnam has also declared:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1231|123]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''128.</div>
+“In the opinion of the Vietnam Communist Party, using Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought as the foundation for our ideology, the guideline for our actions is an important developmental step in cognition and logical thinking<ref>''Delegate document of the 9<sup>th</sup> national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.''</ref>. Achievements that the Vietnamese people have gained in the war to gain our independence, in peace, and in the renovation era, are all rooted in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. Therefore, we have to ‘creatively apply and develop Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought in the Party’s activities. We have to regularly summarise reality, complement and develop theory, and soundly solve the problems of our society.’”<ref>''Delegate document of the 10<sup>th</sup> national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.''</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1241|124]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 105, 58, 73–75.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1251|125]]. The following account is based on Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 170–71, 179, 206; Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization,” 253, 264–66; Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 60–63; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 105, 188; Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''60–65.</div>
+==== Annotation 41 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#126|126]]. Anarchists throughout Latin America referred to national federations as the regional federations of a country in the world—for example, the Argentine Regional Workers’ Federation (FORA), rather than the Argentine National Workers’ Federation. See Ángel J. Cappelletti, ''Anarchism in Latin America ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 5–6, 63.</div>
+Ho Chi Minh Thought refers to a system of ideas developed by Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists which relate to the application of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and methodology to the specific material conditions of Vietnam during the revolutionary period.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#127|127]]. Compare Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''489–90 and Peter Arshinov, “The Old and New in Anarchism: Reply to Comrade Malatesta (May 1928),” in Alexandre Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 240–41.</div>
+There is no universal road map for applying the principles of Marxism-Leninism. How the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism should be applied will vary widely from one time and place to another. This is why Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese communists had to develop Ho Chi Minh Thought: so that scientific socialism could be developed within the unique context of Vietnam’s particular historical development and material conditions.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#128|128]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 133.</div>
+It is the duty of every revolutionary to study Marxism-Leninism as well as specific applied forms of Marxism-Leninism developed by revolutionaries for their own specific times and places, such as: Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), Mao Zedong (China), Fidel Castro and Che Guevera (Cuba), etc. However, it must be recognized that the ideas, strategies, methodologies, and philosophies developed in such particular circumstances can’t be applied in exactly the same way in other times and places, such as our own contemporary material conditions.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#129|129]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 133. See also Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 475.</div>
+''The Renovation Era'' refers to the period of time in Vietnam from the 1980s until the early 2000s during which the Đổi Mới (renovation) policies were implemented. These policies restructured the Vietnamese economy to end the previous subsidizing model (which was defined by state ownership of the entire economy). The goals of the Renovation Era were to open Vietnam economically and politically and to normalize relations with the rest of the world. The Đổi Mới policies were generally successful and paved the way to ''the'' ''Path to Socialism Era'' which Vietnam exists in today. The goals of the Path to Socialism Era are to develop Vietnam into a modern, developed country with a strong economy and wealthy people, which will allow us to transition towards the lower stage of communism, which Lenin called “socialism.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#130|130]]. Malatesta, ''Between Peasants'', 30.</div>
+And, finally: “We have to be consistent with Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought. We have to creatively apply and develop the ideology correspondingly with the reality in Vietnam. We have to firmly aim for national independence and socialism.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#131|131]]. Kropotkin,'' Direct Struggle'','' ''163.</div>
+== II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#132|132]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 134.</div>
+=== 1. Objects and Purposes of Study ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#133|133]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Memoirs of a Revolutionist ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 376.</div>
+The objects of study of this book, ''The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism,'' are the fundamental viewpoints of Marxism-Leninism in its three component parts.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#134|134]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 163. See also Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 46–51.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#135|135]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 90; Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 9, 46, 96; “Resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress of the International Workers’ Association,” in Appendix to René Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism in the International Workers’ Association, 1864–1877'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2015), 183.</div>
+==== Annotation 42 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#136|136]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 108. See also, 78.</div>
+Remember that a viewpoint is the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking and the perspective from which problems are considered. Also remember that Marxism-Leninism has three component parts:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#137|137]]. Guillaume quoted in Bakunin,'' Bakunin on Anarchism'', 158–59; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''170–71, 186–87; The Jura Federation, “Minutes of the Jura Federation Congress (1880)” in ''No Gods'','' No Masters'', 283.</div>
+'''1. The Philosophy of Marxism:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#138|138]]. Quoted in Caroline Cahm, ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism'','' 1872–1886'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),'' ''59.</div>
+Including Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#139|139]]. Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization,” 251, 255–57. A similar proposal about labor vouchers was made by Kropotkin in 1873 before he became an anarchist communist. In 1879, he proposed “Anarchist communism” as the long-term goal and “collectivism as a transitory form of property.” By 1880, he had abandoned this view and only advocated anarchist communism. See Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'','' ''29–30, 34–35; Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 48–58.</div>
+'''2. The Political Economy of Marxism:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#140|140]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''11–12, 46–48, 95–99; Cafiero, ''Revolution'', 49–62. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 215–19; Kropotkin, ''Conquest of Bread'', 74–78; 102–106. For the history of anarchist communism, see Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 36–67; Davide Turcato, “Anarchist Communism,” in ''The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism'', ed. Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 237–47.</div>
+A system of knowledge and laws that define the production process and commodity exchange in human society.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#141|141]]. George Richard Esenwein,'' Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain'','' 1868–1898 ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 98–116; Temma Kaplan, ''Anarchists of Andalusia'','' 1868–1903'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 139–142.</div>
+'''3. Scientific Socialism'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#142|142]]. Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism'', 9–17, 60–62; Esenwein,'' Anarchist Ideology'', 134–54. Similar views were advocated by Malatesta in 1889. See Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 95–99.</div>
+The system of thought pertaining to the establishment of the communist social economy form.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#143|143]]. Paul Avrich, ''An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre'' (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018), 46–47, 58, 107–120, 144–46; de Cleyre, ''Reader'', 9.</div>
+These objects of study stand as the viewpoints — the starting points of analysis — of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and the three component parts of which it’s composed.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#144|144]]. Avrich, ''An American Anarchist'','' ''147–49; Voltairine de Cleyre, ''Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre—Feminist'','' Anarchist'','' Genius'' (State University of New York, 2005), ed. Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell, 105; de Cleyre, ''Reader'', 31–32, 60, 107–8, 173–74; de Cleyre, “A Suggestion and Explanation” in ''Free Society'' 6, no. 29 (June 3, 1900): 1. In 1908, ''Mother Earth'' published a lecture by de Cleyre titled “Why I am an Anarchist.” During the lecture, she advocates a moneyless society based on distribution according to need. It is unclear when this was written. ''Mother Earth'' claimed that the lecture was delivered in Hammond, Indiana but I have been unable to find a date for this talk. De Cleyre had previously given a talk with the exact same title during her 1897 visit to England. She could have given the same talk multiple times or given different talks with the same title. As a result, it is unclear if she advocated a moneyless society based on distribution according to need before or after adopting anarchism without adjectives. See Avrich, ''An American Anarchist'','' ''120; de Cleyre, ''Exquisite Rebel'', 51–65.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#145|145]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'','' ''201–4.</div>
+In the scope of '''Marxist-Leninist Philosophy''' [the first component part of Marxism-Leninism], these objects of study are:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#146|146]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 131–32.</div>
+* Dialectical Materialism — the fundamental and most universal worldview and methodologies which form the theoretical core of a scientific worldview*. [See Part 1, p. 44]
+* Materialist Dialectics — the science of development, of common relationships, and of the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society and human thought. [See Chapter 2, p. 98]
+* Historical Materialism — the application and development of Materialism and Dialectics in studying social aspects. [Historical materialism is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#147|147]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 130–31.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#148|148]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 203.</div>
+==== Annotation 43 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#149|149]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 15–16; Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 109.</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Remember that ''Scientific'' in Marxism-Leninism refers to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Annotation 1, p. 1]. Note, also, that ''Worldview'' refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. This is discussed in more detail on page 44.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#150|150]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''48. This problem has since been articulated by a number of modern socialist theorists drawing upon Marxism. See Al Campbell and Mehmet Ufuk Tutan, “Human Development and Socialist Institutional Transformation: Continual Incremental Changes and Radical Breaks,” ''Studies in Political Economy'' 82, no. 1 (2008): 153–70; Sam Gindin, “Socialism ‘With Sober Senses’: Developing Workers’ Capacities,” ''The Socialist Register'' 34 (1998): 75–99.</div>
+Thus, a ''scientific worldview'' is a worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge of definitions and categories that generally and correctly reflect the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#151|151]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''48.</div>
+In the scope of '''Marxist-Leninist Political Economics''' [the second component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#152|152]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 49.</div>
+* The theory of value and the theory of surplus value.
+* Economic theory about monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.
+* General economic rules about capitalist production methods, from the stage of formation, to the stage of development, to the stage of perishing, which will be followed by the birth of a new production method: the communist production method.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#153|153]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''450.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#154|154]]. De Cleyre, ''Reader'', 37.</div>
+==== Annotation 44 ====
-[[#155|155]]. Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism'','' ''81–82.
+Marxist-Leninist political economics is the topic of Part 3 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#156|156]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 49. This same idea was expressed by Marx. See Karl Marx, ''Selected Writings'', ed. David McLellan, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 172; Marx and Engels, ''Collected Works'','' ''vol. 5'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), 214.</div>
+In the scope of '''Scientific Socialism''' [the third component part of Marxism-Leninism], the objects of study are:
-== {{anchor|Chapter4AnarchistStrategy}} {{anchor|Chapter4AnarchistStrategy1}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook7}} Chapter 4: Anarchist Strategy ==
+* The historical mission of the working class and the progression of a socialist revolution.
+* Matters related to the future formation and development periods of the communist socio-economic form.
+* Guidelines for the working class in implementing our historical mission.
-Anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries argued that one must not merely critique existing institutions or aspire for a better society. One must also form social movements that engage in class struggle against the ruling classes and thereby bring about fundamental social change. To quote Bakunin, “neither writers, nor philosophers, nor their books, nor socialist journals, would reconstitute a socialism that was alive and vigorous. It is only through enlightened revolutionary instincts, through collective will and through the real organization of the working masses themselves that the latter has a real existence, and when instinct, will and organization are lacking the best books in the world will be nothing more than empty theories and powerless dreams.”[[#1MichaelBakuninSelectedTex|1]] In order to engage in effective action and achieve their goals, working-class social movements had to be guided by an overarching strategy that was both appropriate to their situation and capable of actually bringing about an anarchist society. As Kropotkin succinctly put it, “theory and practice must become one if we are to succeed.”[[#2PeterKropotkinWordsofaR|2]]
+''The purposes'' of studying ''The Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism'' are:'''' to master Marxist-Leninist viewpoints of science, revolution, and humanism*; to thoroughly understand the most important theoretical foundation of Ho Chi Minh Thought, the revolutionary path, and the ideological foundation of the Vietnam Communist Party. Based on that basis, we can build a scientific worldview and methodology and a revolutionary worldview; build our trust in our revolutionary ideals; creatively apply them in our cognitive and practical activities and in practicing and cultivating morality to meet the requirements of Vietnamese people in the cause of building a socialist Vietnam.
-A crucial aspect of anarchist theory was, therefore determining what methods of action to engage in. According to Malatesta, “to be able to act, to be able to contribute to the realization of one’s cherished ideas, one has to choose one’s own path. In parties, as more generally in life, the questions of method are predominant. If the idea is the beacon, the method is the helm.”[[#3QuotedinDavideTurcatoMak|3]] It is for this reason that “we are anarchists in our goal… but we are anarchist in our method too.”[[#4QuotedinTurcatoMakingSen|4]] Elsewhere Malatesta defined anarchism as “the method of reaching anarchy, through freedom, without government.”[[#5ErricoMalatestaTheAnarchi|5]]
+-----
-Anarchists understood that creating appropriate methods of action was not a matter of inventing abstract strategies fit for all times and places, and following them as if there were an instruction manual for producing a revolution. Anarchism, to quote Kropotkin, contains “no ready-made recipes for political-cooking.”[[#6QuotedinRuthKinnaKropotk|6]] Building an anarchist society requires action within a specific context and, since this context varies according to time and place, it follows that, in Goldman’s words, “the methods of Anarchism . . . do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances” but “must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual.”[[#7EmmaGoldmanRedEmmaSpeaks|7]] As Malatesta wrote, “the problem facing us anarchists, who regard anarchy not so much as a beautiful dream to be chased by the light of the moon, but as an individual and social way of life to be brought about for the greatest good of all . . . is to so conduct our activities as to achieve the greatest useful effect in the various circumstances in which history places us. One must not ignore reality, but if reality is noxious, one must fight it, resorting to every means made available to us by reality itself.”[[#8ErricoMalatestaTheMethod|8]]
+==== Annotation 45 ====
-Despite anarchist methods of action varying depending upon the historically specific context, there were common views on strategy and social change that pervaded the anarchist movement. These were: (a) the advocacy of social revolution, the unity of means and ends, prefiguration, direct action; the spirit of revolt; and (b) the rejection of attempting to achieve social change via the conquest of state power. In this chapter, I shall explain the first group of topics and then, in chapter 5, I shall turn to the anarchist critique of conquering state power. Throughout both chapters, I shall demonstrate that anarchists advocated the strategies they did due to their beliefs about what forms of practice constituted them and how these practices would simultaneously transform people and social relations.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> The humanism of Marxism-Leninism differs greatly from the humanism of Feuerbach discussed in Annotation 12, p. 13. Marxist-Leninist humanism concerns itself with the liberation of all humans. As Marx and Engels wrote in ''The Communist Manifesto:'' “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
-'''Social Revolution'''
+=== 2. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method ===
-Anarchists held that the abolition of class society could “only be achieved by means of a revolutionary movement” instigating a social revolution.[[#9JamesGuillaumeIdeasonSo|9]] It is common for modern academics who study the history of revolutions to define a “revolution” as necessarily involving the transformation of the state from one form into another.[[#10ForexampleCharlesTillyE|10]] Anarchists wanted to abolish the state, rather than seize its power, and so did not define a social revolution in such a state-centric manner. They attempted to create a social revolution that fundamentally transformed “the foundations of society, its political, economic and social character” and so was distinct from a statist revolution in which there is “a mere change of rulers, of government.”[[#11AlexanderBerkmanWhatisA|11]]
+There are some basic requirements for studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism:
-This fundamental transformation of society required, according to Kropotkin, “completely reconstructing all relationships” between people, from the relationships within a household, factory, or village to those between urban and rural areas.[[#12PeterKropotkinModernScie|12]] The same idea was expressed by Wilson, who advocated “a revolution in every department of human existence, social, political and economic.”[[#13CharlotteWilsonAnarchist|13]] Anarchists did not limit the scope of revolutionary transformation to the public sphere of the community or workplace. For the revolution to be meaningful, it had to also transform the so-called private sphere of sexual relationships, parent-child relationships, housework, and so on. Goldman, to take one example, argued that the compulsory social relations of marriage should be replaced by free love in which “love can go and come without fear of meeting a watch-dog,” and neither partner acts or views themselves as the owner, controller, and dictator of the other.[[#14GoldmanRedEmma22021|14]] The extent to which some anarchists viewed emancipation within the private sphere as essential can be seen in Kropotkin’s insistence that “a revolution, intoxicated with the beautiful words Liberty, Equality, Solidarity would not be a revolution if it maintained slavery at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery of the hearth would still have to rebel against the other half.”[[#15PeterKropotkinTheConques|15]]
+First, Marxist-Leninist theses were conceptualized under many different circumstances in order to solve different problems, so the expressions of thought of Marxist-Leninists can vary. Therefore, students studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism must correctly understand its spirit and essence and avoid theoretical purism and dogmatism.
-Although anarchists sometimes claimed that the social revolution should be “spontaneous,” the majority of anarchists did not expect it to appear suddenly without any planning and preparation. Nor did anarchists think that the social revolution would occur independently of anarchists influencing other workers through words and deeds. They instead meant that the social revolution should not be imposed on society by a revolutionary elite acting in the name of the people. For a revolution to be “spontaneous” in this sense of the term was for it to be voluntarily launched and self-determined by workers themselves. A worker acted spontaneously when they acted of their own volition, even if their actions were inspired by the actions of those around them.[[#16MichaelBakuninStatismand|16]] Anarchists were, in other words, committed to the famous words of the 1864 preamble to the statutes of the First International: “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.”[[#17KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|17]] This line from the preamble was consistently repeated by anarchist authors or rephrased in slightly different language, such as Malatesta’s remark that “we anarchists do not want to ''emancipate'' the people; we want the people to ''emancipate themselves''.”[[#18ErricoMalatestaLifeandI|18]]
+-----
-The necessity of a social revolution emerged from the fact that a ruling class had never in history given up their power voluntarily. In every instance, it had required violence or at least the threat of it.[[#19BerkmanAnarchism174|19]] Although anarchism aimed at, to quote Malatesta, “the removal of violence from human relations,” the vast majority of anarchist authors advocated revolutionary violence as a means to overcome the violence that defended and maintained class society.[[#20MalatestaLifeandIdeas4|20]] This revolutionary violence took two main forms: the forceful expropriation of the economic ruling classes and the violent destruction of the state. In 1884, Malatesta advocated “an armed, violent revolution” that would “smash the army and police” and achieve the “forcible expropriation of property owners” and “the abolition of all political authority.”[[#21MalatestaMethodofFreedom|21]] This position emerged from an awareness that, as Malatesta explained in 1892, “the means we employ are those that circumstances make possible or necessary . . . we have to make our fight in the world as it is, or else be condemned to be nothing but fruitless dreamers.”[[#22MalatestaMethodofFreedom|22]] Class society is violently enforced by “powerful military and police organizations which meet any serious attempt at a change with prison, hanging, and massacre. . . . Against the physical force that blocks our way there is no appeal except to physical force.”[[#23MalatestaMethodofFreedom|23]]
+==== Annotation 46 ====
-The same position was consistently advocated by Kropotkin over several decades. In 1877, he endorsed “the expropriation and suppression of the bourgeoisie.”[[#24QuotedinGeorgeWoodcockan|24]] A few years later in 1881, he wrote that workers must “seize all of the wealth of society, if necessary doing so over the corpse of the bourgeoisie, with the intention of returning all of society’s wealth to those who produced it, the workers.”[[#25KropotkinDirectStruggle|25]] In 1906, he claimed that in order to achieve “the complete destruction of Capitalism and the State, and their replacement by Anarchist Communism” it was necessary to engage in “armed struggle against the dominating order” and expropriate the ruling classes.[[#26KropotkinDirectStruggle|26]] In 1913, he argued that “economic emancipation” required “smashing the old political forms represented by the State.”[[#27KropotkinModernSciencean|27]] A year later, he wrote that “two things are necessary to be successful in a revolution . . . an idea in the head, and a bullet in the rifle! The force of action—guided by the force of Anarchist thought.”[[#28KropotkinDirectStruggle|28]] The extent to which Kropotkin was a proponent of violence against the forces of state repression can be seen in the fact that, in 1877, he attended a demonstration in Switzerland armed with a gun. He was ready, in his own words, to “blow out the brains” of the police if they attacked.[[#29QuotedinCarolineCahmKro|29]] In the wake of the 1905 Russian revolution, when he was in his sixties, Kropotkin practiced shooting with a rifle in case he returned to Russia and needed to participate in street fighting.[[#30WoodcockandAvakumovicFro|30]]
+Marxism-Leninism should be understood as an applied science, and application of this science will vary based on material conditions. As Engels wrote in a personal letter in 1887, remarking on the socialist movement in the USA: “Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learned by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is drilled into the Americans from outside and the more they test it with their own experience... the deeper will it pass into their flesh and blood.”
-Malatesta and Kropotkin were not unique in this respect. Countless other anarchists can be quoted making the exact same points.[[#31ForexampleBakuninStatism|31]] Adolph Fischer claimed in 1887 that “only by the force of arms can the wage slaves make their way out of capitalistic bondage,” “expropriate the privileged,” and achieve “the abolition of political authority, the state.”[[#32QuotedinAlbertParsonsAn|32]] Rocker insisted in 1920 that “we already know that a revolution cannot be made with rose-water. And we know, too, that the owning classes will never yield up their privileges spontaneously. On the day of victorious revolution the workers will have to impose their will on the present owners of the soil, of the subsoil and of the means of production.”[[#33RockerTheSovietSystemo|33]] In order to do so, workers would also have to demolish the state, since it is “the fortress” that violently maintains the power of the ruling classes.[[#34RockerTheSovietSystemo|34]]
+As an example, Lenin tailored his actions and ideas specifically to suit the material conditions of Russia under the Czar and in the early revolutionary period. Russia’s material conditions were somewhat unique during the time of Lenin’s revolutionary activity, since Russia was an agrarian monarchy with a large peasant population and a relatively undeveloped industrial sector. As such, Lenin had to develop strategies, tactics, and ideas which suited those specific material conditions, such as determining that the industrial working class and agricultural peasants should work together. As Lenin explained in ''The Proletariat and the Peasantry'':
-The forms of violence that anarchists advocated and engaged in covered a wide spectrum of behavior and varied among different contexts. It included, but was not limited to, riots; fighting the police with fists, sticks, and stones; assassinating class enemies; and engaging in armed conflict with the military. This is not to say that anarchists who advocated revolutionary violence agreed with one another on which forms of violence were ethically acceptable or strategically advisable. Johann Most wrote several articles during the 1880s in which he actively encouraged anarchists to engage in violent acts of vengeance against the ruling classes.[[#35AndrewRCarlsonAnarchism|35]] Malatesta, in comparison, argued in the 1890s that although anarchists should use violence to overthrow systems of oppression, they should not engage in violence to achieve revenge.[[#36MalatestaMethodofFreedom|36]]
+<blockquote>
+Thus the red banner of the class-conscious workers means, first, that we support with all our might, the peasants’ struggle for full freedom and all the land; secondly, it means that we do not stop at this, but go on further. We are waging, besides the struggle for freedom and land, a fight for socialism.
+</blockquote>
-A significant number of anarchists saw potential dangers in revolutionary violence. In 1896, Malatesta argued that “let us have no unnecessary victims, not even in the enemy camp . . . a liberating revolution cannot be born of massacre and terror, these having been—and ever so it shall remain—the midwives to tyranny.”[[#37MalatestaMethodofFreedom|37]] Kropotkin similarly wrote in 1892 that “slaughtering the bourgeois so as to ensure that the revolution succeeds is a nonsensical dream” since “organized and legalized Terror . . . serves only to forge chains for the people” and “lays the groundwork for the dictatorship of whoever will grab control of the revolutionary tribunal.”[[#38KropotkinDirectStruggle|38]] Even Most told an audience in Baltimore that “we are revolutionists not from love of gore” but “because there is no other way to free and redeem mankind.”[[#39QuotedinPaulAvrichTheH|39]]
+Obviously, this statement would not be specifically applicable to a society with highly developed industry and virtually no rural peasants (such as, for instance, the modern-day USA), just as Lenin’s remarks about the Czar would not be specifically applicable to any society that does not have an institution of monarchy.
-In the popular imagination, revolutions are typically equated with violent acts of destruction, such as fighting the police and army or storming parliament. Anarchists advocated these acts, but they did not reduce the social revolution to them. For them, the social revolution was above all an act of creation. The old world had to be destroyed only because this was a prerequisite to the construction of a new social order. In 1873, Bakunin claimed that although “the real passion for destruction . . . is far from sufficient for achieving the ultimate aims of the revolutionary cause . . . there can be no revolution without widespread and passionate destruction, a destruction salutary and fruitful precisely because out of it, and by means of it alone, new worlds are born and arise.”[[#40BakuninStatismandAnarchy|40]] For anarchists like Berkman, a revolution “''begins'' with a violent upheaval,” but this is only “the rolling up of your sleeves” before “''the actual work''” of revolution occurs, namely “the reorganization of the entire life of society.”[[#41BerkmanAnarchism18384|41]]
+As another example, take the works of Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh Thought is defined by the Communist Party of Vietnam as “a complete system of thought about the fundamental issues of the Vietnam revolution.” In other words, Ho Chi Minh Thought is a specific application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism to the material conditions of Vietnam.
-As Kropotkin noted, the “first skirmish” of a social revolution, when the people rise up in insurrection, “is soon ended, and it is only after the overthrow of the old constitution that the real work of revolution can be said to begin.”[[#42KropotkinConquestofBread|42]] This did not mean that violence was not an important aspect of launching and defending the social revolution. Kropotkin predicted that a revolution would most likely result in a civil war, due to the ruling classes launching a counterattack against the working classes.[[#43PeterKropotkinMemoirsof|43]] Anarchists were instead drawing attention to the fact that the core of the social revolution was people internalizing anarchist ideas and reconstructing and reorganizing society according to them. The social revolution, in other words, rested on the simultaneous transformation of social structures and of the people who constituted, produced, and reproduced them. It required a change not only in how society was organized, but also a corresponding change to what drives and capacities people exercised and developed. Above all, for anarchists like Goldman, it required people to develop revolutionary consciousness, such as a “sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood.”[[#44GoldmanRedEmma400|44]] This aspect of the social revolution would continue long after the ruling classes had been successfully overthrown.
+One unique aspect of Vietnam’s revolution which Ho Chi Minh focused on was colonization. As a colonized country, Ho Chi Minh realized that Vietnam had unique challenges and circumstances that would need to be properly addressed through revolutionary struggle. Another unique aspect of Vietnam’s material conditions was the fact that the colonial administration of Vietnam changed hands throughout the revolution: from France, to Japan, back to France, then to the USA. Ho Chi Minh was able to dynamically and creatively apply Marxism-Leninism to these shifting material conditions. For instance, in ''Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party,'' written in 1930, Ho Chi Minh explains some of the unique problems faced by the colonized people of Indochina (modern day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) and proposes solutions specific to these unique material conditions:
-Therefore, anarchists did not expect the social revolution to occur quickly. Kropotkin predicted in 1885 that “it is not by a revolution lasting a couple of days that we shall come to transform society in the direction posed by anarchist communism. . . . It is a whole insurrectionary period of three, four, perhaps five years that we must traverse.”[[#45KropotkinRebel72Seeal|45]] During and after this insurrectionary period, society as a whole would be restructured not from the top down by means of government decree but from the bottom up by millions of workers, in both urban and rural areas, reorganizing their workplaces, communities, and households according to anarchist ideas. Fabbri went further and noted in 1922 that “however extensive and radical a revolution may be, before it manages to be victorious completely and worldwide not one but many generations must elapse.”[[#46LuigiFabbriAnarchyand|46]] In other words, anarchists viewed “the social revolution” as a “process” that stretched over an extended period of time.[[#47NabatProceedingsofNabat|47]]
+<blockquote>
+On the one hand, they (the French) use the feudalists and comprador bourgeoisie (of Vietnam) to oppress and exploit our people. On the other, they terrorize, arrest, jail, deport, and kill a great number of Vietnamese revolutionaries. If the French imperialists think that they can suppress the Vietnamese revolution by means of terror, they are grossly mistaken. For one thing, the Vietnamese revolution is not isolated but enjoys the assistance of the world proletariat in general and that of the French working class in particular. Secondly, it is precisely at the very time when the French imperialists are frenziedly carrying out terrorist acts that the Vietnamese Communists, formerly working separately, have united into a single party, the Indochinese Communist Party, to lead the revolutionary struggle of our entire people.
+</blockquote>
-Anarchists divided the process of social revolution into moments of destruction and construction.[[#48Thefollowingaccountofsoc|48]] The working classes would destroy the old world by overthrowing and abolishing the state and expropriating land, raw materials, the means of production, and the necessities of life, such as warehouses of food and clothing or apartment blocks, from the ruling classes.[[#49Anarchiststypicallyclaimed|49]] The working classes would build the new society on the ruins of the old by establishing the communal ownership of these things, building organs of self-management—workplace and community assemblies—and, through these, organizing the ongoing reproduction and restructuring of society. As noted in the previous chapter, most anarchists thought that in order to coordinate production, distribution, and revolutionary activity on a large scale, these assemblies should establish formal local federations that would, in turn, federate together to form regional, national, and ultimately, if the social revolution goes as hoped, international federations. A minority of anarchists opposed the establishment of formal federations and argued that large-scale coordination should only be achieved through free agreements between groups that were nodes of informal social networks.
+During this period, the nations of Indochina were predominantly agricultural, prompting Ho Chi Minh to suggest in the same text that it would be necessary “to establish a worker-peasant-soldier government” and “to confiscate all the plantations and property belonging to the imperialists and the Vietnamese reactionary bourgeoisie and distribute them to the poor peasants.” Obviously all of these considerations are specific to the material conditions of Indochina under French colonial rule in 1930.
-The defense of the social revolution would be achieved through the formation of worker militias, rather than through the seizure of state power. These worker militias would act as organs of class power. As early as 1868, Bakunin, who had previously joined the barricades during the 1848 revolution in Paris and Prague and an 1849 insurrection in Dresden, argued that revolutionaries must “organize a revolutionary force capable of defeating reaction,” which would include the “federation of the Barricades.”[[#50BakuninSelectedWritings|50]] This view was repeated in 1870, when he wrote that, during an anarchist revolution, workers would be “armed and organized” in order to coordinate “common defense against the enemies of the Revolution.”[[#51BakuninSelectedWritings|51]] Decades later in 1922, Malatesta advocated “the creation of voluntary militia, without powers to interfere as militia in the life of the community, but only to deal with any armed attacks by the forces of reaction to reestablish themselves, or to resist outside intervention by countries as yet not in a state of revolution.”[[#52MalatestaLifeandIdeas1|52]] Berkman similarly argued in 1929 that “the armed workers and peasants are the only effective defense of the revolution.”[[#53BerkmanAnarchism232See|53]]
+By 1939, the situation was changing rapidly. Ho Chi Minh was operating from China, which was being invaded by fascist Japan. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the Japanese imperial army would come to threaten Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. As such, Ho Chi Minh wrote a letter to the Indochinese Communist Party outlining recommendations, strategies, and goals pertaining to the precipitating material conditions. At that time, France had not yet been invaded by Germany, but Ho Chi Minh was very aware of the looming threat of fascism both in Europe and in Asia. He realized that rising up in revolutionary civil war against the French colonial administration would give fascist Japan the opportunity to quickly conquer all of Indochina, which is why he made the following recommendations in a letter to the Communist Party of Indochina in 1939:
-Advocating workers’ militias was not limited to the writings of famous anarchist authors. It can also be seen in the resolutions of anarchist organizations. The resolutions passed at the Spanish National Confederation of Labor’s (CNT) May 1936 Zaragoza Congress acknowledged “the necessity to defend the advances made through the revolution” from both “foreign capitalist invasion” and “counterrevolution at home.”[[#54QuotedinJosePeiratsThe|54]] This would be achieved through arming the populace with an array of weapons including not only pistols and rifles but also “planes, tanks, armored vehicles, machine-guns and anti-aircraft cannon,” creating a workers’ militia of “all individuals of both sexes who are fit to fight,” which would coordinate its action via their local “commune” and the “Confederation of Autonomous Libertarian Communes.”[[#55QuotedinJosePeiratsThe|55]] Anarchists put this theory into practice and formed workers’ militias to defend the revolution during the Russian revolution and civil war of 1917–23, and the early phases of the Spanish revolution and civil war of 1936–39.[[#56Thecomplexhistoryofanarc|56]]
+<blockquote>
+Our party should not strive for demands which are too high, such as total independence, or establishing a house of representatives. If we do that, we will fall into the trap of fascist Japan. For now, we should only ask for democracy, freedom to organize, freedom to hold meetings, freedom of speech, and for the release of political prisoners. We should also fight for our party to be organized and to operate legally.
+</blockquote>
-The manner in which anarchists described the social revolution can give the false impression that they thought it would occur all at once and imagined that, to pick a country at random, all or most of France would simultaneously rise up, overthrow the ruling classes and build an anarchist society. This interpretation ignores that Kropotkin routinely pointed out that the social revolution would most likely: (a) occur alongside a parallel statist revolution launched by republicans or state socialists; (b) develop out of a statist revolution or a series of smaller insurrections; and (c) begin with local uprisings in particular regions, such as Paris, or by particular groups of people, such as miners, and spread to the rest of the country (and hopefully the world) as people in other regions and industries heard of these uprisings and were inspired to join the emerging revolutionary process.[[#57KropotkinDirectStruggle|57]]
+Once France fell to Germany in 1940, Indochina was immediately handed over to Japanese colonial rule. The Japanese army was brutal in its occupation of Vietnam, and the French colonial administrators surrendered entirely to the Japanese empire and helped the Japanese to administer all of Indochina. Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in January of 1941 and participated directly with the resistance struggle against Japan until 1945, when the situation once again changed dramatically due to the Japanese military’s surrender to allied forces and withdrawal from Vietnam. He immediately took advantage of this situation and held a successful revolution against both the Japanese and French administrators. In the Declaration of Independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh wrote:
-As has already been mentioned, anarchists held that these uprisings, and the social revolution at large, should involve the forcible expropriation of the ruling classes. They thought that any social revolution that did not engage in expropriation would be doomed to failure. If a social revolution were to succeed, the population as a whole must be fed, clothed, and housed. If this did not happen, workers would never support the social revolution, because it does not improve their lives directly or causes a decline in living conditions. Without the support of the masses, the social revolution would fail and reactionaries would be able to restore class society with the promise of bringing stability. Anarchists, in other words, understood that “it is not enough to cherish a noble ideal. Man does not live by high thoughts or superb discourses, for he needs bread as well.”[[#58KropotkinRebel218Thef|58]] It is essential that, once a social revolution begins, people immediately expropriate and redistribute food, clothing, and housing among the population. The expropriation of the means of production and land would, in turn, enable the working classes to produce the necessities of life needed to sustain the population over a longer period of time and prevent food shortages from defeating the social revolution.[[#59KropotkinRebel2072182|59]]
+<blockquote>
+After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French. The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the homeland.
+</blockquote>
-Several anarchists in the late nineteenth century predicted that, even if a country were able to achieve this, the social revolution would likely fail unless it occurred internationally. Guillaume argued in 1874 that “the Revolution cannot be confined to a single country; on pain of death, it is obliged to subsume into its movement, if not the whole world, then at least a considerable portion of the civilized countries.”[[#60GuillaumeIdeasonSocial|60]] No country can be entirely self-sufficient and were the states neighboring a country in revolution to impose a blockade, let alone invade, then “the Revolution, being isolated, would be doomed to perish.”[[#61GuillaumeIdeasonSocial|61]] Kropotkin shared this concern and developed a detailed response to the problem of economic isolation in his famous 1892 book ''The Conquest of Bread''.'' ''He attempted to demonstrate in exhaustive detail how a country could reorganize production and distribution during a revolution with the use of the technology and productive capacities of the time, such as through the extensive use of green houses in urban areas.[[#62KropotkinConquestofBread|62]] Decades later, Berkman witnessed the blockade that was imposed on the 1917 Russian revolution by capitalist states. In 1929, he wrote in response to these experiences that “the revolution is ''compelled'' to become self-supporting and provide for its own wants.”[[#63BerkmanAnarchism228|63]]
+As France began to make their intentions clear that they would be resuming their colonialist claim to Indochina, Ho Chi Minh began preparing the country for a new chapter in revolutionary struggle. In his 1946 letter to the people of Vietnam, entitled ''A Nationwide Call for Resistance'', Ho Chi Minh wrote:
-The anarchist fear that an isolated revolution would be defeated, alongside their commitment to universal human emancipation, led them to place a great deal of importance on opposing the patriotism and nationalism of the state and fostering internationalism among the working classes. Bakunin understood that “a real and definite solution to the social question can be found only on the basis of an international solidarity of workers of every land,” because “no isolated local or national workers’ association, even one based in the largest of European countries, can ever triumph in the face of a formidable coalition of every privileged class, of every wealthy capitalist, and of every state in the world.”[[#64BakuninSelectedTexts34|64]] To overcome this coalition of reaction, workers had to achieve “the unity of all local and national bodies” through the formation of “one universal association—the great ''International Workers’ Association of every land''.”[[#65BakuninSelectedTexts43|65]] This point was reiterated by Rocker decades later when he argued that “the effective basis . . . for the international liberation of the working class” will only be laid “when the workers in every country . . . come to understand clearly that their interests are everywhere the same, and out of this understanding learn to act together.”[[#66RudolfRockerAnarchoSyndi|66]]
+<blockquote>
+We call everyone, man and woman, old and young, from every ethnic minority, from every religion, to stand up and fight to save our country. If you have guns, use guns. If you have swords, use swords. If you have nothing, use sticks. Everyone must stand up and fight.
+</blockquote>
-The outcome of this internationalism would, to quote Malatesta, be workers coming to view “the whole world as our homeland, all humanity as our brothers and sisters.”[[#67MalatestaCafe137Seeal|67]] Under capitalism, this internationalism would be grounded in an understanding of the working class’s shared interests, such that any “worker, the oppressed, Chinese or Russian or from any other country, is our brother, just as the property-owner, the oppressor, is our enemy, even if he is born in our home town.”[[#68MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|68]] This belief in working-class internationalism led anarchists in Europe and the United States to form multiethnic and multiracial social movements or organizations. The aptly named International Group of San Francisco brought together Russian, Jewish, Chinese, Polish, French, Italian, and Mexican anarchists in order to organize discussion groups, lectures, picnics, dances, plays, concerts and dinners.[[#69ZimmerImmigrants18288|69]] In 1931, the paper ''L’Emancipazione'', which was collectively produced by members of the group, declared its goal to be “overcoming all race hatred for the solidarity of all peoples, [and] the destruction of all borders: to inaugurate the true and sincere pact of human solidarity.”[[#70QuotedinZimmerImmigrants|70]]
+As these historical developments illustrate, Ho Chi Minh was able to creatively and dynamically apply the principles of Marxism-Leninism to suit the shifting material conditions of Vietnam, just as Lenin had to creatively and dynamically apply these principles to the emerging situation in Russia in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century. So is the task of every student of Marxism-Leninism: to learn to apply these principles creatively and dynamically to the material conditions at hand.
-Numerous other examples can be found in the history of anarchism in the United States, which was largely a social movement of immigrants. Anarchists played a key role, alongside other socialists, in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) at a convention in 1905. The constitution of the IWW, in contrast to other trade unions at the time, included an explicit commitment to organizing all workers, regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, or nationality. This was reflected in the IWW’s subsequent organizing campaigns, which included the formation of interracial unions among Black and white timber workers in the South and Northwest, and Black and white dockworkers on the Philadelphia waterfront. The IWW’s multiethnic and interracial character can also be seen in the fact that French, Spanish, Italian, Mexican, Finnish, Swedish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish, Japanese, and African American anarchists participated within the trade union as members of local sections, organizers of strikes, and editors of, or writers for, newspapers. On the West Coast, Japanese anarchists, including Takeuchi Tetsugoro, translated IWW literature into Japanese, published a bilingual newspaper to promote the IWW, and organized 2,000 Japanese grape pickers via the Fresno Labor League. In September 1909, the Fresno Labor League held a joint rally with the local branch of the IWW, which was primarily composed of Mexican and Italian workers. After the organization dissolved in 1910, many members joined the local branch of the IWW and went on to organize hundreds of Mexican and Japanese orange pickers in 1918.[[#71PeterColeDavidStruthers|71]]
+-----
-For anarchists, this commitment to universal human solidarity entailed an opposition to imperialism and colonialism and the support of anticolonial national liberation movements, such as those in Cuba, India, and Ireland.[[#72KropotkinDirectStruggle|72]] According to Maximoff, “the Anarchists demand the liberation of all colonies and support every struggle for national independence as long as it is an expression of the will of the revolutionary proletariat and the working peasantry of the nation concerned.”[[#73MaximoffProgramofAnarcho|73]] This support included the belief that the main goal of national liberation movements—emancipation—could only be achieved through the methods of anarchism, rather than the establishment of a new state. As will be explained in chapter 5, anarchists predicted that if national liberation movements seized state power then they would end up replacing foreign colonial oppressors with a new minority ruling class who oppressed and exploited the majority of the population.
+Second, the birth and development of Marixst-Leninist theses is a process. In that process, all Marixst-Leninist theses have strong relationships with each other. They complement and support each other. Thus, students studying each Marxist-Leninist thesis need to put it in proper relation and context with other theses found within each different component part of Marxism-Leninism in order to understand the unity in diversity [see: Annotation 107, p. 110], the consistency of every thesis in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.
-During World War I, anarchist opposition to imperialism was paradoxically used by a small number of authors, including Kropotkin and Grave, to argue that anarchists should support the French Republic against German militarism on the grounds that Germany had launched a war of aggression and, if victorious, would impose autocracy on the rest of Europe. Most anarchists rejected this argument and refused to side with any state in the conflict since it was a war between rival imperialist powers. As the ''International Anarchist Manifesto Against War'' declared in 1915, “there is but one war of liberation: that which in all countries is waged by the oppressed against the oppressors, by the exploited against the exploiters.”[[#74InternationalAnarchistMan|74]] This opposition to all states in the conflict coincided with multiple attempts to organize resistance to the war, such as launching campaigns against conscription, which resulted in anarchists experiencing a significant amount of state repression.[[#75KinnaKropotkin17783Ma|75]]
+Third, an important goal of studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism is to understand clearly the most important theoretical basis of Ho Chi Minh Thought, of the Vietnam Communist Party and its revolutionary path. Therefore, we must attach Marxist-Leninist theses to Vietnam’s revolutionary practice and the world’s practice in order to see the creative application of Marxism-Leninism that President Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnam Communist Party implemented in each period of history.
-'''Evolution and Revolution'''
+Fourth, we must study the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to meet the requirements for a new Vietnamese people in a new era. So, the process of studying is also the process of self-educating and practicing to improve ourselves step-by-step in both individual and social life.
-Anarchists did not expect the social revolution to appear out of nowhere. They viewed social change as a single process that could be divided into periods of evolution and periods of revolution.[[#76MarieFlemingTheAnarchist|76]] During periods of evolution change is slow, gradual, and partial. Evolutionary change includes such things as certain ideas becoming more popular, small groups of people developing radical capacities and drives, or dominant structures being gradually modified. Over time, this evolutionary change builds up and culminates in a revolutionary period during which change is rapid and large scale, fundamentally altering society. Although periods of evolution are in general much longer than periods of revolution, it does not follow from this that revolutions are short. A revolutionary period could last years if, during this period, it involves ongoing, large-scale change that fundamentally alters society. The French revolutionary period that began in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille, for instance, ended ten years later in 1799 with the seizure of state power by Napoleon Bonaparte.
+Fifth, Marxism-Leninism is not a closed and immutable theoretical system. On the contrary, it is a theoretical system that continuously develops based on the development of reality. Therefore, the process of studying Marxism-Leninism is also a process of reflection: summarizing and reviewing your own practical experiences and sharing what you’ve learned from these experiences in order to contribute to the scientific and humanist development of Marxism-Leninism. In addition, when studying the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, we need to consider these principles in the proper context of the history of the ideological development of humanity. Such context is important because Marxism-Leninism is quintessentially<ref>See Annotation 6, p. 8.</ref> the product of that history.
-Evolutionary and revolutionary change were not seen as separate distinct entities but rather fed off and flowed into one another. An evolutionary period would, if events unfolded as anarchists hoped, develop into a revolutionary period. According to Bakunin, revolutions “come about of themselves, produced by the force of things, the tide of events and facts. They ferment for a long time in the depths of the instinctive consciousness of the popular masses—then they explode, often triggered by apparently trivial causes.”[[#77BakuninSelectedWritings|77]] In turn, they create or open up new pathways for evolutionary change in the future, while at the same time blocking off other avenues. These new evolutions would lead to new revolutionary change in the future, and so on. As Reclus argued, “evolution and revolution are two successive aspects of the same phenomenon, evolution preceding revolution, and revolution preceding a new evolution, which is in turn the mother of future revolutions.”[[#78EliseeReclusAnarchyGeog|78]]
+These requirements have strong relationships with each other. They imbue the studying process with the quintessence of Marxism-Leninism. And more importantly, they help students apply that quintessence into cognitive and practical activities.
-Émile Pouget expressed this same idea in different language. He conceptualized revolution as a single process of social change that includes both gradual modifications to capitalism and the abolition of capitalism in favor of socialism. For him, revolutionary syndicalism “does not regard the Revolution as a future cataclysm for which we must wait patiently to see emerging from the inevitable working-out of events. . . . The Revolution is an undertaking for all times, for today as well as tomorrow: it is continual action, a daily battling without let-up or respite, against the forces of oppression and exploitation.”[[#79EmilePougetThePartyof|79]] As a result, when the working classes launch an insurrection that forcefully expropriates the capitalist class it will be “the culmination of preceding struggles” in which they had traversed “stages along the road to human emancipation.”[[#80PougetThePartyofLabour|80]]
+==== Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism — Leninism ====
-Anarchists consistently expressed these ideas about evolution developing into revolution through water-based metaphors. Bakunin wrote in a letter to Reclus that “we are falling back into a time of evolution—that is to say revolutions that are invisible, subterranean and often imperceptible . . . drops of water, though they may be invisible may go on to form an ocean.”[[#81BakuninSelectedTexts251|81]] Guillaume claimed that “it is not in one day that waters rise to the point where they can breach the dam holding them back: the waters rise slowly and by degrees: but once they have reached the desired level, the collapse is sudden, and the dam crumbles in the blinking of an eye.”[[#82GuillaumeIdeasonSocial|82]] For Berkman, evolutionary change leads into revolutionary change in the same way that water in a kettle gradually heats up until it boils.[[#83BerkmanAnarchism179|83]]
+''Worldview'' refers to the whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in that world. Our worldview directs and orientates our life, including our cognitive and practical activities, as well as our self-awareness. Our worldview defines our ideals, our value system, and our lifestyle. So, a proper and scientific worldview serves as a foundation to establish a constructive approach to life. One of the basic criteria to evaluate the growth and maturity of an individual or a whole society is the degree to which worldview has been developed.
-This did not mean that anarchists viewed evolution and revolution as natural forces that inevitably propel human subjects toward a better society.[[#84Thisideahasbeenfalselya|84]] Reclus understood that “revolutions do not necessarily constitute progress, just as evolutions are not always directed toward justice.”[[#85ReclusAnarchy139|85]] Malatesta similarly held that “there is no natural law that says evolution must inevitably give priority to liberty rather than the permanent division of society into two castes . . . that of the dominators and that of the dominated.”[[#86MalatestaCafe105|86]] These evolutions and revolutions, be they progressive or reactionary, were nothing but the products of humans acting within their historical situation and thereby transforming the world. Mella insisted that “social evolution is constituted by men; these men constitute the means by which it develops.”[[#87MellaEvolutionandRevolu|87]] For Malatesta, “human evolution moves in the direction in which it is driven by the will of humanity.”[[#88MalatestaCafe105|88]]
+''Methodology'' is a system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with ''philosophical methodology'' being the most general scope of methodology.
-One of the main forms of evolutionary change anarchists engaged in was spreading anarchist ideas through newspapers, pamphlets, books, talks, and demonstrations. Anarchist literature was not exclusively nonfiction and also included poems, songs, short stories, plays, and novels. The majority of anarchist print media was written and edited by workers for free in their spare time after a full day of work. There were a few papers which were run by full-time paid staff, such as Spain’s ''Solidaridad Obrera'' from 1916 onwards, but these were in the minority.[[#89JamesYeomanPrintCulture|89]] Workers who could not read would listen to anarchist texts being read aloud at public meetings, smaller private gatherings, and even at work. Some illiterate workers would deliberately memorize their favorite anarchist articles and then recite them to other workers.[[#90JeromeRMintzTheAnarchi|90]] The medium of transmitting ideas via face-to-face interaction by itself created a social network of anarchist workers in a specific location. This group of workers could then decide to not only absorb and discuss anarchist theory, but also put theory into practice and take direct action, such as by organizing a strike.
+-----
-One of the main sources of content for anarchist papers was the vast number of letters that workers sent to editors and publishing groups. These letters usually contained anarchist theory, stories, poetry, calls for solidarity, news of organizing and meetings, and reports of oppressive or scandalous behavior by capitalists and the police. Through writing letters, these correspondents transmitted information and reflections about a local area to the editors of the paper. The editors would, if they deemed it worthy, print the letter in the paper and then send copies to every correspondent they had across the country. Correspondents would distribute the paper to local workers and collect money for both the publishing costs of the paper and solidarity funds that the paper had set up to support striking workers, anarchist prisoners, or widows of dead comrades. The anarchist press was constituted by a social network in which local correspondents were the nodes through which the anarchist press was channeled out to localities, and the thoughts, experiences, and money from localities were channeled back to publishers. During periods when there were no genuinely national formal anarchist organizations in a country, the informal social networks that connected readers, correspondents, editors, and publishers functioned as the organizational structure of the anarchist movement.[[#91YeomanPrintCulture1619|91]]
+-----
-Anarchists also spread their ideas through lectures, public debates, and speaking tours. For example, in 1895, the Italian anarchist Pietro Gori went on a vast speaking tour of the United States during which he delivered somewhere between two and four hundred lectures on anarchism in a single year. He began many by singing songs and playing his guitar in order to gather a crowd, before launching into a talk on anarchism, often successfully persuading a number of workers to form anarchist groups.[[#92PietroDiPaolaTheKnights|92]] The dual goal of consciousness-raising and organizing was typically facilitated through the distribution of posters, pamphlets, and periodicals at talks. This had the effect that speaking tours established a local archive of anarchist literature wherever they traveled. The new collection of print media could then be used by workers to educate themselves further and become more committed to anarchism once the speaking tour had left the area. Since periodicals included an address to send letters to, the distribution of print media also ensured that new local anarchists had a means to communicate with other anarchists and become part of the social networks that constituted the movement.[[#93YeomanPrintCulture1474|93]]
+==== Annotation 47 ====
-This emphasis on spreading ideas was motivated by the awareness that, to quote Lucy Parsons, fundamental social change was preceded by “a long period of education” that developed “self-thinking individuals.”[[#94LucyParsonsFreedomEqual|94]] The “first task” of anarchists, according to Malatesta, was “to persuade people. We must make people aware of the misfortunes they suffer and of their chances to destroy them. We must awaken sympathy in everybody for the misfortunes of others and a warm desire for the good of all people . . . arousing the sentiment of rebellion in the minds of men against the avoidable and unjust evils from which we suffer in society today, [and] getting them to understand how they are caused and how it depends on human will to rid ourselves of them.”[[#95MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|95]]
+Tran Thien Tu, the vice-dean of the Department of Marxist-Leninist Theoretical Studies at the Le Duan Political Science University in Quang Tri, Vietnam, defines three degrees of scopes of Methodology. They are, from most specific to most general:
-In other words, anarchists sought to bring about a variety of different changes to the consciousness of the working classes. They sought to improve their theoretical understanding of existing society and how it oppresses them, persuade them that an anarchist society is both possible and desirable, instill anarchist values in them, and, perhaps most importantly, motivate them to actually engage in direct action and emancipate themselves. It was for this reason that Kropotkin sought to use his paper ''Le Révolté'' to inspire workers with hope by documenting “the growing revolt against antiquated institutions,” rather than, as many socialist papers did, drive workers to despair and inaction by focusing too strongly on suffering within existing society.[[#96KropotkinMemoirs39091|96]]
+'''1. Field Methodology'''
-Anarchist newspapers, pamphlets, books, and talks were but one aspect of a wider revolutionary working-class counterculture that the anarchist movement constructed. There are numerous examples of anarchist workers in Europe and the United States organizing plays, poetry scenes, musical performances, dinners, dances, picnics, and public celebrations of key dates in the revolutionary calendar, such as May Day and the anniversary of the Paris Commune. These social events, which constituted a significant amount of day-to-day anarchist activity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were not only moments of fun and creativity. They were also instrumental in: (a) drawing workers into a social milieu where they might develop revolutionary consciousness and come to engage in direct action; (b) raising funds for newspapers, strikes, political prisoners, etc.; and (c) forming close social bonds both among anarchist militants and between anarchists and the wider working class in the area. The creation and reproduction of these social networks laid the foundation on which larger acts of revolt and rebellion were organized.[[#97Forexamplesofanarchistco|97]]
+The most specific scope of methodology; a field methodology will apply only to a single specific scientific field.
-For decades in Spain, workers came into contact with anarchist ideas via cultural and social centers known as ateneos (athenaeums), which were interconnected with the anarchist trade union movement. These ateneos typically featured a café, library, reading rooms, meeting rooms for anarchist and neighborhood groups, and an auditorium for formal debates, public talks, and artistic performances. During periods of state repression when trade unions were forced underground, ateneos were generally able to remain open and thereby ensure the ongoing existence of an anarchist presence within working-class communities. The workers who participated in ateneos organized a wide range of educational and leisure activities in their spare time. This included day schools for working-class children, evening classes for adult workers, theater clubs that would perform radical plays, singing and musical groups, and hiking clubs that allowed poor urban workers to experience the beauty of nature in the countryside and along the coast. Through engaging in these activities, workers developed themselves in multiple directions, such as gaining the confidence to speak before a crowd, learning to read and write, and acquiring an in-depth understanding of why capitalism and the state should be abolished.
+'''2. General Methodology'''
-A significant number of anarchist militants, especially women, first encountered anarchist ideas and entered into anarchist social networks through their participation in the ateneos when they were children and teenagers. Young people not only received an anarchist education in ateneos, but also gained experiences of anarchist organizing. In 1932, youth groups that had emerged from ateneos in Granada, Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia formed the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL). The FIJL, which was an independent organization linked with the CNT, came to be viewed as one of the main pillars of the anarchist movement. On several occasions, the ateneos were the avenue through which workers mobilized to participate in demonstrations and strikes. They were, in short, social spaces that facilitated working-class self-education, recreation, and class struggle.[[#98MarthaAckelsbergFreeWome|98]]
+A more general scope of methodology; a general methodology will be shared by various scientific fields.
-'''Unity of Means and Ends'''
+'''3. Philosophical Methodology'''
-Anarchists did not think that any form of activity could lead to an anarchist society. They argued that working-class social movements should only use means that were in conformity with the ends of creating a free, equal, and cooperative society without domination or exploitation. They advocated the unity of means and ends. In 1881, Kropotkin argued that social movements should establish their “final ''objective''” and then “specify a proposed course of action ''in conformity with the ends''.”[[#99KropotkinDirectStruggle|99]] Anarchists like Malatesta often expressed this idea with metaphors of roads and bridges, transit and movement. He wrote,
+The most general scope of methodology, encompassing the whole of the material world and human thought.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">It is not enough to desire something; if one really wants it adequate means must be used to secure it. And these means are not arbitrary, but instead cannot but be conditioned by the ends we aspire to and by the circumstances in which the struggle takes place, for if we ignore the choice of means we would achieve other ends, possibly diametrically opposed to those we aspire to, and this would be the obvious and inevitable consequence of our choice of means. Whoever sets out on the highroad and takes a wrong turning does not go where he intends to go but where the road leads him.[[#100MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|100]]</div>
+-----
-Goldman made this same point in 1922 when she argued, in response to the Bolshevik seizure of state power during the Russian Revolution, that “means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim” because the “means employed, become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical.”[[#101GoldmanRedEmma4012|101]] Given this, “revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be ''initiated'' with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitionary period. The latter can only serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.”[[#102GoldmanRedEmma404|102]]
+''Worldview'' and ''philosophical methodology'' are the fundamental knowledge-systems* of Marxism-Leninism.
-Anarchism’s commitment to the unity of means and ends was grounded in the theory of practice, which maintained, as we have seen, that as humans engage in activity, they simultaneously transform themselves and the world around them. An anarchist society would be reproduced over time by people engaging in horizontal systems of association and decision-making and, in so doing, continuously creating and re-creating both anarchist social relations and themselves as people with the right kinds of capacities, drives, and consciousness for an anarchist society. These new social relations can only take root if capitalism and the state are abolished through a social revolution and so will have to be created by the people who presently live in, and have been shaped by, class society. It is therefore essential that during the course of the class struggle workers engage in practices that transform them into people who are capable of, and driven to, overthrow class society and establish and reproduce an anarchist society. If social movements make the mistake of using the wrong or inappropriate means then they will produce people who will create a different society than the one they initially intended.
+==== Annotation 48 ====
-This theory entailed two main commitments. First, a core part of determining what strategies and tactics a social movement should use to achieve their goals is establishing how the forms of practice that constitute them transform individuals and social relations simultaneously. If a social movement’s end goals can only be achieved through a social revolution, then it must choose means during an evolutionary period that build toward this. Kropotkin argued in 1881 that workers should engage in direct struggle against capital, especially via trade unions and strikes, because of the unity of means and ends. He wrote,
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> In the original Vietnamese, the word ''lý'' ''luận'' is used, which we roughly translate to the phrase “knowledge-system” throughout this book. Literally, ''lý luận'' is a combination of the words ''lý'' ''lẽ,'' which means “argument,” and ''bàn'' ''luận,'' which means “to infer.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">A party which proposes a social revolution as its goal, and which seeks to seize capital from the hands of its current holders must, of necessity, and from this day onward, position itself at the center of the struggle against capital. If it wishes that the next revolution should take place against the regime of property and that the watchword of the next call to arms should necessarily be one calling for the expropriation of society’s wealth from the capitalists, the struggle must, on all fronts, be a struggle against the capitalists.[[#103KropotkinDirectStruggle|103]]</div>
+The full meaning of ''lý'' ''luận'' is: a system of ideas that reflect reality expressed in a system of knowledge that allows for a complete view of the fundamental laws and relationships of objective reality.
-The second main position entailed by the unity of means and ends is that social movements must structure organizations and make decisions in a manner that causes participants to develop the kinds of radical capacities, drives, and consciousness that are necessary for producing and reproducing the social relations of the future society. A social movement organized in a hierarchical and centralized manner cannot create an anarchist society because it will not produce the right kinds of people for the task. Participants will either act in an authoritarian way or be subject to the authoritarianism of others, such as a small group of leaders monopolizing decision-making power and issuing orders that the membership then implements. This will result in the development of authoritarian tendencies in individuals and the establishment of authoritarian social structures that will, in turn, enable authoritarian modes of practice and constrain antiauthoritarian ones. If a social movement constituted by these self-reproducing authoritarian social structures were to launch or take over a revolution, the result would not be an anarchist society. The authoritarianism of the social movement would instead come to characterize society as a whole. Social movements that aim to create an anarchist society must therefore be constituted by forms of practice that produce self-determining people who associate horizontally with one another. In order to do so, workers must establish social relations in the present that are, as far as possible, the same as those that would constitute an anarchist society.
+<br />
-The unity of means and ends led anarchists to maintain that, although violence was necessary to defend the revolution from counterattack by the ruling classes, it should not be used to force the working classes into an anarchist society. In Bakunin’s words, “liberty can be created only by liberty, by an insurrection of all the people and the voluntary organization of the workers from below upward.”[[#104BakuninStatismandAnarch|104]] As a result, “a revolution that is imposed, either by official decrees, or by force of arms is no longer a revolution but the opposite of a revolution, because it necessarily provokes reaction.”[[#105QuotedinAWZurbrugg|105]] Malatesta noted that “anarchy cannot be made by force and violent imposition by a few” and “is only possible when it is understood and wanted by large popular masses that embrace all the elements necessary to creating a society superior to the present one.”[[#106MalatestaMethodofFreedo1|106]] There is, in other words, an incompatibility between the means of coercing people into a particular kind of society and the ends of creating a free society in which people voluntarily self-manage social life. A genuine social revolution can only occur if the majority of the population choose to participate within it and reorganize society themselves.
+==== The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism ====
-For anarchists, means and ends are not only interconnected in so far as the means you engage in determine the ends you arrive at. They are also identical in the narrow sense that both the means and the ends of anarchism are freedom. As Fabbri wrote, “the libertarian notion of revolution” holds that “freedom is also a means as well as an end.”[[#107LuigiFabbriRevolutiona|107]] Anarchist actions, in other words, create freedom and are instances of freedom at the same time. This can be seen by connecting the anarchist conceptions of freedom discussed in chapter 3 to revolutionary practice. When the working classes collectively struggle against the ruling classes, they are not only fighting for a distant postcapitalist society in which humanity will finally be free. They are also rejecting domination in the present by choosing to act in accordance with their own wills, rather than obeying the wills of their masters and remaining subservient. When the working classes create organizations and social relations in which they horizontally relate to one another, they are both struggling for a future free society and creating a freer society in the here and now by expanding their real possibilities of experiencing a different kind of life and becoming a different kind of person. When the working classes engage in collective struggles or participate in horizontal social structures, they are developing themselves and becoming more free than they were before.
+Marxist-Leninist worldview and philosophical methodology emerge from the quintessence [see Annotation 6, p. 8] of dialectical materialism, which itself developed from other forms of dialectics, which in turn developed throughout the history of the ideological development of humanity.
-Such a view was not inconsistent with the fact that the majority of anarchists thought violence was necessary to overthrow the ruling classes and defend the social revolution. Using violence to abolish the power of violent oppressors is not a negation of freedom but rather an affirmation of it. As Malatesta put it, “in order to fight our enemies, and fight effectively, we do not need to deny the principle of freedom,” since a commitment to freedom entails “the right to resist any violation of freedom, and to use brute force to resist, when violence is based upon brute force and there is no better way to successfully oppose it.”[[#108MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|108]] Anarchists wish to use violence to expropriate the economic ruling classes “not because freedom is a good thing for the future, but because it is always good, today as much as tomorrow, and the owners deprive us of it by depriving us of the means of exercising it.”[[#109MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|109]] Anarchists, likewise, wish to use violence to overthrow the political ruling classes “because governments are the negation of freedom and we cannot be free without having overthrown them.”[[#110MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|110]]
+Materialism is foundational to Marxism-Leninism in two important ways:
-'''Prefiguration'''
+''Dialectical Materialism'' is the ideological core of a scientific worldview.
-The anarchist commitment to the unity of means and ends led them to argue that working-class social movements should establish horizontal social relations that are, as far as is possible, the same as those that would constitute an anarchist society. In so doing, workers attempt to construct the world as they wish it to be during their struggle against the world as it is. They also create, through experimentation in the present, the real methods of organization and association that people in the future might use to achieve the states of affairs that characterize an anarchist society. Kropotkin, for example, argued in 1913 that anarchists “have to find, within the practice of life itself and indeed working through their own experiences, new ways in which social formations can be organized . . . and how these might emerge in a liberated society.”[[#111KropotkinDirectStruggle|111]]
+''Historical Materialism'' is a system of dialectical materialist opinions about the origin of, motivation of, and the most common rules that dominate the movement and development of human society.
-During the second half of the twentieth century, this idea was called ''prefiguration'' or ''prefigurative politics''. It should be kept in mind that this term was not used by anarchists historically.[[#112Forthefirstusesofthese|112]] Nonetheless, anarchist organizations generally prefigured the future anarchist society in two ways. First, by embodying the kinds of organizational structure and methods of deliberation and decision-making that a future society would contain. Second, by performing the kinds of functions that organizations in a future society will carry out. Although a social revolution would mark a dramatic shift in social life, there would be no such dramatic shift in anarchist methods of organization and association. The methods would remain the same. What would change is the context and the conditions under which these methods are applied and so the extent to which they can be fully put into practice.
+Dialectics are also foundational to Marxism-Leninism, specifically in the form of ''Materialist Dialectics,'' which Lenin defined as “the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge.”<ref>''The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.</ref> Lenin also defined Materialist Dialectics as “what is now called theory of knowledge or epistemology.”<ref>''Karl Marx'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref> [Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see ''Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism'', p. 204.]
-Anarchist organizations built within class society thus have a dual function. In the present they bring people together in order to directly satisfy unmet drives and struggle effectively against capitalism and the state. Through participating in anarchist organizations, workers simultaneously attempt to achieve concrete goals and develop their radical capacities, drives, and consciousness. A tenant union might not only organize a rent strike that wins a reduction in rent or prevents an eviction. The participants could also learn how to make collective decisions in general assemblies and act for themselves through their own direct action. At the same time, they might realize that tenants have shared class interests that are opposed to the class interests of landlords. During the course of the struggle, they begin to understand that society could be organized without landlords, and they may come to aspire for an economic system in which everyone has free access to housing. In changing the world, workers at the same time change themselves.
+-----
-During a revolutionary period, anarchist organizations would take on new roles and serve as the inspiration for emerging anarchist social forms and/or transform from organizations that struggle against class society into organizations that run a classless society.[[#113Someanarchistsrejectedth|113]] At such a point, they would not only be the dominant structures through which society was generally organized. They would also continually produce and reproduce individuals who want to and are able to freely associate as equals.
+==== Annotation 49 ====
-The strategy of prefiguration was not original or exclusive to the anarchist movement. From the 1840s onward, a tendency within the French socialist movement had proposed the formation of workers’ cooperatives as organizations that would grow in number under capitalism until they displaced capitalist firms and became the nodes of a socialist society.[[#114BernardHMossTheOrigin|114]] During debates within the First International, this idea was extended to the First International itself, including the trade unions affiliated to it. The Belgian Internationalist César De Paepe, who was a collectivist but not an anarchist, proposed in his February 1869 article “The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future”'' ''that “the International already offers the model of the society to come and . . . its various institutions, with the required modifications, will form the future social order.”[[#115CesarDePaepeThePresen|115]] For De Paepe, “the International contains within itself the seeds of all the institutions of the future. Let a section of the International be established in each commune; the new society will be formed and the old will collapse with a sigh.”[[#116CesarDePaepeThePresen|116]] The influence these ideas had on the developing anarchist movement can be seen in the fact that the article was republished in April 1869 in ''Le Progrès'', which was edited by Guillaume, and in May 1869 by the official organ of the Romance Federation of the First International, ''L’Égalité'', which Bakunin wrote for and edited at the time.[[#117RobertGrahamWeDoNotFe|117]]
+For beginning students of Marxism-Leninism, distinguishing between ''Dialectical Materialism'' and ''Materialist Dialectics'' may at first be confusing. Here is an explanation of each concept and how they relate to one another:
-One of the earliest anarchist endorsements of prefigurative politics occurred when, on November 12, 1871, the Jura Federation issued the “Sonvilier Circular” in response to Marx, Engels, and their supporters converting the General Council of the First International into a governing body that imposed state-socialist decisions and policies on the organization’s previously autonomous sections.[[#118ForthecontextoftheSon|118]] As part of their critique of the actions of the General Council they stated that
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-5.png|''Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">the society of the future should be nothing other than the universalization of the organization with which the International will have endowed itself. We must, therefore, have a care to ensure that that organization comes as close as we may to our ideal. How can we expect an egalitarian and free society to emerge from an authoritarian organization? Impossible. The International, as the embryo of the human society of the future, is required in the here and now to faithfully mirror our principles of freedom and federation and shun any principle leaning toward authority and dictatorship.[[#119TheJuraFederationTheS|119]]</div>
+''Dialectical Materialism'' is a scientific understanding of matter, consciousness and the relationship between the two. Dialectical Materialism is used to understand the world by studying such relationships.
-Anarchists, in short, thought that building prefigurative organizations was essential because of the unity of means and ends. As Bakunin wrote, a few months after the “Sonvilier Circular” was published, “the fashion and form of one’s organization arises from and flows as a consequence from the nature of one’s aims.”[[#120BakuninSelectedTexts18|120]] Kropotkin likewise argued in 1873 that revolutionaries must reject social relations within “the revolutionary organization” that contradict the ideals for which it has been formed, relations such as “a hierarchy of ranks which enslaves many people to one or several persons” or “inequality in the interrelations of the members of one and the same organization.”[[#121PeterKropotkinFugitiveW|121]]
+''Materialist Dialectics'' is a science studying the general laws of the movement, change, and development of nature, society and human thought.
-This was important because, as Malatesta explained, “the abolition of government and capitalism is feasible only once the people, organizing themselves, are equipped to perform those social functions performed today—and exploited to their own advantage—by rulers and capitalists.”[[#122MalatestaPatientWork20|122]] To this end, anarchists like Goldman proposed that workers in the present should attempt “to prepare and equip themselves for the great task the revolution will put upon them” by acquiring “the knowledge and technical skill necessary for managing and directing the intricate mechanisms of the industrial and social structure of their respective countries.”[[#123GoldmanRedEmma397|123]] Anarchist organizations that prefigured the future anarchist society were the concrete means through which workers would learn to self-manage their lives and thereby become equipped to create a self-managed society. As Mella wrote in 1911,
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-6.png|''Relationship between Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">The proletariat continues acquiring the capacity for cooperation and management precisely outside of political action. In workers’ associations, ''especially in those where political practices do not govern'', workers are gaining the power of initiative, management practices, habits of freedom and direct intervention in common affairs, ease of expression and mental assurance, all things whose development is void in political entities that have as a base the delegation of powers, and, therefore, the subordination and discipline, and obedience to the elected. In social associations, initiatives come from below and from below come ideas, strength, and action. In this way, free men are made and are released to walk.[[#124MellaAnarchistSocialism|124]]</div>
+And so, we use Dialectical Materialism to understand the fundamental nature of reality. This understanding is used as a basis for changing the world, using Materialist Dialectics to guide our activities. We can then reflect on the results of our activities, using Dialectical Materialism, to further develop our understanding of the world.
-Decades later in 1932, the Spanish anarchist Isaac Puente argued that just as a child learns to walk or ride a bicycle by trying and failing until they succeed, so too would workers learn to produce and reproduce an anarchist society through experiments in horizontal forms of association. He wrote, “living in libertarian communism will be like learning to live. Its weak points and its failings will be shown up when it is introduced. If we were politicians we would paint a paradise brimful of perfections. Being human and being aware what human nature can be like, we trust that people will learn to walk the only way it is possible for them to learn: by walking.”[[#125IsaacPuenteLibertarianC|125]]
+As Marxist-Leninists, we utilize this continuous cycle between studying and understanding the world through Dialectical Materialism and affecting change in the world through Materialist Dialectics with the goal of bringing about socialism and freeing humanity.
-Anarchists argued with one another about which prefigurative organizations should be built and how these organizations should be structured. Antiorganizationalists advocated small affinity groups and informal social networks, while organizationalists advocated, in addition to this, large formal federations, such as trade unions. Some anarchists advocated forming intentional communities and workers’ cooperatives, while other anarchists rejected this strategy.[[#126BakuninBasicBakunin153|126]] One area where anarchists generally agreed was on the need to construct emancipatory schools. Anarchists of all varieties founded or participated in schools in Spain, Italy, France, England, the United States, and elsewhere. These schools lasted for varying lengths of time, ranging from one or two years to over four decades, in the case of the Modern School of New York, which opened in 1911, relocated to Stelton, New Jersey in 1915 and finally closed in 1953.[[#127PaulAvrichTheModernSch|127]]
+It is also important to understand the nature of ''dialectical relationships.''
-These schools educated children and adults, but also sought to contribute toward fundamental social change. In 1898, a number of prominent anarchists, including Louise Michel, Reclus, Grave, and Kropotkin, signed an article published in ''Les Temps Nouveaux ''that advocated the creation of anarchist schools on the grounds that “education is a powerful means of disseminating and infiltrating minds with generous ideas” and so could become “the most active motor of progress,” acting as “the lever that will lift up the world and will overthrow error, lies and injustice forever.”[[#128ArdouinetalLibertyTh|128]]
+A dialectical relationship is a relationship in which two things mutually impact one another. Dialectical materialism perceives all things in ''motion'' [see ''Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter'', p. 59] and in a constant state of ''change'', and this motion and change originates from relationships in which all things mutually move and change each other through interaction, leading to development over time.
-One of the most influential anarchist educationalists was Francisco Ferrer, who established a Modern School that taught pupils in Barcelona between 1901 and 1906. He advocated “the establishment of new schools in which, as far as possible, there shall rule this spirit of liberty that we feel will dominate the whole education of the future.”[[#129FranciscoFerrerAnarchist|129]] Ferrer did not think that teachers would be able to establish a fully emancipatory school overnight. He instead argued that teachers should engage in pedagogical experiments that demonstrated, through a process of trial and error, what approaches to education enabled children to develop themselves and become adults who could think independently and horizontally associate with others.[[#130FerrerAnarchistEducation|130]] Ferrer’s experiments in pedagogy were abruptly ended on October 13, 1909, when he was executed by the Spanish government for a crime he had not committed: orchestrating a week-long working-class insurrection against army reservists being called up to fight in Morocco. His martyrdom led him to become an internationally known figure and inspired the creation of emancipatory schools around the world.[[#131AvrichModernSchool293|131]]
+-----
-The theory and practice of anarchist prefigurative politics was largely concerned with the formation and structure of organizations and often did not give sufficient attention to interpersonal relations between people in daily life, especially men and women. In the United States, for example, anarchists only shifted to focusing on prefiguration in daily life in the 1940s, after anarchism had ceased to exist as a mass movement in the country.[[#132CornellUnrulyEquality1|132]] This is not to say that anarchists prior to this did not think it was important to act like an anarchist in daily life. In 1886, Wilson claimed that anarchists should, in parallel with the formation of mass, working-class social movements, “endeavor to discard the principle of domination from our own lives.”[[#133WilsonAnarchistEssays4|133]] Malatesta similarly wrote in 1897 that “we need to start by being as socialist as we can immediately, in our everyday life.”[[#134MalatestaPatientWork14|134]] Nor is it to say that anarchists in this period never explicitly advocated some forms of prefiguration in daily life. In 1907, the Italian anarchist Camillo Di Sciullo argued that anarchists should, “build a little anarchist world within your family.”[[#135QuotedinJenniferGuglielm|135]]
+Thoroughly understanding the basic content of the worldview and methodology of Marxism-Leninism is the most important requirement in order to properly study the whole theory system of Marxism-Leninism and to creatively apply it into cognitive and practical activities in order to solve the problems that our society must cope with.
-The main form of prefiguration in daily life anarchists advocated was free love in the sense of a voluntary sexual relationship between equals that occurred outside of marriage. These relationships were mostly monogamous, although some anarchists did advocate and practice polyamory. Notable examples of anarchists seriously attempting to engage in free love include the relationship between Rudolf Rocker and Milly Witkop and the one between Guy Aldred and Rose Witkop. In both cases, Rocker and Aldred appear to have treated their partner in a nonpatriarchal manner. However, most evidence indicates that the majority of anarchist men did not build the gender and romantic relations of the future society within their own households. They continued to treat women in a patriarchal manner, such as expecting their partner to become a mother who did the vast majority of housework and childcare. This, in turn, often led to anarchist women lacking the free time to properly participate within the anarchist movement.[[#136AckelsbergFreeWomen46|136]] In 1935, the Spanish anarchist Lola Iturbe complained that anarchist men “however radical they may be in cafés, unions, and even affinity groups, seem to drop their costumes as lovers of female liberation at the doors of their homes. Inside, they behave with their compañeras just like common ‘husbands.’”[[#137QuotedinAckelsbergFree|137]]
+-----
-A similar failure occurred in public organizations. The CNT, for example, was formally committed to the goal of a society in which men and women were free and equal, but this was generally not prefigured within the trade union’s day-to-day social relations. Soledad Estorach recalled in an interview that women would attend a meeting but not return due to experiences of sexism. Even trade union sections whose membership were mostly women were represented at congresses by men and only a few women spoke during a trade union’s local general assembly. Within the FIJL, teenage boys would laugh at girls when they spoke, or were about to speak, at meetings.[[#138AckelsbergFreeWomen77|138]]
+=== 3. Excerpt From ''Modifying the Working Style'' By Ho Chi Minh ===
-Women in both Europe and the United States responded to patriarchy within the anarchist movement by forming their own groups in order to enable women to more fully participate in the movement, struggling against patriarchal and class oppression simultaneously. The Women’s Emancipation Group—founded in 1897 by the Italian anarchists Maria Roda, Ninfa Baronio, and Ernestina Cravello—had around fifteen members. It was based in Paterson, New Jersey, held regular meetings over seven years, printed and distributed antipatriarchal literature, and inspired other anarchist women to form their own groups, such as the Women’s Propaganda Group in Manhattan.[[#139GuglielmoLivingtheRevol|139]] Anarchist women in Spain similarly formed their own groups in the 1920s. These grew in number until they were formally linked together via the establishment of the national federation Mujeres Libres (Free Women) in 1937 during the Spanish revolution. The organization’s significance can be seen in the fact that it mobilized over 20,000 women.[[#140AckelsbergFreeWomen21|140]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-7.jpg|''Ho Chi Minh training cadres in 1959.'']]
-One of Mujeres Libres’ most important contributions was taking anarchist ideas on prefiguration and applying them to the emancipation of women. Since the 1860s, anarchists had argued that workers should build organizations that used the same structure and decision-making procedures as an anarchist society because, through participating in them, workers learned how to self-manage their lives and thereby how to create a self-managed society. Mujeres Libres developed this theory by arguing that liberation for women (and the drives, capacities, and consciousness this entailed) was not simply a matter of creating organizations that coordinated action via federations or made decisions via general assemblies. This is because one of the main barriers to women developing themselves through revolutionary practice was sexist treatment by men and women’s own internalization of patriarchal norms.
+Training is a must. There is a proverb: “without a teacher, you can never do well;” and the expression: “learn to eat, learn to speak, learn to pack, learn to unpack.”
-In October 1938, Mujeres Libres explained that one of the main goals of the organization was “to empower women to make of them individuals capable of contributing to the structuring of the future society, individuals who have learned to be self-determining.”[[#141QuotedinAckelsbergFree|141]] To achieve this, Mujeres Libres organized educational programs specifically for women. These taught not only basic skills, such as reading and writing, but also courses on “social formation” that focused on how women were capable of developing themselves and had to learn to take initiative and act independently of the men in their lives. Members of Mujeres Libres spread these ideas to the countryside during educational trips where they gave talks to other women. During these talks they explained that mothers could be anarchist militants, that men oppressed women, and that women should act themselves to stop this from occurring.[[#142AckelsbergFreeWomen151|142]] In so doing, they were attempting to build the gender relations of anarchy during both the struggle against capitalism and the state and the formation of an anarchist society, rather than waiting till after the revolution for their emancipation.
+Even many simple subjects require study, let alone revolutionary work and resistance work. How can you perform such tasks without any training?
-'''Direct Action'''
+But training materials must be aimed at the needs of the masses. We must ask: after people receive their training, can they apply their knowledge immediately? Is it possible to practice right away?
-The primary means by which the working classes would simultaneously transform themselves and the social world was direct action. Individuals or groups engage in direct action when they act themselves to bring about social change, rather than relying upon intermediaries or representatives to act on their behalf. Direct action, to quote Rocker, encompasses “every method of immediate warfare by the workers against their economic and political oppressors.”[[#143RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|143]] By “immediate warfare,” Rocker meant actions such as strikes, boycotts, industrial sabotage, distributing antimilitarist propaganda and, in certain circumstances, the “armed resistance of the people for the protection of life and liberty.”[[#144RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|144]] Direct action thus includes nonviolent and violent actions that contribute toward both evolutionary and revolutionary change. The social revolution is in a sense the ultimate form of direct action.
+If training is not immediately practical, then years of training would be useless.
-Anarchists initially did not use the term direct action and instead deployed a variety of equivalent phrases.[[#145ForexampleBakuninSelect|145]] It is difficult to trace, using texts that have been translated into English, when the term direct action was first adopted by the anarchist movement. One early example is Wilson’s 1886 advocacy of “direct personal action” in the first issue of ''Freedom''.[[#146WilsonAnarchistEssays5|146]] The term direct action appears to have become commonly used due to the emergence and growth of revolutionary syndicalism as a social movement in France between the 1890s and the early 1900s. During this period, revolutionary syndicalists, many of whom were anarchists, consistently advocated and engaged in what they termed direct action. This phrase initially referred to when workers drew on their own strength to personally struggle against capitalism and thereby achieve their own liberation through their own actions.[[#147VadimDamierAnarchoSyndi|147]]
+Unfortunately, many of our trainers do not understand this simple logic. That’s why there are cadres who train rural people in the uplands in the field of “economics!”
-This perspective can be seen in Émile Pouget’s appropriately titled 1907 pamphlet ''Direct Action''. According to Pouget, who was both an anarchist and a revolutionary syndicalist, direct action meant that “the working class . . . expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its methodology. It means that from now on the ''producer'' . . . means to mount a direct attack upon the capitalist mode of production in order to transform it by eliminating the employer and thereby achieving sovereignty in the workshop.”[[#148EmilePougetDirectAction|148]] For Pouget, “direct action is, therefore, merely trade union action . . . without capitalist compromises, without the flirtation with the bosses of which the sycophants of ‘social peace’ dream . . . without friends in the government and with no ‘go-betweens’ horning in on the debate.”[[#149PougetDirectAction3|149]]
+In short, our way of working, organizing, talking, propagandizing, setting slogans, writing newspapers, etc., must all take this sentence as a model:
-By the early twentieth century, the term direct action had become a staple of anarchist parlance and was used in a much broader sense than can be found in early revolutionary syndicalist texts. In 1910, Goldman argued that “direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.”[[#150GoldmanRedEmma7677A|150]] Goldman applied this idea to abolishing patriarchy and argued that women should emancipate themselves through their own direct action, rather than trying to win the right to vote and elect representatives who would act on their behalf. She declared that a woman’s “development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right of anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc. . . . by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free.”[[#151GoldmanRedEmma202|151]]
+“From within the masses, back into the masses.”
-This broader notion of direct action was shared by de Cleyre. During a 1912 lecture in Chicago, she said that “every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist.”[[#152VoltairinedeCleyreTheV|152]] Equipped with this more expansive definition, de Cleyre illustrated the idea by referring not only to the actions of unionized workers. She also pointed to abolitionists, who helped slaves escape their owners through the underground railroad, and to John Brown, who killed supporters of slavery and attempted to free and arm slaves through the seizure of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry.[[#153deCleyreReader5255|153]]
+No matter how big or small our tasks are, we must clearly examine and modify them to match the culture, living habits, level of education, struggling experiences, desire, will, and material conditions of the masses. On that basis we will form our ways of working and organizing. Only then can we have the masses on our side.
-Anarchists themselves engaged in a wide variety of different forms of direct action, both small and large scale. These included, but were not limited to, workplace strikes, rent strikes, combative demonstrations, riots, armed uprisings, prison escapes, industrial sabotage, boycotts, civil disobedience, and providing illegal abortions. A few of the more exciting, small-scale examples provide some sense of the range direct action could cover.
+Otherwise, if you just do as you want, following your own thoughts, your subjectivity, and then force your personal thoughts upon the masses, it is just like “cutting your feet to fit your shoes.” Feet are the masses. Shoes are our ways of organizing and working.
-Anarchists in Paris organized a socialist removal service that would, under the cover of night, move the possessions of poor families from their apartment before they had paid rent. On at least one occasion, anarchists gagged, tied up, and left a landlord or concierge on his bed in order to achieve this.[[#154JohnMerrimanTheDynamite|154]] In 1900, anarchists living in the United States unsuccessfully attempted to free Berkman from prison by digging an underground tunnel through which he could escape.[[#155PaulAvrichandKarenAvric|155]] Five years later, anarchists in the Russian empire defended Jewish people during the 1905 pogroms by organizing mobile defense units armed with pistols and bombs.[[#156MaurizioAntonioliedThe|156]] In 1919, nearly 150 anarchists, mostly women, rioted at the docks in Lower Manhattan, New York. This was in response to their family members and loved ones being arrested by the American government and deported to Russia for being anarchists.[[#157CornellUnrulyEquality7|157]] In September 1923, the Spanish anarchist affinity group Los Solidarios, which included Buenaventura Durruti, stole 650,000 pesetas from the Gijón branch of the Bank of Spain in order to buy weapons for a planned, but never carried out, insurrectionary general strike.[[#158AbelPazDurrutiintheSp|158]]
+Shoes are made to fit people’s feet, not the other way around.
-On numerous other occasions, anarchists participated in larger acts of collective direct action carried out by mass movements. In early 1902, Galleani and other anarchists organized a series of meetings among dye workers in Paterson, New Jersey. These culminated in a small strike being launched in mid-April by Italian dye workers. Over the following weeks the strike massively expanded and, on June 17, a general strike was proclaimed that mobilized around 15,000 dye and textile workers in the city and surrounding area. This expansion of the strike was driven forward by the efforts of anarchist militants who distributed local anarchist papers and organized meetings in Italian, German, and English. On June 18, Galleani gave a speech where he called upon the striking workers to “rise up!” and “answer the legal violence of capital with the human violence of revolt!” A group of between 1500 and 2000 striking dyers then marched into Paterson and proceeded to break the windows and doors of several dye works in order to drive out scabs and to close down production. This soon escalated into an extended gun battle with the police during which Galleani, who was armed with a revolver, received a minor gunshot wound to the face. The strike continued over the following week and ended with workers gaining a general wage increase.[[#159ZimmerImmigrants7778|159]]
+= Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism =
-From these examples, it is clear why anarchists advocated direct action. When successful, it either immediately results in a goal being achieved or imposes costs onto the ruling classes, such that they acquire an incentive to give into the demands of workers. A strike stops production and so a capitalist’s ability to earn profit. If a capitalist wants to stay in business, and is unable to break the strike, they have no choice but to increase wages, reduce hours of work, improve safety conditions, and so on.
+Dialectical Materialism, one of the materialist foundations of Marxism-Leninism, uses the materialist worldview and dialectical methods to study fundamental philosophical issues. Dialectical Materialism is the most advanced form of Materialism, and serves as the ''theoretical core of a scientific worldview.'' Therefore, thoroughly understanding the basic content of Dialectical Materialism is the essential prerequisite to study both the component principles of Marxism-Leninism in particular, and the whole of Marxism-Leninism in general.
-Anarchists advocated direct action not only because it was an effective means for achieving social change but also because it positively transformed those who engaged in it. According to the Austrian anarchist Siegfried Nacht, “it is above all through action that the people can educate themselves. Little by little, action will give them a revolutionary mentality.”[[#160AntonioliedInternationa|160]] Pouget held that “direct action has an unmatched educational value: It teaches people to reflect, to make decisions and to act. . . . Direct action thus releases the human being from the strangle-hold of passivity and listlessness. . . . It teaches him will-power, instead of mere obedience, and to embrace his sovereignty instead of conferring his part upon a deputy.”[[#161PougetDirectAction5S|161]]
+== I. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism ==
-Such a transformation in people was essential for the achievement of anarchist goals. The overthrow of class society and the construction of an anarchist society required the working classes to learn to act for themselves and collectively self-organize and self-determine their lives. This viewpoint was grounded in the theory that there is a connection between means and ends. For Kropotkin, the anarchist vision of a future society “necessarily leads us to develop for the struggle our own tactics, which consist in developing the greatest possible amount of ''individual initiative'' in each group and in each individual—unity in action being obtained by unity of purpose and by the force of persuasion.”[[#162KropotkinModernScience|162]] The social revolution would, after all, only be successful if the working classes had already, to quote Pouget, “acquired the capacity and will” to transform society and overcome “the difficulties that will crop up” through their “own direct efforts, on the capabilities that it possesses within itself.”[[#163PougetDirectAction7|163]] Direct action in the present “lays the groundwork” for the social revolution since “it is the popularization, in the old society of authoritarianism and exploitation, of the creative notions that set the human being free: development of the individual, cultivation of the will and galvanization for action.”[[#164PougetDirectAction20|164]] It was, as Galleani wrote, “the best available means for preparing the masses to manage their own personal and collective interests.”[[#165GalleaniEndofAnarchism|165]]
+=== 1. The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues ===
-'''The Spirit of Revolt'''
+''Philosophy is a system of the most general human theories and knowledge about our world, about ourselves, and our position in our world.''
-Malatesta wrote in 1889 that “the great revolution . . . will come as the result of relentless propaganda and an exceptional number of individual and collective revolts.”[[#166MalatestaMethodofFreedo|166]] He was not simply predicting that revolts would culminate in a social revolution. He was also arguing that revolts are a necessary aspect of the process of social change due to the manner in which they, like all forms of direct action, transform workers who participate in or observe them. He thought that “revolts play a huge part in bringing the revolution about and laying its ground-work.”[[#167MalatestaMethodofFreedo|167]] This was because
+Philosophy has existed for thousands of years. Philosophy has different objects of study depending on different periods of time. Summarizing the whole history of philosophy, Engels said: “The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being<ref>''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', Friedrich Engels, 1886.</ref>.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">it is deeds that trigger ideas, which in turn react with deeds and so on. . . . How ever could those millions of men—brutalized by exhausting toil; rendered anaemic by inadequate and unwholesome food; educated down through the ages in respect for priest, boss, and ruler; forever absorbed in the quest for their daily bread; superstitious; ignorant; fearful—one fine day perform an about face and emerge from their hovels, turn their backs on their entire past of patient submission, tear down the social institutions oppressing them and turn the world into a society made up of equals and brothers—had not a long string of extraordinary events forced their brains to think? If a thousand partial battles had not nurtured the spirit of rebellion in them, plus an appreciation of their own strength, a feeling of solidarity toward their fellow oppressed, hatred for the oppressor, and had not a thousand revolts taught them the art of people’s warfare and had they not found in the yearned for victory a reason to ask themselves: what shall we do tomorrow?[[#168MalatestaMethodofFreedo|168]]</div>
+So, philosophy studies the relations between consciousness and matter, and between humans and nature.
-Anarchists, in other words, believed that, in order for a social revolution to emerge, an increasingly large number of workers have to choose to engage in acts of revolt that transform them and motivate other workers to rise up against their oppressors. During the early 1880s, Kropotkin argued that this process must be driven forward by anarchist workers engaging in acts that spread, what he called, “the spirit of revolt.”[[#169Thisphrasecontinuedtobe|169]] According to Kropotkin, this was because the majority of workers will not become anarchists during periods of evolutionary change. Even a mass movement of one million anarchist workers would be a minority in a country of thirty million. Anarchism will only be embraced by workers throughout all of society during a revolutionary period, when vast numbers of previously indifferent people are caught up in a wave of excitement, become open to fundamentally new ways of thinking, and take an active role in reshaping society. This was demonstrated by the fact that, in the eighteenth century, republicanism and the desire to abolish monarchy only became popular in France during the French Revolution itself.[[#170KropotkinRebel7073|170]]
+In philosophy, there are two main questions:
-The success of anarchism therefore required establishing how evolution develops into revolution. Kropotkin answer was that “it is the ''action'' of the minorities, continuous action endlessly renewed that achieves this transformation” to a “revolutionary situation.”[[#171KropotkinRebel186|171]] He predicted that the actions of radical minorities, as individuals and groups, will spread discontent with the existing social system, hatred of the ruling classes, and “reawaken audacity, the spirit of revolt, through preaching by example.”[[#172KropotkinRebel186|172]] The acts of revolt carried out by courageous minorities will receive sympathy and support from workers not yet engaging in revolutionary action and thereby “find imitators,” such that, as the first radicals are being imprisoned, “others will appear to continue their work” and “the acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of revenge, will continue and multiply.”[[#173KropotkinRebel187|173]]
+'''Question 1: The question of consciousness and matter: which came first; or, to put it another way, which one determines which one?'''
-Kropotkin thought this would occur due to three interdependent processes: (a) revolutionary ideas will spread among previously indifferent workers who are now forced to pick a side in the ongoing class conflict; (b) workers will join the ongoing insurgency because its successes demonstrate the real possibility of overthrowing the ruling classes who previously seemed invincible; and (c) a vicious cycle of state repression will anger the working classes and provoke more and more acts of revolt. Over time, these acts of revolt will spread and grow in size and number until a full-blown social revolution breaks out.[[#174KropotkinRebel18790|174]]
+In attempting to answer this first question, philosophy has separated into two main schools: ''Materialism,'' and ''Idealism.''
-This social revolution will only adopt an anarchist character if anarchist workers play a key role in the early waves of revolt, because “the party which has done most revolutionary agitation, which has manifested most liveliness and audacity, will get the best hearing on the day when action becomes necessary, when someone must march at the head to accomplish the revolution.”[[#175KropotkinRebel189|175]] A social movement that fails to engage in “revolutionary action in the preparatory period” and make its ideas and aspirations popular among the masses “will have a scanty chance of realizing even the smallest part of its programme. It will be overtaken by the activist parties.”[[#176KropotkinRebel18990|176]]
+'''Question 2: Do humans have the capacity to perceive the world as it truly exists?'''
-Kropotkin developed this position from his study of how the French Revolution of 1789 arose. He claimed that, in urban areas, a minority of republican revolutionaries spread the spirit of revolt by popularizing their ideas through pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and songs as well as organizing protests where orators spoke, effigies of the ruling classes were burned, and soldiers were attacked if they attempted to break up the demonstration. Over time, this developed the militancy and daring of the masses until demonstrations transformed into riots and riots into a revolution.[[#177KropotkinRebel19296|177]] A similar pattern unfolded in the countryside. According to Kropotkin, “during the whole year of 1788 there were only half-hearted riots among the peasantry. Like the small and hesitant strikes today, they broke out here and there across France, but gradually they spread, became more broad and bitter, more difficult to suppress.”[[#178KropotkinRebel7374|178]] By 1789, the mass of peasantry had risen up to overthrow the ruling classes. They did so because they “saw that the government no longer had the strength to resist a rebellion” after “a few brave men set fire to the first châteaux, while the mass of people, still full of fear, waited until the flames from the conflagration of the great houses rose over the hills toward the clouds.”[[#179KropotkinRebel74|179]] The actions of these revolutionary minorities were the catalyst for a chain reaction of uprisings until
+In answer to this second question, two schools: ''Intelligibility'' — which admits the human cognitive capacity to truly perceive the world — and ''unintelligibility'' — which denies that capacity.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">it became impossible to control the revolution. . . . It had broken out almost simultaneously in a thousand places; in each village, in each town, in each city of the insurgent provinces, the revolutionary minorities, strong in their audacity and in the unspoken support they recognized in the aspirations of the people, marched to the conquest of the castles, of the town halls and finally of the Bastille, terrorizing the aristocracy and the upper middle class, abolishing privileges. The minority started the revolution and carried the people with it.[[#180KropotkinRebel74|180]]</div>
+Materialism is the belief that the nature of the world is matter; that matter comes first; and that matter determines consciousness. People who uphold this belief are called materialists. Throughout human history, many different factions of materialists with various schools of materialist thought have evolved.
-Kropotkin thought it would “be just the same with the revolution whose approach we foresee. The idea of anarchist communism, today represented by feeble minorities but increasingly finding popular expression, will make its way among the mass of the people.”[[#181KropotkinRebel75|181]] This would be achieved by groups of anarchist workers spreading throughout the populace in order to help organize acts of resistance and rebellion. Such collective struggles would culminate in revolution spreading widely until capitalism and the state had been overthrown. During this process, “what is now the minority will become the People, the great mass, and that mass rising up against property and the State, will march forward towards anarchist communism.”[[#182KropotkinRebel75|182]]
+Idealism is the belief that the nature of the world is consciousness; consciousness precedes matter; consciousness decides matter. People who uphold this belief are called idealists. Like materialism, various factions of idealists with varying schools of idealist thought have also evolved throughout history.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#14|1]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', ed. A. W. Zurbrugg (London: Merlin Books, 2016),'' ''77.</div>
+<br />
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#24|2]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Words of a'' ''Rebel ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992), 204. See also, 219.</div>
+Idealism has cognitive origins and social origins.
-[[#34|3]]. Quoted in Davide Turcato, ''Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution'','' 1889–1900 ''(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 55.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#44|4]]. Quoted in Turcato, ''Making Sense'', 55.</div>
+==== Annotation 50 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#54|5]]. Errico Malatesta, ''The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles, 1924–1931'', ed. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1995), 52.</div>
+''Cognitive origin'' refers to origination from the human consciousness of individuals.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#64|6]]. Quoted in Ruth Kinna, ''Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 132.</div>
+''Social origin'' refers to origination from social relations between human beings.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#74|7]]. Emma Goldman, ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader'', ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 74.</div>
+So, idealism originates from both the conscious activity of individual humans as well as social activity between human beings.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#84|8]]. Errico Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''449–50.</div>
+These origins are ''unilateral consideration'' and ''absolutization'' of only one aspect or one characteristic of the whole cognitive process.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#94|9]]. James Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization,” in ''No Gods'','' No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'','' ''ed. Daniel Guérin (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005),'' ''247.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#104|10]]. For example Charles Tilly, ''European Revolutions'','' 1492–1992'' (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 5.</div>
+==== Annotation 51 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#114|11]]. Alexander Berkman, ''What is Anarchism? ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003),'' ''180, 176.</div>
+''Unilateral consideration'' is the consideration of a subject from one side only.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#124|12]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Modern Science and Anarchy'', ed. Iain McKay'' ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018),'' ''275.</div>
+''Absolutization'' occurs when one conceptualizes some belief or supposition as ''always'' true in ''all'' situations ''without'' exception.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#133|13]]. Charlotte Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'', ed. Nicolas Walter (London: Freedom Press, 2000), 53.</div>
+Both unilateral consideration and absolutization fail to consider the dynamic, constantly changing, and interconnected relations of all things, phenomena, and ideas in our reality.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#143|14]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 220–21</div>
+Idealism originates from unilateral consideration because idealists ignore the material world and consider reality ''only'' from the perspective of the human mind. It also originates from absolutism because idealists ''absolutize'' human reasoning as the ''only'' source of truth and knowledge about our world ''without exception.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#153|15]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''The Conquest of Bread'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007), 156–57. For other examples see Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''197–99; Errico Malatesta, ''At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism'' (London: Freedom Press, 2005), 88–96. It should be kept in mind that, despite the ideas and actions of antipatriarchal anarchists within the movement, many anarchist men were sexists.</div>
+As Lenin wrote in ''On the Question of Dialectics'': “Philosophical idealism is a unilateral development, an overt development, of one out of many attributes, or one out of many aspects, of consciousness.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#163|16]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,'' ''1990), ed. Marshall Shatz, 133, 171; Mark Leier, ''Bakunin: The Creative Passion—A Biography'' (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009), 345n6. It should be kept in mind that on other occasions anarchists used the term “spontaneous” in a different sense to refer to actions that occurred impulsively, suddenly or without planning. For example, in 1924, Malatesta complained about some anarchists who wrongly believed that “human events,” including revolutions, “happen automatically, ''naturally'', without preparation, without organization, without preconceived plans.” See Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 461.</div>
+Historically, idealism has typically benefitted the oppressive, exploitative class of society. Idealism and religions usually have a close relation with each other, and support each other to co-exist and co-develop.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#173|17]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 20'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), 14.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#183|18]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta'','' ''ed. Vernon Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 83. For other examples of anarchists repeating the words of the preamble, see Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'','' ''234; Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 537.</div>
+==== Annotation 52 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#193|19]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 174.</div>
+Idealists, in absolutizing human consciousness, have a tendency to only give credence to the work of the mind and ignore the value of physical labor. This has been used to justify class structures in which religious and intellectual laborers are given authority and privilege over manual laborers.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#203|20]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'', 45. See also Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 241. There were a few anarchists who were pacifists committed to strict nonviolent resistance, but they were in the minority. See Bart de Ligt, ''The Conquest of Violence: An Essay on War and Revolution'' (London: Pluto Press, 1989).</div>
+This situation has also led to the idea that mental factors play a decisive role in the development of human society in particular and the whole world in general. This idealist view was supported by the ruling class and used to justify its own power and privilege in society. The dominant class has historically used such idealist philosophy as the justifying foundation for their political-social beliefs in order to maintain their ruling positions.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#213|21]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 53, 55, 59.</div>
+Marx discusses this tendency for rulers to idealistically justify their own rule in ''The German Ideology'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#223|22]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 156–57.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an ‘eternal law.’
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#233|23]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 157.</div>
+Marx goes on to explain how the idealist positions of the ruling class tend to get embedded in historical narratives:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#243|24]]. Quoted in George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumović, ''Peter Kropotkin: From Prince to Rebel ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1990), 160.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true. This historical method which reigned in Germany, and especially the reason why, must be understood from its connection with the illusion of ideologists in general, e.g. the illusions of the jurist, politicians (of the practical statesmen among them, too), from the dogmatic dreamings and distortions of these fellows; this is explained perfectly easily from their practical position in life, their job, and the division of labour.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#253|25]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 305.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#263|26]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 470, 477.</div>
+In history, there are two main forms of idealism: ''subjective'' and ''objective''.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#273|27]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science and Anarchy'', 169. See also, 275, 277.</div>
+''Subjective idealism'' asserts that ''consciousness'' is the primary existence. It asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions while denying the objective existence of material reality altogether.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#283|28]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct ''Struggle, 207. For other examples, see,'' ''145.</div>
+''Objective idealism'' also asserts the ideal and consciousness as the primary existence, but also posits that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. This concept is given many names, such as “absolute concept”, “absolute spirit,” “rationality of the world,” etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#293|29]]. Quoted in Caroline Cahm, ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism'','' 1872–1886'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),'' ''104.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#303|30]]. Woodcock and Avakumović, ''From Prince to Rebel'', 365–66.</div>
+==== Annotation 53 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#313|31]]. For example Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'','' ''171; Carlo Cafiero, ''Revolution'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2012), 24–25, 36–37, 47; Nestor Makhno, ''The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays'','' ''ed. Alexandre Skirda (San Francisco: AK Press, 1996), 86–7; Luigi Galleani, ''The End of Anarchism?'' (London: Elephant Editions, 2012), 76–77.</div>
+''Primary existence'' is existence which precedes and determines other existences.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#323|32]]. Quoted in Albert Parsons, ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis'' (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2003), 83, 82, 78.</div>
+Idealists believe that consciousness has primary existence over matter, that the nature of the world is ideal, and that the ideal defines existence.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#333|33]]. Rocker, “The Soviet System or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” in ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', ed. Friends of Aron Baron (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 56.</div>
+Materialists believe the opposite: that matter has primary existence over the ideal, and that matter precedes and determines consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#343|34]]. Rocker, “The Soviet System or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” 56.</div>
+Dialectical Materialism holds that matter and consciousness have a dialectical relationship, in which matter has primary existence over the ideal, though consciousness can impact the material world through willful conscious activity.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#353|35]]. Andrew R. Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'','' ''vol. 1,'' The Early Movement'' (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1972), 253–55.</div>
+The primary existence of matter within Dialectical Materialism is discussed further in ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#363|36]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''201–4.</div>
+Willful activity (''willpower'') is discussed in ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness'', p. 79.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#373|37]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 203. See also Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'', 62–65.</div>
+The key difference between ''subjective'' and ''objective'' idealists is this:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#383|38]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''563–64.</div>
+Subjective idealists believe that there is no external material world whatsoever — that what we imagine as the material world is merely illusory — and that all reality is created by consciousness, whereas objective idealists believe that there ''is'' a material world outside of human consciousness, but it exists independently of human consciousness; therefore (according to objective idealists), since humans can only observe the world through conscious experience, the material world can never be truly known or observed by our consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#393|39]]. Quoted in Paul Avrich, ''The Haymarket Tragedy'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 67.</div>
+In opposition to Idealism, Materialism originated through practical experience and the development of science. Through practical experience and systematic development of human knowledge, Materialism has come to serve as a universally applicable theoretical system which benefits progressive social forces and which also orients the activities of those forces in both perception and practice.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#403|40]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 28. Bakunin made a similar remark in 1842 prior to becoming an anarchist. See Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', ed. Arthur Lehning (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 58. For examples of this idea being repeated by later anarchists, see Berkman, ''The Blast ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 10; Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 222; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''579.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#413|41]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'','' ''183–84. See also Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''145–46.</div>
+==== Annotation 54 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#423|42]]. Kropotkin, ''Conquest of Bread'', 67–68.</div>
+Materialism benefits progressive social forces by showing reality as it is, by dispelling the idealist positions of the ruling class, and by revealing that society and the world can be changed through willful activity.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#433|43]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Memoirs of a Revolutionist ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 270–71.</div>
+Materialism guides progressive social forces by grounding thought and activity in material reality, enabling strategies and outcomes that line up with the realities of the material world. For instance, we must avoid utopianism [see Annotation 17, p. 18] in which emphasis is placed on working out ideal forms of society through debate, conjecture, and conscious activity alone. Revolution against capitalism must, instead, focus on affecting material relations and processes of development through willful activity.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#443|44]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 400.</div>
+As Engels pointed out in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'': “The final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#453|45]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'','' ''72. See also Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 322, 535, 553.</div>
+=== 2. Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#463|46]]. Luigi Fabbri, “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism,” in ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', ed. Friends of Aron Baron (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 28.</div>
+In human history, as human society and scientific understanding have developed, materialism has also developed through three forms: ''Primitive Materialism, Metaphysical Materialism,'' and ''Dialectical Materialism.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#473|47]]. Nabat, “Proceedings of Nabat,” in ''No Gods'','' No Masters'', 487.</div>
+''Primitive Materialism'' is the primitive form of materialism. Primitive materialism recognizes that matter comes first, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects, the origin, of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. These Primitive Materialist concepts can be found in many ancient materialist theories in such places as China, India, and Greece. [These Primitive Materialist elemental philosophies are discussed more in ''Matter'', p. 53] Although it has many shortcomings, Primitive Materialism is partially correct at the most fundamental level, because it uses the material of nature itself to explain nature.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#483|48]]. The following account of social revolution can be seen in Berkman, ''Anarchism'','' ''177–236; Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 99–103; Malatesta, ''Café'', 122–25.</div>
+''Metaphysical Materialism'' is the second basic form of Materialism. This form of materialism was widely discussed and developed in Western Europe in the 17<sup>th</sup> and 18<sup>th</sup> centuries. During this time, the metaphysical method of perceiving the world was applied to materialist philosophy. Although Metaphysical Materialism does not accurately reflect the world in terms of universal relations [see p. 108] and development, it was an important step forward in the fight against idealist and religious worldviews, especially during the transformational period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in many Western European countries.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#493|49]]. Anarchists typically claimed that only means of production and land that was used by a capitalist or landowner to profit off the labor of others would be expropriated. See Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 214; Kropotkin, ''Conquest of Bread'', 89. For how the expropriation of food, clothing, and housing was envisioned, see ibid., 70–71, 103–4, 121–22, 127.</div>
+==== Annotation 55 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#503|50]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 170–71.</div>
+Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by ''mechanical philosophy'', a scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17<sup>th</sup> century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Mechanical philosophy led to a belief that all things — including living organisms — were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices. Influenced by this philosophy, metaphysical materialists came to see the world as a giant mechanical machine composed of parts, each of which exists in an essentially isolated and static state.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#513|51]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 179. For his participation in 1848 and the 1849 insurrection, see E. H. Carr, ''Michael Bakunin'' (London: The Macmillan Press, 1975), 149–62, 189–94.</div>
+Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes Metaphysical materialism contributed significantly to the struggle against idealistic and religious worldviews, especially during the historical transition period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Western European countries. Metaphysical materialism also had severe limitations; especially in failing to understand many key aspects of reality, such as the nature of development through change/motion and relationships.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#523|52]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''157.</div>
+''Dialectical Materialism'' is the third basic form of materialism. It was founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many of his successors. By inheriting the quintessence of previous theories and thoroughly integrating contemporary scientific achievements, Dialectical Materialism immediately solved the shortcomings of the Primitive Materialism of ancient times as well as the Metaphysical Materialism of modern Western Europe. It reaches the highest development level of materialism so far in history.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#533|53]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'','' ''232. See also Malatesta,'' Patient Work'', 85; Makhno, ''Struggle'', 57–58, 89; Gregori P. Maximoff, ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism ''(n.p., Guillotine Press, 2015), 43–46.</div>
+By accurately reflecting objective reality with universal relations and development*, Dialectical Materialism offers humanity a great tool for scientific cognitive activities and revolutionary practice. The Dialectical Materialist system of thought was built on the basis of scientific explanations about matter, consciousness, and the relationship between the two.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#543|54]]. Quoted in José Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1, ed. Chris Ealham (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011), 109.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#553|55]]. Quoted in José Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1, 110.</div>
+==== Annotation 56 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#563|56]]. The complex history of anarchist military participation in the Russian and Spanish civil wars goes beyond the scope of this book. For overviews, see Peter Arshinov, ''History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918–1921'' (London: Freedom Press, 2005); Makhno, ''Struggle'','' ''6–23; Agustín Guillamón, ''Ready for Revolution: The CNT Defense Committees in Barcelona, 1933–1938'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014).</div>
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Materialist Dialectical methodology explains the world in terms of relationships and development. This is discussed in ''Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics'', p. 106.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#573|57]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 542–4, 551–5; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 191–5; Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 101–2, 186–89, 203. Malatesta also pointed out that anarchists would be but one faction within the revolution. See Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''472.</div>
+== II. Dialectical Materialist Opinions About Matter, Consciousness, and the Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#583|58]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 218. The fear that a social revolution could be crippled by food shortages was shared by Malatesta. See Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 428–9.</div>
+=== 1. Matter ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#593|59]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 207, 218–20; Kropotkin, ''Conquest of Bread'', 95–97; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 588.</div>
+==== a. Category of “Matter” ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#603|60]]. Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization,” 266.</div>
+<br />
+''Matter'' is a philosophical subject which has been examined for more than 2,500 years. Since ancient times, there has been a relentless struggle between materialism and idealism around this subject. Idealism asserts that the world’s nature, the first basis of all existence, is consciousness, and that matter is only a product of that consciousness. Conversely, materialism asserts that nature, the entirety of the world, is composed of matter, that this material world exists indefinitely, and that all things and phenomena are composed of matter.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#613|61]]. Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization,” 266. See also Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 37–38.</div>
+Before dialectical materialism was born, materialist philosophers generally believed that matter was composed of some self-contained element or elements; that is to say some underlying substance from which everything in the universe is ultimately derived. In ancient times, the five elements theory of Chinese philosophy held that those self-contained substances were ''metal — wood — water — fire — earth;'' in India, the Samkhya school believed that they were ''Pradhana'' or ''Prakriti''<ref>According to the Samkhya school, Pradhana is the original form of matter in an unmanifested,indifferentiated state; ''Prakriti'' is manifested matter, differentiated in form, which contains potential for motion.</ref>'';'' in Greece, the Milesian school believed they were ''water'' (Thales’s<ref>Thales, ~642 — ~547 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, politician.</ref> conception) or ''air'' (Anaximene’s<ref>Anaximene, ~585 — ~525 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher.</ref> conception); Heraclitus<ref>Heraclitus, ~540 — ~480 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, founder of ancient dialectics.</ref> believed the ultimate element was ''fire;'' Democritus<ref>Democritus, ~460 — ~370 B.C. (Greek): Philosopher, naturalist, a founder of atom theory.</ref> asserted that it was something called an “atom,”'''' etc. Even as recently as the 17<sup>th</sup>-18<sup>th</sup> centuries, conceptions about matter belonging to modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon<ref>Francis Bacon, 1561 — 1626 (British): Philosopher, novelist, mathematician, political activist.</ref>, Renes Descartes<ref>Rene Descartes, 1596 — 1650 (Fench): Philosopher, mathematician, physicist.</ref>, Thomas Hobbes<ref>Thomas Hobbes, 1588 — 1679 (British): Political philosopher, political activist.</ref>, Denis Diderot<ref>Denis Diderot, 1713 — 1784 (French): Philosopher, novelist.</ref>, etc., still hadn’t changed much. They continued following the same philosophical tendency as ancient philosophers by focusing their studies of the material world through elemental phenomena.
-[[#623|62]]. Kropotkin, ''Conquest of Bread''.
+These conceptions of matter which were developed by philosophers before Marx’s time laid a foundation for a tendency to use nature to explain nature itself, but that tendency still had many shortcomings, such as: oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements;” failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness; failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#633|63]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 228.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#643|64]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 34, 43.</div>
+==== Annotation 57 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#653|65]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 43.</div>
+Here are further explanations of these shortcomings of early materialists:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#663|66]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 71.</div>
+'''Oversimplification of matter into fictitious “elements”'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#673|67]]. Malatesta, ''Café'', 137. See also Kenyon Zimmer, ''Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 111.</div>
+Due to a lack of understanding and knowledge of matter, metaphysical materialists created erroneous conceptions of “elements” which do not accurately describe the nature of matter. By using such an erroneously conceived system of non-existing elements to describe nature, metaphysical materialists were prevented from gaining real insights into the material world which delayed and hindered scientific progress.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#683|68]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''153.</div>
+'''Failure to understand the nature of consciousness as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#693|69]]. Zimmer, ''Immigrants'', 182–88.</div>
+Many early materialists believed that consciousness was simply a mechanical byproduct of material processes, and that mental events (thoughts, consciousness) could not affect the material world, since these events were simply mechanically determined ''by'' the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#703|70]]. Quoted in Zimmer, ''Immigrants'', 182.</div>
+As a first principle, Dialectical Materialism does hold that consciousness is ''created by'' matter. However, Dialectical Materialism also holds that consciousness can ''influence'' the material world through conscious action. This constitutes a dialectical relationship.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#713|71]]. Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer, ed., ''Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW'' (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 4–7, 29–43; Zimmer, ''Immigrants'', 101–10.</div>
+As Lenin explains in ''Materialism and Empirio-criticism'': “Consciousness in general ''reflects'' being—that is a general principle of ''all'' materialism... social consciousness ''reflects'' social being.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#722|72]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''138–41; Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''221–37; Zimmer, ''Immigrants'','' ''120–24; Federico Ferretti, ''Anarchy and Geography: Reclus and Kropotkin in the UK ''(London: Routledge, 2019), 104–15, 120–43.</div>
+Whereas early materialists erroneously held that consciousness is simply an “accidental” byproduct of matter, Dialectical Materialism holds that consciousness is a characteristic of the ''nature'' of matter. As Engels wrote in the notation of ''Dialectics of Nature'':
-[[#732|73]]. Maximoff, ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 43.
+<blockquote>
+That matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain is for mechanism a pure accident, although necessarily determined, step by step, where it happens. But the truth is that it is the nature of matter to advance to the evolution of thinking beings, hence this always necessarily occurs wherever the conditions for it (not necessarily identical at all places and times) are present.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#742|74]]. “International Anarchist Manifesto Against War (1915),” in ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas'','' ''vol. 1,'' From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', ed. Robert Graham (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005), 290. See also Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''379–87.</div>
+Dialectical materialism also breaks from early materialism by positing that consciousness has a dialectical relationship with matter. Consciousness arises from the material world, but can also influence the material world through conscious action. In other words, mental events can trigger physical actions which affect the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#752|75]]. Kinna, ''Kropotkin'','' ''177–83; Matthew S. Adams and Ruth Kinna, eds. ''Anarchism, 1914–18: Internationalism, Anti-Militarism and War'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017); A. W. Zurbrugg, ''Anarchist Perspectives in Peace and War, 1900–1918'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2018), 157–81.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#762|76]]. Marie Fleming, ''The Anarchist Way to Socialism:'' Élisée'' Reclus and Nineteenth-Century European Anarchism ''(London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1979),'' ''77, 157–58; Kropotkin, ''Memoirs'', 412; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 95, 97; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 195–96, 342; Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 55.</div>
+As Marx explains in ''Theses on Feuerbach'':
-[[#772|77]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''172.
+<blockquote>
+The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice... Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#782|78]]. Élisée Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' Geography'','' Modernity: Selected Writings of Élisée Reclus'', ed. John Clark and Camille Martin (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013), 138.</div>
+Put more simply, we as humans are capable of “revolutionary practice” which can “change the world” because our consciousness allows us to “change circumstances.” This is discussed further in ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness'', p. 79.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#792|79]]. Émile Pouget, “The Party of Labour,” Libcom website, November 19, 2010, https://libcom.org/article/party-labour-emile-pouget.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Failure to recognize the significance of matter in human society, leading to a failure to solve social issues based on a materialist basis
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#802|80]]. Pouget, “The Party of Labour.”</div>
+Dialectical materialists believe that matter exists in many forms, and that human society is a special form of existence of matter. Lenin referred to the material existence of human society as ''social being'', which stood in contrast with human society’s ''social consciousness.'' Social being encompasses all of the material existence and processes of human society.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#812|81]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 251–52. Bakunin used similar imagery in a letter to Nechaev. See Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 183.</div>
+As Lenin wrote in ''Materialism and Empirio-criticism'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#822|82]]. Guillaume, “Ideas on Social Organization,” 247. This dam metaphor can also be found in Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolutions'','' ''81.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Social being is independent of the social consciousness of men. The fact that you live and conduct your business, beget children, produce products and exchange them, gives rise to an objectively necessary chain of events, a chain of development, which is independent of your social consciousness, and is never grasped by the latter completely. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#832|83]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 179.</div>
+Early materialists failed to recognise the relationship between matter and consciousness — as Lenin puts it, specifically, between ''social being'' and ''social consciousness''. Thus in contemplating social issues, these early materialists were unable to find proper materialist solutions.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#842|84]]. This idea has been falsely attributed to Kropotkin. Malatesta, for example, makes this claim in his 1931 article “Peter Kropotkin: Recollections and Criticisms by One of His Old Friends.” See Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 516–20. For a critique of fatalistic readings of Kropotkin, see Matthew S. Adams, ''Kropotkin'','' Read'','' and the Intellectual History of British Anarchism: Between Reason and Romanticism'' (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015) 106–11.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#852|85]]. Reclus,'' Anarchy'', 139.</div>
+These shortcomings resulted in a non-thorough materialist viewpoint: when dealing with questions about nature, the early materialists had a strong materialist viewpoint but when dealing with social issues, they “slipped” into an idealist viewpoint.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#862|86]]. Malatesta, ''Café'', 105.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#872|87]]. Mella, “Evolution and Revolution,” Biblioteca Anarquista website, https://es.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ricardo-mella-evolucion-y-revolucion. See also Ricardo Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: A Ricardo Mella Anthology'','' ''ed. Stephen Luis Vilaseca (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 87–92, 227.</div>
+==== Annotation 58 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#882|88]]. Malatesta,'' Café'', 105.</div>
+Lenin explains this concept of “slipping into” idealism through a non-thorough materialist viewpoint in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism:'' “Once you deny objective reality, given us in sensation, you have already lost every one of your weapons against fideism, for you have slipped into agnosticism or subjectivism — and that is all fideism wants.”
-[[#892|89]]. James Yeoman, ''Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890–1915'' (New York: Routledge, 2020), 40–44, 248–49; George Richard Esenwein,'' Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain'','' 1868–1898 ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 127; Chris Ealham, ''Living Anarchism: José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015), 72–74.
+''Note: fideism is a form of idealism which holds that truth and knowledge are received through faith or revelation. Subjectivism is the centering of one’s own self in conscious activities and perspective; see Annotation 222, p. 218.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#902|90]]. Jerome R. Mintz, ''The Anarchists of Casas Viejas ''(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 80, 120n3; Yeoman, ''Print Culture'', 46.</div>
+In the same work, Lenin upholds that objective reality can be known through sense perception:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#912|91]]. Yeoman, ''Print Culture'', 16–19, 43–50, 146–47.</div>
+<blockquote>
+We ask, is a man given objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or not? [...] If you hold that it is not given, you... inevitably sink to subjectivism... If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.
+</blockquote>
-[[#922|92]]. Pietro Di Paola, ''The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora, 1880–1917 ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 1–2; Paul Avrich, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background ''(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 47.
+Lenin also explains that proper materialism must recognize objective/absolute truth:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#932|93]]. Yeoman, ''Print Culture'', 147–48.</div>
+<blockquote>
+To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#942|94]]. Lucy Parsons, ''Freedom'','' Equality and Solidarity: Writings and Speeches'','' 1878–1937'','' ''ed. Gale Ahrens (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2004), 31.</div>
+A failure to recognize the existence of such objective, absolute truth, according to Lenin, constitutes “relativism,” a position that all truth is relative and can never be absolutely, objectively knowable.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#952|95]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 46.</div>
+<blockquote>
+It is unconditionally true that to every scientific ideology (as distinct, for instance, from religious ideology), there corresponds an objective truth, absolute nature. You will say that this distinction between relative and absolute truth is indefinite. And I shall reply: yes, it is sufficiently ‘indefinite’ to prevent science from becoming a dogma in the bad sense of the term, from becoming something dead, frozen, ossified; but it is at the same time sufficiently ‘definite’ to enable us to dissociate ourselves in the most emphatic and irrevocable manner from fideism and agnosticism, from philosophical idealism and the sophistry of the followers of Hume and Kant. Here is a boundary which you have not noticed, and not having noticed it, you have fallen into the swamp of reactionary philosophy. It is the boundary between dialectical materialism and relativism.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#962|96]]. Kropotkin, ''Memoirs'', 390–91.</div>
+In other words, while proper materialism must contain a degree of relativistic thinking sufficient to challenge assumptions and reexamine perceived truth periodically, materialists must not fall into complete relativism (such as that espoused by Hume and Kant) lest they fall into idealist positions. Ultimately, Absolute Truth — according to Lenin — constitutes the alignment of conscious understanding with objective reality (not to be confused with Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth; see Annotation 232, p. 228).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#972|97]]. For examples of anarchist counterculture see Avrich, ''Haymarket'','' ''131–49; Di Paola, ''Knights Errant'', 169–83; Tom Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City'','' 1880–1914'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007),'' ''34–51, 168–82; Andrew Douglas Hoyt, “And They Called Them ‘Galleanisti’: The Rise of the ''Cronca Sovversiva'' and the Formation of America’s Most Infamous Anarchist Faction (1895–1912),” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2018), 76–125; Esenwein, ''Anarchist Ideology'','' ''124–31; Angel Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State'','' 1989–1923'' (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 155–62, 259–62; Zimmer, ''Immigrants'','' ''24–26, 35–37, 62–66.</div>
+Lenin recognized the development of Marx and Engels as “''modern materialism'', which is immeasurably richer in content and in comparably more consistent than all preceding forms of materialism,” in large part because Marx and Engels were able to apply materialism properly to social sciences by taking the “direct materialist road as against idealism.” He goes on to describe would-be materialists who fall to idealist positions due to relativism and other philosophical inadequacies as “a contemptible ''middle party'' in philosophy, who confuse the materialist and idealist trends on every question.”
-[[#982|98]]. Martha Ackelsberg, ''Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 84–88; Ealham, ''Living Anarchism'','' ''50–55; Chris Ealham: ''Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona'','' 1898–1937 ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 45–47; Danny Evans, ''Revolution and the State: Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020), 23.
+Lenin warned that a failure to hold a thoroughly materialist viewpoint leads philosophers to become “ensnared in idealism, that is, in a diluted and subtle fideism; they became ensnared from the moment they took ‘sensation’ not as an image of the external world but as a special ‘element.’ It is nobody’s sensation, nobody’s mind, nobody’s spirit, nobody’s will — this is what one inevitably comes to if one does not recognise the materialist theory that the human mind reflects an objectively real external world.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#992|99]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''303.</div>
+In other words, idealist conceptions of sensation inject mysticism into philosophy by conceiving of sensation as otherworldly, supernatural, and detached from material human beings with material experiences in the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1002|100]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''46.</div>
+The development of natural sciences in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century and early 20<sup>th</sup> centuries (especially the inventions of Roentgen<ref>Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, 1845–1923 (German): Physicist.</ref>, Becquerel<ref>Henri Becquerel, 1852–1908 (French): Physicist.</ref>, Thomson<ref>Sir Joseph John Thomson, 1856–1940 (British): Physicist, professor at London Royal Institute.</ref> etc.), disproved the theories of “classical elements” such as fire, water, air, etc. [see ''Primitive Materialism'', p. 52]. These innovations led to a viewpoint crisis in the field of physical science. Many idealists used this opportunity to affirm the non-material nature of the world, ascribing the roles of supernatural forces to the birth of the world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1012|101]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'','' ''401–2.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1022|102]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 404.</div>
+==== Annotation 59 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1032|103]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 306–7.</div>
+Lenin discussed this viewpoint crisis extensively in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''. Here Lenin discusses relativist reactions to new breakthroughs in natural science, which led even scientists (who proclaimed to be materialists) to take idealist positions:
-[[#1042|104]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 179.
+<blockquote>
+We are faced, says Poincaré [a French scientist], with the “ruins” of the old principles of physics, “a general debacle of principles.” It is true, he remarks, that all the mentioned departures from principles refer to infinitesimal magnitudes; it is possible that we are still ignorant of other infinitesimals counteracting the undermining of the old principles... But at any rate we have reached a “period of doubt.” We have already seen what epistemological deductions the author draws from this “period of doubt:” “it is not nature which imposes on [or dictates to] us the concepts of space and time, but we who impose them on nature;” “whatever is not thought, is pure nothing.” These deductions are idealist deductions. The breakdown of the most fundamental principles shows (such is Poincaré’s trend of thought) that these principles are not copies, photographs of nature, not images of something external in relation to man’s consciousness, but products of his consciousness. Poincaré does not develop these deductions consistently, nor is he essentially interested in the philosophical aspect of the question.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1052|105]]. Quoted in A. W. Zurbrugg, “Introduction” in Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 14.</div>
+Lenin concludes by stating that the non-thorough materialist position has lead directly to these idealist positions of relativism:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1062|106]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 420, 426. See also Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 46–47.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The essence of the crisis in modern physics consists in the breakdown of the old laws and basic principles, in the rejection of an objective reality existing outside the mind, that is, in the replacement of materialism by idealism and agnosticism.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1072|107]]. Luigi Fabbri, “Revolution and Dictatorship: On One Anarchist Who Has Forgotten his Principles,” trans. Paul Sharkey, Kate Sharpley Library website, https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8932r8. See also Berkman, ''Anarchism'','' ''136; Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''3, 143.</div>
+With this historical background, in order to fight against the distortions of many idealists and to protect the development of the materialist viewpoint, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin simultaneously summarized all the natural scientific achievements in late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> century and built upon Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ thought to develop this definition of matter:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1082|108]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''147, 148.</div>
+''“Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1092|109]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''147.</div>
+Lenin’s definition of matter shows that:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1102|110]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''147.</div>
+''First,'' we need to distinguish between the definition of “matter” as a philosophical category (the category that summarizes the most basic and common attributes of all material existence, and which was defined with the objective of solving the basic issues of philosophy) from the definition of “matter” that was used in specialized sciences (specific and sense-detectable substance).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1112|111]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''200.</div>
+''Second,'' the most basic, common attribute of all kinds of matter [and under both definitions listed in the previous paragraph] is ''objective existence,'' meaning matter exists outside of human consciousness, independently of human consciousness, no matter whether humans can perceive it with our senses or not.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1122|112]]. For the first uses of these terms, see Carl Boggs, “Marxism, Prefigurative Communism and the Problem of Workers’ Control,” ''Radical America'' 11 (1977): 99–122; Wini Breines, “Community and Organization: The New Left and Michels’ ‘Iron Law,’” ''Social Problems'' 27, no. 4 (1980): 419–29. For a broad overview of this topic, see Paul Raekstad and Sofa Saio Gradin, ''Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today ''(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020).</div>
+''Third,'' matter, with its specific forms, can cause and affect mental events in humans when it directly or indirectly impacts the human senses; human consciousness is the reflection of matter; matter is the thing that is reflected by human consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1132|113]]. Some anarchists rejected this idea. Nettlau argued that anarchist organizations built in the present should not be viewed as the embryo of the future society because we should not “permit the present to mortgage or lay its hands upon the future” and we “have no real knowledge of the nature of ''the society of the future, which, like life itself, will have to remain ‘without adjectives.’''” See Max Nettlau, ''A Short History of Anarchism'', ed. Heiner M. Becker (London: Freedom Press, 1996),'' ''196, 208, 282.</div>
+Lenin’s definition of matter played an important role in the development of materialism and scientific consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1142|114]]. Bernard H. Moss, ''The Origins of the French Labor Movement: The Socialism of Skilled Workers ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 32–41,'' ''69.</div>
+''First,'' by pointing out that the most basic, common attribute of matter is objective existence, Lenin successfully distinguished the basic difference between the definition of matter as a philosophical category and the definition of matter as a category of specialized sciences. It helped solve the problems of defining matter in the previous forms of materialism; it offered scientific evidence to define what can be considered matter; it layed out a theoretical foundation for building a materialist viewpoint of history, and overcame the shortcomings of idealist conceptions of society.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1152|115]]. César De Paepe, “The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth website, March 20, 2018, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-translations/the-present-institutions-of-the-international-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-future-1869.</div>
+''Second,'' by asserting that matter was ''“objective reality,” “given to man in his sensations,”'' and “''copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations,”'' Lenin not only confirmed the primary existence of matter and the secondary existence of consciousness [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness, p. 88''] but he also affirmed that humans had the ability to be aware of objective reality through the “copying, photographing and reflection of our sensations” [in other words, sense perceptions].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1162|116]]. César De Paepe, “The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future.” For an overview of his life and ideas, see William Whitham, “César De Paepe and the Ideas of the First International,” ''Modern Intellectual History ''16, no. 3 (2019):'' ''897–925.</div>
+==== b. Mode and Forms of Existence of Matter ====
-[[#1172|117]]. Robert Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'','' We Invoke It: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015), 109; Wolfgang Eckhardt, ''The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association'' (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016),'' ''9.
+According to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, ''motion'' is the mode of existence of matter; ''space'' and ''time'' are the forms of existence of matter.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1182|118]]. For the context of the “Sonvilier Circular,” see Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'', 167–75; Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'', 85–120.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1192|119]]. The Jura Federation, “The Sonvilier Circular,” in ''Libertarian Ideas'','' ''vol. 1, 97–98. For Marx and Engels’s response, in which they reject this position, see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 23'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 64–70.</div>
+==== Annotation 60 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1202|120]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'','' ''180–81. See also Michael Bakunin, ''The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869–1871'', ed. and trans. Robert M. Cutler (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), 139.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Mode refers to the way or manner in which something occurs or exists. You can think of mode as pertaining to the “how,” as opposed to the “what.” For example, the ''mode'' of circulation refers to ''how'' commodities circulate within society [see Annotation 14, p. 16]; ''mode'' of production refers to ''how'' commodities are produced in society. So, mode of existence of matter refers to ''how'' matter exists in our universe.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1212|121]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Fugitive Writings'', ed. George Woodcock (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1993),'' ''41.</div>
+Form comes from the category pair [see ''Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics'', p. 126] of Content and Form [see p. 147]. Form refers to how we perceive objects, phenomena, and ideas. So, form of existence of matter refers to the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter [explained below] in our universe.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1222|122]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 20.</div>
+''- Motion is the Mode of Existence of Matter''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1232|123]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 397.</div>
+As Friedrich Engels explained: ''“Motion, in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking.”''
-[[#1242|124]]. Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism'','' ''91.
+According to Engels, motion encompasses more than just positional changes. Motion embodies “all the changes and processes happening in this universe;” matter is always associated with motion, and matter can only express its existence through motion.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1252|125]]. Isaac Puente, Libertarian Communism, (Johannesburg: Zabalaza Books, 2005), 10.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1261|126]]. Bakunin, ''Basic Bakunin'', 153; Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''358–60; Fleming, ''Anarchist Way'','' ''129–30; Reclus, ''Anarchy'', 152–55. For examples of anarchist cooperatives and intentional communities, see Andrew Cornell, ''Unruly Equality: US Anarchism in the Twentieth Century ''(Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016),'' ''96–100, 129–33; John Quail, ''The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of British Anarchists'' (London: Granada Publishing Limited, 1978),'' ''224–31.</div>
+==== Annotation 61 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1271|127]]. Paul Avrich, ''The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006), 50–51, 261–64; Constance Bantman, ''The French Anarchists in London'','' 1880–1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation'' (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013),'' ''90–91; Fausto Buttà, ''Living Like Nomads: The Milanese Anarchist Movement Before Fascism'' (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 120–29;'' ''Hoyt, “And They Called Them ‘Galleanisti,’” 102–20; Yeoman, ''Print Culture'', 151–62.</div>
+In Dialectical Materialist philosophy, “motion” is also known as “change” and it refers to the changes which occur as a result of the mutual impacts which occur in or between subjects through the negation of contradictions. Motion is a constant attribute of all things, phenomena, and ideas (see Characteristics of Development, p. 124).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1281|128]]. Ardouin et al., “Liberty Through Education: The Libertarian School,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth website, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-translations/liberty-through-education-1898.</div>
+Because matter is inseparable from motion (and vice versa), Engels defined motion as the ''mode'' of matter — the way or manner in which matter exists. It is impossible for matter in our universe to exist in completely static and unchanging state, isolated from the rest of existence; thus matter exists in the ''mode'' of motion. Over time, motion leads to ''development'' as things, phenomena, and ideas transition through various stages of quality change [see Annotation 117, p. 119].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1291|129]]. Francisco Ferrer, ''Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader'','' ''ed. Mark Bray and Robert H. Haworth'' ''(Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2019), 86. See also, 50–51.</div>
+Matter exists objectively, therefore motion also exists objectively. The motion of matter is self-motion<ref>In the original Vietnamese, the word tự vận động is used here, which we roughly translate to the word ''self-motion'' throughout this book. Literally, tự vận động means: “it moves itself.”</ref>.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1301|130]]. Ferrer,'' Anarchist Education'', 85–93. Anarchists disagreed on whether or not schools run by anarchists should teach anarchist ideas. See ibid., 188–206; Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism'','' ''185–201.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1311|131]]. Avrich, ''Modern School'','' ''29–31.</div>
+==== Annotation 62 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1321|132]]. Cornell, ''Unruly Equality'','' ''159–60, 163, 208–9.</div>
+It is important to note that “matter,” in the philosophical sense as used in dialectical materialist phlosophy, includes all that is “objective” (external) to individual human cosnciousness. This includes objective phenomena which human senses are unable to detect, such as objective social relations, objective economic values, etc. Objectiveness is discussed more in Annotation 108, p. 112; objective social relations are discussed more in Annotation 10, p. 10.
-[[#1331|133]]. Wilson,'' Anarchist Essays'', 43.
+In ''Dialectics of Nature'', Friedrich Engels discussed the properties of motion and explained that motion can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore, motion can only change form or transfer from one object to another. In this sense, all objects are dynamically linked together through motion:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1341|134]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''140. See also Reclus, ''Anarchy'', 188.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existence extending from stars to atoms... In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. It already becomes evident here that matter is unthinkable without motion. And if, in addition, matter confronts us as something given, equally uncreatable as indestructible, it follows that motion also is as uncreatable as indestructible. It became impossible to reject this conclusion as soon as it was recognised that the universe is a system, an interconnection of bodies.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1351|135]]. Quoted in Jennifer Guglielmo, ''Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City'','' 1880–1945 ''(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 165.</div>
+In other words, every body of matter is in motion relative to other bodies of matter, and thus matter is inseparable from motion. Motion results from the interaction of bodies of matter. Because motion and matter define each other, and because motion can only exist in relation to matter and matter can only exist in relation to motion, the motion of matter can be described as “self-motion,” because the motion is not created externally but exists only within and in relation to matter itself. Engels further explains that if this were not true — if motion were external to matter — then motion itself would have had to have been created external to matter, which is impossible:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1361|136]]. Ackelsberg, ''Free Women'','' ''46–52, 171–2; Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution'','' ''155–58, 195–99; J. Mintz, ''Casas Viejas'', 91–99; Zimmer, ''Immigrants'','' ''44–46; Guglielmo,'' Living the Revolution'','' ''154, 156,'' ''171–72; Ginger Frost, “Love is Always Free: Anarchism, Free Unions and Utopianism in Edwardian England,” ''Anarchist Studies'' 17, no. 1 (2009): 73–94.</div>
+<blockquote>
+To say that matter during the whole unlimited time of its existence has only once, and for what is an infinitesimally short period in comparison to its eternity, found itself able to differentiate its motion and thereby to unfold the whole wealth of this motion, and that before and after this remains restricted for eternity to mere change of place — this is equivalent to maintaining that matter is mortal and motion transitory. The indestructibility of motion cannot be merely quantitative, it must also be conceived qualitatively; matter whose purely mechanical change of place includes indeed the possibility under favourable conditions of being transformed into heat, electricity, chemical action, or life, but which is not capable of producing these conditions from out of itself, such matter has forfeited motion; motion which has lost the capacity of being transformed into the various forms appropriate to it may indeed still have dynamis but no longer energeia, and so has become partially destroyed. Both, however, are unthinkable.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1371|137]]. Quoted in Ackelsberg, ''Free Women'', 115.</div>
+So, motion can change forms and can transfer from one material body to another, but it can never be created externally from matter, and neither motion nor matter can be created or destroyed in our universe. Thus, matter exists in a state of “self-motion;” motion can never externally be created nor externally applied to matter.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1381|138]]. Ackelsberg, ''Free Women'','' ''77, 87–88, 103, 115–20, 123.</div>
+To put it another way, motion results from the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist as assemblages of relationships [see The Principle of General Relationships, p. 107], and these relationships contain opposing forces. As Lenin explained in his ''Philosophical Notebooks'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1391|139]]. Guglielmo, ''Living the Revolution'', 156, 159–60, 162–63.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their ‘self-movement,’ in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1401|140]]. Ackelsberg, ''Free Women'','' ''21, 115, 120–37.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1411|141]]. Quoted in Ackelsberg, ''Free Women'','' ''148.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1421|142]]. Ackelsberg, ''Free Women'', 151–54.</div>
+Based on the scientific achievements which occurred in his lifetime, Engels classified motion into 5 basic forms: ''mechanical motion'' (changes in positions of objects in space); ''physical motion'' (movements of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity…); ''chemical motion'' (changes of organic and inorganic substances in combination and separation processes…); ''biological motion'' (changes of living objects, or genetic structure…); ''social motion'' (changes in economy, politics, culture, and social life).
-[[#1431|143]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 78.
+These basic forms of motion are arranged into levels of advancement based on the level of complexity of matter that is affected.
-[[#1441|144]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 78.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-8.png]]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1451|145]]. For example Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 203.</div>
+The basic forms of motion each affect different forms of matter, but these forms of motion do not exist independently from each other; they actually have strong relationships with each other, in which the more advanced forms of motion develop from lower forms of motion; the more advanced forms of motion also internally include lower forms of motion. [I.e., biological motion contains chemical motion; chemical motion contains physical motion; etc.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1461|146]]. Wilson, ''Anarchist Essays'', 58. See also, 53, 84; Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 105; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 298.</div>
+Every object exists with many forms of motion, but any given object is defined by its most advanced form of motion. [I.e., living creatures are defined in terms of biological motion, societies are defined in terms of social motion, etc.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1471|147]]. Vadim Damier, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism in the Twentieth Century'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2009), 13–15, 23–24.</div>
+By classifying the basic forms of motion, Engels laid out the foundation for classification and synthesization of science. The basic forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1481|148]]. Émile Pouget, ''Direct Action ''(London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2003), 1.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1491|149]]. Pouget, ''Direct Action'', 3.</div>
+==== Annotation 63 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1501|150]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 76–77. A few years later in her 1913 pamphlet ''Syndicalism: Its Theory and Practice'', Goldman used the term “direct action” in its original narrow syndicalist sense. See ibid., 94.</div>
+In ''Dialectics of Nature'', Engels clears up a great deal of confusion and addresses many misconceptions about matter, motion, forces, energy, etc. which existed in both science and philosophy at the time by defining and explaining the dialectical nature of matter and motion.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1511|151]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'','' ''202.</div>
+When Dialectical Materialism affirmed that motion was the mode of existence — the natural attribute of matter — it also confirmed that motion is absolute and eternal. This does not mean that Dialectical Materialism denies that things can become ''frozen;'' however, according to the dialectical materialist viewpoint, ''freezing is a special form of motion, it is motion in equilibrium'' and ''freezing is relative and temporary.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1521|152]]. Voltairine de Cleyre, ''The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader'' ed. A. J. Brigati (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004),'' ''48.</div>
+''Motion in equilibrium'' is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1531|153]]. de Cleyre, ''Reader'', 52–55.</div>
+Freezing is a ''relative'' phenomenon because freezing only occurs in some forms of motion and in some specific relations, it does not occur in all forms of motion and all kinds of relations. Freezing is a temporary phenomenon because freezing only exists for a limited period of time, it cannot last forever.
-[[#1541|154]]. John Merriman, ''The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror ''(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 55.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1551|155]]. Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, ''Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 127–32; Emma Goldman, ''Living My Life'','' ''vol. 1'' ''(New York: Dover Publications, 1970),'' ''246–49, 257–8, 275–77.</div>
+==== Annotation 64 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1561|156]]. Maurizio Antonioli, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam (1907) ''(Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2009), 164.</div>
+Equilibrium can exist at any advancement of motion. Lenin discussed ''equilibrium'' as it pertains to the social form of motion in discussing an equilibrium of forces existing in Russia in 1905 in this article, ''An Equilibrium of Forces:''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#157|157]]. Cornell, ''Unruly Equality'', 71–74.</div>
+<blockquote>
+) The result to date (Monday, October 30) is an equilibrium of forces, as we already pointed out in Proletary, No. 23.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#158|158]]. Abel Paz, ''Durruti in the Spanish Revolution'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006), 49–54.</div>
+) Tsarism is no longer strong enough, the revolution not yet strong enough, to win.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#159|159]]. Zimmer, ''Immigrants'', 77–78; Antonio Senta, ''Luigi Galleani: The Most Dangerous Anarchist in America ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019), 98–99, 106–11.</div>
+) Hence the tremendous amount of vacillation. The terrific and enormous increase of revolutionary happenings (strikes, meetings, barricades, committees of public safety, complete paralysis of the government, etc.), on the other hand, the absence of resolute repressive measures. The troops are wavering.
-[[#160|160]]. Antonioli, ed. ''International Anarchist Congress'','' ''92.
+) The Tsar’s Court is wavering (The Times and the Daily Telegraph) between dictatorship and a constitution.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#161|161]]. Pouget, ''Direct Action'', 5. See also Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'', 170–71.</div>
+The Court is wavering and biding its time. Strictly speaking, these are its correct tactics: the equilibrium of forces compels it to bide its time, for power is in its hands.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#162|162]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 189.</div>
+The revolution has reached a stage at which it is disadvantageous for the counter-revolution to attack, to assume the offensive.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#163|163]]. Pouget, ''Direct Action'', 7.</div>
+For us, for the proletariat, for consistent revolutionary democrats, this is not enough. If we do not rise to a higher level, if we do not manage to launch an independent offensive, if we do not smash the forces of Tsarism, do not destroy its actual power, then the revolution will stop half way, then the bourgeoisie will fool the workers.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#164|164]]. Pouget, ''Direct Action'', 20.</div>
+) Rumour has it that a constitution has been decided upon. If that is so, then it follows that the Tsar is heeding the lessons of 1848 and other revolutions: he wants to grant a constitution without a constituent assembly, before a constituent assembly, apart from a constituent assembly. What kind of constitution? At best (for ’the Tsar) a Constitutional-Democratic constitution.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#165|165]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 32.</div>
+This implies: achievement of the Constitutional-Democrats’ ideal, skipping the revolution; deceiving the people, for all the same there will be no complete and actual freedom of elections.
-[[#166|166]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''83.
+Should not the revolution skip this granted constitution?
-[[#167|167]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''90.
+-----
-[[#168|168]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''91.
+''- Space and Time are Forms of Existence of Matter''
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#169|169]]. This phrase continued to be used by Kropotkin over several decades. See Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''140, 200, 348, 374; Peter Kropotkin, ''The Great French Revolution'' (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 18–19; Kropotkin,'' Modern Science'','' ''190, 194.</div>
+Every form of matter exists in a specific position, with specific space particularity (height, width, length, etc.), in specific relation (in front or behind, above or under, to the left or right, etc.) with other forms of matter. These positional relations exist in what we call ''space.'' [Space is defined by positional relations of matter.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#170|170]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 70–73.</div>
+On the other hand, the existence of matter is also expressed in the speed of change and the order in which changes occur. These changes occur in what we call ''time.'' As Engels wrote: “For the basic forms of all existence are space and time, and a being outside of time is as absurd as an existence outside space.” Matter, space, and time are not separable; there is no matter that exists outside of space and time; there is also no space and time that exist outside of matter’s motion.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#171|171]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 186.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#172|172]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 186.</div>
+==== Annotation 65 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#173|173]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 187.</div>
+Space and time, as the forms of matter, i.e.: the ways in which we perceive the existence of matter. We are only able to perceive and understand material objects as they exist within space and time.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#174|174]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 187–90</div>
+Space and time, as forms of existence of matter, exist objectively [see Annotation 108,
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#175|175]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 189.</div>
+p. 112], and are defined by matter. [Space is defined by the positional relations between material objects; time is defined by the speed of change of material objects and the order in which these changes occur.] Space has three dimensions: height, width, length; time has one direction: from the past to the future.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#176|176]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 189–90.</div>
+==== c. The Material Unity of the World ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#177|177]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 192–96.</div>
+Dialectical Materialism affirms that the nature of the world is matter, and the world is unified in its material properties. [In other words: the entire universe, in all its diversity, is made of matter, and the properties of matter are the same throughout the known universe.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#178|178]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 73–74.</div>
+The material nature of the world is proven on the following basis:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#179|179]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 74.</div>
+''First,'' there is only one world: the material world; the material world is the first existence [i.e., it existed before consciousness], it exists objectively, and independently, of human consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#180|180]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 74.</div>
+''Second,'' the material world exists eternally, endlessly, infinitely; it has no known beginning point and there is no evidence that it will ever disappear.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#181|181]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 75.</div>
+''Third,'' all known objects and phenomena of the material world have objective relations with each other and all objects and phenomena exist in unity with each other. All of them are specific forms and structures of matter, or have material origin which was born from matter, and all are governed by the objective rules of the material world. In the material world, there is nothing that exists outside of the changing and transforming processes of matter; all of these processes exist as causes and effects of each other.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#182|182]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 75.</div>
+-----
-== {{anchor|Chapter5AnarchismandStateS}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook8}} {{anchor|Chapter5AnarchismandStateS1}} Chapter 5: Anarchism and State Socialism ==
+==== Annotation 66 ====
-Anarchism as a social movement emerged in parallel with, and opposition to, various forms of state socialism. This included not only Marxism but also those influenced by such figures as Louis Auguste Blanqui, Ferdinand Lassalle, César De Paepe, Paul Brousse, and Jean Allemane. During the late nineteenth century, a number of socialist political parties adopted Marxist programs or at least programs influenced by Marxism, such as the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria in 1888 and the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1891. These social democratic parties contained numerous factions, including people who were not Marxists, and coexisted with political parties committed to other kinds of state socialism, such as the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France, who were known as Possibilists. From 1889 onward, the various state socialist parties of the time were linked together through a loosely organized coalition known as the Second International. This coalition disintegrated from 1914 onward, when the majority of socialist parties in Europe supported their respective nation-states in World War I and voted for war credits. This was followed by the Russian revolution of 1917, during which the Marxist Bolshevik party seized state power and established a one-party dictatorship. These two events led to a split in state socialism and the formation of various national Communist parties, which affiliated with the centralized, Bolshevik-led Third International (Comintern) that had been founded in March 1919. These Communist parties, in contrast to a significant chunk of social democracy, were explicit Marxist parties and became the main rivals of anarchism within international socialism.[[#1GaryPSteensonAfterMarx|1]]
+The most important thing to understand here is that every object and phenomenon in the universe arises as matter, all material objects and phenomena are dynamically linked to one another in an infinite chain of causes and effects and changes and transformations, all governed by the material laws of our reality. This understanding is the material foundation of dialectical materialism.
-The anarchist critique of state socialist strategies was largely articulated in response to the programs, newspapers, congress resolutions, and actions of the various socialist, and later communist, political parties that confronted them. Anarchist authors, in other words, generally focused their energy on refuting the theory and practice of really existing social movements, rather than producing an exhaustive examination of Marx and Engels’s various writings on the topic (much of which was not publicly available or easy to obtain at the time). This is not to say that anarchists never argued against Marx and Engels. Anarchist critiques of state socialism frequently mentioned Marx and Engels by name or responded to an idea that Marx and Engels had advocated in their best-known works, such as the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' or ''Anti-Dühring''.[[#2Forillustrativeexamplesse|2]]'' ''Yet, even when critiquing the strategy of Marx and Engels, anarchists tended to interpret their ideas through the lens provided to them by socialist political parties at the time, rather than understanding Marx and Engels on their own terms.[[#3ForanoverviewofMarxandE|3]]
+=== 2. Consciousness ===
-According to anarchists in this period, state socialists generally argued that, in order to achieve a stateless, classless society (essentially an anarchist society), the working classes must first conquer state power and use it to overthrow the capitalist class, reconstruct the economy along socialist lines, and defend the revolution from counterattack. The conquest of state power would be achieved by forming political parties that either won state power through parliamentary elections or seized state power via force. The government of the bourgeoisie would be transformed into, or replaced with, a democratic workers’ republic that, at least in theory, was based on the genuine self-rule of the working classes. The reconstruction of the economy would take the form of private property being abolished in favor of state ownership of the means of production and land. Production, distribution, and exchange would then be organized through the state. Once the revolution had been successful and a classless society achieved, the state would wither away. Anarchists and state socialists agreed on the ends of a stateless, classless society but proposed different means to achieve it.[[#4PeterKropotkinWordsofaR|4]]
+==== a. The Source of Consciousness ====
-Anarchists rejected the strategy of attempting to abolish capitalism via the conquest of state power. This rejection did not stem from abstract arguments about morality, or ignore the harsh facts of real politics. They instead did so for fundamentally strategic reasons that were grounded in the theory of practice. Anarchists argued that, given the unity of means and ends (which was explained in the previous chapter), the conquest of state power was a path that would never lead to a stateless, classless society. This argument applied to both engaging in parliamentarism within the existing bourgeois state and attempting to overthrow the bourgeois state and transform it into, or replace it with, a workers’ state. In making this argument, anarchists were not, as is commonly claimed by Marxists, rejecting or ignoring political struggle. Given my focus on explaining what anarchists themselves thought, I shall not examine the complex question of whether or not the anarchist critique of state socialism actually applied to their various opponents, such as Marx and Engels.
+According to the materialist viewpoint, consciousness has natural and social sources.
-'''Parliamentarism'''
+-----
-During the late nineteenth century, various socialist parties were formed in Europe and the United States. These parties generally argued that the abolition of capitalism and establishment of socialism could be achieved, or at least built toward, through the strategy of winning local and national elections and participating in bourgeois parliaments as representatives of the working class. Through this political struggle, socialist parties would simultaneously build up their size and organizational strength, win various reforms via the passing of new legislation, and spread socialist ideas to a large audience. In so doing, they would transform parliament from a mere tool of bourgeois rule into a lever of working-class emancipation. This parliamentary struggle would occur alongside, and as a complement to, various forms of extraparliamentary activity, including demonstrations, the organization of trade unions and strikes, the construction of cooperatives, the spreading of ideas via the socialist press, and the establishment of a working-class counterculture within singing societies, bicycle clubs, reading groups, and the like. Socialist parties generally, but not always, viewed the parliamentary struggle as primary and thought that extraparliamentary activity played a secondary and supportive role. Over time, these various forms of struggle would lead to the development of a mass socialist party that was capable of, and driven to, win state power in response to the economic crises of capitalism.[[#5Foranoverviewofthesemove|5]]
+==== Annotation 67 ====
-State socialists disagreed with one another about how to achieve this. Moderate state socialists proposed that if a socialist party won a majority in parliament then they would be able to gradually establish socialism through the passing of new legislation and the achievement of various reforms. Radical state socialists rejected this position and argued that the conquest of state power could not be won by legal and peaceful means. State power could only be forcibly seized by such means as an armed insurrection, coup, or general strike. The majority of radical state socialists did not, however, reject parliamentarism and thought that it could still be used as an effective means to win immediate improvements within capitalism, spread socialist ideas to a large audience, and build up the size and organizational strength of the socialist party.[[#6EdwardBernsteinEvolutionar|6]]
+Consciousness arises from ''nature'', and from ''social'' activities and relations.
-Anarchists had four main objections to parliamentarism. First, even if socialist parties managed to win majorities in parliament, the economic ruling classes would never allow their power and property to be voted away and abolished via peaceful and legal means. Capitalists and landowners would, if necessary, overthrow any socialist party that attempted to do so. The abolition of capitalism in favor of socialism cannot be achieved via the ballot. It can only be achieved by working-class social movements breaking the law and launching a social revolution to forcibly overthrow their oppressors. Anarchists were aware that radical state socialists agreed with them about this.[[#7BerkmanAnarchism9193Kr|7]]
+''Natural'' refers to the material world. Without the material world of matter, material processes, and the evolution of material systems — up to and including the human brain — consciousness would never have formed.
-Second, anarchists rejected the claim that parliamentarism was a necessary or sufficient condition for winning immediate improvements within capitalism. They argued that workers could achieve immediate improvements through direct action alone. This could be seen not only in the numerous strikes that had successfully won higher wages or reductions to the working day, but also in the fact that direct action had played an important role in the achievement of the right to vote itself, as with the 1893 general strike in Belgium. It was clear that a key factor in the achievement of new legislation was the working classes imposing external pressure on parliament via direct action. If this is the case, then reforms could be won by imposing pressure on liberal, republican, or conservative politicians. It did not specifically require the election of socialist politicians. Such immediate improvements would also most likely be won faster if time, energy, and money devoted to electoral campaigns was instead exclusively used on direct action and the self-organization of the working classes.[[#8KropotkinDirectStruggle3|8]]
+''Social'' activities and relations also contributed to the development of consciousness. The social processes of labor and language were also prerequisites for the development of conscious activity in human beings.
-In the absence of the working classes imposing external pressure on parliament via direct action, socialist politicians routinely found themselves unable to pass new laws in parliament. Bourgeois politicians from a variety of different parties would put aside their differences in order to vote against motions proposed by socialists.[[#9MalatestaPatientWork303|9]] Even if socialist politicians did manage to pass laws in parliament that protected or expanded workers’ rights, it did not follow from this that the law would be enforced. As de Cleyre wrote in 1912, “nearly all the laws which were originally framed with the intention of benefiting the workers, have either turned into weapons in their enemies’ hands, or become dead letters unless the workers through their organizations have directly enforced their observance. So that in the end, it is direct action that has to be relied on anyway.”[[#10VoltairinedeCleyreTheVo|10]]
+''- Natural Source of Consciousness''
-A state socialist might reply that, in order to achieve maximum effectiveness, working-class social movements should engage in parliamentary politics and direct action simultaneously. In 1897, Malatesta answered this by pointing out that “the two methods of struggle do not go together and whoever embraces them both inevitably winds up sacrificing any other considerations to the electoral prospect.”[[#11MalatestaLongandPatient|11]] Ultimately, “the electoral and parliamentary contest amounts to schooling in parliamentarism and winds up making parliamentarists of all its practitioners.”[[#12MalatestaLongandPatient|12]]
+There are many factors that form the natural sources for consciousness, but the two most basic factors are ''human brains'' and ''the relationship between humans and'' ''the objective world which makes possible creative and dynamic reflection.''
-The third anarchist objection to parliamentarism was that it is a form of practice that fails to develop in workers the radical traits necessary for a social revolution. Instead of taking direct action within prefigurative organizations, workers would engage in such activities as voting in elections, campaigning for politicians, and listening to them make various promises. Such forms of activity would produce workers who look to politicians to achieve their own emancipation and who respond to injustices by putting their hopes in the next election, rather than taking direct action themselves.[[#13MalatestaLongandPatient|13]] In 1912, De Cleyre claimed that the “main evil” of parliamentary politics was “that it destroys initiative, quenches the individual rebellious spirit, teaches people to rely on someone else to do for them what they should do for themselves, what they alone can do for themselves.”[[#14DeCleyreReader59|14]] Decades later, Rocker was convinced that this is what had occurred. He wrote in 1938 that “participation in parliamentary politics has affected the Socialist labor movement like an insidious poison. It destroyed . . . the impulse to self-help, by inoculating people with the ruinous delusion that salvation always comes from above.”[[#15RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|15]]
+''About human brains:'' consciousness is an attribute of a highly organized form of matter, which is the brain. Consciousness is the function and the result of the neurophysiological activities of human brains. As human brains evolved and developed over time, their neurophysiological activities became richer, and, as these activities progressed, consciousness developed further and further over time. This explains why the human evolution process is also a process of developing the capacity for perception and thinking. Whenever human neurophysiological activities don’t function normally because of damaged brains, our mental life is also disturbed.
-Anarchists thought that this would be especially harmful during a revolutionary situation. Parliamentarism not only leads to workers becoming accustomed to elevating party leaders into positions of power. It also makes them believe in the possibility of good government and the false notion that emancipation can be achieved by simply changing who is in power. In a revolution, workers would thus most likely establish a new government based on minority rule by a political ruling class. This government would then, for reasons that will be discussed later, turn on and repress working-class social movements. A new system of domination and exploitation would arise, rather than a stateless, classless society based on self-management and free association. Given this, a key reason why anarchists rejected participating in electoral politics was because, to quote Malatesta, “we consider any methods that lead the people to believe that progress consists in a change of governing individuals, and revolution in a change of government form, to be dangerous, and directly counter to our purposes.”[[#16MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|16]]
+''About the relationship between humans'' and ''the objective world which made possible creative and dynamic reflection:'' The relationship between humans and the objective world has been essential for as long as humans have existed. In this relationship, the objective world is reflected through human senses which interact with human brains and then form our consciousness.
-Fourth, anarchists argued that state socialists were wrong to think that they could enter the existing capitalist state, transform it from within, and use it as a tool to build toward socialism. The capitalist state, which is a hierarchical institution that perpetuates the power of the economic and political ruling classes, would transform them. In 1869, before most socialist parties were formed, Bakunin predicted that working-class politicians would be “transplanted into a bourgeois environment, into a political atmosphere of wholly bourgeois political ideas, will cease to be actual workers and will become statesmen, they will become bourgeois, and perhaps more bourgeois than the bourgeoisie.”[[#17MichaelBakuninSelectedTe|17]] Later anarchists thought that this prediction had come true. Reclus claimed in 1898 that “socialist leaders who, finding themselves caught up in the electoral machine, end up being gradually transformed into nothing more than bourgeois with liberal ideas. They have placed themselves in determinate conditions that in turn determine them.”[[#18EliseeReclusAnarchyGeog|18]] Kropotkin similarly wrote in 1913 that “as the socialists become a party of government and share power with the bourgeoisie, their socialism will necessarily fade: this is what has already happened.”[[#19KropotkinModernScience1|19]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-9.png|''Consciousness exists as a dynamic set of relationships between the external material world, human sense perception, and the functions of the human brain.'']]
-Anarchists thought this would consistently occur to any socialist party that engaged in parliamentarism due to a set of interlocking processes. Most obviously, socialist politicians would be corrupted by the exercise of state power, the intrigues of parliament, and the financial offers of wealthy patrons. Reclus argued that the state is “a collection of individuals placed in a specific milieu and subjected to its influence. Those individuals are raised up above their fellow citizens in dignity, power, and preferential treatment, and are consequently compelled to think themselves superior to the common people. Yet in reality the multitude of temptations besetting them almost inevitably leads them to fall below the general level.”[[#20ReclusAnarchy122|20]] As a result of this, socialist politicians with “the best of intentions” may initially “fervently desire” the abolition of capitalism and the state “but new relationships and conditions change them little by little. Their morality changes along with their self-interest, and, thinking themselves eternally loyal to the cause and to their constituents, they inevitably become disloyal.”[[#21ReclusAnarchy122|21]]
+''Reflection'' is the re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. Reflection is a characteristic of all forms of matter.
-Socialist parties that attain power within parliament would, in order to exercise that power, have to become effective managers of the bourgeois state and the national economy. Doing so requires, given the nature of capitalism and the state as social structures, the ongoing reproduction of the domination and exploitation of the working classes. As a result, state socialists in power would inevitably develop interests opposed to the wider working classes and side with capital against labor in order to maintain their own position of rulership and influence. This would especially occur in response to workers engaging in direct action and thereby disrupting the smooth functioning of the economy. In Max Baginski’s words: “The politics of parliaments are tailored to serve the needs of the bourgeois, the capitalist world. They administer this world and provide the violent means necessary to guarantee its continued existence: soldiers, police, and courts of law. Whosoever, as a representative of the workers, enters parliament or the government is faced with two choices; either he is superfluous or else he is an active accomplice in the administration and safeguarding of a political order founded on the exploitation of labor.”[[#22MaxBaginskiWhatDoesSynd|22]]
+There are many forms and levels of reflection such as [from more simple to more complex]: physical and chemical reflection, biological reflection, mental reflection, creative and dynamic reflection, etc.
-The leadership of socialist parties would, in addition to this, come to view the interests of their nation-state and the interests of the party as increasingly intertwined because the party exercises power within a specific nation and owes its power to the votes of a national electorate. Thus, socialist parties are, to quote Rocker, “compelled by the iron logic of conditions to sacrifice their Socialist convictions bit by bit to the national policies of the state.”[[#23RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|23]] This would result in the labor movement being “gradually incorporated in the equipment of the national state” until it had become a social force that maintained the stability and “equilibrium” of capitalism.[[#24RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|24]]
+-----
-Socialist parties would be transformed not only by the corrupting effects of wielding state power but also by the compromises that parliamentary politics forced them to make. During this period, socialist parties typically had a maximum program and a minimum program. The maximum program were its long-term goals, such as universal human emancipation and the abolition of private property. The minimum program consisted of immediate improvements to be won within capitalism through legislation. These typically included such demands as universal suffrage, banning child labor, the eight-hour day, compulsory secular state education, free health care, and freedom of speech, the press, and assembly.[[#25Fortheprogramsofsocialis|25]] Anarchists thought that socialist parties would begin as revolutionary organizations that focused on the attainment of the minimum program but, gradually over time, become reformist organizations that had abandoned the maximum program and mistakenly viewed the minimum program as the essence of socialism.
+==== Annotation 68 ====
-This would consistently occur because, in order to win elections at both a local and national level, socialist parties must secure as many votes as possible by appealing to as many people as possible, including nonsocialists who would otherwise vote for republican, liberal, or conservative political parties. This would, especially in countries without universal suffrage, include people with class interests that were opposed to those of the working classes, such as small merchants and shopkeepers. Socialist parties, in addition to this, have to ensure that they maintain a legal existence and do not engage in activity that could preclude them from standing in elections or sitting in parliament. The need to appeal to as many voters as possible, alongside the need to operate within the confines of the law, would force socialist parties to: (a) reduce their political program to very minor reforms to capitalist society; and (b) oppose workers within the party, or affiliated trade unions, engaging in militant direct action that might scare voters away.[[#26BerkmanAnarchism92939|26]] This process only accelerates over time as the socialist party grows in size and attracts, to quote Rocker, “bourgeois minds and career-hungry politicians into the Socialist camp.”[[#27RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|27]]
+Change is driven by mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and/or ideas. Any time two such subjects impact one another, ''traces'' of some form or another are left on both interacting subjects. This characteristic of change is called ''reflection''.
-In order to achieve these minor social reforms, socialist parties, given the nature of the parliamentary system, would be compelled to form alliances with bourgeois political parties in order to form coalition governments or successfully pass laws in parliament.[[#28MichaelBakuninStatismand|28]] For Bakunin, one of the most notable examples of the dangers of forming alliances with bourgeois political parties occurred when the Geneva section of the First International supported the 1872 electoral campaign of the lawyer Jean-Antoine Amberny, a member of both the First International and the bourgeois Radical Party. During his campaign, he publicly promised fellow members of the bourgeoisie that the First International in Geneva would not engage in strikes that year and, in so doing, acted against the interests of local construction workers, who were at the time, considering taking strike action in response to reduced wages. The leadership of the Geneva section chose to intervene on the side of Amberny and thereby sacrifice the direct struggle of workers themselves in order to protect the electability of a bourgeois candidate. This included unsuccessfully attempting to persuade construction workers to issue a declaration that they were not planning to go on strike.[[#29ReneBerthierSocialDemocr|29]] In response to these events, Bakunin concluded that “whenever workers’ associations ally themselves with the politics of the bourgeoisie, they can only become, willingly or unwillingly, their instrument.”[[#30BakuninSelectedTexts181|30]]
+The concept of reflection, first proposed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, has been advanced through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists (including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others), and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry up to this day by mainstream researchers in Cuba, Vietnam, China, and Laos. The information provided below is somewhat simplified and generalized to give the reader a basic familiarity with the theory of reflection and the development of reflection in nature.
-Anarchists predicted that the combined effect of these various processes, which are inherent in parliamentarianism as a social structure, would result in socialist parties abandoning their revolutionary ideas and becoming socialist in name only. State socialists at the time proclaimed that the parliamentary struggle was merely a means to the end of constructing the mass revolutionary socialist movements that would abolish class society. Anarchists replied that, given the forms of practice that constituted parliamentarism, what was once a means to an end would become an end in and of itself. Socialist parties would become mere reform movements that defended the status quo and only aimed at the improvement of conditions within the cage of capitalism and the state.[[#31GalleaniEndofAnarchism|31]]
+Dialectical materialist scientists have developed a theory of the development of evolution of forms of reflection, positing that forms of reflection have become increasingly complex as organic processes and life have evolved and grown more complex over time.
-A state socialist might reply that although anarchists are correct about the dangers of parliamentarism, socialist parties could participate in elections and parliament solely as a means to spread their ideas and critique the ruling classes. Anarchists thought such a strategy was mistaken because it ignored the manner in which participation in elections and parliament transforms people and organizations independently of their intentions. In 1928, Berkman noted that state socialists had initially claimed that they only meant to engage in parliamentarism “for the purpose of propaganda,” but this “proved the undoing of Socialism” because they had failed to realize that “the means you use to attain your object soon themselves become your object.”[[#32BerkmanAnarchism92|32]] He explained,
+The chart below gives an idea of how different forms of reaction have evolved over time:
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Little by little they changed their attitude. Instead of electioneering being merely an educational method, it gradually became their only aim to secure political office, to get elected to legislative bodies and other government positions. The change naturally led the Socialists to tone down their revolutionary ardor; it compelled them to soften their criticism of capitalism and government in order to avoid persecution and secure more votes. Today the main stress of Socialist propaganda is not laid any more on the educational value of politics but on the actual election of Socialists to office.[[#33BerkmanAnarchism9293|33]]</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-10.png|''This chart outlines the basic development tendency of Forms of Reflection in matter which lead from inorganic matter, to life, to human consciousness and society.'']]
-Anarchists thought that their critique of parliamentarism was confirmed by the history of state socialism. To focus on France, the socialist Alexandre Millerand joined the bourgeois cabinet of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau in 1899 and became Minister of Commerce and Industry. His colleagues included the Minister of War, Gaston de Galliffet, who had ordered the murder of a large number of workers during the suppression of the Paris Commune. Once in power, Millerand attempted to establish compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes and thereby harm the ability of trade unions to engage in direct action. Pouget responded to this by labeling Millerand a “prisoner of Capital” who “could not break the mold; he is only a cog in the machine of oppression and whether he wishes it or not he must, as minister, participate in the job of crushing the proletariat.”[[#34QuotedinJeremyJenningsS|34]] Several years later, in 1906, socialist René Viviani became Minister of Labor and, under his watch, nineteen workers were killed and an estimated seven hundred were injured due to state repression during strike actions. This state repression included forty thousand soldiers being sent to police a miner’s strike in 1906, launched in response to a mining accident that took the lives of 1,100 miners. In 1910, Aristide Briand, who had once been a socialist and an advocate of the general strike, joined Viviani in government as Minister of the Interior. He proceeded to defeat a French railway strike by arresting the strike committee, declaring a military emergency, and conscripting the railway workers into the army. In so doing, he subjected any worker who refused to work to martial law and the potential punishment of execution for disobeying orders.[[#35JenningsSyndicalisminFra|35]]
+Obviously, not all subjects develop completely along the path outlined above. Thus far, to our knowledge, only human beings have developed entirely to the level of consciousness and society. It is also unknown whether, or how, human society may develop into some future, as-yet-unknown, form.
-In 1914, World War I broke out and the majority of socialist political parties in Europe responded by siding with their respective governments. A minority of state socialists, which grew in size as the war progressed, remained committed to working-class internationalism, opposed all sides in the war, and organized the antimilitarist Zimmerwald Conference in 1915. The majority of the anarchist movement, in comparison, refused to side with any state in the conflict and suffered a significant amount of state repression due to this.[[#36SFKissinWarandtheMa|36]] Anarchists did not think that socialist political parties abandoned antimilitarism simply due to the treachery or negative personality traits of politicians. Rather, they focused on the manner in which socialist parties had been transformed through the social structures they participated in and the forms of practice that constituted them. Berkman argued in 1928 that “the life we lead, the environment we live in, the thoughts we think, and the deeds we do—all subtly fashion our character and make us what we are. The Socialists’ long political activity and cooperation with bourgeois politics gradually turned their thoughts and mental habits from Socialist ways of thinking.”[[#37BerkmanAnarchism99|37]] This gradual process culminated in socialist parties abandoning their principles and becoming “the handmaiden of the militarists and jingo nationalists” who “sent the toilers to murder each other.”[[#38BerkmanAnarchism9998|38]]
+-----
-From these and other events, anarchists concluded that their predictions had come true. State socialists who entered parliament in order to work toward the conquest of political power and the abolition of classes had not conquered the state. The state had conquered them, and genuine socialist parties had, gradually over time, become fundamentally bourgeois and opposed to the self-emancipation of the working classes.
+''Physical and chemical reflection'' is the simplest form of reflection, dealing with the ways in which inorganic matter is reflected in human consciousness. Physical and chemical reflection is the reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, positions, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). Physical and chemical reactions are passive: when two objects interact with each other physically or chemically, they do not do so consciously.
-'''Workers’ State'''
+-----
-Anarchists did not limit themselves to critiquing parliamentarism within the existing bourgeois state. They went further and rejected the strategy of overthrowing the bourgeois state and transforming it into, or replacing it with, a workers’ state. They viewed the conquest of state power as a means that would never achieve the ends of a stateless, classless society. To understand why, one must first understand the anarchist theory of the state.
+==== Annotation 69 ====
-Anarchists argued that, given their in-depth analysis of the state as a social structure both historically and when they were writing, the state is necessarily a centralized and hierarchical institution wielded by a political ruling class. This class possesses the authority to make laws and issue commands at a societal level that others must obey due to the threat or exercise of institutionalized force. Kropotkin was convinced that this was “the essence of every State” and that, if an organization ceased to be structured in this manner, then “it ceases to be the State.”[[#39KropotkinModernScience3|39]] Since the state is a centralized and hierarchical institution that rules over an extended territory, it follows that the political power of the so-called workers’ state could not in reality be wielded by the working classes as a whole. State power would at best be exercised by a minority of elected representatives acting in the name of the working classes. Bakunin predicted “it is bound to be impossible for a few thousand, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of men to wield that power effectively. It will have to be exercised by proxy, which means entrusting it to a group of men elected to represent and govern them.”[[#40MichaelBakuninSelectedWr|40]]
+Reflection occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the object are transferred to each other. Below are some very simplified illustrations to relate the basic idea of the physical reflection of material objects.
-Anarchists thought that there was an inherent connection between the organizational form and function of any social structure. And the organizational form of the state did not develop by accident. The state is structured in a hierarchical and centralized manner because of the function that it performs and was created to perform: establishing and maintaining the domination and exploitation of the working classes by the ruling classes. This applied not only to monarchies and individual dictatorships but also to republics governed by parliaments of elected representatives. A social structure characterized by a specific organizational form cannot be used to perform just any possible function. Centralization and hierarchy enable and result in the rule of a minority over a majority. Therefore, the state cannot be transformed into an instrument of liberation simply by writing a new constitution or electing good people with the right ideas into positions of authority. The minority of governors who actually exercise state power would, even if they were genuine socialists elected by universal suffrage, become tyrants who dominate and exploit the majority of the population.[[#41RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|41]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-11.png]]
-This would occur due to a specific set of processes. Since the state is a social structure like any other, it follows that it is constituted by social relation and forms of practice that produce and reproduce people with particular capacities, drives, and consciousness. According to Malatesta, “the government is the aggregate of the governors . . . those who have the power to make laws, to regulate relations between men, and to force obedience to these laws.”[[#42MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|42]] This force is exercised via various institutionalized mechanisms of coercion, such as the police, army, courts, and prisons. The exercise of state power is therefore necessarily constituted by social relations of command and obedience, of domination and subordination. The minority of socialists who wield this power will use it to implement their own ideas and further their interests. In so doing, they will inevitably come into conflict with different groups of workers who have ideas and interests of their own. This will especially occur with workers who are other kinds of socialist. Given the vast differences in power, the workers will be compelled to follow the commands of their superiors. If they do not do so and choose to ignore, resist, or rebel against the will of the governors they will be met with violent state repression, including censorship, beatings, arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. The result is always the same: workers would not self-determine their lives or the society in which they lived. They would instead be subject to the will of a governing minority. As Malatesta explained, “a government . . . already constitutes a class privileged and separated from the rest of the community. Such a class, like every elected body, will seek instinctively to enlarge its powers; to place itself above the control of the people; to impose its tendencies, and to make its own interests predominate. Placed in a privileged position, the government always finds itself in antagonism to the masses, of whose forces it disposes.”[[#43MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|43]]
+'''Reflection as Change in Position:'''
-One might object by arguing that these socialist representatives are workers themselves and so do not form a class distinct from the workers who elected them. Bakunin responded to this argument in 1873. He insisted that the governing minority are “''former'' workers, who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the people will cease to be workers and will begin to look upon the whole workers’ world from the heights of the state. They will no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern the people.”[[#44BakuninStatismandAnarchy|44]] In other words, they have transitioned from being members of the working classes to being members of the political ruling class in control of the state. State socialists fail to realize that class is not only about a person’s relationship to the means of production. It is also determined by a person’s relationship to the means of institutionalized coercion. The so-called dictatorship of the proletariat would therefore not be based on the self-rule of the proletariat. It would, to quote Malatesta in 1897, “be the dictatorship of ‘Party’ over people, and of a handful of men over ‘Party.’”[[#45MalatestaPatientWork27|45]]
+. Round Object moves towards Square Object.
-Anarchists argued that a fundamentally new function—the self-management of social life by producers themselves—requires the construction of fundamentally new social structures. These new organs need an organizational form that actually enables and leads to the realization of the desired function. For this to occur, the organs of self-management have to be developed by working-class social movements themselves engaging in a process of experimentation during the course of the class struggle. According to anarchists, these new organs are, as we have seen, workplace assemblies, community assemblies, and workers’ militias linked together through formal federations and/or informal social networks.[[#46KropotkinModernScience1|46]]
+. Round Object impacts Square Object.
-If state socialists advocated the destruction of the capitalist state and the creation of a new workers’ state that was genuinely nothing but the self-rule of the working classes, then the disagreement with anarchists would largely be a semantic disagreement about how to define a state. In 1897, Malatesta considered the possibility of a social democrat who sincerely wanted to abolish the state:
+. Square Object changes position; Round Object “bounces” and reverses direction.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">If they meant that, even as they capture it, they want to abolish the State . . . disband any armed governmental force, do away with all legislative powers . . . and promote the organization of society from the bottom up through the free federation of producer and consumer groups, then the entire issue would boil down to this: that they express by certain words the same ideas that we express by other words. Saying ''we want to storm the fortress and destroy it'', and saying ''we want to seize that fortress to demolish it ''means one and the same thing.[[#47MalatestaPatientWork120|47]]</div>
+.Thus, Square Object’s change in position ''reflects'' the motion of Round Object (and vice-versa). Traces of both contradicting objects are reflected in the respective motion and position of each object.
-He knew, however, that the vast majority of state socialists did not advocate federations of workplace assemblies, community assemblies, and workers’ militias—the true organs of worker self-rule—and then simply choose to call these systems of organization a state.[[#48Councilcommunistsareanex|48]] In June 1919, Malatesta wrote that the Bolsheviks did not mean by “the dictatorship of the proletariat” merely “the effective power of all the workers intent on breaking down capitalist society” by expropriating the ruling classes and creating social structures in which “there would be no place for a class that exploited and oppressed the producers.”[[#49MalatestaMethodofFreedom|49]] If this is what “the dictatorship of the proletariat” meant then “our dissent would have to do only with words.”[[#50MalatestaMethodofFreedom|50]] In reality, and judging by their actions, the Bolsheviks meant “a dictatorship of a party, or rather of the heads of a party; and it is a true dictatorship, with its decrees, its penal laws, its executive agents and above all with its armed force that serves today also to defend the revolution against its external enemies, but that will serve tomorrow to impose upon the workers the will of the dictators, to arrest the revolution, consolidate the new interests and finally defend a new privileged class against the masses.”[[#51MalatestaMethodofFreedom|51]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-12.png]]
-According to state-socialist theory, a workers’ state would only exist during the transition from capitalism to a stateless, classless society. The state is the coercive instrument by which one economic class rules over and represses another economic class. A workers’ state would be the social structure through which the proletariat ruled over and repressed the bourgeoisie. Exercising this political power, the proletariat would reorganize the economy and establish state ownership and control of the means of production and land. In so doing, they would abolish class. Once class had been abolished, the economic basis for the state would cease to exist, since there would no longer be a division between a class who ruled and a class who was ruled over.[[#52KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|52]] The workers’ state would, to quote Engels, wither away such that “the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not ‘abolished.’ ''It dies out''.”[[#53MarxandEngelsCollectedW|53]] Once this had occurred, society would be organized via “a free and equal association of the producers.”[[#54KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|54]]
+'''Reflection as Change in Structure:'''
-Anarchists living in the nineteenth century were not convinced by this argument. Decades before the Russian revolution and the emergence of the USSR, anarchists predicted that a workers’ state would not die out after the abolition of capitalism. It would instead continuously reproduce itself as a social structure. This is because the forms of practice involved in either exercising or being subject to state power produce people with traits that reproduce the state as a dominant structure, rather than people who will want to and be able to abolish the state. In exercising state power, socialist governors would not only change the world but also change themselves. They would acquire distinct class interests as members of the political ruling class and come to focus on maintaining and expanding their own power over the working classes, rather than allowing it to be abolished in favor of a stateless, classless society.
+. Round Object moves toward Square Object.
-In 1881, Cafiero declared that any socialist who says “they wish to take over the State in order to destroy it once the struggle is over” is “either seeking to mislead us or are deceiving themselves. . . . No power, no authority in the world has ever destroyed itself. No tyrant has ever dismantled a fortress once he has entered it. On the contrary, every authoritarian organism, every tyranny tends always to spread, to establish itself even more, by its very nature. Power inebriates and even the best can become the worst once they are vested with authority.”[[#55CarloCafieroRevolutionE|55]] In short, to quote Bakunin, the “habit of commanding . . . [and] the exercise of power never fail to produce this demoralization: ''contempt for the masses, and, for the man in power, an exaggerated sense of his own worth''.”[[#56MichaelBakuninBakuninon|56]]
+. Round Object impacts Square Object.
-Anarchists thought this would occur irrespective of people’s good intentions due to the manner in which they are shaped by the social structures they constitute and participate in. Malatesta wrote, “it is not a question here of the good faith or good will of this man or of that, but of the necessity of situations and the general tendencies that men exhibit when they find themselves in certain circumstances.”[[#57MalatestaPatientWork124|57]] Bakunin similarly claimed that those who exercised state power would be transformed by “the iron logic of their position, the force of circumstances inherent in certain hierarchical and profitable political relationships.” This would occur regardless of their “sentiments, intentions, or good impulses.”[[#58BakuninStatismandAnarchy|58]]
+. Structural changes (traces) occur in both Round and Square Object as a result of impact.
-The existence of a state ruled by a minority political ruling class would simultaneously have a dire effect on the working classes in general. Instead of directly self-managing their lives themselves, the working classes would be subject to the rule of a governing minority and so engage in forms of practice that lead them to become accustomed to oppressive social relationships after their supposed liberation. They would learn to obey and defer to their superiors rather than to think and act for themselves. Rather than learning how to associate with others as equals, they would learn to put those in power on a pedestal and venerate them in just the same way that people under capitalism learn to hero worship so-called “captains of industry” or political figureheads like royal families and charismatic presidents. Workers would come to support the ongoing existence of the state and view it as a natural and necessary aspect of human existence that cannot be changed.[[#59MalatestaMethodofFreedom|59]] Authority, to quote Berkman, “debases its victims” and “makes those subject to it acquiesce in wrong, subservient, and servile.”[[#60BerkmanAnarchism43See|60]]
+. These changes constitute structural, physical ''reflection''.
-Anarchists predicted that the minority political ruling class in control of the so-called workers’ state would, in order to defend and maintain their position of authority, create a new economic ruling class that owed them allegiance and so would protect their class interests. This new economic ruling class would initially appear within the state bureaucracy itself given that the so-called workers’ state would own and manage the whole or majority of the economy. Over time, the new economic ruling class would grow in power due to the extreme importance of production and distribution in social life and gradually transform the state into an institution that primarily serves their distinct economic interests. This would culminate in the reintroduction of private property and market capitalism.[[#61MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|61]] The state was, to quote Fabbri, “more than an outcome of class divisions; it is, at one and the same time, the creator of privilege, thereby bringing about new class divisions.”[[#62LuigiFabbriAnarchyand|62]] According to Malatesta, “anyone in power means to stay there, and no matter what the costs he intends to impose his will—and since wealth is a very effective instrument of power, the ruler, even if he personally does not abuse or steal, he promotes the rise of a class around him that owes to him its privileges and has a vested interest in his remaining in power. . . . Abolish private property without abolishing government, and the former will be resurrected by those who govern.”[[#63MalatestaPatientWork123|63]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-13.png]]
-Supporters of workers’ states in this period generally believed that state socialism was a necessary transitional phase between capitalism and communism. Anarchists replied that state socialism would ultimately be the transitional phase between capitalism and capitalism. Given the self-reproducing nature of the state, and its tendency to establish new class divisions, it could not be used to achieve a stateless, classless society. Although, as Bakunin noted, state socialists claimed that “this state yoke, this dictatorship, is a necessary transitional device for achieving the total liberation of the people; anarchy, or freedom, is the goal, and the state, or dictatorship the means,” they failed to realize that “no dictatorship can have any other objective than to perpetuate itself, and that it can engender and nurture only slavery in the people who endure it.”[[#64BakuninStatismandAnarchy1|64]] The state would never wither away. It had to be intentionally and violently destroyed.[[#65FabbriAnarchyandScient|65]]
+'''Chemical Reflection:'''
-'''State Capitalism'''
+. Atom C is attached to Atom B.
-From an economic perspective, anarchists also rejected the idea that a state socialist society would be socialist at all. They thought it was more appropriate to label such a society ''state capitalism''. The term was used by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in a different sense to refer to the Soviet Republic’s New Economic Policy of 1921, in which capitalist markets and small private businesses existed alongside state ownership and management of large-scale industry but were subject to control by a self-proclaimed workers’ state. The earlier and broader anarchist usage of the term should not be confused with this.[[#66VladimirLeninSelectedWor|66]] It should also be kept in mind that the anarchist claim that state socialist societies would be instances of state capitalism was distinct from their prediction that state socialism would result in the resurrection of private property and market capitalism. From this perspective, it would begin as one form of capitalism and then later transform into another kind of capitalism.
+. Atom C detaches from Atom B and transfers to attach to Atom A.
-State socialists aim to establish state ownership of the means of production and land, organize production and distribution through centralized state planning, and have workers become employees of the state. Were this to happen then, a single entity—the state—would own and control the whole or the majority of the economy. Under this system, the economy would, due to the state’s centralized and hierarchical nature, be owned and controlled by the minority of people who in fact wielded state power, rather than the working classes they claimed to represent. These workers would, instead of directly owning and controlling the economy themselves through organs of self-management, labor within state-owned workplaces hierarchically managed by state bureaucrats. These bureaucrats would implement the policies decided by the minority ruling class who, even if elected via universal suffrage, actually exercise decision-making power on a day-to-day basis. Under such a system, workers become wage laborers employed by the state and subject to its domination within the workplace in the same manner that they had previously been employed and dominated by individual capitalists and landowners.
+. This is a process of ''chemical reflection'', in which both molecules mutually reflect one another after A <sub>C</sub>B a process of chemical reaction (one molecule loses Atom C while the other gains Atom C).
-This perspective can be seen throughout anarchist texts. Bakunin predicted in ''Statism and Anarchy'' that the leaders of socialist parties would, if they seized state power, concentrate “in their own hands all commercial, industrial, agricultural, and even scientific production and will divide the people into two armies, one industrial and one agrarian, under the direct command of state engineers, who will form a new privileged scientific and political class.”[[#67BakuninStatismandAnarchy1|67]] In ''Modern Science and Anarchy'', Kropotkin claimed that anarchists rejected “the new form of wage-labor which would arise if the State took possession of the means of production and exchange, as it has already taken possession of the railways, the post office, education, national security [''l’assurance mutuelle''], and defense of the territory. New powers, industrial powers . . . would create a new, formidable instrument of tyranny.”[[#68KropotkinModernScience1|68]] Kropotkin referred to such a society as “state capitalism” on numerous occasions.[[#69KropotkinDirectStruggle|69]]
+As dialectical materialists, we must strive to develop our understanding of the reflections of physical and chemical changes and reactions so that our conceptions reflect the material world as accurately as possible. For example: we must not ascribe consciousness to physical processes. Example: a gambler who comes to believe that a pair of dice is “spiteful” or “cursed” is attributing conscious motivation to unconscious physical processes, which is an inaccurate ideological reflection of reality.
-State socialism would therefore lead to a reconfiguration of class society rather than the abolition of classes and the self-management of production and distribution by producers and consumers themselves. The existing economic and political ruling classes—capitalists, landowners, bankers, politicians, judges, generals etc.—would be replaced by or subordinated to a new economic and political ruling class—the socialist party leadership—which exercised power through a single institution: the state. This new economic and political ruling class would, in turn, be aided by a vast array of state bureaucrats who would serve as a managerial class that was subject to the authority of the socialist party leadership but at the same time exercised power over the working classes. In Malatesta’s words, “whoever has dominion over things, has dominion over men; whoever governs production governs the producers; whoever controls consumption lords it over the consumer. The question is this: either things are administered in accordance with agreements freely reached by those concerned, in which case we have anarchy, or they are administered in accordance with law made by the administrators, and we have Government, the State, which inevitably turns tyrannical.”[[#70MalatestaPatientWork123|70]]
+-----
-Since state socialists sought to seize existing state power, it followed that the managerial class would be largely composed of the same bureaucrats who had previously managed the market-capitalist state. State socialists would transform certain aspects of the state during their seizure of state power, such as writing a new constitution, but the bulk of the state’s bureaucratic machinery would remain intact since the state could not function without it. This would occur even if state socialists genuinely wanted to smash the old state bureaucracy and immediately construct a new one. During a revolutionary period, the leaders of the socialist party would not be in the position to replace or fundamentally reorganize the state bureaucracy, especially in societies where most people were illiterate. They would instead be forced by circumstances to use, and massively expand, the previously existing state bureaucracy in order to implement their plans as rapidly and as effectively as possible, nationalizing industry and organizing the economy through central planning.
+''Biological reflection'' is a higher, more complex form of reflection [compared to physical reflection]. It deals with reflection of organic material in the natural world. As our observations of biological processes have become more sophisticated and complex [through developments in natural science, the development of better tools for observation such as microscopes and other technologies, and so on], our conscious reflections of the natural world have also become more complex.
-For Kropotkin, this was no different from when republicans overthrew monarchies. The form of the state was altered, but the state bureaucracy continued to operate largely as before. He wrote that, in France, “the Third Republic, in spite of its republican form of government, remained monarchist in its essence.” This was because,
+Biological reflection is expressed through ''excitation, induction,'' and ''reflexes.''
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Those holding power have changed the name; but all this immense ministerial scaffolding, all this centralized organization of bureaucrats, all this imitation of the Rome of the Caesars which has been developed in France, all this formidable organization to ensure and extend the exploitation of the masses in favor of a few privileged groups that is the essence of the State-institution—all that remained. And these cogs [of the bureaucratic machine] continue, as in the past, to exchange their fifty documents when the wind has blown down a tree onto a national highway, and to pour the millions deducted from the nation into the coffers of the privileged. The [official] stamp on the documents has changed; but the State, its spirit, its organs, its territorial centralization, its centralization of functions, its favoritism, its role as creator of monopolies, have remained. Like an octopus, they expand [their grip] on the country day-by-day.[[#71KropotkinModernScience2|71]]</div>
+''Excitation'' is the reaction of simple plant and animal life-forms which occurs when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes to their habitat [i.e., a plant which moves toward the sun throughout the day].
-State socialism would therefore not only be a reconfiguration of class society. It would also be an expansion of existing class society in so far as the bulk of the state machinery would continue to operate largely as before and this state machinery would move from organizing only certain aspects of the economy—the post office, trains etc.—to organizing the whole or most of the economy.
+''Induction'' is the reaction of animals with simple nerve systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms.
-Within such a society, the state would, for all intents and purposes, act as a single massive capitalist, since it now performed the various functions that were previously performed under market capitalism by multiple individual capitalists owning and directing different aspects of the economy. As a result, anarchists saw in state socialism not the abolition of classes, but the replacement of individual capitalists competing in a market with a single state capitalist that alone owned, directed, and planned the economy.[[#72FabbriAnarchyandScient|72]] Bakunin, for example, claimed that under state socialism the state would “''become the sole proprietor'' . . . the single capitalist, banker, financier, organizer, the director of all national work and the distributor of every product.”[[#73BakuninSelectedTexts88|73]] According to Kropotkin, state socialists aim to “seize the existing power structures and to retain and strengthen their control over them; in place of all of today’s ruling classes (landlords, industrialists, merchants, bankers, etc.) they strive to create one single proprietor—the State—to rule over all land, all works and factories, all accumulated wealth, and to be run by a Parliament.”[[#74KropotkinDirectStruggle|74]] Anarchists rejected this vision and could not “see in the coming revolution a mere . . . replacement of the current capitalists by the State [as sole] capitalist.”[[#75KropotkinModernScience1|75]]
+-----
-Anarchists were also afraid that state socialists would create something much worse than state capitalism ruled by an elected parliament. In centralizing so much economic and political power into the hands of the state, they were creating an institution that could, in turn, be seized by a dictator and used to establish an even more tyrannical society. Kropotkin wrote in 1913 that “as long as the statist socialists do not abandon their dream of socializing the instruments of labor in the hands of a centralized State, the inevitable result of their attempts at State Capitalism and the Socialist state will be the failure of their dreams and military dictatorship.” The state they created during a period of revolutionary turmoil “would be the stepping-stone for a dictator, representing the reaction.” This would merely be a repeat of what had already happened after the French revolutions of 1793 and 1848. In the “centralized State . . . created by the Jacobins, Napoleon I found the ground already prepared for the Empire. Similarly, fifty years later, Napoleon III found in the dreams of a centralized democratic republic which developed in France after [the revolution of] 1848 the ready-made elements for the Second Empire.”[[#76KropotkinModernScience1|76]]
+==== Annotation 70 ====
-It was for these reasons that Kropotkin warned revolutionaries that the state is, “an octopus with a thousand heads and a thousand suckers, like the sea monsters of the old tales, it makes it possible to envelop all society and to channel all individual efforts so as to make them result in the enrichment and governmental monopoly of the privileged classes.”[[#77KropotkinModernScience3|77]] As a result, “if the revolution does not crush the octopus, if it does not destroy its head and cut off its arms and suckers, it will be strangled by the beast. The revolution itself will be placed at the service of monopoly, as was the [French] revolution of 1793.”[[#78KropotkinModernScience3|78]]
+''Unconditioned reflexes'' are characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. Such reactions are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within the organism. An example of an unconditioned reflex response would be muscles in the leg twitching at the response of a tap on the knee. Such responses are purely physiological and are never learned (“conditioned” into us) — these reactions are simply ''induced'' physiologically.
-For anarchists, these predictions were soon proven true by the one-party Bolshevik state that was established during the 1917 Russian revolution and the subsequent seizure of this state by Stalin and his supporters after Lenin’s death in January 1924.[[#79Forabriefoverviewofthis|79]] As early as June 1919, Malatesta wrote that although “Lenin, Trotsky and their companions are certainly sincere revolutionaries . . . they prepare the governmental cadres that will serve those that will come, who will profit from the revolution and kill it. They will be the first victims of their method, and with them, I fear, will fall the revolution.”[[#80MalatestaMethodofFreedom|80]]
+''Mental reflections'' are reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms.
-Anarchists who had witnessed the revolution first hand subsequently wrote a number of critiques of the Bolsheviks. This included Goldman, who was deported from the United States to Russia in 1920. She wrote in December 1922 that the Bolsheviks had succeeded only in creating an “all-powerful, centralized Government with State Capitalism as its economic expression,” which was based on “the masking of autocracy by proletarian slogans.”[[#81GoldmanRedEmma388394|81]] The Bolsheviks violently repressed all rival forms of socialism, including anarchists, left socialist-revolutionaries, and Mensheviks, in order to keep power within the Communist Party. Members of the Party “who were suspected of an independent attitude” and challenged the party leadership were expelled.[[#82GoldmanRedEmma387|82]] In parallel to this, the organs of self-management that had been created by workers themselves during the revolution—soviets, factory committees, trade unions, and cooperatives—were “either subordinated to the needs of the new State or destroyed altogether.”[[#83GoldmanRedEmma389|83]] The consequence of this was that “the triumph of the State meant the defeat of the Revolution.”[[#84GoldmanRedEmma391|84]] This occurred because the “revolutionary methods” of the Bolsheviks were not “in tune with revolutionary aims.”[[#85GoldmanRedEmma404For|85]]
+-----
-The tragedy of the Russian Revolution demonstrated, according to anarchists, that they had been right and state socialists had been wrong. The liberation of the working classes could only be achieved through them crushing state power and building their own organs of self-management and class power. These arguments have, from an anarchist perspective, only proven stronger with time, given that subsequent state socialist revolutions in China, Cuba, and Vietnam have, like their predecessor in Russia, failed to produce a substantially free and equal society in which the working classes themselves own the means of production and self-manage their lives within both the workplace and wider society, let alone a state in the process of withering away. Despite numerous achievements within certain domains, such as increasing literacy rates or improving healthcare, these societies have not laid the foundations from which a stateless, classless, moneyless society based on distribution according to need could possibly emerge.
+==== Annotation 71 ====
-'''Anarchism and Political Struggle'''
+''Conditioned reflexes'' are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals learn to associate previously unrelated neural stimuli to elicit a particular reaction. The Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov famously developed our understanding of conditioned responses by ringing a dinner bell shortly before giving dogs food. After a few repetitions, dogs would begin to salivate upon hearing the dinner bell being rung, even before any food was offered. Any dog which did not receive this conditioning would not salivate upon hearing a dinner bell. This is what makes it a learned, conditioned response — a type of mental reflection.
-The anarchist rejection of seizing state power has led some Marxists to assert that anarchists opposed, and so ignored the need for, political struggle.[[#86ForexampleHalDraperKarl|86]] This argument dates back to Marx and Engels themselves. Marx wrote in an 1870 letter to Paul Lafargue that Bakunin thought that the industrial working class “must not occupy itself with ''politics''” and instead “only organize themselves by trades-unions,” and thus making what Marx saw as the fatal error of allowing “the governments, these great trade-unions of the ruling classes, to do as they like.” Bakunin had, according to Marx, failed to see “that every class movement as a class movement, is necessarily and was always a ''political'' movement.”[[#87KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|87]] After the First International’s Hague Congress of 1872, Marx gave a speech in which he said that “a group has been formed in our midst which advocates that the workers should abstain from political activity” and thereby ignored that “the worker will have to seize political supremacy to establish the new organization of labor.”[[#88KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|88]] Engels likewise claimed in an 1872 letter to Louis Pio that anarchists in the First International advocated the “''complete abstention from all political activity, and especially from all elections''.”[[#89KarlMarxandFriedrichEnge|89]]
+''Dynamic and creative reflection'' is the most advanced form of reflection. It only occurs in matter that has the highest structural level, such as the human brain. Dynamic and creative reflection is done through the human brain’s nervous physiological activities whenever the objective world impacts human senses. This is a kind of reflection that actively selects and processes information to create new information and to understand the meaning of that information. This dynamic and creative reflection is called consciousness.
-Anarchists in Marx’s time and beyond did not, however, reject political struggle in and of itself. They rejected one form of political struggle—attempting to conquer state power via elections or armed insurrection—in favor of a different form of political struggle—engaging in direct action outside of and against the state with the long-term aim of abolishing it. This position was grounded in the idea that working-class social movements should only engage in forms of political struggle that built toward a social revolution that abolished capitalism and the state, rather than leading workers away from it. As Malatesta wrote, anarchists embraced “political struggle” in the sense of “struggle against the government and not co-operation with the government,” because “if you truly want to overthrow the system, then you must clearly place yourself outside and against the system itself.”[[#90MalatestaAttheCafeConv|90]] For many anarchists, this political struggle included engaging in direct action to gain or enforce political liberties that expanded the ability of workers to self-organize, such as freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.[[#91RudolfRockerTheLondonYe|91]]
+-----
-The anarchist view on political struggle can be seen in Bakunin’s distinction between bourgeois reformist politics and the revolutionary proletarian politics of the anarchist movement. According to Bakunin, “it would be the death of the proletariat, if it were preoccupied exclusively and solely with economic matters” and ignored “political questions.”[[#92BakuninSelectedTexts238|92]] This is because any significant attempt by the working classes to emancipate themselves economically will be met by state violence. In Bakunin’s words, “''the political question is inseparable from the economic question'' . . . politics—the institution and mutual relations of States—has no other object except that of ensuring that the ruling classes can legally exploit the proletariat. So in consequence, the moment the proletariat wishes to free itself, it is forced to consider politics—to fight it and overcome it.”[[#93BakuninSelectedTexts226|93]] The First International would for this same reason, “be compelled to intervene in politics so long as it is forced to struggle against the bourgeoisie.”[[#94BakuninPoliticalPhilosoph|94]] Its task as an organization “is not just some economic or a simply material creative activity, it is at the same time and to the same degree an eminently political process.”[[#95QuotedinBerthierSocialD|95]]
+==== Annotation 72 ====
-The question for Bakunin was not whether we should engage in politics but what form our political interventions should take. He was careful to distinguish between bourgeois politics, which did not aim to achieve the immediate emancipation of workers, and the politics of labor or social revolution, which aimed to abolish the state in order to establish socialism.[[#96BakuninSelectedTexts22|96]] Given this, “It is not true . . . to say that we completely ignore politics. We do not ignore it, for we definitely want to destroy it. And here we have the essential point separating us from political parties and bourgeois radical Socialists. Their politics consists in making use of, reforming, and transforming the politics of the State, whereas our politics, the only kind we admit, is the total ''abolition'' of the State, and of the politics which is its necessary manifestation.”[[#97MichaelBakuninThePolitic|97]]
+Remember Lenin’s definition of matter from ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'': “Matter is a philosophical category denoting objective reality which is given to man in his sensations, and which is copied, photographed, and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.”
-Bakunin’s distinction between bourgeois politics and revolutionary proletarian politics was shared by other anarchists. During the First International’s 1872 Hague Congress, which was attended by Marx and Engels, Guillaume claimed that the anarchist idea of politics “was not political indifferentism, but a special kind of politics negating bourgeois politics and which we should call the politics of labor,” which sought “''the destruction of political power''.”[[#98QuotedinWolfgangEckhardt|98]] Andrea Costa wrote, with Bakunin’s assistance, a program for the Italian section of the Saint-Imier International sometime in late 1872. The program distinguished between the “negative politics” of abolishing ruling-class institutions and the “positive politics” of constructing a new society through the “revolutionary power” of the working classes.[[#99QuotedinTRRavindranatha|99]] Over two decades later, in 1897, Malatesta remarked that “who has outdone us in arguing that the battle against capitalism has to be harnessed to the fight against the State, meaning the political struggle? There is a school of thought these days in which political struggle means achieving public office through elections: but . . . logic forces other methods of struggle upon those seeking to do away with government, rather than capture it.”[[#100MalatestaPatientWork20|100]]
+An intrinsic property of matter is that it can be sensed by human beings, and through this sensation, ''reflected'' in human consciousness. Thus, all forms of matter share the characteristic of being able to be reflected in the human mind.
-For Malatesta, like Bakunin before him, economic struggles would be transformed into political struggles. He argued that “from the economic struggle one must pass to the political struggle, that is to the struggle against government” because “workers who want to free themselves, or even only to effectively improve their conditions, will be faced with the need to defend themselves from the government” that violently protects private property rights and the interests of the economic ruling classes.[[#101MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|101]] Workers will be forced to “oppose the rifles and guns which defend property with the more effective means that the people will be able to find to defeat force by force.”[[#102MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|102]] The manner in which capitalism and the state support and cocreate one another led Malatesta to conclude that the economic struggle against capitalism and the political struggle against the state are so interconnected that they should be viewed as two aspects of a single struggle against the ruling classes, rather than as two separate struggles.[[#103MalatestaPatientWork16|103]]
+Criticizing Karl Pearson, who said that it was not logical to maintain that all matter had the property of being conscious, Lenin wrote in brackets: “But it is logical to suppose that all matter possesses a property which is essentially kindred to sensation: the property to reflect.” Understanding the concept of dynamic and creative reflection is critical to understanding the role of consciousness and the ideal in Dialectical Materialism. In particular, reflection differentiates Dialectical Materialism from the idealist form of dialectics used by Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10]. As Marx famously wrote in ''Capital Volume I'':
-A significant number of anarchists held that politics would be abolished via the social revolution. One Spanish anarchist poem, for example, declared that “politics” would “disappear from the world” via “the establishment of anarchy.”[[#104QuotedinJeromeRMintz|104]] Other anarchists, in comparison, thought that politics was not inherently state-centric and would continue to exist, albeit in a very different form, after the abolition of the state. Kropotkin argued that “new forms of economical life will require also new forms of political life, and these new forms cannot be a reinforcement of the power of the State by giving up in its hands the production and distribution of wealth, and its exchange.”[[#105KropotkinDirectStruggle|105]] These new forms of political life must instead be “created by the workers themselves, in ''their'' unions, ''their'' federations, completely outside the State.”[[#106KropotkinModernScience|106]] Given this, “The free Commune . . . is the ''political ''form that the ''social ''revolution must take.”[[#107KropotkinModernScience|107]]
+<blockquote>
+My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
+</blockquote>
-'''Different Kinds of Anarchism'''
+In other words, Hegelian idealism saw human consciousness as defining the material world. Dialectical Materialism inverts this relationship to recognize that what we conceive in our minds is only a reflection of the material world. As Marx explains in ''The German Ideology'', all conscious thought stems from life processes through reflection:
-Anarchists in this historical period generally shared the basic strategic commitments that have been explained in Chapters 4 and 5. They nonetheless also disagreed with one another about a wide variety of more specific topics. This included such questions as what kind of organizations they should build, what tactics they should engage in, and how anarchists should act to help bring about the social revolution. Broadly speaking the anarchist movement can be divided into two main strategic schools of thought: insurrectionist anarchism and mass anarchism. Insurrectionist anarchism advocated the formation of small, loosely organized groups that attempted to trigger, or at least build toward, a social revolution by engaging in an escalating series of individual and collective violent attacks against the ruling classes and their institutions. Mass anarchism, in comparison, advocated the formation of large-scale formal organizations that struggled for immediate reforms in the present via direct action. They viewed such struggles as the most effective means to construct a mass movement capable of launching a social revolution via an armed insurrection.[[#108LucienvanderWaltAnarc|108]]
+<blockquote>
+Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
+</blockquote>
-The terms insurrectionist anarchist and mass anarchist were not used by anarchists historically and are anachronistic. In Spain during the 1880s, the debate occurred between anarchist communists (insurrectionist anarchists) and anarchist collectivists (mass anarchists). In Italy during the 1890s and 1900s, it occurred between anarchist communists who were either organizationalists (mass anarchists) or antiorganizationalists (insurrectionist anarchists). Given the wide variety of different terms that were used historically, I decided to make things clearer by using the same terminology consistently. This terminology, which was coined by the historian Lucian van der Walt, is potentially misleading and two points of clarification must be made.
+Marx and Engels argued that consciousness arose from the ''life-processes'' of human beings. Life-processes are processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life, and these processes have a dialectical relationship with consciousness: the processes of life, therefore, reflect consciousness, just as consciousness reflects human life-processes. Conscious activities (such as being able to hunt, gather, and cook food, build shelter, and so on) improve the life-processes of human beings (by improving our health, extending our life-spans, etc.); and as our life-processes improved, our consciousness was able to develop more fully. As a concrete example of the dialectic between life processes and consciousness, it is now widely believed by scientists that the advent of cooking and preparing food (conscious activity) improved the functioning of the human brain<ref>Source: “Food for Thought: Was Cooking a Pivotal Step in Human Evolution?” by Alexandra Rosati, ''Scientific American'', February 26, 2018.</ref> (a life process) which, in turn, developed human consciousness, and so on. Life-processes thus determine ''how'' consciousness reflects reality, while consciousness impacts back on life-processes, reflecting the dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness [see p. 88] and between practical activities and consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226].
-First, mass anarchists advocated and engaged in armed insurrections, while insurrectionist anarchists ultimately aimed to create a mass working-class social movement. Second, although one can distinguish between insurrectionist anarchism and mass anarchism these are ideal types and individuals cannot always be neatly categorized into one or the other due to their combining elements of both or only subscribing to certain aspects of the theory in question. The anarchist movement contained a great deal of intellectual diversity and, although some anarchists were dogmatic, there were no rigid barriers between different kinds of anarchism that might, in principle, prevent one kind of anarchist learning from and being influenced by another kind of anarchist. Most Italian anarchists who lived in North Beach, San Francisco, for example, subscribed to multiple publications espousing different kinds of anarchism and interacted socially with anarchists from other tendencies.[[#109KenyonZimmerImmigrantsA|109]] The distinction between insurrectionist anarchism and mass anarchism should be viewed as a simplification that is helpful for thinking about the major strategic disagreements within the anarchist movement, rather than being a perfect description of the ideological complexity of the anarchist movement. In the next several chapters, I will examine the various forms that anarchism took during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
+Because consciousness arose from life-processes of human beings in the material world, we know that the material world is reflected in our consciousness. However, these reflections do not ''determine'' the material world, and do not mirror the material world exactly [see Annotation 77, p. 79]. It is also important to understand that, since life-processes in the material world predate and determine consciousness, consciousness can never be a first basis of seeking truth about our world. As Marx further explains in ''The German Ideology:''
-[[#15|1]]. Gary P. Steenson, ''After Marx, Before Lenin: Marxism and Socialist Working-Class Parties in Europe, 1884–1914'' (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991); Keven McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, ''The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin ''(Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1996), 1–27.
+<blockquote>
+Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#25|2]]. For illustrative examples, see Alexander Berkman, ''What is Anarchism? ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003),'' ''89–136; Emma Goldman, ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader'', ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 101–8, 383–420; Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 371–82, 432; Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 24–27, 120–24; Rudolf Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 11–12, 48–49; Rudolf Rocker, “Marx and Anarchism,” Anarchist Library website, April 26, 2009. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rudolf-rocker-marx-and-anarchism.</div>
+In other words, Hegelian idealism makes the critical mistake of believing that the ideal — consciousness — is the first basis of reality, and that anything and everything can be achieved through mere conscious activity. Marx, on the other hand, argues that “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life,” and that we must understand the ways in which reality is reflected in consciousness before we can hope to affect change in the material conditions of human beings:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#35|3]]. For an overview of Marx and Engels’s strategy, see Hal Draper, ''Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution'','' ''vol. 3,'' The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”'' (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986); Richard N. Hunt, ''The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels'','' ''vol. 1,'' Marxism and Totalitarian Democracy, 1818–1850'' (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974); Hunt, ''The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels'','' ''vol. 2,'' Classical Marxism, 1850–1895 ''(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984).</div>
+<blockquote>
+In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here [in the materialist perspective] we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#45|4]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Words of a'' ''Rebel ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992), 91–92; Peter Kropotkin, ''Modern Science and Anarchy'', ed. Iain McKay'' ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018),'' ''211, 220–21, 233.</div>
+So, the work of the Dialectical Materialist is not to try to develop Utopian conceptions of reality first, to then proceed to try and force such purely ideal conceptions onto reality (see Annotation 17, p. 18).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#55|5]]. For an overview of these movements and their ideas, see Steenson, ''After Marx, Before Lenin''. For important primary sources, see Karl Kautsky, ''The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) ''(Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1910); Mike Taber, ed. ''Under the Socialist Banner: Resolutions of the Second International 1889–1912 ''(Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021).</div>
+Rather, we must understand the material basis of reality, as well as the material processes of change and motion which govern reality, and only then can we search for ways in which human beings can influence material reality through conscious activity. As Marx explains, the revolutionary must not be fooled into believing we can simply conceive of an ideal world and then replicate it into reality through interpretation and conscious thought alone. Instead, we must start with a firm understanding of material conditions and, from that material basis, determine how to build our revolutionary movement through conscious impact of material relations and processes of development in the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#65|6]]. Edward Bernstein, ''Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation ''(New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1909), x–xvi, 145–46, 163, 196–99, 216–19; Rosa Luxemburg, ''Rosa Luxemburg Speaks'','' ''ed. Mary-Alice Waters'' ''(New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), 48–59, 76–83.</div>
+As Marx wrote in ''The German Ideology:'' “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” This distinction may seem subtle at first, but it has massive implications for how Marx suggests we go about participating in revolutionary activity. For Marx, purely-idealist debates and criticisms are an unproductive waste of time:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#75|7]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 91–93; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 193; Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 30–31.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly ‘world-shattering’ statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against ‘phrases.’ They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. The only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few (and at that thoroughly one-sided) elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries of universal importance.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#85|8]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 378–81; Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 64–71; Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''178–82.</div>
+Marx also discusses the uselessness of idealist conjecture:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#95|9]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''30–31.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Moreover, it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to do on its own: out of all such muck we get only the one inference that these three moments, the forces of production, the state of society, and consciousness, can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the division of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact that intellectual and material activity — enjoyment and labour, production and consumption — devolve on different individuals, and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of labour. It is self-evident, moreover, that ‘spectres,’ ‘bonds,’ ‘the higher being,’ ‘concept,’ ‘scruple,’ [terms for idealist conceptions] are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression, the conception apparently of the isolated individual, the image of very empirical fetters and limitations, within which the mode of production of life and the form of intercourse coupled with it move.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#105|10]]. Voltairine de Cleyre, ''The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader'' ed. A. J. Brigati (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004),'' ''59.</div>
+What Marx means by this is that we should focus on the material processes and conditions of society if we intend to change society, because idealist speculation, conjecture, critique, and thought alone, at the individual level, will never be capable of affecting revolutionary change in our material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#115|11]]. Malatesta, ''Long and Patient'', 4.</div>
+Instead, we must focus on the material basis of reality, the material conditions of society, and seek revolutionary measures which are built upon materialist foundations. Only by understanding material processes of development, as well as the dialectical relationship between consciousness and matter, can we reliably and effectively begin to impact reality through conscious activity. This begins with the recognition that conscious thought itself is a ''reflection'' of material reality which developed and results from ''life-processes'' of material motion and processes of change within the human brain.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#125|12]]. Malatesta, ''Long and Patient'', 9.</div>
+This concept of reflection, pioneered by Marx and Engels, was significantly developed by V. I. Lenin in his response to Machian positivists who posited that what we perceive is not truly reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27]. In his ''Philosophical Notebooks,'' Lenin wrote: “Life gives rise to the brain. Nature is reflected in the human brain.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#134|13]]. Malatesta, ''Long and Patient'', 180–81.</div>
+In ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', Lenin further defined the relationship between matter and consciousness through reflection.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#144|14]]. De Cleyre,'' Reader'', 59.</div>
+'''LENIN’S PROOF OF THE THEORY OF REFLECTION'''
-[[#154|15]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'','' ''54.
+In ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,'' Lenin offered the following arguments to back up the theory of reflection.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#164|16]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 178. See also, 77; ''Patient Work'', 10, 44.</div>
+<blockquote>
+) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin [a chemical substance which was newly discovered at time of writing] existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#174|17]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', ed. A. W. Zurbrugg (London: Merlin Books, 2016),'' ''54.</div>
+Lenin is saying that the material world must exist outside of and independent from our consciousness. He cites as evidence the discovery of a chemical substance which until recently we had no sensory perception of, noting that this substance must have existed long before we became aware of it through sensory observation.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#184|18]]. Élisée Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' Geography'','' Modernity: Selected Writings of Élisée Reclus'', ed. John Clark and Camille Martin (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013), 147.</div>
+<blockquote>
+) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is “beyond” phenomena (Kant) or that we can or must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) — all this is the sheerest nonsense, [unfounded belief], trick, invention.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#194|19]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 193.</div>
+Lenin is referencing a centuries-old debate about whether or not human beings are capable of having real knowledge of a “thing-in-itself,” or if we can only perceive ''phenomena'' of things (characteristics observable to our senses). The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness. So the question being posed is: can we REALLY have knowledge of material objects outside of our consciousness, or does consciousness itself act as a barrier to ever REALLY knowing anything about material objects and the material world outside of our consciousness?
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#204|20]]. Reclus, ''Anarchy'', 122.</div>
+Immanuel Kant argued that we can never know the true nature of the material world, writing: “we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing-in-itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.” This idea that the senses could not be trusted to deliver accurate knowledge — and thus, the “thing-in-itself” is essentially unknowable — was carried forward by later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume [see Annotation 10, p. 10]. In ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', Marx and Engels refute this notion, arguing that ''practice'' allows us to discover truth about “things-in-themselves:”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#214|21]]. Reclus, ''Anarchy'', 122.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice — namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable “thing-in-itself”.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#224|22]]. Max Baginski, ''What Does Syndicalism Want? Living'','' Not Dead Unions'' (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2015), 13.</div>
+Lenin expanded on this argument, explaining that the phenomena of objects which we observe with our senses ''do'' accurately reflect material objects, even though we might not know everything about these objects at once. Over time, as we learn more and more about material objects and the material world through practice and repeated observation, we more fully and accurately come to understand “things-in-themselves, as he writes in ''Empirio-Criticism and Materialism:''
-[[#234|23]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 55.
+<blockquote>
+) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as readymade and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.
+</blockquote>
-[[#244|24]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 55.
+Here, Lenin further elaborates on the dialectical nature of knowledge: we must simultaneously accept that our knowledge is never perfect and unchanging, but we must also recognize that we are capable of making our knowledge more exact and complete over time. To further defend his ideas about reflection, Lenin cited Czech philosopher Karl Kautsky’s argument against Kant:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#254|25]]. For the programs of socialist parties in Austria, Germany, and Italy, see the appendix to Steenson, ''After Marx, Before Lenin'', 285–307.</div>
+<blockquote>
+That I see green, red and white is grounded in my faculty of sight. But that green is something different from red testifies to something that lies outside of me, to real differences between the things... The relations and differences between the things themselves revealed to me by the individual space and time concepts are real relations and differences of the external world, not conditioned by the nature of my perceptive faculty... If this were really so [i.e., if Kant’s doctrine of the ideality of time and space were true], we could know nothing about the world outside us, not even that it exists.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#264|26]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 92–93, 99–102; Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' ''145–7; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 338, 372–74; Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 115.</div>
+Lenin followed from Marx and Engels that, in order to further develop our understanding and knowledge of the material world, it was necessary to engage in ''practice'' [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-[[#274|27]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 55.
+<blockquote>
+The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#284|28]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,'' ''1990), ed. Marshall Shatz, 180; Luigi Galleani, ''The End of Anarchism?'' (London: Elephant Editions, 2012), 30.</div>
+Notice that Engels is careful to use the words ''so far'': “its qualities, ''so far'', agree with reality outside ourselves.” Engels does not argue that human understanding of the material world is infallible: mistakes are often made. But over time, as such mistakes are discovered and our understanding improves, our knowledge of the material world develops. This is only possible if the phenomena of objects which we observe — the reflections within our consciousness — do actually and accurately represent material reality. Lenin elaborated on this necessity to constantly update and improve dialectical materialist philosophy as new information and knowledge became available:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#294|29]]. René Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism in the International Workers’ Association, 1864–1877'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2015), 48–9; Peter Kropotkin, ''Memoirs of a Revolutionist ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 259–60.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Engels, for instance, assimilated the, to him, new term, energy, and began to employ it in 1885 (Preface to the 2<sup>nd</sup> ed. of Anti-Dühring) and in 1888 (Ludwig Feuerbach), but to employ it equally with the concepts of ‘force’ and ‘motion,’ and along with them. Engels was able to enrich his materialism by adopting a new terminology.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#304|30]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 181.</div>
+Engels provided further elaborations on how practical experience and mastery of the material world refutes the notion that it is impossible to have real knowledge of the material world in ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#314|31]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 29–30.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice, viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable... The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such thingsin-themselves until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the thing-in-itself became a thing for us, as for instance, alizarin [a dye which was originally plant-based], which we no longer trouble to grow in in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#324|32]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 92.</div>
+So, dialectical materialism holds that there is a material world external from our consciousness; that conscious thoughts are reflections of this material world; that we can have real knowledge of the material world through sensory observation; and that our knowledge and understanding of the material world is best advanced through ''practice'' in the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#334|33]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 92–93.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#344|34]]. Quoted in Jeremy Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France: A Study of Ideas'' (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990),'' ''36. See also Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 111–17. In response to Millerand’s actions, the 2nd International passed resolutions at its 1900 and 1904 congresses that opposed the entry of socialist politicians into a bourgeois government’s cabinet. See Taber, ed. ''Under the Socialist Banner'','' ''77–78, 83–84.</div>
+''- Social Sources of Consciousness''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#354|35]]. Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 36; F. F. Ridley, ''Revolutionary Syndicalism in France: The Direct Action of Its Time'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970),'' ''58–61; Robert G. Neville, “The Courrières Colliery Disaster, 1906,” ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 13, no. 1 (1978): 33–52.</div>
+There are many factors that constitute the social sources of consciousness. The most basic and direct factors are ''labor'' and ''language.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#364|36]]. S. F. Kissin, ''War and the Marxists: Socialist Theory and Practice in Capitalist Wars'','' ''vol. 1,'' 1848–1918 ''(London: Routledge, 2019). For anarchist responses to the war, see Matthew S. Adams and Ruth Kinna, eds. ''Anarchism, 1914–18: Internationalism, Anti-Militarism and War'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017)''<nowiki>; </nowiki>''A. W. Zurbrugg, ''Anarchist Perspectives in Peace and War, 1900–1918'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2018), 157–81.'' ''</div>
+''Labor'' is the process by which humans interact with the natural world in order to make products for our needs of existing and developing. Labor is also the process that changes the human body’s structure [i.e., muscles developing through exercise].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#374|37]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 99.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#384|38]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 99, 98.</div>
+==== Annotation 73 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#394|39]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 310, 199, 227.</div>
+In ''Dialectics of Nature'', Engels describes the dialectical relationship between labor and human development:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#404|40]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', ed. Arthur Lehning (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 255. The same point is made in Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 388.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source — next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#414|41]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 14–15; Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''130; Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 273–75, 352.</div>
+Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity; the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#424|42]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''113.</div>
+Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorwaldsen, the music of a Paganini.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#434|43]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 130. See also Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 253, 265–66.</div>
+But the hand did not exist alone, it was only one member of an integral, highly complex organism. And what benefited the hand, benefited also the whole body it served.
+</blockquote>
-[[#444|44]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 178.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#454|45]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 27.</div>
+Labor also allows us to discover the attributes, structures, motion laws, etc., of the natural world, via observable phenomena.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#464|46]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 164, 352.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#474|47]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 120–21.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#484|48]]. Council communists are an example of Marxists who advocated a dictatorship of the proletariat that was similar to, but not identical with, what anarchists advocated. For a discussion of the similarities between council communism and anarchism, see Saku Pinta, “Towards a Libertarian Communism: a Conceptual History of the Intersections Between Anarchisms and Marxisms” (PhD Diss., Loughborough University, 2013).</div>
+==== Annotation 74 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#494|49]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''392.</div>
+We discover truth about the natural world through labor — through physical ''practice'' in the material world. See the discussion of ''practice'' in Annotation 211, p. 205.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#504|50]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''392.</div>
+All of these phenomena, through our human senses, impact our human brains. And through brain activity, knowledge and consciousness of the objective world are formed and developed.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#514|51]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''392. There appears to be a typo in this edition, where Malatesta says that it will “defend the revolution for its external enemies.” I choose to replace “for” with “against” based on the translation available in ''No Gods'','' No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'','' ''ed. Daniel Guérin (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005),'' ''392.</div>
+''Language'' is a system of material signals that carries information with cognitive content. Without language, consciousness could not exist and develop.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#524|52]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'','' ''vol. 24'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989), 320–21; ''Collected Works'','' ''vol. 26, 269–72</div>
+The birth of language goes hand in hand with labor. From the beginning, labor was social. The relationships between people who perform labor processes require them to have means to communicate and exchange thoughts. This requirement caused language to arise and develop along with the working processes. With language, humans not only communicate, but also summarise reality and convey experience and thoughts from generation to generation.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#534|53]]. Marx and Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 24, 321.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#544|54]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 26 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 272. For Marx’s vision of a stateless classless society, see Paul Raekstad, ''Karl Marx’s Realist Critique of Capitalism: Freedom, Alienation, and Socialism'' (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 155–72.</div>
+==== Annotation 75 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#554|55]]. Carlo Cafiero, ''Revolution'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2012), 45.</div>
+From ''Dialectics of Nature'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#564|56]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Bakunin on Anarchism'', ed. Sam Dolgoff (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1980), 145.</div>
+<blockquote>
+It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man’s horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other. Necessity created the organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by modulation to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#574|57]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 124.</div>
+Comparison with animals proves that this explanation of the origin of language from and in the process of labour is the only correct one. The little that even the most highly-developed animals need to communicate to each other does not require articulate speech. In its natural state, no animal feels handicapped by its inability to speak or to understand human speech. It is quite different when it has been tamed by man. The dog and the horse, by association with man, have developed such a good ear for articulate speech that they easily learn to understand any language within their range of concept. Moreover they have acquired the capacity for feelings such as affection for man, gratitude, etc., which were previously foreign to them. Anyone who has had much to do with such animals will hardly be able to escape the conviction that in many cases they now feel their inability to speak as a defect, although, unfortunately, it is one that can no longer be remedied because their vocal organs are too specialised in a definite direction. However, where vocal organs exist, within certain limits even this inability disappears. The buccal organs of birds are as different from those of man as they can be, yet birds are the only animals that can learn to speak; and it is the bird with the most hideous voice, the parrot, that speaks best of all. Let no one object that the parrot does not understand what it says. It is true that for the sheer pleasure of talking and associating with human beings, the parrot will chatter for hours at a stretch, continually repeating its whole vocabulary. But within the limits of its range of concepts it can also learn to understand what it is saying. Teach a parrot swear words in such a way that it gets an idea of their meaning (one of the great amusements of sailors returning from the tropics); tease it and you will soon discover that it knows how to use its swear words just as correctly as a Berlin costermonger. The same is true of begging for titbits.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#584|58]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 52. See also Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 63.</div>
+First labour, after it and then with it speech — these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which, for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect. Hand in inevitably accompanied by a corresponding refinement of the organ of hearing, so the development of the brain as a whole is accompanied by a refinement of hand with the development of the brain went the development of its most immediate instruments — the senses. Just as the gradual development of speech is all the senses. The eagle sees much farther than man, but the human eye discerns considerably more in things than does the eye of the eagle. The dog has a far keener sense of smell than man, but it does not distinguish a hundredth part of the odours that for man are definite signs denoting different things. And the sense of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest initial form, has been developed only side by side with the development of the human hand itself, through the medium of labour.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#594|59]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''147.</div>
+So, the most basic, direct and important source that decides the birth and development of language is labor. Language appeared later than labor but always goes with labor. Language and labor were the two main stimulations affecting the brains of the primates which evolved into humans, slowly changing their brains into human brains and transforming animal psychology into human consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#604|60]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 43. See also Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 136.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-14.png|''This diagram is based on work from an article titled'' “Evidence in Hand: Recent Discoveries and the Early Evolution of Human Manual Manipulation<ref>Written by Professor Tracy L. Kivell and published in ''The Royal Society''.</ref>.”''Modern research has discovered strong evidence<ref>''Stone Tools Helped Shape Human Hands'' by Sara Reardon, published in New Scientist Magazine.</ref> that the human hand evolved along with tool use, in line with Engels’ analysis in'' Dialectics of Nature.]]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#614|61]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 115–16, 130–31, 289–90; Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 11–13.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#624|62]]. Luigi Fabbri, “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism,” in ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', ed. Friends of Aron Baron (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 20.</div>
+==== Annotation 76 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#634|63]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 123.</div>
+It is also worth noting that, just as human consciousness derived from labor and language ''and'' social activity, so too did society itself arise from language and labor, as Engels explained in ''Dialectics of Nature'':
-[[#644|64]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 179.
+<blockquote>
+The reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development. This development did not reach its conclusion when man finally became distinct from the ape, but on the whole made further powerful progress, its degree and direction varying among different peoples and at different times, and here and there even being interrupted by local or temporary regression. This further development has been strongly urged forward, on the one hand, and guided along more definite directions, on the other, by a new element which came into play with the appearance of fully-fledged man, namely, society.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#654|65]]. Fabbri, “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism,” 20.</div>
+In other words, these factors of human’s physical nature and human society have a dialectical relationship with one another. Elements of human nature — in particular labor and language — led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#664|66]]. Vladimir Lenin, ''Selected Works ''(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 635, 682–83, 685–86.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-15.png|''Human language and human labor mutually develop one another through a dialectical process to develop human nature. Simultaneously, human nature and human society mutually develop one another through a dialectical process.'']]
-[[#674|67]]. Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 181.
+Elements of human nature — in particular labor and language — led to the development of human society, which in turned played a key role in the development of human language and labor.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#684|68]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 170.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#694|69]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 165, 210, 288, 385–86,</div>
+==== b. Nature and Structure of Consciousness ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#704|70]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 123–24.</div>
+''- Nature of Consciousness''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#714|71]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 274.</div>
+''Consciousness is the dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; it is the subjective image of the objective world.'' [See discussion of dynamic and creative reflection on p. 68]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#723|72]]. Fabbri, “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism,” 29–30.</div>
+''The dynamic and creative nature'' of reflection is expressed in human psycho-physiological activities when we receive, select, process, and save data in our brains. Within the human brain, we are able to collect data from the external material world. Based on this information, our brain is capable of creating new information, and we are able to analyze, interpret, and understand all of this information collectively within our consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#733|73]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 88–89.</div>
+The dynamic and creative nature of reflection is also expressed in several human processes:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#743|74]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 130–31.</div>
+* The creation of ideas, hypotheses, stories, etc.
+* The ability to summarize nature and to comprehend the objective laws of nature.
+* The ability to construct models of ideas and systems of knowledge to guide our activities.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#753|75]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 198.</div>
+''Consciousness is the subjective image of the objective world.'' Consciousness is defined by the objective world in both Content and Form [see Annotation 150, p. 147]. However, consciousness does not perfectly reflect the objective world. It modifies information through the subjective lenses (thoughts, feelings, aspirations, experiences, knowledge, needs, etc.) of humans. According to Marx and Engels, ideas are simply “sublimates [transformations] of [the human brain’s]... material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.”<ref>''The German Ideology'', Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1846.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#763|76]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 191, 193.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#773|77]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 306.</div>
+==== Annotation 77 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#783|78]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 306.</div>
+In ''The German Ideology'', Marx and Engels refer to ideas somewhat poetically as “the phantoms formed in the human brain,” and explains that ideas arise directly from material human life processes [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Lenin makes it very clear in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'' that consciousness is not a ''mirror image'', or ''exact'' reproduction of reality, quoting Engels:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#793|79]]. For a brief overview of this very complex history from an anti-Leninist perspective, see: Maurice Brinton, “The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control 1917–1921: The State and Counter-Revolution,” in ''For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton'', ed. David Goodway (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 293–378; Iain McKay, “The State and Revolution: Theory and Practice,” in ''Bloodstained'', 61–117.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The great basic question of all philosophy,” Engels says, “especially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being,” of “spirit and nature.” Having divided the philosophers into “two great camps” on this basic question, Engels shows that there is “yet another side” to this basic philosophical question, viz., “in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality?” “The overwhelming majority of philosophers give an affirmative answer to this question,” says Engels, “including under this head not only all materialists but also the most consistent idealists.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#803|80]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''392.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#813|81]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 388, 394. For details about Goldman and Berkman’s deportation, see Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, ''Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012),'' ''269–72, 291–302.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#823|82]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 387.</div>
+Of extra importance is Lenin’s footnote to the above passage, regarding what he purports to be Viktor Chernov’s mistranslation of Engels:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#833|83]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 389.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Fr. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., 4<sup>th</sup> Germ. ed., S. 15. Russian translation, Geneva ed., 1905, p. 12–13. Mr. V. Chernov translates the word Spiegelbild literally (a mirror reflection) accusing Plekhanov of presenting the theory of Engels “in a very weakened form” by speaking in Russian simply of a “reflection” instead of a “mirror reflection”. This is mere cavilling. Spiegelbild [mirror reflection] in German is also used simply in the sense of Abbild [reflection, image].
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#843|84]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 391.</div>
+Here, Lenin reaffirms and clarifies Engels’ idea that consciousness is not a perfect, exact duplicate of reality; not a “mirror image.” This, however, does not contradict the fact that we can obtain real knowledge of the real world in our consciousness, and that this knowledge improves over time through practice and observation. Indeed, Lenin’s passage on practice cited first in this annotation directly follows the above passage in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#853|85]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 404. For other anarchist critiques of the Bolsheviks, see Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 103–36; Peter Arshinov, ''History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918–1921'' (London: Freedom Press, 2005); Voline, ''The Unknown Revolution, 1917–1921 ''(Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2019).</div>
+See: Natural Source of Consciousness, p. 64, and Annotation 32, 27.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#863|86]]. For example Hal Draper, ''Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution'','' ''vol. 4,'' Critique of Other Socialisms'' (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 154; Paul Thomas, ''Karl Marx and the Anarchists'' (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 12, 16, 343–48; Vladimir Lenin, ''Collected Works'', vol. 10,'' ''ed. Andrew Rothstein (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), 71–73; George Plechanoff, ''Anarchism and Socialism ''(Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1912), 94–100.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#873|87]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 43'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 490–91.</div>
+''Consciousness is a social phenomenon and has a social nature.'' Consciousness arose from real life activities. Consciousness is always ruled by natural law and by social law.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#883|88]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 23'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988), 254–55.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#893|89]]. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ''Collected Works'', vol. 44'' ''(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989), 331.</div>
+==== Annotation 78 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#903|90]]. Malatesta, ''At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism'' (London: Freedom Press, 2005), 155. See also Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy'', 171.</div>
+''Natural law'' includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. Consciousness itself can never violate natural law as it arises from the natural processes of the natural world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#913|91]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''The London Years ''(Nottingham, UK: Five Leaves, 2005), 28; ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'','' ''73–78; Peter Kropotkin, ''Rebel'', 39–43.</div>
+''Social law'' includes the objective and universal relationships between social phenomena and social processes. Human society was created through labor, and this labor was performed in very specific material relations between humans and the natural world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#923|92]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 238.</div>
+''Note: social law is a key concept of historical materialism, which is the topic of Part 2 of the textbook from which this entire text has been translated, which we hope to translate in the future.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#933|93]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 226.</div>
+In ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx explains how social existence and social laws govern the consciousness of individuals:
-[[#943|94]]. Bakunin, ''Political Philosophy'', 313.
+<blockquote>
+In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
+</blockquote>
-[[#953|95]]. Quoted in Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 59.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#963|96]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 22, 53, 225.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#973|97]]. Michael Bakunin, ''The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism'', ed. G.P.'' ''Maximoff'' ''(New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964),'' ''313.</div>
+Consciousness is determined by the social communication needs of human beings as well as the material conditions of reality.
-[[#983|98]]. Quoted in Wolfgang Eckhardt, ''The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association'' (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016),'' ''341.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#993|99]]. Quoted in T.R. Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'' (Kingston and Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 183.</div>
+==== Annotation 79 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1003|100]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 20–21.</div>
+The term ''material conditions'' refers to the external environment which humans inhabit. Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base<ref>See Annotation 3, p. 2 and Annotation 29, p. 24.</ref> of human society, and other objective externalities and systems which affect human life and society. Note that material conditions don’t refer to physical matter alone, but also include objective social relations and phenomena. In ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx argues that “neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1013|101]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''53, 52.</div>
+Consciousness is dynamic in nature, constantly learning and changing flexibly. Consciousness guides humans to transform the material world to suit our needs.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1023|102]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''53. See also Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 310–11.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1033|103]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 167–68.</div>
+==== Annotation 80 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1043|104]]. Quoted in Jerome R. Mintz, ''The Anarchists of Casas Viejas ''(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 13.</div>
+Consciousness and material conditions have a dialectical relationship with one other, just as the base of society and the superstructure have a dialectical relationship with one other [see Annotation 29, p. 24]. Consciousness arises from material conditions, though conscious activity can affect material conditions.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1053|105]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 535.</div>
+As Marx explains in ''Capital Volume I'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1063|106]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 164. See also Kropotkin, ''Rebel'','' ''144.</div>
+<blockquote>
+At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1073|107]]. Kropotkin, ''Modern Science'', 159.</div>
+In ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx explains how the development of material conditions eventually leads to conscious activity which will in turn lead to changes in society:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1083|108]]. Lucien van der Walt, “Anarchism and Marxism,” in ''Brill’s Companion to Anarchist Philosophy'', ed. Nathan Jun'' ''(Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2017), 515. This distinction was first proposed in Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, ''Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009), 123–24. It should be noted that, since its publication, Schmidt was revealed to be a racist.</div>
+<blockquote>
+At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1093|109]]. Kenyon Zimmer, ''Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 99.Chapter 6: Insurrectionist Anarchism</div>
+As Marx further explains, material conditions must first be met before such revolutionary social changes can be made through conscious activity:
-== {{anchor|Chapter6InsurrectionistAnarc1}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook9}} {{anchor|Chapter6InsurrectionistAnarc}} Chapter 6: Insurrectionist Anarchism ==
+<blockquote>
+No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.
+</blockquote>
-Insurrectionist anarchists advocated the formation of small, loosely organized groups that met to learn and discuss ideas, plan direct action, organize talks and countercultural activities—such as dances and picnics—produce or distribute anarchist literature, and engage in violent acts of revolt against the ruling classes and their institutions.[[#1Priortothecreationofthe|1]] The ultimate aim of these different methods of action was the same: to inspire or evoke a revolutionary upsurge by the working classes. In theory, anarchists advocating, praising, and engaging in violent attacks against the ruling classes and their institutions would provoke or inspire significant segments of the working classes to rise up, which would in turn motivate others to join them in insurrection. This would lead to a chain reaction of uprisings spawning an ever-increasing number of revolts until the working classes had formed a mass movement, forcefully expropriated the ruling classes and abolished capitalism and the state in favor of an anarchist society.[[#2MichaelSchmidtandvanderW|2]]
-This strategy was advocated by Galleani. He held that “the way to revolution, whose initial phase must be the individual act of rebellion, inseparable from propaganda, from the mental preparation which understands it, integrates it, leading to larger and more frequent repetitions through which collective insurrections flow into the social revolution.”[[#3LuigiGalleaniTheEndofAn|3]] Although insurrectionist anarchists favored individual acts of rebellion, they also believed that the social revolution would be brought about by the working classes acting as a mass movement engaging in collective insurrections. Galleani endorsed “the direct and independent action of individuals and masses,” including “rebellion, insurrection, the general strike, the social revolution.”[[#4GalleaniEndofAnarchism3|4]] Cafiero thought that a social revolution would require “the violence of the insurgent masses.”[[#5CarloCafieroRevolutionEd|5]]
+-----
-The three main ideas that constituted insurrectionist anarchist strategy in this historical period were an opposition to formal organizations, a rejection of struggling for immediate reforms, and a commitment to propaganda of the deed. This chapter will establish what insurrectionists thought and how they used the theory of practice to justify or reject particular strategies. In particular, it will provide an overview of how the meaning of propaganda of the deed changed over time.
+''- Structure of Consciousness''
-'''Opposition to Formal Organizations'''
+Consciousness has a very complicated structure, including many factors which have strong relationships with each other. The most basic factors are ''knowledge, sentiment'' and ''willpower.''
-Insurrectionist anarchists argued that anarchism as a movement should not be organized through large, formal organizations characterized by such things as having a constitution, elected delegates, yearly national congresses that passed congress resolutions, and an official membership. Insurrectionist anarchists were initially in favor of federations because anarchism as a movement developed within the federations of the First and Saint-Imier Internationals. Paul Brousse, for example, was one of the main theorists of propaganda of the deed but also participated in a French anarchist federation that was affiliated with the Saint-Imier International.[[#6DavidStaffordFromAnarchis|6]] Similarly, during the 1880s, Most advocated propaganda of the deed, rejected the struggle for immediate reforms, and played a key role in the founding of the American national federation of the International Working People’s Association.[[#7TomGoyensBeerandRevoluti|7]]
+-----
-From the late 1870s onward, a significant segment of insurrectionist anarchists, such as Cafiero, came to reject formal organizations for strategic reasons, while still advocating federations as a key component of the future anarchist society. Eventually what had been a matter of strategy was transformed into a matter of principle and insurrectionist anarchists came to hold that all formal organizations were fundamentally incompatible with anarchist values and goals. It is difficult to establish how many insurrectionist anarchists there were because, unlike trade unions, they did not keep records of their size.[[#8CafieroRevolution4142P|8]]
+==== Annotation 81 ====
-Despite the fact that some insurrectionist anarchists claimed to reject all organization, they were not against organization in the sense of people coming together to act collectively as a group. Insurrectionist anarchists themselves usually distinguished between ''free association'', which they supported, and ''organization'', by which they meant formal organization, which they opposed. The Italian anarchist Giuseppe Ciancabilla wrote in 1899 that “organization (not free agreement, nor free association, we mean) is absolutely anti-anarchist.”[[#9QuotedinKenyonZimmerImmi|9]] In 1925, Galleani advocated a society based on cooperation, mutual agreement between groups, and “''the autonomy of the individual within the freedom of association''.”[[#10GalleaniEndofAnarchism|10]] Yet he also thought that “organizationalists cannot find a form of organization compatible with their anarchist principles.”[[#11GalleaniEndofAnarchism|11]] For this reason he opposed “the political organization of the anarchist party,” by which he meant a specific anarchist organization, and “the organization of the craft and trade unions.”[[#12GalleaniEndofAnarchism|12]]
+As with the concept of reflection (see Annotation 68, p. 65), the analysis of the structure of consciousness which follows is rooted in ideas first proposed by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and later developed through the work of various Soviet psychologists, philosophers, and scientists including Ivan Pavlov, Todor Pavlov, Aleksei Leontiev, Lev Vygotsky, Valentin Voloshinov, and others, and is used as a basis for scientific inquiry and development up to this day. According to ''Where is Marx in the Work and Thought of Vygotsky?'' by Lucien Sève (2018), much of this work, such as the groundbreaking work of Lev Vygotsky, has been heavily “de-Marxized,” stripped of all aspects of Marxism and, by extension, dialectical materialism, in translation to English.
-Critics of insurrectionist anarchism were likewise aware that they did not literally reject all organization. The Spanish anarchist Juan Serrano y Oteiza, who advocated formal organization and revolutionary trade unionism, wrote in 1885 that his opponents within the movement, “do not accept any organization except that of a group, and therefore they do not have organized trade sections, nor do they have local federations, district federations or federations of trade or trade unions. . . . Their only and exclusive form of organization are the groups or circles of social studies among which there has not been established any pact or constituted any commission which can serve as a center of relations between the respective collective bodies that pursue the same ends.”[[#13QuotedinGeorgeRichardEse|13]] Several years later in 1890, Malatesta noted that antiorganizationalist anarchists “rack their brains to come up with names to take the place of organization, but in actual fact they quite sheepishly engage in organization or attempts at organization.”[[#14MalatestaTheMethodofFre|14]]
+''Knowledge'' constitutes the understanding of human beings, and is the result of the cognitive process. Knowledge is the re-created image of perceived objects which takes the form of language. Knowledge is the mode of existence of consciousness and the condition for consciousness to develop.
-Insurrectionist anarchists opposed formal organizations for two main reasons. First, they held that it made it too easy for the state to infiltrate, persecute, and surveil the anarchist movement. In 1874, a group of influential Italian anarchists argued that the wave of state repression that the Italian section of the Saint-Imier International had experienced was a product of how they had primarily organized within a formal public federation. This had enabled “bourgeois troublemakers and spies” to infiltrate the movement and provide the government with information such that they could track the activities of anarchists and repress them at “the opportune moment.”[[#15QuotedinNunzioPerniconea|15]]
+-----
-From late 1878 onward, the amount of state repression that Italian anarchists faced massively expanded. This occurred due to the Italian ruling classes using an unsuccessful republican assassination attempt against King Umberto I of Italy as an opportunity to destroy the International once and for all.[[#16PerniconeandOttanelliAss|16]] In 1879, Cafiero responded to these events by arguing that anarchists should establish “''secret and firm bonds'' between all of us” because formal organizations “display all our forces to the public, i.e., to the police” and so reveal “how and where to strike us.”[[#17QuotedinNunzioPernicone|17]]
+==== Annotation 82 ====
-One year later, the Italian state issued the killing blow to the International in Italy when the high court ruled that any internationalist organization composed of five or more people was an association of malefactors. This enabled the Italian state to arrest and imprison anarchists simply for being anarchists, even if they had not planned or engaged in any illegal actions. At the same time, numerous anarchists were subject to searches of their home, suppression of newspapers, dissolution of groups, extreme limitations on their freedom of association and movement, and deportation to, and forcible confinement on, desolate islands near Sicily and southern Italy.[[#18PerniconeandOttanelliAss|18]] It was within this context of state repression that the Italian anarchist paper ''La Gazetta Operaia'' wrote in July 1887 that “experience teaches that a vast association of a revolutionary character easily offers its flank to the police, therefore to persecution. . . . United and fighting all together under the impetus of a vast association we run the risk of being crushed with a single blow by adversaries stronger than us.”[[#19QuotedinPerniconeItalian|19]]
+Marx and Engels discussed the relationship between language and consciousness extensively in ''The German Ideology'', explaining that language — the form of knowledge which exists in human consciousness — evolved dialectically with and through social activity, and that consciousness also developed along with and through the material processes that gave rise to speech:
-The second reason why insurrectionist anarchists opposed formal organization was that, from their perspective, formal organizations made people unfree and inhibited their membership’s ability to act and take initiative.[[#20DavideTurcatoMakingSense|20]] This entailed that formal organizations were incompatible with the unity of means and ends, since they failed to produce the self-determining individuals needed for a successful social revolution and the production and reproduction of an anarchist society. This hostile attitude toward formal organization partly stemmed from the negative experiences anarchists had within the First International due to the actions of the General Council.[[#21DavidBerryAHistoryofth|21]]
+<blockquote>
+From the start the ‘spirit’ is afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”So, language, physical speech organs, and human society all developed in dialectic relations with one another. Since language is the form of knowledge in human consciousness, this means that knowledge arose directly from these dialectical processes:
-Formal organizations were above all thought to mirror the organizational form of the state. In February 1887, the Italian anarchist paper ''Humanitas'' labeled formal organizations “a state in miniature” and argued that they destroyed “the spirit of initiative in individuals, who expect everything from this organization.”[[#22QuotedinPerniconeItalian|22]] In 1925, Galleani similarly claimed that any formal organization “has its programme; i.e., its constitutional charter: in assemblies of group representatives it has its parliament: in its management, its boards and executive committees, it has its government. In short, it is a graduated superstructure of bodies a true hierarchy, no matter how disguised.”[[#23GalleaniEndofAnarchism|23]]
+Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious.
+</blockquote>
-According to Galleani, constitutions forced the formal organization to follow a particular set of procedures, rather than what was appropriate or necessary given ongoing events and the nature of the present struggle. Formal avenues for decision-making and action, such as congresses, filtered out original ideas and reaffirmed the orthodoxy of the organization. When workers wanted to take action themselves and implement their own ideas, they were instead instructed to go through the appropriate committee or were informed that a committee had already been set up to handle this task and would take care of matters. Even federations based on delegates were critiqued for leading to a situation in which representatives and those higher up in the organization made decisions that the wider membership accepted out of discipline, regardless of their own opinions and interests. In each case, the organization would take on a life of its own and control its membership.[[#24GalleaniEndofAnarchism|24]]
+The fact that knowledge has a language-form in human consciousness is also important to understand because it shows that consciousness arose dialectically as, and through, social activity, and indeed, language and social activity gave rise to consciousness as a replacement for animal instinct in our relations with nature.
-Galleani rejected the idea that delegates could represent others, even if they had been elected and mandated. This was because “every delegate . . . could represent only his own ideas and feelings, not those of his constituents, which are infinitely variable on any subject.”[[#25GalleaniEndofAnarchism|25]] He thought it was impossible to “anarchically delegate to another person one’s own thought, one’s own energy, one’s own will.”[[#26QuotedinSentaGalleani1|26]] Galleani also rejected congress resolutions on the grounds that they subordinated the minority to the majority and thereby made people unfree. For Galleani, congresses were only useful and consistent with anarchism if they were just meetings that provided an occasion for individual militants to meet, share ideas, and work together.[[#27SentaGalleani126Formal|27]]
+-----
-As an alternative to large formal organizations, insurrectionist anarchists advocated the formation of small, loosely organized groups. These affinity groups, which were also called circles or clubs, were either more or less permanent cells or were formed for a specific task and dissolved once it was complete. They typically had a membership of between four and twenty members and were given a wide variety of different names, such as Germinal (in honor of Émile Zola’s novel), The Termites Libertarian Circle, The Barricade Group, The Right to be Idle Group, and the Revolutionary Propaganda Circle.[[#28AndrewDouglasHoytAndTh|28]] An 1885 article in ''Le Révolté'' claimed that “we do not believe in long-term associations, federations, etc. For us, a group should come together only for a clearly defined objective or short-term action; once the action is accomplished, the group should reform on a new basis, either with the same elements, or with new ones.”[[#29QuotedinBerryFrenchAnar|29]]
+<blockquote>
+Man’s consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all. This beginning is as animal as social life itself at this stage. It is mere herd-consciousness, and at this point man is only distinguished from sheep by the fact that with him consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a conscious one.
+</blockquote>
-Thus, anarchist affinity groups were viewed as superior to formal organizations because the fact that they were loosely structured and composed of a small group of people, who knew and trusted one another, meant that they simultaneously enabled freedom of initiative while also being more effective at avoiding infiltration, persecution, and state surveillance. If an affinity group was infiltrated or repressed by the state then, given its small size, the damage to the anarchist movement was less severe than when the same occurred to a large federation.[[#30CarloCafieroTheOrganisa|30]] In 1890, Jean Grave argued in ''La Révolte'' that affinity groups accustom “individuals to bestir themselves, to act, without being bogged down in routine and immobility, thereby preparing the groupings of the society to come, by forcing individuals to act for themselves, to seek out one another on the basis of their inclinations, their affinities.”[[#31QuotedinAlexandreSkirda|31]] Affinity groups were, in other words, thought to prefigure the social relations of an anarchist society and so were constituted by forms of practice that developed individuals with the right kinds of radical capacities, drives, and consciousness for achieving anarchist goals.
+And, as language and social activity dialectically developed through one another, human society became complex enough to give rise to human societies and human economies:
-This is not to say that insurrectionist anarchists thought that only small groups of people should engage in actions. Massive crowds containing numerous small affinity groups could, for example, riot without belonging to a formal organization. Large groups of people who were participating in an uprising could quickly form mass general assemblies in order to make agreements about what to do next. They could do so without establishing a federation, electing an administrative committee, or passing binding congress resolutions. Nor is it the case that affinity groups were completely isolated entities. Insurrectionist anarchists sought to achieve coordination between different groups via informal social networks, which were usually centered around specific periodicals, rather than through the establishment of a formal federation. This can be seen in the history of the paper ''Cronaca Sovversiva'', which was edited by Galleani and based in the United States. It not only spread anarchist ideas and instilled a sense of anarchist identity in its readership, but also connected anarchist groups by publishing their correspondence and announcements in a single place that they all read. This facilitated both the exchange of information and enabled groups to engage in dialogue with one another and make collective decisions.[[#32HoytAndTheyCalledThem|32]]
+<blockquote>
+This sheep-like or tribal consciousness receives its further development and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs, and, what is fundamental to both of these, the increase of population. With these there develops the division of labour…
+</blockquote>
-Some insurrectionist anarchists were so committed to their rejection of formal organizations that they viewed those who advocated them as betraying the core principles of anarchism. This resulted in a great deal of polemical debate that could sometimes even turn violent. In September 1899, the antiorganizationalist anarchist barber Domenico Pazzaglia shot Malatesta in the leg during a meeting at a saloon in West Hoboken, New Jersey, due to Malatesta’s advocacy of formal organizations. He responded in a truly anarchist fashion by refusing to tell the police who had shot him.[[#33ZimmerImmigrants60Pern|33]]
-'''Rejection of Struggling for Reforms'''
+-----
-Insurrectionist anarchism opposed the strategy of struggling for immediate reforms in the present. As the paper ''L’Insurrezione'' argued in 1881, “anything that facilitates and brings the time of the insurrection nearer, is good; all that keeps it away through maintaining the appearance of progress, is bad. This is the principle that guides us.”[[#34QuotedinDiPaolaKnights|34]] This rejection of struggling for immediate reforms included not only parliamentary politics, which all anarchists rejected, but also participating within trade unions in order to struggle for higher wages, shorter working days, and improved working conditions. Those insurrectionists who did advocate participating within trade unions did so only when they thought it was a good opportunity to undermine the trade union bureaucracy, spread anarchist ideas, develop the spirit of revolt, and persuade workers that their involvement in the trade union was futile and would not achieve their emancipation. This included the organization of wildcat strikes that were not approved or supported by the trade union’s leadership.[[#35GalleaniEndofAnarchism|35]]
+Knowledge can be separated into two broad categories: knowledge of nature, and knowledge of human society. Each of these categories of knowledge reflects its corresponding entity in the external world.
-Insurrectionist anarchists rejected struggling for immediate reforms for three main reasons. First, they held that reforms did not challenge, but rather rested upon, the ongoing existence of dominant institutions. Social movements that aim to win reforms will therefore end up consenting to and reproducing the existing economic and political system, rather than overthrowing it. They may start out as revolutionary, but the practice of struggling for reforms will, over time, cause radical capacities, drives and, consciousness to decay and be replaced by ones compatible with dominant structures. Reforms that are initially viewed as only a means or stepping stone to revolution will, over time, be transformed into the actual end goals of a movement’s activity. For insurrectionist anarchists, this process of revolutionary movements being weakened by the struggle for reforms could be clearly seen in socialist political parties that became less and less radical over time in order to gain votes and pass reformist laws through political alliances with bourgeois parties.[[#36GalleaniEndofAnarchism|36]]
+-----
-Second, they thought that the ruling classes only conceded reforms to the working classes in order to calm popular discontent. Although reforms might improve people’s lives in the short term, they also stabilized class society and thereby perpetuated the suffering and oppression of the working classes. This is because the achievement of reforms can alter the consciousness of workers such that they come to mistakenly believe that the ruling classes are benevolent, view the state as a servant of the people, and put their hopes in politicians and the law. Reforms could, in short, have the dangerous effect of causing workers to desire a better and more humane master, rather than no master at all. According to Galleani, “reforms” are “the ballast the bourgeoisie throws overboard to lighten its old boat in the hope of saving the sad cargo of its privileges from sinking in the revolutionary storm.”[[#37GalleaniEndofAnarchism|37]] Given this, reforms should be seen as the byproducts of threats to ruling class power that are granted when “attacks against the existing social institutions become more forceful and violent,” rather than being the main immediate goal of political and economic struggle.[[#38GalleaniEndofAnarchism|38]]
+==== Annotation 83 ====
-Third, insurrectionists tended to subscribe to the iron law of wages, which had been advocated by the political economist David Ricardo and later popularized among socialists by Ferdinand Lassalle, who was one of the main founders of what would become German social democracy. The concept claimed that real wages under capitalism would always tend toward the amount of money required to secure the subsistence of the worker. For Ricardo and Lassalle, this was related to population growth: an expansion of the supply of labor would lead to a decrease in wages, and living costs would increase due to larger families.[[#39GDHColeAHistoryof|39]] The insurrectionist anarchists, in contrast, focused on the idea that any increase in wages that workers won through struggle would be canceled out by increases in the cost of living as capitalists and landlords charged more for basic necessities such as food and rent. If this were true, then fighting to win higher wages was futile, a waste of time and energy, since any wage increase would not last.[[#40GalleaniEndofAnarchism|40]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-16.png|''Each category of knowledge reflects a corresponding entity in the external world.'']]
-In place of struggles for immediate reforms, insurrectionist anarchists advocated immediate violent confrontation with dominant institutions. Galleani argued that “tactics of corrosion and continuous attack should be preferred . . . immediate attempts at partial expropriation, individual rebellion and insurrection” or strikes that adopt “an openly revolutionary character” and seek, “through the inevitable use of force and violence, the unconditional surrender of the ''ruling'' classes.”[[#41GalleaniEndofAnarchism|41]] Insurrectionist anarchists held that, instead of waiting for the revolution to happen, it would be better to “start the revolution inside oneself and realize it according to the best of our abilities in partial experiments, wherever such an opportunity arises, and whenever a bold group of our comrades have the conviction and courage to try.”[[#42GalleaniEndofAnarchism|42]] These tactics were thought to “exert the most spirited influence over the masses” and would therefore inspire the working classes to rise up.[[#43GalleaniEndofAnarchism|43]]
+It’s also important to note that human society and nature have a dialectical relationship with each other and mutually impact one another, and, by extension, knowledge of nature and knowledge of human society also dialectically influence one another. So these categories of knowledge are not isolated from one another but rather dynamically shape and influence each other continuously through time.
-'''Propaganda of the Deed'''
+-----
-If revolutions were, as an article in ''La Révolte'' stated in 1890, “the product of a spontaneous explosion of the masses’ discontent and anger,” then the role of revolutionaries was to ignite this anger.[[#44QuotedinBerryFrenchAnar|44]] Propaganda of the deed was one of the primary means through which insurrectionist anarchists attempted to spread the spirit of revolt and thereby contribute toward the emergence of a social revolution. Historians of terrorism frequently make the mistake of equating the entire idea of propaganda of the deed with the kinds of high-profile assassination or bombings carried out by anarchists at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.[[#45ForexampleDavidCRapopo|45]] The idea of propaganda of the deed did not, however, always refer to the advocacy and practice of individuals attempting to murder the ruling classes in the name of revolution. It underwent a process of development over three decades of theory and practice.
+Based on levels of cognitive development, we can also classify knowledge into categories of: daily life knowledge and scientific knowledge, experience knowledge and theory knowledge, emotional knowledge and rational knowledge.
-What would come to be called “propaganda of the deed” started out as the view that anarchist ideas could and should be spread through actions, rather than only through written or spoken propaganda. Propaganda of the deed proceeded to undergo two main phases of development. During its first phase, between 1870 and 1880, it largely referred to the practice of anarchists collectively attempting to launch armed insurrections in order to spread their ideas and provoke a popular uprising. This went alongside the view that other forms of collective direct action, such as combative demonstrations, were an effective means of popularizing anarchist ideas and gaining support for the anarchist movement. During its second phase, which lasted roughly from the 1880s to the early 1900s, it transformed into the idea that individual acts of violence, such as assassinating heads of state or bombing crowded opera houses frequented by the wealthy, were a legitimate form of working-class vengeance that would weaken the ruling classes and inspire the working classes to rebel.[[#46PaulAvrichAnarchistPortr|46]] Both notions of propaganda of the deed shared the idea that revolutionary action by an anarchist minority could successfully spread anarchist ideas and spark a chain of events that would culminate in a social revolution. Where they differed was the kind of action advocated and performed.[[#47Therearesomeusagesofthe|47]]
+-----
-''Propaganda of the Deed: First Phase''
+==== Annotation 84 ====
-The 1870s began with a series of unsuccessful insurrections. In September 1870, Bakunin and his associates launched a quickly defeated insurrection in Lyon. On the September 26, they issued a program, adopted by a crowd of six thousand, declaring the abolition of the state and the establishment of revolutionary committees for each commune, which were subject to the direct supervision of the people. When they attempted to implement this program two days later, they succeeded in storming the city hall and issuing a variety of decrees only to be forced to flee by late afternoon when municipal authorities called in the army. This was soon followed by an equally unsuccessful second insurrection in Lyon on April 30, 1871, the rapid rise and bloody fall of the Marseille Commune between March 23 and April 4, and the Paris Commune between March 18 and May 28.[[#48AvrichAnarchistPortraits|48]] During the violent repression of the Paris Commune, at least seventeen thousand people were, according to the official government report, executed for having risen up against the ruling classes. Anarchists, in comparison, believed that between thirty and thirty-six thousand people had been slaughtered.[[#49JohnMerrimanMassacreThe|49]] The Spanish cantonalist rebellion of July 1873, in which anarchists participated, suffered a similarly violent defeat.[[#50EsenweinAnarchistIdeology|50]]
+The following information is from the ''Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism'', released by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training:
-It was within this context of armed conflict with the ruling classes that the idea of propaganda of the deed arose and gained prominence. In 1870, Bakunin remarked that revolutionaries “must now embark on stormy revolutionary seas and . . . spread our principles, not with words ''but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda''.”[[#51BakuninBakuninonAnarchis|51]] The aim of these deeds was to inspire the masses through revolutionary acts.''' '''In advocating this strategy, Bakunin does not appear to have been arguing that assassinations were an effective means of changing society. In 1866, he had responded to Dmitry Karakozov’s attempt to assassinate the Tsar by writing that “no good can come of regicide in Russia for it would arouse a reaction favorable to the Tsar.”[[#52MichaelBakuninSelectedWr|52]] For Bakunin it was a mistake to think that “the Gordian knot can be cut with one stroke.”[[#53BakuninSelectedWritings|53]]
+'''Daily Life and Scientific Knowledge'''
-On July 8, 1873, the French anarchist Paul Brousse, who would later become a state socialist, responded to the ongoing cantonalist rebellion by writing an article for the Barcelona paper ''La Solidarité Révolutionnaire''.[[#54StaffordFromAnarchismto|54]] In it, he declared that “revolutionary propaganda is . . . above all made in the open, in the midst of the piled-up paving stones of the barricades, on days when the exasperated people make war on the mercenary forces of reaction.”[[#55QuotedinCahmKropotkin7|55]] This view, as he would later write in the August 1877 edition of the ''Bulletin of the Jura Federation'', rested on the idea of grabbing “people’s attention, of showing them what they cannot read, of teaching them socialism by means of actions and making them see, feel, touch. . . . Propaganda by the deed is a mighty means of rousing the popular consciousness.”[[#56PaulBroussePropagandaby|56]] An insurrection that established a socialist commune would have to defend itself but even if it was defeated, like the recent insurrections of the early 1870s, this would not matter in the long run since “the idea will have been launched, not on paper, not in a newspaper, not on a chart” but in the real political practices of the working classes; it would thus “march, in flesh and blood, at the head of the people.”[[#57PaulBroussePropagandaby|57]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-17.png]]
-Brousse’s insistence on propaganda through insurrection partly developed out of being radicalized by the Paris Commune of 1871. The Paris Commune had, Brousse argued, done more to spread revolutionary ideas in two months of fighting than twenty-three years of traditional written propaganda. This was because, while a person must find, buy, and read a book or newspaper in order to be radicalized by it, an armed insurrection rapidly gains the attention of large numbers of people, including those who cannot read, and puts them in a position where they must take a side in the ongoing struggle.[[#58CahmKropotkin7778|58]] This was not mere speculation on Brousse’s part. In Italy, a large number of revolutionaries were driven to socialism by news of the Paris Commune, including future prominent anarchists such as Malatesta, Cafiero, and Costa.[[#59PerniconeItalianAnarchism|59]]
+''Daily Life Knowledge'' is the knowledge we acquire in our daily lives to deal with our daily tasks. From our interactions with nature and human society, we cultivate life experience and our understanding of every aspect of our daily lives in relation to human society and nature.
-Brousse was not alone in holding that insurrections that establish communes have a powerful transformative effect on popular consciousness. Bakunin had himself made a similar point in his unsent 1872 letter to the editors of ''La Liberté'', which was not published until 1910. He wrote in response to the Paris Commune that,
+''Scientific Knowledge'' arises from Daily Life Knowledge: as our daily lives become more complex, we develop a need to understand the material world and human society more deeply and comprehensively. Scientific Knowledge is thus a developed system of knowledge of nature and human society. Scientific Knowledge can be tested and can be applied to human life and activity in useful ways.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">What makes that revolution important is not really the weak experiments which it had the power and time to make, it is the ideas it has set in motion, the living light it has cast on the true nature and goal of revolution, the hopes it has raised, and the powerful stir it has produced among the popular masses everywhere, and especially in Italy, where the popular awakening dates from that insurrection, whose main feature was the revolt of the Commune and the workers’ associations against the State.[[#60BakuninSelectedWritings|60]]</div>
+'''Experience and Theory Knowledge:'''
-Cafiero shared this evaluation. In an unpublished chapter of his 1881 ''Revolution'','' ''he wrote that ''“''the events of the Commune implanted militant socialism in every civilized land, and the long-awaited distant goal of the propagandist was reached in an instant by the brilliant flash of events.”[[#61CafieroRevolution63The|61]] Two years later, Kropotkin said, during his court speech while on trial in Lyon, that, after the defeat of the Paris Commune, “socialism drew new life from the blood of its followers. Its ideas about property have been given an enormous circulation.”[[#62KropotkinDirectStruggle|62]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-18.png]]
-Nor was Brousse alone in holding that anarchists should, given the powerful propaganda effect of the Paris Commune, work toward the social revolution by launching insurrections that establish new communes. In an August 11, 1877, article in ''L’Avant-Garde'', Kropotkin reacted to the recent violently crushed railway strikes in the United States by proposing that the strikes would have gone differently if there had been anarchists present who had sought to transform the strikes into insurrections that established communes and forcefully expropriated the ruling classes. Even if these proposed communes had been defeated they would have, like the Paris Commune before them, served as “an immensely resounding act of propaganda for socialism.”[[#63QuotedinCahmKropotkin1|63]] In 1879, Kropotkin argued for this strategy again by insisting that attempts at social revolution must perform “the deed of expropriation” because it is “the most powerful way of propagating the idea” among the general populace and thereby motivating other workers to join the emerging social revolution and expropriate their local economic ruling classes.[[#64KropotkinDirectStruggle|64]]
+''Experience Knowledge'' is cultivated from direct observation of nature and human society. This kind of knowledge is extremely diverse, and we can apply this kind of knowledge to guide our daily activities.
-Within the historical context of the rise and subsequent violent defeat of the 1848 revolutions, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the Spanish cantonalist rebellion of 1873, anarchists thought that they were riding a revolutionary wave and that the social revolution was imminent. In 1883, while on trial in Lyon, Kropotkin declared to the court that “the social revolution is near. It will break out within ten years.”[[#65KropotkinDirectStruggle|65]] This was not a uniquely anarchist perspective. Engels also predicted that a revolution was imminent numerous times during the 1880s and 1890s.[[#66GaryPSteensonAfterMarx|66]] Reflecting on this period in 1904, Kropotkin wrote that “revolutionaries and moderates agreed then in predicting that the bourgeois regime, shaken by the revolution of 1848 and the Commune of Paris, could not long resist the attack of the European proletariat. Before the end of the century the collapse would come.”[[#67KropotkinDirectStruggle|67]]
+''Theory Knowledge'' arises from Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is composed of abstract generalizations of Experience Knowledge. Theory Knowledge is more profound, accurate, and systematically organized than Experience Knowledge and gives us an understanding of the laws and dynamics of nature and human society.
-If the revolution was near, then, as Costa wrote in January 1874 (with Bakunin’s approval), “the time for peaceful propaganda has passed, it must be replaced by resounding—solemn propaganda of insurrection and barricades.”[[#68QuotedinCahmKropotkin7|68]] These words were written in the journal of the Italian Committee for Social Revolution (CIRS), a secret association whose membership included key Italian anarchists such as Cafiero, Costa, and Malatesta. The group sought to put theory into practice by launching multiple insurrections simultaneously across Italy, which had recently experienced a wave of strikes, demonstrations, and riots in response to high food prices and unemployment. This strategy was opposed by the majority of delegates of the Saint-Imier International at a meeting on March 18, 1874, on the grounds that socialism was not yet popular enough in Italy for armed insurrections to be launched. Despite lacking international support, the Italian federation nonetheless decided to proceed with its plan. The result was total failure.[[#69PerniconeItalianAnarchism|69]]
+'''Emotional and Rational Knowledge:'''
-None of the insurrections attempted on August 7 and 8, 1874, went as the Italian anarchists had hoped. The people did not rise up in response to CIRS’ calls for revolution, which they had announced in a bulletin that had been posted to the walls of various cities. The thousands of revolutionaries that were expected to form armed bands did not turn up. Instead only several hundred assembled, with a mere five turning up to join Malatesta’s insurrection in Puglia on the night of August 11. In response, the anarchist militants either quickly disbanded or were soon arrested. Other anarchists were arrested before they could even assemble due to police spies sharing the anarchists’ plans with the authorities. Bakunin was forced to shave his beard and escape to Switzerland disguised as a priest.[[#70PerniconeItalianAnarchism|70]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-19.png]]
-The insurrections of August 1874 were viewed by Costa, one of the main organizers, as an attempt at propaganda of the deed. In his 1890 memoir, Costa wrote that “the occasion had come if not to provoke the social revolution in Italy, at least to give a practical example that would demonstrate to the people what we wanted and to propagate our ideas with evidence of deeds.”[[#71QuotedinPerniconeItalian|71]] Despite the failure of 1874, the Italian Federation of the Saint-Imier International officially adopted propaganda of the deed as a strategy during its congress of October 1876. This was done because, as Cafiero and Malatesta explained in a letter published in the December edition of the ''Bulletin of the Jura Federation'', “the Italian Federation holds that the ''act of insurrection'', designed to assert socialist principles through deeds, is the most effective method of propaganda and the only one that, without deceiving and corrupting the masses, can delve into the deepest strata of society and draw the cream of humanity into the struggle, backed by the International.”[[#72MalatestaMethodofFreedom|72]]
+Less Developed More Developed
-In advocating propaganda through the deed of armed insurrection, Italian anarchists were not advocating something new to Italian politics. The strategy had a prior history in the theory and practice of revolutionary Italian republicanism, which much of the Italian anarchist movement had developed out of.[[#73Theunsuccessfulinsurrectio|73]] Giuseppe Mazzini and his associates had sought to create a unified Italian republic through a strategy of armed bands of revolutionaries engaging in guerrilla warfare and attempting to “rouse the nation into insurrection.”[[#74GiuseppeMazziniACosmopol|74]] This can be seen in Mazzini’s hope that a defeated 1853 insurrection in Milan would have been “the kindling of a universal fire throughout Italy” if it had lasted twenty-four hours.[[#75QuotedinDenisMackSmith|75]] Malatesta later claimed, in 1897, that the early anarchist movement in Italy had believed in, “the youthful illusion (which we inherited from Mazzinianism) of imminent revolution achievable through the efforts of the few without due preparation in the masses.”[[#76MalatestaPatientWork336|76]]
+''Emotional Knowledge'' is the earlier stage of cognitive processing. Emotional Knowledge comes directly to us from our human senses. We obtain emotional knowledge when we use our human senses to directly learn things about nature and human society. Emotional Knowledge is usually manifested as immediate cognitive responses such as pleasure, pain, and other such impulses.
-The attempted insurrections launched by Italian republicans were consistently unsuccessful. They often failed, like the future anarchist insurrections, due to the state knowing of the plots before they were launched.[[#77DMSmithMazzini671|77]] The exception was in 1860, when Giuseppe Garibaldi, a longtime associate of Mazzini, contributed to the unification of Italy by invading Sicily with roughly one thousand poorly armed men and subsequently, after amassing a much larger army of twenty thousand soldiers, capturing Naples.[[#78ClarkItalianRisorgimento|78]] An inkling of the effect that Garibaldi’s actions had on the developing socialist movement can be seen in Kropotkin’s insistence in an 1897 letter to Maria Isidine Goldsmith that between 1859 and 1860 “Garibaldi’s brave campaigns did more to spread the liberal, radical spirit of revolt and socialism right across Europe than anything else.”[[#79KropotkinDirectStruggle|79]]
+''Rational Knowledge'' arises from Emotional Knowledge. It is a higher stage of cognitive processing, involving abstract thought and generalization of emotional knowledge.
-The strategy of forming armed bands that launched insurrections coincided with some republican revolutionaries unsuccessfully attempting to assassinate monarchs. On January 14, 1858, Felice Orsini and two accomplices tried to assassinate Emperor Napoleon III of France with explosives. The three bombs that were thrown killed eight and wounded at least 156 people but barely harmed the Emperor. On December 8, the soldier Agesilao Milano stabbed and wounded King Ferdinand II of Naples with a bayonet. These republican acts of violence, be they collective revolts or individual attacks, had a profound influence on Italian anarchism.[[#80MarcoPinfariExploringth|80]] Malatesta remembered in 1932 that “the idea of violence, even in the sense of the individual ''attentat'', which many today believe characteristic of anarchism, was inherited by us from democracy. . . . Before accepting the teachings of Bakunin, the Italian Anarchists—Fanelli, Friscia, Gambuzzi—had admired and exalted Agesilao Milano, Felice Orsini, and ''coups de main'' typical of Mazzini. When they passed over to the International, they were not taught anything in this camp that they had not already learned from Mazzini and Garibaldi.”[[#81QuotedinPerniconeandOtta|81]]
+Rational Knowledge is usually manifested as definitions, conjectures, judgments, etc.
-Italian anarchists were particularly influenced by Carlo Pisacane, whose writings they discovered in the mid-1870s. Pisacane was a socialist influenced by Proudhon and was chief of staff of Mazzini’s republican army of 1849.[[#82PerniconeItalianAnarchism|82]] In 1857, shortly before dying in a failed insurrection at Sapri (which he co-organized with Mazzini), he wrote that “ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around . . . conspiracies, plots and attempted uprisings are the succession of deeds whereby Italy proceeds toward her goal of unity. The flash of Milano’s bayonet was a more effective propaganda than a thousand volumes penned by doctrinarians.”[[#83CarloPisacanePoliticalT|83]]
+''See also: Principle of Development, p. 119; Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, p. 204.''
-Undeterred by their previous failure in 1874, the Italian anarchists soon made a second attempt at insurrection, which would come to be known as the Benevento affair. In theory, an armed band of anarchists would roam the Matese mountain range and its surrounding provinces in southern Italy, spreading revolutionary consciousness. One of the insurrection’s participants, Pietro Ceccarelli (who had previously participated in Garibaldi’s campaigns), explained later in 1881 that they planned “to rove about the countryside for as long as possible, preaching [class] war, inciting social brigandage, occupying small towns and leaving them after having accomplished whatever revolutionary acts we could, and to proceed to that area where our presence would prove more useful.”[[#84QuotedinPerniconeItalian|84]] Believing “that revolution must be provoked, we carried out an act of provocation. . . . We were a band of insurgents destined to provoke an insurrection that cannot and must not count on anything but the echo it may find in the population.”[[#85QuotedinPerniconeItalian|85]]
+-----
-Guillaume described the ideas behind this strategy in detail. He wrote,
+''Sentiment'' is the resonant manifestation of human emotions and feelings in our relationships. Sentiment is a special form of reality reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Whenever reality impacts human beings, we feel specific sensations and emotional reactions to those impacts. Over time, these specific sensations and emotions combine and dialectically develop into generalized human feelings, and we call these generalized feelings ''sentiment.'' Sentiment expresses and develops in every aspect of human life; it is a factor that improves and promotes cognitive and practical activities.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Our friends in Italy came to the conclusion that, in their country at least, ''oral and written propaganda were not enough'', and that, to be clearly understood by the popular masses, especially the peasants, it was necessary to ''show'' them what could not be made living and real in any theoretical teaching, they had to be taught socialism through ''deeds'' so that they could see, feel and touch it. A plan was formed for teaching the Italian peasants, by means of a ''practical lesson'', what society would be like if it got rid of government and property owners; for this, it would be enough to organize an armed band, large enough to control the countryside for a brief time and go from one commune to another carrying into effect ''Socialism through action'' before the very eyes of the people.[[#86QuotedinCahmKropotkin7|86]]</div>
+-----
-Again, things did not go according to plan.[[#87Thefollowingaccountofthe|87]] The Italian state was aware of the plot by mid-February 1877, due to reports from police spies who had infiltrated the anarchist movement. The following month, a member of the group, Salvatore Farina, disappeared after revealing the full details of their plans to the Italian state. Rather than flee the country, the anarchists decided to launch the insurrection at the beginning of April, a month earlier than planned. Doing so did not allow them to escape police repression. Several were arrested before they could even reach the agreed rendezvous point. Those who managed to arrive successfully were forced to flee the area with a fraction of their equipment after discovering and shooting at the four policemen who had them under surveillance. During their escape, they were joined by ten fellow insurgents who had, by chance, eluded the police because they missed their scheduled train. Together the group of only twenty-six anarchists headed for the mountains.
+==== Annotation 85 ====
-The armed band was low on men, ammunition, weapons, and food. Traveling to nearby large towns to gather supplies was not an option since, as the anarchists soon discovered, the government had already occupied the area with twelve thousand troops. Given these circumstances, the anarchists were only able to enter two small towns, Letino and Gallo. In each case, they did what little they could by burning official documents taken from the town hall, distributing what weapons and money they could find to the local peasants, and giving a speech on the necessity and value of the social revolution. In his speech to the peasants of Letino, Cafiero declared “the rifles and the axes we have given you, the knives you have. If you wish, do something, and if not, go f— yourselves.”[[#88QuotedinPerniconeItalian|88]]
+As Marx explains in ''Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844:'' “Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being — and because he feels that he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object.” Marx further elaborates that sentimental emotion is essential to human nature: “The domination of the objective essence within me, the sensuous eruption of my essential activity, is emotion which thereby becomes the activity of my nature.”
-According to Brousse, these events had been a practical demonstration that taught the peasants how much contempt they should have for private property and the state.[[#89BroussePropagandabythe|89]] This lesson appears to have had a limited effect, since the peasants of both Letino and Gallo cheered and applauded the anarchists only to return to their daily lives once the band had left. One of the reasons why the peasants did not join the anarchists in insurrection was that they were legitimately afraid of what would happen if they rose up. Malatesta later recalled that a peasant in Gallo had asked him how they could know that the anarchists were not, in fact, undercover police attempting to entrap them. Even if they could be sure that the anarchists were not police, an insurrection was still deeply impractical. As the peasants explained to Malatesta, “the town is in no condition to defend itself, the revolution has not yet erupted on a vast scale, tomorrow the troops will come and massacre us all.”[[#90QuotedinPerniconeItalian|90]]
+Depending on the subjects that are perceived, as well as our human emotions about them, sentiments can be manifested in many different forms such as: moral emotion, aesthetic emotion, religious emotion, etc.
-After failing to escape the region due to poor weather conditions, the anarchists took refuge for the night in a farmhouse near Letino. They were soon surrounded by soldiers after being informed on by a local peasant seeking a reward. Fighting was not an option—their weapons and ammunition had been rendered useless by rainfall. Knowing that they would be killed if they resisted the anarchists chose to surrender without a fight. With their arrests the insurrection was over.
+-----
-Despite this, the insurrection was not a total failure. News of the insurrection and the subsequent trial, during which the defendants gave speeches on anarchism, garnered the International and its revolutionary socialist politics considerable national attention for several weeks. This was probably a contributing factor in the growth of the Italian section of the Saint-Imier International over the following year and a half.[[#91PerniconeItalianAnarchism|91]] Cafiero, perhaps looking for a positive outcome of the failed insurrection he had participated in, later claimed that the Benevento affair had increased demand for Marx’s ''Capital'' to such an extent that a bookseller in Naples was forced to find more copies after having sold out.[[#92CafieroRevolution6364|92]]
+==== Annotation 86 ====
-Anarchists in Berne, Switzerland, made less ambitious attempts at propaganda of the deed. They attended a demonstration on March 18, 1877, the anniversary of the Paris Commune, and brought red flags with them. The canton had prohibited the public display of the red flag and the previous year’s demonstration by social democrats had ended in failure when it was attacked, dispersed, and the red flag was torn up. The aim of the anarchists was to march through Berne defending the flag from attacks by the police. This action was inspired by a Russian demonstration on December 6, 1876, when students and workers had gathered outside Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral after a revolutionary had been killed in prison. At the Russian demonstration, a student carrying a red flag had declared the demonstration’s solidarity with all who had suffered in the struggle against Tsarism. The subsequent brutal state repression of the demonstration led to a large increase in public sympathy toward the revolutionaries. The anarchists hoped that their demonstration involving a red flag would have a similar effect and lead to increased sympathy with and support for the Jura Federation, whose membership was in serious decline.
+''Moral Emotion'' is the basic manifestation of moral consciousness at an emotional level. For example: when we see people helping other people, we have positive emotional responses, yet when we see people harming other people, we have negative emotional responses. ''(Source: Nguyen Thi Khuyen of the National Institute of Administration of Vietnam)''
-On the day of the protest in Berne, roughly 250 demonstrators, several of whom were armed with sticks and truncheons, assembled themselves into a procession and marched forward with the Swiss anarchist Adhémar Schwitzguébel at their head brandishing a red flag. The demonstration, which was attended by several well-known anarchists including Guillaume, Kropotkin, and the Frenchman Jean-Louis Pindy, was then attacked by police armed with sabers and the anarchists defended themselves. During the struggle six policemen and several protesters were seriously wounded. The anarchists were forced to abandon the original flag but did manage to escape with another red flag and take it to the meeting planned for the end of the demonstration.[[#93CahmKropotkin8082100|93]] Kropotkin claimed in letter written to Paul Robin on March 24, that the protest had nonetheless been a success because two thousand people, instead of the expected seventy, had attended the meeting afterward organized by the anarchists. Their act of revolt had gained them “an attentive and in part sympathetic public” since “''there is nothing like courage to win over the people''.”[[#94QuotedinCahmKropotkin1|94]]
+''Aesthetic Emotion'' refers to the the resonant feelings which arise from our interaction with beauty, sadness, comedy, etc., in life and in art. For example: when humans encounter beauty, we feel positive emotional responses. When humans encounter ugliness, we feel negative emotional responses. When we witness pain, we feel sympathetic feelings of pain and a desire to help. When we witness comedy, we feel humorous emotions ourselves. ''(Source: Textbook of General Aesthetic Studies from the Ministry of''
-In August, Brousse argued that the Berne protest was an act of propaganda of the deed that taught the Swiss working class “that they do not, as they thought they did, enjoy freedom.”[[#95BroussePropagandabythe|95]] This lack of freedom was apparent in how the Swiss state responded to the Berne protest. Thirty of the demonstrators were brought to trial and sentenced to periods of imprisonment ranging from sixty days for the two anarchists who had struck policemen with sticks to forty days for Guillaume, thirty days for Brousse, and ten days for the rest. All the foreign participants were expelled from the Berne Canton for three years and with this the movement in Berne lost its leading militants.[[#96StaffordFromAnarchismto|96]]
+''Education and Training of Vietnam)''
-''Propaganda of the Deed: Second Phase''
+''Religious Emotion'' is the human belief in supernatural or spiritual forces which can’t be tested or proved through material practice or observation. However, belief in these forces can give human beings emotional responses such as hope, love, etc. ''(Source: Pham Van Chuc, Doctor of Philosophy, Central Theoretical Council of the Communist Party of Vietnam)''
-During its second phase, propaganda of the deed developed into advocating or engaging in assassination and bombings.[[#97Ihavedecidednottocollec|97]] The transformation occurred in response to a vast array of factors that included: a vicious cycle of anarchists responding to state violence with violent individual attacks that led, in turn, to more state violence and so on; anarchists being influenced by assassinations and bombings carried out by contemporary social movements such as Italian republicans, Russian nihilists, and Irish nationalists; and the nefarious influence of police spies and agent provocateurs. It is difficult to chart the path from collective uprisings into individual acts of violence, partly because it is rarely clear if a particular attack was carried out by a genuine anarchist attempting to implement insurrectionist theory and engage in propaganda of the deed. Attacks were frequently attributed to anarchists by the police or the press (including, sometimes, the anarchist press) with little to no evidence.[[#98RichardBachJensenTheBat|98]]
+These are just a few illustrative examples; there are many other ways in which human emotion and sentiment can manifest.
-The earliest alleged anarchist assassination attempts occurred in 1878 when Max Hödel on May 11 and Dr. Carl Nobiling on June 2 both tried unsuccessfully to kill the Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany. This was soon followed by Juan Oliva y Moncasi’s failed attempt to assassinate King Alfonso XII of Spain on October 25. It is not clear from the available evidence whether either Hödel or Nobiling were genuine anarchists. At best they were socialists with some loose connections to a few anarchist groups.[[#99AndrewRCarlsonAnarchism|99]] Although Moncasi was a member of the anarchist-led Spanish section of the Saint-Imier International, it is not clear whether he was an anarchist himself.[[#100EsenweinAnarchistIdeolog|100]]
+''Willpower'' is the manifestation of one’s own strength used to overcome obstacles in the process of achieving goals. Willpower is a dynamic aspect of consciousness, a manifestation of human consciousness in the material world.
-The first definite anarchist assassination plot occurred in 1880. After guns had failed to kill the Kaiser, the German anarchist August Reinsdorf planned to dig a tunnel under the Reichstag, plant explosives around the building’s supports and ignite them while the Reichstag was in session. Reinsdorf made the mistake of explaining his plan in a letter dated September 1, 1880, to his associate Johann Most, a German socialist who, at the time, lived in London, edited the journal ''Freiheit'', and had yet to become an anarchist. Oskar Neumann, a spy living in London, heard of the plan and subsequently informed the Berlin police. Reinsdorf was arrested on November 14 while carrying a dagger near the home of the Berlin chief of police, Guido von Madai, whom he planned to assassinate.[[#101CarlsonAnarchisminGerma|101]]
+-----
-This escalation in political practice was mirrored by an escalation in theory. In December 1880, Cafiero wrote an article for ''Le Révolté ''in which he repeated the old insurrectionist idea that actions were an effective means of spreading revolutionary ideas. What had changed was the scope of acceptable action. Rather than merely advocating armed bands inspiring a popular insurrection, he now insisted that anarchists should engage in “permanent rebellion, by word, by writing, by dagger, by gun, by dynamite . . . we shall use every weapon which can be used for rebellion. Everything is right for us which is not legal.”[[#102CarloCafieroAction188|102]] He argued that anarchists should immediately engage in violent attacks because “if we go on waiting until we are strong enough before attacking—we shall never attack, and we shall be like the good man who vowed that he wouldn’t go into the sea until he had learned to swim. It is precisely revolutionary action which develops our strength, just as exercise develops the strength of our muscles.”[[#103CarloCafieroAction188|103]] He predicted that if anarchists fought and died for popular movements then the seeds of socialism they contained would grow and flower into a revolution. Cafiero, in short, held that engaging in revolutionary violence would simultaneously develop the capacities of anarchists and instill radical drives and consciousness within the working classes.
+==== Annotation 87 ====
-A few months later, Cafiero wrote a letter to the paper ''Il Grido del Popolo ''in which he advocated armed struggle in more detail. Anarchist militants were to form a group in their area composed of between six and ten men or women and engage in violent attacks, including with explosives, against capitalism and the state. He optimistically predicted that their actions “will find echoes all over the world. Hardly will the actions of one group have begun, when the whole country will be covered in groups, and action become generalized. Every group will be its own center of action, with a plan all of its own, and a multiplicity of varied and harmonic initiatives. The concept of the whole war will be one only: the destruction of all oppressors and exploiters.”[[#104CafieroTheOrganization|104]]
+An unnamed poem by Ho Chi Minh, written in 1950 for the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers, addresses the phenomenon of willpower:
-Propaganda of the deed soon came to be enshrined in the resolutions of the International Social Revolutionary Congress, which met in London between July 14 and 20, 1881, and was conceived as an attempt to re-found the International.[[#105Accordingtoapolicerepor|105]] The congress was attended by forty-five delegates claiming to represent sixty federations and fifty-nine individual groups with a total membership of fifty thousand people. One of the most vocal delegates was the French police agent Égide Spilleux, who operated under the pseudonym Serreaux and had successfully infiltrated the movement.[[#106CahmKropotkin15259Pe|106]] After a significant amount of discussion and debate, the delegates agreed to adopt the following resolution,
+<blockquote>
+Nothing in this world must be difficult
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">the International Workingmen’s Association deems it necessary to add “Propaganda by Deed” to oral and written propaganda. . . . It is absolutely necessary to exert every effort toward propagating, by deeds, the revolutionary idea and to arouse the spirit of revolt in those sections of the popular masses who still harbor illusions about the effectiveness of legal methods . . . Whereas the agricultural workers are still outside the revolutionary movement, it is absolutely necessary to make every effort to win them to our cause, and to keep in mind that a deed performed against the existing institutions appeals to the masses much more than thousands of leaflets and torrents of words, and that “Propaganda by Deed” is of greater importance in the countryside than in the cities.[[#107QuotedinCarlsonAnarchis|107]]</div>
+The only thing that we should fear is having a waivering heart
-Edward Nathan-Ganz, delegate No. 22 and one of the three members of the resolution committee appointed to summarize the proposals that had been put forward during the congress, connected propaganda of the deed to the manufacture of bombs. He wrote within the resolution that “whereas the technical and chemical sciences have rendered services to the revolutionary cause and are bound to render still greater services in the future, the Congress suggests that organizations and individuals affiliated with the International Workingmen’s Association devote themselves to the study of these sciences.”[[#108QuotedinCarlsonAnarchis|108]]
+We can dig up mountains and fill the sea
-Reinsdorf soon decided to follow these proposals and undertake a second attempt at blowing up members of Germany’s ruling classes. As he explained in an 1882 letter to an American comrade, only the bomb could “inject the whole bourgeoisie and their slaves with total terror” and achieve “complete and utter revenge” for “all the dirty tricks and atrocities” they committed.[[#109QuotedinUlrichLinseP|109]] This time, Reinsdorf and his associates in the town of Elberfeld planned to use dynamite to kill Wilhelm I, alongside other key members of the German ruling classes, at the inauguration of the Niederwald Monument on September 28, 1883. The assassination failed. Due to a sprained ankle, Reinsdorf was unable to go himself and two of his associates—the saddler Franz Rupsch and the compositor Emil Küchler—went in his place. Küchler made the mistake of ignoring Reinsdorf’s instructions to buy a waterproof fuse. The night before the assassination attempt, it rained heavily and the cheaper fuse failed to ignite at the crucial moment. In 1884, Reinsdorf and his group were arrested and put on trial for the attempted assassination of the Emperor. It turned out that one of Reinsdorf’s associates, the weaver Carl Rudolf Palm—who had donated forty marks toward Rupsch and Küchler’s travel expenses—was in fact a police spy and had been informing on the group from the very beginning. On the morning of February 7, 1885, Reinsdorf and Küchler were executed, with Rupsch having had his death sentence commuted to imprisonment for life.[[#110CarlsonAnarchisminGerma|110]]
+Once we’ve willfully made a firm decision
+</blockquote>
-In parallel to these events, Most, who had known Reinsdorf, moved from London to New York in December 1882 and became an anarchist.[[#111GoyensBeerandRevolution|111]] During the mid-1880s, Most wrote numerous articles for ''Freiheit ''which declared that workers should arm themselves with guns, dynamite, poison, and knives in order to violently attack the ruling classes and achieve revenge. For example, in August 1884 he wrote that “Every prince will find his Brutus. Poison on the table of the gourmet will cancel out his debt. Dynamite will explode in the splendid, rubber tyred, coaches of the aristocracy and bourgeois as they pull up to the opera. Death will await them, both by day and by night, on all roads and footpaths and even in their homes, lurking in a thousand different forms.”[[#112QuotedinCarlsonAnarchis|112]] In 1885, Most even published an assassination manual for his readers based on what he had learned working in an explosives factory. It was titled ''The Science of Revolutionary Warfare: A Manual of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, etc''.[[#113CarlsonAnarchisminGerma|113]]
+Today, this poem serves as the lyrics for anthem of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (formerly the Revolutionary Youth Pioneers).
-This shift to the meaning of propaganda of the deed within anarchist circles did not occur in isolation. Anarchists were influenced by assassinations and bombings carried out by other social movements between the 1850s and 1880s, including Italian republicans, Irish nationalists, and Russian nihilists.[[#114OnItalianrepublicanssee|114]] One of the most impactful events was Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) assassinating Tsar Alexander II of Russia with explosives on March 1, 1881. In the aftermath of this attack, an increasing number of anarchists came to argue that anarchists should follow Narodnaya Volya’s example and organize their own assassination campaign against the ruling classes. It is not a coincidence that the International Social Revolutionary Congress in London passed a resolution advocating propaganda of the deed and the study of chemical sciences to build explosives a few months after the assassination of the Tsar with explosives.[[#115SethRussianTerrorists9|115]]
+-----
-The impact of the Tsar’s assassination was clear to anarchists at the time. In 1891, Kropotkin wrote that “when the Russian revolutionaries had killed the Czar . . . the European anarchists imagined that, from then on, a handful of fervent revolutionaries, armed with a few bombs, would be enough to bring about the social revolution.”[[#116QuotedinJensenAnarchist|116]] This perspective was echoed by Nettlau. He wrote in 1932 that, during this period, anarchists were inspired by “the example of fortitude and sacrifice set by Russian nihilists” and thought that, due to the assassination of the Tsar, alongside other examples of revolt, insurrection, and state repression, there was a “growing accumulation of acts of violence,” which in turn indicated that “a general revolutionary upheaval of a socially destructive type was imminent.”[[#117NettlauShortHistory148|117]]
+Willpower arises from human self-awareness and awareness of the purposes of our actions. Through this awareness and through willpower, we are able to struggle against ourselves and externalities to successfully achieve our goals. We can consider willpower to be the power of conscious human activity; willpower controls and regulates human behaviors in order to allow humans to move towards our goals voluntarily; willpower also allows humans to exercise self-restraint and self-control, and to be assertive in our actions according to our views and beliefs.
-Although the vast majority of anarchist assassinations and bombings were carried out by genuine anarchists acting independently, there are several examples of the police normalizing or encouraging the use of these violent tactics. Louis Andrieux, the prefect of the Paris Police, financed the creation of the anarchist paper ''La Révolution Sociale'' in September 1880, through his agent Serreaux. The paper, which Serreaux helped to edit, published articles advocating violent attacks and provided the reader with instructions on how to manufacture dynamite. In June 1881, a police agent working for Andrieux played a key role in instigating a small group of anarchists to bomb the statue of the former president Adolphe Thiers, who had ordered the massacre of the Paris Commune a decade earlier. The bomb failed to damage the statue, and left only a black stain. As mentioned earlier, Serreaux attended the International Social Revolutionary Congress in London as a delegate and formed around him a group of supporters that Kropotkin referred to as “''la bande Serreaux''.” During the congress, this group advocated propaganda of the deed, a rejection of morality, the study of bomb making, and a repeat of actions like the bombing of the statue of Thiers.[[#118JensenAnarchistTerrorism|118]]
+-----
-It was not until the 1890s that the new understanding of propaganda of the deed was implemented by anarchists on a grand scale. The manner in which this occurred varied between countries. In Italy, explosives were largely used to damage government buildings, rather than people, and generally did little more than break windows.[[#119PerniconeandOttanelliAs|119]] In Spain and France, by contrast, there were a series of bombings that wounded and killed random civilians who just happened to be in the area. In 1892, François Koenigstein, known more commonly as Ravachol, decided to seek vengeance for the wrongful arrest, torture, and imprisonment of anarchist protesters by the French state. To this end, he bombed the apartment buildings where the judge and prosecutor attorney of the court case lived on March 11 and 27. The bombs injured eight innocent people and failed to wound, let alone kill, their targets.[[#120JohnMerrimanTheDynamite|120]]
+==== Annotation 88 ====
-Several months later, on November 8, Émile Henry left a bomb outside the offices of the Carmaux Mining Company, which had recently crushed a miners’ strike. The bomb exploded after being moved to a nearby police station, killing five people. On December 9, 1893, Auguste Vaillant, an unemployed anarchist who was unable to feed his wife and daughter, threw a small nail bomb into France’s chamber of deputies in order to call attention to the suffering of the poor. Due to its design, the bomb only slightly wounded several deputies and a few spectators. Despite not having killed anyone, Vaillant was sentenced to death. Seven days after Vaillant was executed, Henry sought revenge and threw a bomb into Paris’s Café Terminus on February 12, 1894. His aim was not to target any person in particular but to kill any random member of the bourgeoisie. The explosion killed one and wounded twenty.[[#121MerrimanDynamite99105|121]]
+In ''Dialectics of Nature'', Engels explains how willpower developed in human beings as we separated from animals through the development of consciousness: “The further removed men are from animals, however, the more their effect on nature assumes the character of premeditated, planned action directed towards definite preconceived ends.”
-Similar events occurred in Spain. On September 24, 1893, Paulino Pallás threw a bomb at Arsenio Martínez de Campos, the Captain General of Catalonia, during a military parade in Barcelona. The bomb, which was thrown in response to the execution of four anarchist militants, killed two people and wounded Campos and twelve soldiers and spectators. Pallás was subsequently executed. Santiago Salvador, who had been converted to anarchism by Pallás, sought revenge for his friend’s execution by throwing two bombs down onto the wealthy audience of the Liceu Opera theater in Barcelona during its November 7 performance of ''William Tell''. Only one bomb exploded, killing fifteen people and seriously injuring fifty others.[[#122EsenweinAnarchistIdeolog|122]]
+In ''Capital Volume I'', Marx explains how willpower uniquely allows humans to consciously change our own material conditions to suit our needs according to pre-conceived plans:
-Other anarchists used blades and guns to engage in targeted assassinations. In 1894, Santo Caserio stabbed to death the President of France Sadi Carnot. This was followed by Michele Angiolillo assassinating the Spanish prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo in 1897 and Luigi Lucheni killing the Empress of Austria Elisabeth Eugenie in 1898. Two years later in 1900, Gaetano Bresci killed King Umberto I of Italy with a revolver. In 1901, Leon Czolgosz, who had only recently come into contact with anarchist ideas, shot and fatally wounded the American president William McKinley. On other occasions, anarchist assassins were unsuccessful, such as Berkman’s 1892 attempt to kill the capitalist Henry Clay Frick in retaliation for the violent repression of a strike at the Homestead steel works.[[#123JensenAnarchistTerrorism|123]]
+<blockquote>
+Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.
+</blockquote>
-Anarchist assassinations and bombings did not end suddenly at the dawn of the new century and continued for several years after. For example, anarchist bomb throwers failed to murder the King of Spain Alfonso XIII during his 1905 visit to Paris and 1906 wedding in Madrid. The explosions from these two assassination attempts injured 124 bystanders and killed twenty-three people. Over a decade later, the anarchist Émile Cottin unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate the French Prime Minister Clemenceau in 1919.[[#124OnAlfonsoseePaulAvrich|124]]
-The majority of these attacks were carried out in response to the much greater violence of the ruling classes. A clear example of this is Bresci’s assassination of King Umberto I of Italy in 1900. A few years previously, in 1897 and 1898, a wave of protests, demonstrations, strikes, and riots had spread across Italy in response to the spiraling cost of bread, which was the primary source of food for the working classes. This direct struggle included women leading raids on granaries and bakeries in order to expropriate food. Bread prices had risen due to an extremely poor grain harvest in Italy and the Italian state’s decision to not lower import duties on foreign grain in order to protect the financial interests of Italian capitalists and landowners. This included the prime minister and finance minister, who both owned vast amounts of land. The Italian state responded to the working classes struggle for adequate food with mass arrests, the mobilization of the army, and the imposition of martial law. On several occasions, protesters armed with little more than sticks and stones were wounded or killed by gunfire from soldiers. In the port of Livorno, two warships even threatened to shell working-class neighborhoods.
+-----
-Such threats were not empty. In May 1898, soldiers in Milan not only responded to thrown rocks with volleys of gunfire. They also fired artillery at striking workers, who had attempted to defend themselves by erecting barricades out of little more than furniture, metal grilles, and trolley cars. Groups of women who attempted to block the street were met with cavalry charges and trampled under horses’ hooves. A crowd of two thousand students, some of whom were armed with revolvers, were shot at with cannons. The names of 264 people were listed as dead victims in local newspapers, though other estimates ranged from four hundred to eight hundred deaths. King Umberto celebrated this violence by rewarding Italy’s highest decoration to the commander of the soldiers in Milan, General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris.[[#125PerniconeandOttanelliAs|125]] Bresci later claimed that “when in Paterson I read of the events in Milan, where they even used cannons, I wept with rage and prepared myself for vengeance. I thought of the king who awarded a prize to those who carried out the massacres, and I became convinced that he deserved death.”[[#126QuotedinZimmerImmigrant|126]]
+The true value of willpower is not only manifested in strength or weakness, but is also expressed in the content and meaning of the goals that we try to achieve through our willpower. Lenin believed that willpower is one of the factors that will create revolutionary careers for millions of people in the fierce class struggles to liberate ourselves and mankind.
-Such individual acts of violence usually provided an anarchist with the opportunity to engage in propaganda of the word during their court speech and thereby spread anarchist ideas to a large audience via the reporting of mainstream newspapers. These speeches varied in quality and the extent to which they successfully transmitted anarchist ideas. To give one example, Berkman refused to be represented by a lawyer and prepared a lengthy court speech on anarchism. During the trial Berkman’s speech was unexpectedly badly translated from German to English by a court interpreter. After an hour, the judge abruptly ended the speech and Berkman was unable to complete it. This occurred despite him offering to cut the part on labor and capital and move onto his discussion of the church and the state.[[#127AvrichandAvrichSashaan|127]] Caserio’s passionate court speech suffered a similar fate when it was translated into French and quickly read aloud by a court clerk in a monotone voice. His speech nonetheless provides an illustrative example of the manner in which anarchist assassins or bombers justified their violent acts. He declared to the court that anarchists had to respond to the “guns, chains, and prisons” of the ruling classes with “dynamite, bombs, and daggers” in order to “defend our lives” and “destroy the bourgeoisie and the governments.”[[#128QuotedinPerniconeandOtt|128]]
+-----
-Anarchists responded to the wave of assassinations and bombings that began in the 1890s in a variety of conflicting ways. Prominent anarchist authors routinely claimed that the individuals who carried out such acts of violence were sensitive or desperate people reacting to the much greater violence of capitalism and the state.[[#129ForexampleEmmaGoldmanR|129]] A significant segment of the wider anarchist movement labeled the perpetrators as martyrs who acted heroically in the pursuit of social emancipation. In 1895, the English anarchist Louisa Sarah Bevington wrote that “those who did these acts were the very best, the most human, unselfish, self-sacrificing of our comrades, who threw their lives away, meeting death or imprisonment in the hope that their acts would sow the seeds of revolt, that they might show the way and wake an echo, by their deeds of rebellion, in the victims of the present system.”[[#130LouisaSarahBevingtonAn|130]]
+==== Annotation 89 ====
-These sorts of statements were part of a broader trend in which the memory of anarchist assassins and bombers were incorporated into anarchist counterculture and took their place alongside other key events of remembrance, such as the anniversary of the Paris Commune. An Italian anarchist group in the United States, for example, named themselves “The Twenty-Ninth of July,” after the day Bresci assassinated Umberto.[[#131AvrichSaccoandVanzetti|131]] This trend was not universal or always long-lasting. In Spain, several anarchist papers initially praised anarchist assassins and bombers as martyrs, but from 1898 onward, their names rarely appeared in print media.[[#132JamesYeomanPrintCulture|132]]
+In “''Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder'', Lenin explains how revolutions are born from the collective willpower of thousands of people:
-Anarchists, regardless of what they thought about the individuals who carried out assassinations and bombings, disagreed with one another about whether or not such acts were an effective means of contributing toward positive social change. Galleani wrote articles defending Pallás and Vaillant in December 1893, and publicly recommended a bomb-making manual in 1906 that featured an image of Ravachol on the front cover.[[#133SentaGalleani6566139|133]] Several years later, in 1925, Galleani argued that a wave of individual acts of violence was “''a necessarily intermediary phenomenon between the sheer ideal or theoretical affirmation and the insurrectionary movement which follows it and kindles the torch of the victorious revolution''.”[[#134GalleaniEndofAnarchism|134]] Just as Brousse had previously thought that anarchist-led insurrections transmitted lessons to the people, so too did Galleani think that assassinating monarchs was a powerful means of communication. It taught the oppressed classes that a monarch, who is believed to be picked by God and wields a vast amount of power, can be killed and so is just like any other person. Above all, such individual acts of violence taught workers that they could, if they wanted, free themselves and overthrow their oppressors. For Galleani, no act of rebellion was useless or harmful to the cause.[[#135GalleaniEndofAnarchism|135]]
+<blockquote>
+History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes. This can readily be understood, because even the finest of vanguards express the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of thousands, whereas at moments of great upsurge and the exertion of all human capacities, revolutions are made by the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute struggle of classes. Two very important practical conclusions follow from this: first, that in order to accomplish its task the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms or aspects of social activity without exception (completing after the capture of political power — sometimes at great risk and with very great danger — what it did not complete before the capture of power); second, that the revolutionary class must be prepared for the most rapid and brusque replacement of one form by another.
+</blockquote>
-Other anarchists disagreed and argued that such actions were tactically misguided and immoral when they targeted innocent people. Malatesta opposed Henry’s bombing of the Café Terminus as “unjust, vicious, and senseless,”[[#136MalatestaPatientWork58|136]] and described Salvador’s bombing of the Liceu Opera theater as an act which killed and wounded “needless victims” while achieving “no possible benefit to the cause.”[[#137MalatestaPatientWork12|137]] In the case of Michele Angiolillo’s assassination of the Spanish Prime minister, an act that did not harm any innocent people, Malatesta thought that although the act was morally justifiable, “it is doubtful that his deed served the freedom of Spaniards . . . it is for reasons of usefulness that, generally speaking, we are not in favor of individual attacks, which have been very common throughout history but almost always have not helped, and have very often harmed, the cause they were intended to serve.”[[#138MalatestaPatientWork26|138]]
-According to the historian Richard Bach Jensen, during the 1890s real or alleged anarchist assassinations and bombings in Europe, the United States, and Australia killed at least sixty people and wounded more than two hundred. Between 1878 and 1914, real or alleged anarchist assassinations and bombings globally (excluding Russia) killed more than 220 people and wounded over 750. Despite such great human costs, which included the needless murder and injury of innocent civilians, the tactic of propaganda of the deed had failed to generate a mass revolutionary movement or inspire large insurrections, let alone ignite the social revolution. It had instead made the social revolution a more remote possibility because it both convinced the political ruling classes, including heads of police, that they were threatened by an international coordinated anarchist conspiracy that had to be destroyed, and it provided them with a political opportunity for directing huge amounts of state repression toward the anarchist movement in particular, and the socialist movement in general. This state repression included the banning of anarchist papers, mass arrests, and laws that criminalized anarchism specifically.[[#139JensenAnarchistTerrorism|139]] Kropotkin neatly summarized the consequences of this state repression in 1907, when he remarked that it had the “effect of thinning our ranks.”[[#140KropotkinDirectStruggle|140]]
+-----
-Ultimately, it is fair to say that insurrectionist anarchism was unsuccessful, in so far as the main forms of propaganda of the deed they advocated and engaged in failed to inspire the working classes to rise up, and in so doing, form a mass movement capable of overthrowing class society. The strategy of propaganda of the deed can appear to be doomed to failure from a twenty-first<sup>-</sup>century vantage point, equipped with the benefit of hindsight and the lessons of over 150 years of attempts to build socialism. As a result, it is essential to understand insurrectionist anarchists on their own terms, and contextualize their ideas within the time they lived in. The strategy of insurrectionist anarchism did not develop out of nowhere. It was instead a product of anarchists being affected by and responding to their contemporary situation. This included the belief that a social revolution was imminent due to a recent wave of insurrections in multiple countries; being deeply influenced by the actions and ideas of contemporary social movements, such as Italian republicans, Russian nihilists, and Irish nationalists; responding to the much greater violence of the political and economic ruling classes toward the working classes in general and anarchism in particular; and the nefarious influences of police spies and agent provocateurs. Insurrectionist anarchism was nonetheless not the only strategy anarchists developed in response to their context.
+All of these factors [knowledge, sentiment, and willpower] which, together, create consciousness, have dialectical relationships with each other. Of these factors, knowledge is the most important, because it is the mode of existence of consciousness, and also the factor which guides the development of all the other factors, and it also determines how the other factors manifest.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#16|1]]. Prior to the creation of the anarchist movement in the 1870s, the strategy of insurrectionist anarchism was advocated by Déjacque in the 1850s. Since I do not know if his ideas on strategy had any influence on the movement in general or the key insurrectionist theorists, such as Cafiero, Most, or Galleani, I have decided to not discuss his ideas. See Joseph Déjacque, ''Down with the Bosses and Other Writings, 1859–1861'' (Gresham, OR: Corvus Editions, 2013), 40–42.</div>
+=== 3. The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#26|2]]. Michael Schmidt and van der Walt, ''Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009), 20, 123, 128–131.</div>
+The relationship between matter and consciousness is dialectical. In this relationship, ''matter comes first, and matter is the source of consciousness; it decides consciousness. However, consciousness is not totally passive, it can impact back to matter through the practical activities of human beings.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#36|3]]. Luigi Galleani, ''The End of Anarchism?'' (London: Elephant Editions, 2012), 99.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#46|4]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 32.</div>
+==== Annotation 90 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#56|5]]. Carlo Cafiero, ''Revolution'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2012), 47.</div>
+Engels explained in ''Dialectics of Nature'' that “matter evolves out of itself the thinking human brain,” which means that matter must necessarily come prior to consciousness.
-[[#66|6]]. David Stafford, ''From Anarchism to Reformism: A Study of the Political Activities of Paul Brousse, 1870–90'' (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971),'' ''104–5, 108–9.
+As Marx explains in ''Capital Volume I'', matter determines conscious activity:
-[[#76|7]]. Tom Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City'','' 1880–1914'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007),'' ''74, 102–9.
+<blockquote>
+The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#86|8]]. Cafiero, ''Revolution'','' ''41–42; Pietro Di Paola, ''The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora, 1880–1917 ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 61–62; Antonio Senta, ''Luigi Galleani: The Most Dangerous Anarchist in America ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019), 57, 91–93. For an example of an insurrectionist group, see Paul Avrich, ''The Haymarket Tragedy'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 150–56.</div>
+However, it’s important to remember that the relationship between matter and consciousness is ''dialectical'', and that conscious activity — through the combination of willpower and labor — can also impact the material world; social change arises through the combined willpower of many human beings. See: Annotation 80, p. 81.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#96|9]]. Quoted in Kenyon Zimmer, ''Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 59.</div>
+==== a. The Role of Matter in Consciousness ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#106|10]]. Galleani,'' End of Anarchism'', 61, See also, 58, 105.</div>
+Dialectical Materialism affirms that:
-[[#116|11]]. Galleani,'' End of Anarchism'', 73.
+'''• Matter is the first existence, and that consciousness comes after.'''
-[[#126|12]]. Galleani,'' End of Anarchism'', 75.
+'''• Matter is the source of consciousness, it decides consciousness.'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#135|13]]. Quoted in George Richard Esenwein,'' Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain'','' 1868–1898 ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 114.</div>
+We know that matter determines consciousness because consciousness is the product of the high-level-structured matter such as the human brain. Consciousness itself can only exist after the development of the material structure of the human brain. Humans are the result of millions of years of development of the material world. We are, therefore, products of the material world. This conclusion has been firmly established through the development of natural science, which has given us great insight into the long history of the Earth and of the evolution of living organisms, including human beings.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#145|14]]. Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''102. See also'' ''Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''62; Maurizio Antonioli, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam (1907)'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press 2009), 95–97.</div>
+All of this scientific evidence stands as the basis for the viewpoint: ''matter comes first, consciousness comes after'' [see Annotation 114, p. 116].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#155|15]]. Quoted in Nunzio Pernicone and Fraser M. Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order:'' ''Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe ''(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018), 34.</div>
+We have already discussed the factors which constitute the natural and social sources of consciousness:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#165|16]]. Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'','' ''25–29.</div>
+'''•''' Human brains
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#175|17]]. Quoted in Nunzio Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),'' ''169.</div>
+'''•''' Impacts of the material world on human brains that cause reflections
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#185|18]]. Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'','' ''30–33.</div>
+'''•''' Labor
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#195|19]]. Quoted in Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 216.</div>
+'''•''' Language
-[[#205|20]]. Davide Turcato, ''Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution'','' 1889–1900 ''(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 102.
+[See Annotation 72, p. 68 and Annotation 73, p. 75]
-[[#215|21]]. David Berry, ''A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917 to 1945'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009),'' ''19; Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 191.
+All of these factors also assert that ''matter is the origin of consciousness.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#225|22]]. Quoted in Pernicone,'' Italian Anarchism'','' ''216.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#235|23]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 74.</div>
+==== Annotation 91 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#245|24]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 74–75.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-20.png]]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#255|25]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 74.</div>
+The material basis of consciousness is rooted in the following phenomena:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#265|26]]. Quoted in Senta, ''Galleani'', 126.</div>
+<ul>
+<li><ol style="list-style-type: upper-alpha;">
+<li><p>The material structure of the human brain.</p></li></ol>
+</li>
+<li><ol start="2" style="list-style-type: upper-alpha;">
+<li><p>Impacts from the material world cause reflections in human consciousness.</p></li></ol>
+</li>
+<li><ol start="100" style="list-style-type: upper-roman;">
+<li><p>Human Labor — physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.</p></li></ol>
+</li>
+<li><ol start="500" style="list-style-type: upper-roman;">
+<li><p>Human Speech — physical process which dialectically develops consciousness.</p></li></ol>
+</li>
+<li><ol start="5" style="list-style-type: upper-alpha;">
+<li><p>Evolution of human brains and consciousness through material processes of the material world.</p></li></ol>
+</li></ul>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#275|27]]. Senta, ''Galleani'', 126. Formal congresses were also rejected by Jean Grave. See Caroline Cahm, ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism'','' 1872–1886'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),'' ''65.</div>
+For more information, see: Nature and Structure of Consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#285|28]]. Andrew Douglas Hoyt, “And They Called Them ‘Galleanisti’: The Rise of the ''Cronca Sovversiva'' and the Formation of America’s Most Infamous Anarchist Faction (1895–1912),” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2018), 49–53; Chris Ealham: ''Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona'','' 1898–1937 ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 34–35; Agustín Guillamón, ''Ready for Revolution: The CNT Defense Committees in Barcelona, 1933–1938 ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014),'' ''29.</div>
+-----
-[[#295|29]]. Quoted in Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'','' ''19.
+Consciousness is composed of reflections and subjective images of the material world, therefore ''the content of consciousness is decided by matter'' [see Annotation 68, p. 65]''.'' The development of consciousness is determined by natural laws and by social laws<ref>For a discussion of the material basis of social laws, see Annotation 10, p. 10, Annotation 78, p. 80, and Annotation 79, p. 81.</ref> as well as the material environment which we inhabit. All of these factors which determine consciousness are material in nature. Therefore, matter determines not only the content but also the development of consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#305|30]]. Carlo Cafiero, “The Organisation of Armed Struggle,” trans. Paul Sharkey, ''The Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review'' 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1977): 101.</div>
+==== b. The Role of Consciousness in Matter ====
-[[#315|31]]. Quoted in Alexandre Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968 ''(Oakland CA: AK Press, 2002), 50.
+In relation to matter, ''consciousness can impact matter through human activities.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#325|32]]. Hoyt, “And They Called Them ‘Galleanisti,’” 8–9, 24–27, 33–35, 294–96.</div>
+When we discuss consciousness we are discussing ''human'' consciousness. So, when we talk about the role of consciousness, we are talking about the role of human beings. Consciousness in and of itself cannot directly change anything in reality. In order to change reality, humans have to implement material activities. However, consciousness controls every human activity, so even though consciousness does not directly create or change the material world, it equips humans with knowledge about objective reality, and based on that foundation of knowledge, humans are able to identify goals, set directions, develop plans, and select methods, solutions, tools, and means to achieve our goals. So, consciousness manifests its ability to impact matter through human activities.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#335|33]]. Zimmer, ''Immigrants'', 60; Pernicone, “Introductory Essay” in Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''xxiii.</div>
+The impact of consciousness on matter can have positive or negative results.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#345|34]]. Quoted in Di Paola, ''Knights Errant'','' ''52–53.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#355|35]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 76–80; Senta, ''Galleani'','' ''134–48; Zimmer, ''Immigrants'', 28–29; Paul Avrich, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background ''(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 53, 61. Galleani did not adopt a rigid antisyndicalist perspective until around 1910 or 1911 and prior to this appears to have had a more positive view of trade unions. See Hoyt, “And They Called Them ‘Galleanisti,’” 243–44; Senta, ''Galleani'','' ''106–7, 158–59, 172–73, 191–92.</div>
+==== Annotation 92 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#365|36]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'','' ''29–30.</div>
+“Positive” and “negative,” in this context, are subjective and relative terms which simply denote “moving towards a goal” and “moving away from a goal,” based on a specific perspective.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#375|37]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 30.</div>
+From the perspective of revolutionary communism, “positive” can be taken as moving towards the end goal of the liberation of the working class from capitalist oppression and the construction of a stateless, classless society. Likewise, “negative” can be taken as moving away from that goal. See: Annotation 114, p. 116.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#385|38]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 31.</div>
+Humans have the ability to overcome all challenges in the process of achieving our goals and improving our world, so long as our conscious activities meet the following criteria:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#395|39]]. G. D. H. Cole, ''A History of Socialist Thought'','' ''vol. 2,'' Marxism and Anarchism'','' 1850–1890'' (London: Macmillan & Co, 1974), 80–1; Jeremy Wolf, “Iron Law of Wages,” in ''The Encyclopedia of Political Thought'', ed. Michael Gibbons (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0541/abstract.</div>
+* We must perceive reality accurately.
+* We must properly apply scientific knowledge, revolutionary sentiments, and directed willpower.
+* We must avoid contradicting objective laws of nature and society.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#405|40]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'','' ''28, 79.</div>
+Successfully achieving our goals and improving the world in this manner constitutes the ''positive'' outcome of human consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#415|41]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 29.</div>
+On the contrary, if human consciousness wrongly reflects objective reality, nature, and laws, then, right from the beginning, our actions will have negative results which will do harm to ourselves and our society.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#425|42]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 96–97.</div>
+Therefore, by directing the activities of humans, consciousness can determine whether the results of human activities are beneficial or harmful. Our consciousness thus determines whether our activities will succeed or fail and whether our efforts will be effective or ineffective.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#435|43]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 29.</div>
+By studying the matter, origin, and nature of consciousness, as well as the relationships between matter and consciousness, we can see that:
-[[#445|44]]. Quoted in Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'', 21.
+* Matter is the source of consciousness <ref>See: Annotation 72, p. 68.</ref>.
+* Matter determines the content and creative capacity of consciousness <ref>See: Annotation 90, p. 88.</ref>.
+* Matter is the prerequisite to form consciousness <ref>See: ''The Role of Matter in Consciousness,'' p. 89.</ref>.
+* Consciousness only has the ability to impact matter, and this impact is indirect, because it has to be done through human material activities within material reality <ref>See: ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness,'' p. 88.</ref>.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#455|45]]. For example, David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism,” in ''Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy'', ed. Audrey Cronin and James Ludes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 50–52; Mary S. Barton, “The Global War on Anarchism: The United States and International Anarchist Terrorism, 1898–1904,” ''Diplomatic History'' 39, no. 2 (2015): 306–8.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-21.png|''Matter determines consciousness while consciousness impacts matter indirectly through human activity.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#465|46]]. Paul Avrich, ''Anarchist Portraits'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 243.</div>
+The strength with which consciousness can impact the material world depends on:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#475|47]]. There are some usages of the term “propaganda by the deed” by anarchist authors that cannot be neatly fit into these two main versions. Malatesta wrote an article in 1889 called “Propaganda by Deeds,” in which he proposed that anarchists should, either as individuals or affinity groups, beat up tax collectors, push landowners down the stairs when they show up to collect rent, seize and distribute the harvest among peasants rather than allowing it to be taken to the landowner, kill the animals of landowners and distribute the meat to starving peasants, and provide landowners who evict people unable to pay rent “with a terrifying example of the vengeance of the oppressed.” See Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 79–83.</div>
+* The accuracy of reflection of the material world in consciousness <ref>See:Annotation 68, p. 65.</ref>.
+* Strength of willpower which transmits consciousness to human activity <ref>See: ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness,'' p. 79.</ref>.
+* The degree of organization of social activity <ref>See: Annotation 93, below.</ref>.
+* Material conditions in which human activity occurs <ref>See: Annotation 10, p. 10.</ref>.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#485|48]]. Avrich, ''Anarchist Portraits'', 229–39; Julian P.W. Archer, ''The First International in France, 1864–1872: Its Origins, Theories, and Impact'' (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997), 255–73; E. H. Carr, ''Michael Bakunin'' (London: The Macmillan Press, 1975), 394–96, 400–7; Guillaume, “Michael Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch,” in Michael Bakunin, ''Bakunin on Anarchism'', ed. Sam Dolgoff (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1980), 40–42. Bakunin later claimed that the Lyon and Marseille insurrections failed because of a lack of effective organization. See Bakunin, ''Basic Bakunin'', 65.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#495|49]]. John Merriman, ''Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 250–1. For anarchist estimates of the death count, see Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 305; Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 354, 406; Rudolf Rocker, ''The London Years ''(Nottingham, UK: Five Leaves, 2005), 22.</div>
+==== Annotation 93 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#505|50]]. Esenwein, ''Anarchist Ideology'', 45–50; Temma Kaplan, ''Anarchists of Andalusia'','' 1868–1903'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 101–10.</div>
+The importance of organization in determining the outcomes of human social activity is one of the most important concepts of Marxism-Leninism and is discussed frequently by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and nearly every other important communist revolutionary in history. Marx explains the connections between social organization and conscious human activity in ''Capital Volume I'' [see Annotation 80, p. 81].
-[[#515|51]]. Bakunin, ''Bakunin on Anarchism'','' ''195–96.
+=== 4. Meaning of the methodology ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#525|52]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', ed. Arthur Lehning (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 61.</div>
+Dialectical Materialism builds the most basic and common methodological<ref>For discussion of the meaning of methodology, see ''Methodology,'' p. 44.</ref> principles for human cognitive and practical activities on the following bases:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#535|53]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 62. See also Michael Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,'' ''1990), ed. Marshall Shatz, 123.</div>
+* The viewpoint of the material nature of the world [''matter comes first, consciousness comes after''].
+* The dynamic and creative nature of consciousness <ref>See: ''Nature of Consciousness,'' p. 79.</ref>.
+* The dialectical relationship between matter and consciousness <ref>See: ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness,'' p. 88.</ref>.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#545|54]]. Stafford, ''From Anarchism to Reformism'','' ''35–40. For a short overview of Brousse’s life, see Avrich, ''Anarchist Portraits'', 240–46.</div>
+All cognitive and practical activities of humans ''originate from material reality'' and ''must observe objective natural and social laws,'' however, our activities are capable of ''impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity''. [See ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#555|55]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 76–77.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#565|56]]. Paul Brousse, “Propaganda by the Deed,” in ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas'','' ''vol. 1,'' From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', ed. Robert Graham (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005), 150.</div>
+==== Annotation 94 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#575|57]]. Paul Brousse, “Propaganda by the Deed,” 151.</div>
+The above paragraph summarizes an important methodological concept which is critical for undestanding the philosophical framework of Dialectical Materialism. Dialectical Materialism, as a philosophy, synthesizes earlier materialist and idealist positions by recognizing the fact that the material determines consciousness, while consciousness can impact the material world through willful activity.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#585|58]]. Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 77–78.</div>
+From this philosophical basis, the methodology of Materialist Dialectics has been developed to provide a deeper understanding of dialectical development, which is rooted in contradiction and negation within and between subjects. Materialist Dialectics is the subject of Chapter 2, p. 98.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#595|59]]. Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 35–36, 44, 64–70.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#605|60]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 261. See also, 184–85.</div>
+According to this methodological principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], if we hope to succeed in accomplishing our goals in the material world, then we must ''simultaneously'' meet two criteria:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#615|61]]. Cafiero, ''Revolution'', 63. The piece was never published in full during his lifetime because, in September 1881, the newspaper ''La Révolution Sociale'' suspended publication when its editor, the undercover police agent Égide Spilleux, fled with its funds and Cafiero was arrested. See ibid., xi.</div>
+. We must ensure that our knowledge reflects the objective material world as much as possible, respecting the objective natural and social laws of the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#625|62]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 111. Kropotkin had himself been radicalized by news of the Paris Commune. See Martin A. Miller, ''Kropotkin'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 73–75.</div>
+. We must simultaneously recognize the dynamic and creative nature of our conscious activity.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#635|63]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 102.</div>
+When we say that human activities ''originate from material reality'' and ''must observe objective natural and social laws'' we'''' mean that human knowledge must originate from the material world. This means that if we hope to be successful in our activities, we should respect the natural and social laws of the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#645|64]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 500. Kropotkin thought his idea of the spirit of revolt was distinct from Brousse’s theory of propaganda by the deed. This disagreement appears to be largely semantic given that Kropotkin held, like Brousse, that ideas should be spread through actions and that these actions included insurrections which established communes. See Miller, ''Kropotkin'', 260; Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 92, 102–105.</div>
+This means that in our human perception and activities, we must determine goals, and set strategies, policies, and plans which are rooted firmly in objective material reality. Humans have to take objective material reality as the foundation of our activities and plans, and all of our activities must be carried out in the material world. Humans have to examine and understand our material conditions and transform them in ways that will help us to accomplish our goals.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#655|65]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 111. Kropotkin predicted that a revolution was near several times during this period. For other examples, see Peter Kropotkin, ''Words of a'' ''Rebel ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992), 32, 34–35, 205–6; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 119, 291, 542.</div>
+When we talk about ''impacting the material world through dynamic and creative conscious activity,'' we mean we must recognize the positive, dynamic, and creative roles of consciousness. We must recognize the role human consciousness plays in dynamically and creatively manifesting our will in the material world through labor. Impacting the material world through conscious activity at a revolutionary scale requires humans to respect and understand the role of scientific knowledge; to study laboriously to master such knowledge; and then to propagate such knowledge so to the masses to develop public knowledge and belief so as to guide the people’s action.
-[[#665|66]]. Gary P. Steenson, ''After Marx, Before Lenin: Marxism and Socialist Working-Class Parties in Europe, 1884–1914'' (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), 29–31.
+Moreover, we also have to voluntarily study and practice<ref>See: Annotation 211, p. 205.</ref> in order to form and improve our revolutionary viewpoint<ref>See: Annotation 114, p. 116.</ref> and willpower<ref>See: ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness'', p. 79.</ref> in order to have both scientific and humanitarian activity guidelines.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#675|67]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 545.</div>
+To implement this principle [i.e., the Principle of the Dialectic Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness], we have to avoid, fight against, and overcome the diseases of subjectivism<ref>See: Annotation 222, p. 218.</ref> and idealism<ref>See: ''The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues,'' p. 48.</ref> through such errors as:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#685|68]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 78.</div>
+* Attempting to impose idealist plans and principles [which are not rooted in material conditions] into reality.
+* Considering fantasy, illusion, and imagination instead of reality.
+* Basing policies and programs on subjective desires.
+* Using sentiment as the starting point for developing policies, strategies, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#695|69]]. Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 82, 85–86; T.R. Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'' (Kingston and Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 190, 194–95.</div>
+On the other hand, in cognitive and practical activities, we also have to fight against empiricism<ref>See: Annotation 10, p. 10.</ref>, which disregards scientific knowledge and theories, and which is also very conservative, stagnant and passive.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#705|70]]. Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 90–95; Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'','' ''203–209. For Malatesta’s account of his role in the insurrection see Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''12–13.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#715|71]]. Quoted in Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 85.</div>
+==== Annotation 95 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#724|72]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 11. Similar ideas had been expressed by Malatesta at the recent October 1876 Berne Congress of the Saint-Imier International. See Peter Marshall, ''Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism'' (London: Harper Perennial, 2008),'' ''346.</div>
+Process of Developing Revolutionary Public Knowledge
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#734|73]]. The unsuccessful insurrections of 1874 were in part launched in order to out-compete Italian republican revolutionaries. See Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 84–85.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-22.png|''Developing revolutionary public knowledge must be preceded by mastery of knowledge and a firm grounding in the role and nature of knowledge.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#744|74]]. Giuseppe Mazzini, ''A Cosmopolitanism of Nations: Giuseppe Mazzini’s Writings on Democracy'','' Nation Building'','' and International Relations'', ed. Stefano Recchia and Nadia Urbinati (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 111.</div>
+In ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Engels makes a scathing critique of idealist socialist revolutionary thought, writing:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#754|75]]. Quoted in Denis Mack Smith, ''Mazzini'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 100.</div>
+<blockquote>
+To all these [idealist socialists], Socialism is the expression of absolute truth<ref>See: Annotation 232 and ''The Properties of Truth,'' on p. 228.</ref>, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as an absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive of one another.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#764|76]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''336.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#774|77]]. D. M. Smith, ''Mazzini'', 6–7, 10, 41, 47, 64–73, 98–101, 118–19; Martin Clark, ''The Italian'' ''Risorgimento'','' ''2nd ed. (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2009), 41.</div>
+-----
-[[#784|78]]. Clark, ''Italian'' ''Risorgimento'', 80–84.
+Here, Engels points out the absurdity of the idea that some abstract, purely ideal “truth” could liberate workers in the material world. Engels continues on, explaining how such idealist socialism could never lead to meaningful revolutionary change:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#794|79]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 140. One of the individuals inspired by Mazzini and Garibaldi was Bakunin who, prior to becoming an anarchist, met and attempted to work with them between 1862–64 in order to achieve Slav liberation as part of a wider democratic political revolution. Bakunin would go onto become a major critic of Mazzini and Garibaldi. See Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'', 13–20, 57–60, 84–85, 122–26, 131–33, 147–48, 255n19; Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''214–31.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#804|80]]. Marco Pinfari, “Exploring the Terrorist Nature of Political Assassinations: A Reinterpretation of the Orsini Attentat,” ''Terrorism and Political Violence'' 21, no. 4 (2009): 582–83; Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'', 7–19.</div>
+In other words, idealist revolutionary movements only tend to result in endless debate and meaningless theories which are divorced from objective reality and material conditions. Such theories and idealist constructions do not lead to effective action in the real world. Socialism must become ''real'' (i.e., based in objective material conditions and praxis<ref>See: ''Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness,'' p. 204.</ref> in the real world) to affect change in the material world, as Engels explains elsewhere in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'' [see Annotation 17, p. 18].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#814|81]]. Quoted in Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'', 7–8.</div>
+In ''Critique of the Gotha Program'', Marx lays out an excellent case study of the failings of incoherent, idealist socialism. He begins by quoting the Gotha Program, which was an ideological program which the German Workers Party hoped to implement. In this text, Marx cites the Gotha Program line by line and offers his materialist critique of the idealist principles presented. In the following passage, Marx refutes some key errors caused by idealism and offers materialist correction:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#824|82]]. Pernicone,'' Italian Anarchism'','' ''11–13, 118–19, 169. The influence Pisacane had on Italian anarchism can be seen in the fact that Cafiero quotes him at length. See Cafiero, ''Revolution'', 4–5, 10–11, 14, 23, 45, 47, 62, 66–67. Despite being a republican martyr, the political theory of Pisacane does not appear to have been widely known among Italian republicans in the 1860s. See Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'','' ''70–73.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power... But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#834|83]]. Carlo Pisacane, “Political Testament,” Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog, September, 22, 2011, https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/carlo-pisacane-propaganda-by-the-deed-1857. According to Nettlau, the earliest reprint of this text he was aware of occurred in June 1878 in the Italian anarchist journal L’Avvenire. See Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism, ed. Heiner M. Becker (London: Freedom Press, 1996), 92.</div>
+Here, Marx points out the importance of having a firm understanding of the material reality of ''labor'' and its relation to the material, natural world. Marx points out that the idea that labor, alone, is the source of all wealth is an idealist notion of the bourgeoisie, a false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] which prevents proper material analysis and props up the capitalist viewpoint. A failure to grasp the truth of the material basis of reality weakens the socialist position, and any movement built on such weak idealist foundations will lead to failure in trying to bring about revolutionary change.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#844|84]]. Quoted in Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 121.</div>
+We have already discussed the shortcomings of empiricism in Annotation 10, p. 10, but it might be helpful to see another case study, this time from Engels, pointing out the flaws of empiricist analysis in his text ''Anti-Dühring''. Engels begins by quoting the empiricist Eugen Dühring, who wrote:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#854|85]]. Quoted in Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 119.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Philosophy is the development of the highest form of consciousness of the world and of life, and in a wider sense embraces the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series of cognitions or stimuli or a group of forms of being come to be examined by human consciousness, the principles underlying these manifestations of necessity become an object of philosophy. These principles are the simple, or until now assumed to be simple, constituents of manifold knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition of bodies, the general constitution of things can be reduced to basic forms and basic elements. These ultimate constituents or principles, once they have been discovered, are valid not only for what is immediately known and accessible, but also for the world which is unknown and inaccessible to us. Philosophical principles consequently provide the final supplement required by the sciences in order to become a uniform system by which nature and human life can be explained. Apart from the fundamental forms of all existence, philosophy has only two specific subjects of investigation — nature and the world of man. Accordingly, our material arranges itself quite naturally into three groups, namely, the general scheme of the universe, the science of the principles of nature, and finally the science of mankind. This succession at the same time contains an inner logical sequence, for the formal principles which are valid for all being take precedence, and the realms of the objects to which they are to be applied then follow in the degree of their subordination.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#864|86]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 78.</div>
+Engels then proceeds to critique this empiricist worldview, showing that it does not properly reflect the material world and amounts to idealism in its own right:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#874|87]]. The following account of the Benevento Affair is a summary of Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 121–26; Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'','' ''225–29.</div>
+<blockquote>
+What [Dühring] is dealing with are therefore principles, formal tenets derived from thought and not from the external world, which are to be applied to nature and the realm of man, and to which therefore nature and man have to conform. But whence does thought obtain these principles? From itself?
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#884|88]]. Quoted in Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 125</div>
+No, for Herr Dühring himself says: the realm of pure thought is limited to logical schemata and mathematical forms (the latter, moreover, as we shall see, is wrong). Logical schemata can only relate to forms of thought; but what we are dealing with here is solely forms of being, of the external world, and these forms can never be created and derived by thought out of itself, but only from the external world. But with this the whole relationship is inverted: the principles are not the starting-point of the investigation, but its final result; they are not applied to nature and human history, but abstracted from them, it is not nature and the realm of man which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid in so far as they are in conformity with nature and history. That is the only materialist conception of the matter, and Herr Dühring’s contrary conception is idealistic, makes things stand completely on their heads, and fashions the real world out of ideas, out of schemata, schemes or categories existing somewhere before the world, from eternity — just like a Hegel.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#894|89]]. Brousse, “Propaganda by the Deed,” 151.</div>
+Lenin also heavily criticized empiricism in his work ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', which we discuss at length in Annotation 32, p. 27.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#904|90]]. Quoted in Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'','' ''126.</div>
+= Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics =
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#914|91]]. Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 126–27, 140–45.</div>
+Materialist dialectics is one of the basic theoretical parts that form the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. It is the “science of common relations” and also the “science of common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thoughts... Dialectics, as understood by Marx, and also in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology.”<ref>''Karl Marx'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#924|92]]. Cafiero, ''Revolution'', 63–64.</div>
+[Note: Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge; for more information see ''Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism'', p. 204.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#934|93]]. Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 80–82, 100–102; Miller, ''Kropotkin'', 136–37; Stafford, ''From Anarchism to Reformism'','' ''80–83.</div>
+== I. Dialectics and Materialist Dialectics ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#944|94]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 101.</div>
+=== 1. Dialectics and Basic Forms of Dialectics ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#954|95]]. Brousse, “Propaganda by the Deed,” 151.</div>
+==== a. Definitions of Dialectics and the Subjective Dialectic ====
-[[#964|96]]. Stafford, ''From Anarchism to Reformism'','' ''113.
+In Marxism-Leninism, the term ''dialectic'' refers to regular relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought.<ref>See Annotation 9, p. 10.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#974|97]]. I have decided not to collectively label these acts “terrorism.” This is because although some of them were acts of terror against civilians, others were targeted attacks against specific individuals that occurred as part of an ongoing armed conflict between anarchists and the ruling classes. They were thus more akin to special operations carried out during a war. This is, in turn, consistent with how anarchists viewed themselves as militants fighting a class war.</div>
+There are two forms of dialectic: the ''objective dialectic'' and the ''subjective dialectic.'' The objective dialectic is the dialectic of the material world, while the subjective dialectic is the reflection of objective dialectic in human consciousness. [See Annotation 68, p. 65].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#984|98]]. Richard Bach Jensen, ''The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History'','' 1878–1934'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 7, 23–24.</div>
+According to Engels, “Dialectics, so-called ''objective'' dialectics, prevail throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature.”<ref>''Dialectics of Nature'', Friedrich Engels, 1883.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#994|99]]. Andrew R. Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'','' ''vol. 1,'' The Early Movement'' (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1972), 115–16, 139–41. For the argument that they were anarchists, see ibid., 117–24, 143–48. For a critique of this view, see Cahm,'' Kropotkin'', 89–90. Kropotkin denied that there was any connection between these assassination attempts and the Jura Federation. See Peter Kropotkin, ''Memoirs of a Revolutionist ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 388–89.</div>
+-----
-[[#1004|100]]. Esenwein, ''Anarchist Ideology'', 65–66; Benedict Anderson, ''The Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anti-Colonial Imagination'' (London: Verso, 2013), 115n90.
+==== Annotation 96 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1014|101]]. Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'', 284–85.</div>
+''Dialectics'' is an umbrella term which includes both forms of dialectical systems: ''subjective'' and ''objective'' dialectics.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1024|102]]. Carlo Cafiero, “Action (1880),” in ''Libertarian Ideas'','' ''vol. 1, 152.</div>
+''Objective dialectics'' are the dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1034|103]]. Carlo Cafiero, “Action (1880),” 152. See also Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 186–88.</div>
+''Subjective dialectics'', or ''dialectical thought'', is a system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics [see Annotation 49, p. 45].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1044|104]]. Cafiero, “The Organization of Armed Struggle.”</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1054|105]]. According to a police report, almost identical resolutions had been passed a year earlier on September 12, 1880, at a meeting of thirty-two anarchist militants in Vevey, Switzerland, which included Kropotkin and Reclus. See Marie Fleming, ''The Anarchist Way to Socialism: Élisée Reclus and Nineteenth-Century European Anarchism ''(London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1979),'' ''172.</div>
+''Subjective dialectics'' is the theory that studies and summarises the [objective] dialectic of nature into a system with scientific principles and rules, in order to build a system of methodological principles of perception and practice. Dialectics is opposed to ''metaphysics'' — a system of thought which conceives of things and phenomena in the world in an isolated and unchanging state [See Annotation 8, p. 8].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1064|106]]. Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 152–59; Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 193–94.</div>
+==== b. Basic Forms of Dialectics ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1074|107]]. Quoted in Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'','' ''252–53.</div>
+Dialectics has developed into three basic forms and levels: ancient primitive dialectics, German idealist dialectics, and the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1084|108]]. Quoted in Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'', 253. Nathan-Ganz had, a few months prior, published an article on “Revolutionary War Science,” meaning the use of explosives, in his paper the ''An-Archist: Socialistic Revolutionary Review''. See Avrich, ''Haymarket'','' ''57–58; Timothy Messer-Kruse, ''The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 81, 206n28.</div>
+''Ancient primitive dialectics'' is the earliest form of dialectics. It has developed independently in many philosophical systems in ancient China, India and Greece.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1094|109]]. Quoted in Ulrich Linse, “‘Propaganda by Deed’ and ‘Direct Action’: Two Concepts of Anarchist Violence,” in ''Social Protest'','' Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe'','' ''ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld (London: The Macmillan Press, 1982), 210.</div>
+Chinese philosophy has two major forms of ancient primitive dialectics:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1103|110]]. Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'', 288–300.</div>
+* “Changing Theory” (a theory of common principles and rules pertaining to the changes in the universe)
+* The “Five Elements Theory” (a theory of the principles of mutual impact and transformation of the five elements of the universe) of the School of Yin-Yang. [See: ''Primitive Materialism'', p. 52]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1113|111]]. Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution'', 59–60, 93–95.</div>
+In Indian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy is a quintessential [see Annotation 6, p. 8] form of ancient primitive dialectics, which includes such concepts as “selflessness,” “impermanence,” and “predestination.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1123|112]]. Quoted in Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'', 254.</div>
+An ancient, primitive form of dialectics also developed in Ancient Greek philosophy.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1133|113]]. Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'', 254–55.</div>
+Friedrich Engels wrote: “The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought… This primitive, naive, but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.”<ref>''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Friedrich Engels, 1880.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1143|114]]. On Italian republicans, see Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'', 12–14, 26–29. On Irish nationalists, see K. R. M. Short, ''The Dynamite War: Irish-American Bombers in Victorian Britain ''(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan Ltd, 1979); Lindsay Clutterbuck, “The Progenitors of Terrorism: Russian Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Republicans?,” ''Terrorism and Political Violence'' 16, no. 1 (2004), 154–81. On Russian nihilists, see Claudia Verhoeven, ''The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity and the Birth of Terrorism'' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Ronald Seth, ''The Russian Terrorists: The Story of the Narodniki'' (London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1966).</div>
+Engels also wrote of Greek dialectics: “Here, dialectical thought still appears in its pristine simplicity, as yet undisturbed by the charming obstacles which the metaphysicists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — Bacon and Locke in England, Wolff in Germany — put in its own way... Among the Greeks — just because they were not yet advanced enough to dissect and analyse nature — nature is still viewed as a whole, in general. The universal connection of natural phenomena is not proved in regard to particular; to the Greeks it is the result of direct contemplation.”<ref>The Old Preface to ''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1153|115]]. Seth, ''Russian Terrorists'', 96–100; Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'', 35, 37–39.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1163|116]]. Quoted in Jensen, ''Anarchist Terrorism'', 18.</div>
+==== Annotation 97 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1173|117]]. Nettlau, ''Short History'', 148, 146.</div>
+Engels, here, is explaining how the ancient Greek dialecticians were correct to view nature as a cohesive system, a “whole, in general,” which they determined through direct observation of the natural world. The major shortcoming of this ancient Greek form of dialectics was a lack of inquiry into the specific processes and principles of nature. Engels laments that seventeenth and eighteenth century metaphysicists took us backwards by disregarding this view of nature as a cohesive, general whole.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1183|118]]. Jensen, ''Anarchist Terrorism'', 45–46; Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 43–45; Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 154–59, 320–21, notes 11 and 12. For other examples see Jensen, ''Anarchist Terrorism'', 44–52.</div>
+Ancient, primitive dialectics had an accurate awareness of the dialectical characteristic of the world but with its primitive and naive perspective, it still lacked evidence-based forms of natural scientific achievements.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1193|119]]. Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'','' ''51–56.</div>
+Jumping forward to the late 16<sup>th</sup> century, natural sciences started developing rapidly in Europe. Scientists began deeply analysing and studying specific factors and phenomena of nature which led to the birth of modern European metaphysical analysis. In the 18<sup>th</sup> century, metaphysics became the dominant methodology in philosophical thought and scientific study. However, when natural scientists moved from studying each subject separately to studying the unification of all those subjects in their relationships, the metaphysical method proved insufficient. Thus, European scientists and philosophers had to transition into a more advanced system of thought: dialectical thought.
-[[#1203|120]]. John Merriman, ''The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror ''(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 71–73, 78–81.
+''The classical German idealist dialectics'' were founded by Kant and completed by Hegel. According to Engels: ''“The second form of dialectics, which is the form that comes closest to the German naturalists [natural scientists], is classical German philosophy, from Kant to Hegel.”''<ref>The Old Preface to ''Anti-Dühring,'' Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1213|121]]. Merriman, ''Dynamite'','' ''99–105, 137–38, 145,'' ''149–59, 180–81. For other bombings, see ibid., 172–78.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1223|122]]. Esenwein, ''Anarchist Ideology'', 184–88.</div>
+==== Annotation 98 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1233|123]]. Jensen, ''Anarchist Terrorism'', 31–36. For details see Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order''.</div>
+Engels discusses this history, and the shortcomings of the metaphysical philosophy of his era, in ''The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring.'' First, Engels explains why early modern natural scientists initially did not feel constrained by their adherence to metaphysics, since inquiries in the initial revolution of scientific study were limited to the narrow development of specific fields of inquiry by necessity:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1243|124]]. On Alfonso, see Paul Avrich, ''The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006), 26; Angel Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State'','' 1989–1923'' (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 163. On Clemenceau, see Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'','' ''167. For other examples, see Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, ''Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012),'' ''228–36; Avrich, ''Sacco and Vanzetti'','' ''97–104, 137–59, 205–7; Fausto Buttà, ''Living Like Nomads: The Milanese Anarchist Movement Before Fascism ''(Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 200, 221–22, 229.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Empirical natural science has accumulated such a tremendous mass of positive material for knowledge that the necessity of classifying it in each separate field of investigation systematically and in accordance with its inner inter-connection has become absolutely imperative.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1253|125]]. Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'','' ''123–33; Turcato, ''Making Sense'', 170–73. In response to this struggle from below the prime minister suspended import duties on grain and flour until June 30.</div>
+Engels goes on to explain that at the time he was writing, enough knowledge had been accumulated within specific, distinct fields that it becomes necessary to begin studying the connections and overlaps between different fields, which called for theoretical and philosophical foundations:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1262|126]]. Quoted in Zimmer, ''Immigrants'', 60.</div>
+<blockquote>
+It is becoming equally imperative to bring the individual spheres of knowledge into the correct connection with one another. In doing so, however, natural science enters the field of theory and here the methods of empiricism will not work, here only theoretical thinking can be of assistance.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1272|127]]. Avrich and Avrich, ''Sasha and Emma'', 91–96.</div>
+Unfortunately, natural scientists were held back by the existing metaphysical theoretical foundations which were dominant at the time as, according to Engels, “theoretical thinking is an innate quality only as regards natural capacity. This natural capacity must be developed, improved, and for its improvement there is as yet no other means than the study of previous philosophy.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1282|128]]. Quoted in Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'', 75. For more primary sources, see Mitchell Abidor, ed., ''Death to Bourgeois Society: The Propagandists of the Deed'' (Oakland CA, PM Press, 2015).</div>
+Metaphysical theory and formal logic were in common use by natural scientists at the time. As Engels explained in ''On Dialectics'' and ''Dialectics of Nature,'' metaphysics and formal logic could never be as useful as dialectical analysis for examining and unifying concepts from wide-ranging dynamic systems of overlapping fields of inquiry.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1292|129]]. For example Emma Goldman, ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader'', ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 256–79; Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'','' ''84–90;'' ''Voltairine de Cleyre, ''The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader'' ed. A. J. Brigati (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004),'' ''173–76; Ruth Kinna, ''Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 58–60; Clark, “Introduction,” in Élisée Reclus, ''Anarchy'','' Geography'','' Modernity: Selected Writings of Élisée Reclus'', ed. John Clark and Camille Martin (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013), 57–59; Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 124–27.</div>
+Unfortunately, dialectics had not yet been suitably developed for use in the natural sciences before the work of Marx and Engels in developing dialectical materialism, as Engels explained in ''On Dialectics:''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1302|130]]. Louisa Sarah Bevington, ''An Anarchist Manifesto'', (London: Metropolitan Printing Works, 1895), 11.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Formal logic itself has been the arena of violent controversy from the time of Aristotle to the present day. And dialectics has so far been fairly closely investigated by only two thinkers, Aristotle and Hegel. But it is precisely dialectics that constitutes the most important form of thinking for present-day natural science, for it alone offers the analogue for, and thereby the method of explaining, the evolutionary processes occurring in nature, inter-connections in general, and transitions from one field of investigation to another.
+</blockquote>
-[[#1312|131]]. Avrich, ''Sacco and Vanzetti'','' ''52.
+The Idealist Dialectics of Hegel [see Annotation 9, p. 10] constituted a major development of dialectics, but the idealist nature of Hegelian dialectics made them unsuitable for natural scientists, who therefore discarded “Old-Hegelian” dialectics and were thus left without a suitable dialectical framework. Again, from ''On Dialectics:''
-[[#1322|132]]. James Yeoman, ''Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890–1915'' (New York: Routledge, 2020), 90–98.
+<blockquote>
+The year 1848, which otherwise brought nothing to a conclusion in Germany, accomplished a complete revolution there only in the sphere of philosophy [and] the nation resolutely turned its back on classical German philosophy that had lost itself in the sands of Berlin old-Hegelianism... But a nation that wants to climb the pinnacles of science cannot possibly manage without theoretical thought. Not only Hegelianism but dialectics too was thrown overboard — and that just at the moment when the dialectical character of natural processes irresistibly forced itself upon the mind, when therefore only dialectics could be of assistance to natural science in negotiating the mountain of theory — and so there was a helpless relapse into the old metaphysics.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1332|133]]. Senta, ''Galleani'','' ''65–66, 139–41.</div>
+Engels goes on to explain that, having rejected Hegel’s dialectics, natural scientists were set adrift, cobbling together theoretical frameworks from the works of philosophers which were plagued by idealism and metaphysics, and which were therefore not suitable for the task of unifying the disparate fields of natural sciences together:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1342|134]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 84.</div>
+<blockquote>
+What prevailed among the public since then were, on the one hand, the vapid reflections of Schopenhauer, which were fashioned to fit the philistines, and later even those of Hartmann; and, on the other hand, the vulgar itinerant-preacher materialism of a Vogt and a Büchner. At the universities the most diverse varieties of eclecticism competed with one another and had only one thing in common, namely, that they were concocted from nothing but remnants of old philosophies and were all equally metaphysical. All that was saved from the remnants of classical philosophy was a certain neo-Kantianism, whose last word was the eternally unknowable thing-in-itself, that is, the bit of Kant [see Annotation 72, p. 68] that least merited preservation. The final result was the incoherence and confusion of theoretical thought now prevalent.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1352|135]]. Galleani, ''End of Anarchism'', 93–95.</div>
+Engels explains that this lack of a proper dialectical materialist framework had frustrated natural scientists of his era:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1362|136]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 58.</div>
+<blockquote>
+One can scarcely pick up a theoretical book on natural science without getting the impression that natural scientists themselves feel how much they are dominated by this incoherence and confusion, and that the so-called philosophy now current offers them absolutely no way out. And here there really is no other way out, no possibility of achieving clarity, than by a return, in one form or another, from metaphysical to dialectical thinking.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1372|137]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 127.</div>
+After explaining that Hegel’s system of dialectics came closest to meeting the needs of contemporary science, Engels explains why Hegelian dialectics were ultimately rejected by the scientific community:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1382|138]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 264–65. See also Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''187–91; Errico Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta'','' ''ed. Vernon Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 53–58.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line. Hence, with the fall of the idealist point of departure, the system built upon it, in particular Hegelian philosophy of nature, also falls. It must however be recalled that the natural scientists’ polemic against Hegel, in so far as they at all correctly understood him, was directed solely against these two points: viz., the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.”
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1392|139]]. Jensen, ''Anarchist Terrorism'', 36–38. For an overview of state repression in response to propaganda of the deed see Constance Bantman, ''The French Anarchists in London'','' 1880–1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation'' (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013),'' ''132; Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'', 21–22, 32n22; Buttà, ''Living Like Nomads'', 34–35, 39; Carlson, ''Anarchism in Germany'', 127–29, 154–58, 293–94; Di Paola, ''Knights Errant'','' ''14–17; Esenwein, ''Anarchist Ideology'', 167, 188–199; Fleming, ''Anarchist Way'', 213–14; Goyens, ''Beer and Revolution'','' ''191; Merriman, ''Dynamite'', 207–10; Pernicone and Ottanelli, ''Assassins against the Old Order'', 77–89.</div>
+In other words, it was the idealism and the unworkable structuring of Hegelian dialectics that prevented its adoption by natural scientists. Engels finally explains how Marx was able to modify Hegel’s idealist dialectics into a materialist form which is suitable for empirical scientific inquiry:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1402|140]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''397.Chapter 7: Mass Anarchism</div>
+<blockquote>
+It is the merit of Marx that... he was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method, its connection with Hegelian dialectics and its distinction from the latter, and at the same time to have applied this method in Capital to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.
+</blockquote>
-== {{anchor|Chapter7MassAnarchismMas1}} {{anchor|Chapter7MassAnarchismMas}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook10}} Chapter 7: Mass Anarchism ==
-Mass anarchists advocated forming, or participating in, large-scale, formal organizations that prefigured the future anarchist society and engaged in collective struggles for immediate reforms in the present. It was held that these collective struggles for reforms would, over time, develop a revolutionary mass movement that was both capable of, and driven to, overthrow capitalism and the state in favor of an anarchist society. The struggle for immediate reforms was, in other words, viewed as the best means to develop the social force that was necessary for launching a successful armed insurrection. Mass anarchists thought this would occur due to workers being transformed by the practice of participating within prefigurative organizations, taking direct action against the ruling classes, and being influenced by anarchists acting as a militant minority within social movements.[[#1MichaelSchmidtandLucienva|1]]
+-----
-'''Support of Formal Organizations'''
+These Classical German philosophers [Kant, Hegel, etc.<ref>Kant’s “transcendental dialectic” was used to critique rationalism and pure reason, but was not a fully developed dialectical system of thought. Hegel’s idealist dialectics were more universal in nature. See Annotation 9, p. 10.</ref>] systematically organized idealist dialectics into formal philosophies. Of particular note was Hegel’s belief that the dialectical process would eventually lead to an “absolute idea.” This foundational belief in an “absolute idea” is what chiefly defines Hegelian dialectics as idealist in nature [see Annotation 98, p. 100].
-Mass anarchists advocated building, and participating within, large-scale formal federations that prefigured the kinds of organization that would exist in a future anarchist society. These tended to be federations of trade unions or community groups, whose membership included both anarchists and nonanarchists, and federations of anarchist militants, which I shall refer to as ''specific anarchist organizations''. The size of organization mass anarchists hoped to create can be seen in Kropotkin’s argument that the victory of the working classes required “monster unions embracing millions of proletarians” and the establishment of “an ''International Federation of all the Trade Unions all over the World''.”[[#2PeterKropotkinDirectStrug|2]]
+Hegel believed that the subjective dialectic is the basis of the objective dialectic. [In other words, Hegel believed that ''dialectical thought'' served as the ''objective dialectics'' of the material world.]
-Large-scale federations were advocated by mass anarchists for two main practical reasons. First, they held that they were necessary to achieve coordination between, and effective action by, large groups of people in different areas. In 1870, Bakunin argued that the self-emancipation of the working classes was impeded by their “lack of organization, the difficulty of coming to agreements and of acting in concert.”[[#3QuotedinReneBerthierSoci|3]] He wrote,
+According to Hegel, the “absolute idea” was the starting point of all existence, and that this “absolute idea,” after creating the natural world, then came to exist within human consciousness.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Certainly, there is sufficient spontaneous strength among the people, indubitably the strength of the latter is much greater than that of the government and that of ruling classes within it; but lacking organization, spontaneous force is no real force. It is not in a [fit] state to sustain a protracted struggle against forces that are much weaker but much better organized. It is on this undeniable superiority of organized force over elemental popular force that all the power of the state resides. . . . Thus, the [real] question is not one of knowing if the people are capable of an uprising, but rather whether they are ready to form an organization which will assure the success of a revolt, a victory which is not ephemeral, but durable and definitive.[[#4QuotedinBerthierSocialDe|4]]</div>
+Engels wrote that in Hegelian dialectics: “... spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea.”<ref>''The Old Preface to Anti-Dühring, On Dialectics'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-Given this, Bakunin argued in 1871 that “to make the people’s might strong enough to be able to eradicate the State’s military and civil might, it is necessary to organize the proletariat. . . . That is precisely what the International Working Men’s Association does” by organizing workers into federations of trade unions.[[#5MichaelBakuninTheBasicBa|5]]
+-----
-This argument was applied not only to the organization of the working classes in general, but also the organization of workers who were anarchist militants. In 1889, Malatesta complained that some anarchists had “attacked the principle of organization itself. They wanted to prevent betrayals and deception, permit free rein to individual initiative, ensure against spies and attacks from the government—and they brought isolation and impotence to the fore.”[[#6QuotedinNunzioPerniconeI|6]] Amédée Dunois similarly claimed at the 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam that the anarchist movement in France was disorganized and fragmented into unconnected small groups and isolated individuals. He lamented that,
+==== Annotation 99 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Everyone acts in his own way, whenever he wants; in this way individual efforts are dispersed and often exhausted, simply wasted. Anarchists can be found in more or less every sphere of action: in the workers’ unions, in the anti-militarist movement, among anti-clericalist free thinkers, in the popular universities, and so on, and so forth. What we are missing is a specifically anarchist movement, which can gather to it, on the economic and workers’ ground that is ours, all those forces that have been fighting in isolation up to now. This specifically anarchist movement will voluntarily arise from our groups and from the federation of these groups. The might of joint action, of concerted action, will undoubtedly create it. . . . It would be sufficient for the anarchist organization to group together, around a programme of concrete practical action, all the comrades who accept our principles and who want to work with us, according to our methods.[[#7MaurizioAntonioliedTheI|7]]</div>
+In the above quoted passage, Engels was explaining why Hegelian dialectics were unsuitable for use in natural sciences. Here is a longer excerpt:
-The second reason why mass anarchists advocated large-scale federations was that they were necessary for developing the kinds of people and social relations that were needed to abolish capitalism and the state and create an anarchist society. In 1892, Malatesta argued that since “agreement, association, and organization represent one of the laws governing life and the key to strength—today as well as after the revolution,” it follows that the working classes must be organized prior to the social revolution.[[#8MalatestaTheMethodofFree|8]] This is because “tomorrow can only grow out of today—and if one seeks success tomorrow, the factors of success need to be prepared today.”[[#9MalatestaMethodofFreedom|9]] This was especially important given that, as Malatesta explained in 1897, workers cannot be “expected to provide for pressing needs” during the social revolution “unless they were already used to coming together to deal jointly with their common interests.”[[#10ErricoMalatestaALongand|10]] For example, supplying bread to everyone in a city would have to be organized, and this required that bakers were “already associated and ready to manage without masters.”[[#11MalatestaPatientWork158|11]]
+<blockquote>
+First of all it must be established that here it is not at all a question of defending Hegel’s point of departure: that spirit, mind, the idea, is primary and that the real world is only a copy of the idea... We all agree that in every field of science, in natural as in historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms and the various forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science, too, the inter-connections are not to be built into the facts, but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.
-Large-scale, formal organizations were, in short, deemed necessary for both engaging in successful revolts and producing and distributing goods and services during and after the social revolution. Insurrectionist anarchists were not convinced by such arguments because they regarded formal organizations as incompatible with the freedom of the individual, and so with anarchism’s commitment to the unity of means and ends. Mass anarchists replied that formal organizations were both compatible with freedom and a prerequisite for it. They thought that large-scale coordination and collective action based on voluntary agreement expanded a person’s real possibility to act and develop themselves far beyond what an individual could attain by themselves or in a small group. A worker may have the internal ability to help organize a large strike across multiple industries but they lack the capacity to do so when isolated. The external conditions necessary for the development and exercise of such a capacity only emerge when an organization like a national trade union is formed that unites workers together, and thereby enables new forms of action.[[#12MalatestaPatientWork148|12]]
+-----
-Mass anarchists also argued that a lack of organizational structures often results in informal hierarchies emerging. Charismatic individuals can, for example, create a newspaper and use it to steer the anarchist movement in a direction of their own choosing, and transform themselves into a prominent leader. In so doing, they acquire a large amount of influence, and use this to further their own positions and interests in manners that are unaccountable to the wider movement and sometimes even harmful. Formal organizational structures can counter this tendency by creating systems of accountability, such as the editors of newspapers being delegates who are elected and mandated by the members of a trade union.[[#13MalatestaPatientWork153|13]]
+The German idealists (most notably Hegel) built an idealist system of dialectics organized into categories and common laws along with a strict logic of consciousness.
+</blockquote>
-Mass anarchists were, nevertheless, still anarchists and so opposed to any system of top-down organization based on minority rule and centralization.[[#14RicardoMellaAnarchistSoc|14]] The conclusions of the 1906 Russian anarchist-communist conference, which were written by Kropotkin, opposed “every form of hierarchical organization that is characteristic of the parties of the State socialists” in which members are “obedient to a central power” and subject to “party discipline and compulsion.”[[#15KropotkinDirectStruggle|15]] This perspective was shared by Baginski who, three years later, rejected “constraining laws that need a centralistic apparatus for their execution,” while advocating “a federative association that does not demand subjection from its members, but will rather place understanding, initiative, and solidarity in the place of commands and compulsory, soldierly behavior.”[[#16MaxBaginskiWhatDoesSynd|16]]
+Lenin stated that: “Hegel brilliantly ''divined'' the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, ''nature'') in the dialectics of concepts.”<ref>''Conspectus of Hegel’s'' ''Science of Logic'', Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin, 1914.</ref>
-One hierarchical organization that mass anarchists opposed was the bureaucratic trade union. In 1938, Rocker argued that trade unions, in which decisions flow from a small minority of bureaucrats at the top to workers beneath them, should be rejected on the grounds that they are “always attended by barren official routine; and this crushes individual conviction, kills all personal initiative by lifeless discipline and bureaucratic ossification, and permits no independent action.”[[#17RudolfRockerAnarchoSyndi1|17]] Such top-down systems of decision-making systems were especially harmful because the minority who actually made decisions lacked immediate access to the local information needed to do so. To illustrate this point, Rocker referred to trade unions allied with the Social Democratic Party of Germany, in which strikes had to first be approved by the central committee, which was usually very far away and “not in a position to pass a correct judgement on the local conditions.” This meant that workers in a particular area were unable to engage in sudden direct action, and so effectively respond to their immediate circumstances and concerns on the ground.[[#18RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|18]] For a state, “centralism is the appropriate form of organization, since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity in social life for the maintenance of political and social equilibrium [under capitalism]. But for a movement whose very existence depends on prompt action at any favorable moment and on the independent thought and action of its supporters, centralism could but be a curse.”[[#19RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|19]]
+-----
-The form of organization that would, in the opinion of mass anarchists, simultaneously enable effective coordination between large groups of people and the free initiative of its members was the federation. What such federations were supposed to look like can be understood by examining in detail Malatesta’s various descriptions of anarchist organizational structures, especially those he made during a series of debates with antiorganizationalist anarchists in the 1890s.[[#20Thefollowingaccountislar|20]] These organizational principles were later implemented by the specific anarchist organization Malatesta was a member of during the early 1920s, the Italian Anarchist Union.[[#21MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|21]] It should nonetheless be kept in mind that these are Malatesta’s proposals, and, despite being influential, do not reflect what all mass anarchists thought or how all mass anarchist organizations actually operated.
+==== Annotation 100 ====
-Malatesta advocated the formation of an organization that united individuals under a common program, which specified the goals of the group and the means they proposed to achieve them. The purpose of such an organization was to enable individuals to pursue their shared goals by educating one another, engaging in joint activity, and coordinating action over a large-scale. In so doing, an organization would develop a collective strength to change society that was not only impossible for an individual to develop in isolation, but was also greater than the sum of the individual strengths that composed it.
+What Lenin means, here, is that Hegel inadvertently and unconsciously discovered the concept of reflection [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Hegel intuitively understood that the material world was reflected in human consciousness, and, by extension, subjective dialectics (dialectical thought) reflected objective dialectics (of the material world). Hegel’s error was an inversion of the ideal and the material. As Marx later pointed out in the Afterword to the Second German Edition of ''Capital Volume I,'' it is the material which precedes the ideal, and not the other way around:
-Such a formal organization must, given the unity of means and ends, be structured in a manner that prefigures an anarchist society. Whereas authoritarian organizations rest on a division between some who command and others who obey, anarchist organizations are free associations of equals that are formed in order to achieve a common goal. There should be no substantial difference between how anarchists organize before and after the social revolution. They need, “today for the purposes of propaganda and struggle, tomorrow in order to meet all of the needs of social life, organizations built upon the will and in the interest of all their members.”[[#22MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|22]] Anarchist formal organizations, therefore, have to be founded on “the principle of autonomy of individuals within groups, and of groups within federations” such that “nobody has the right to impose their will on anyone else, and nobody is forced to follow decisions that they have not accepted.”[[#23MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|23]] Within such a federalist organization, each group and individual member would be free to federate with whomever they desired, and to leave any federation whenever they wanted. This freedom of association included the freedom of the federation, or groups within the federation, to choose to disassociate from individuals who violated its common program, such as by campaigning for a politician or supporting an imperialist war.[[#24MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|24]]
+<blockquote>
+My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea,’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos [craftsman/artisan/creator] of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea.’ With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
-Decisions within the local groups that compose the federation would be made by a general assembly, in which each member had a vote and an equal say in collective decisions. Although Malatesta held that anarchists should aim for a situation in which everybody agreed on a decision, he understood that this would often not happen, and there would be a division between a majority of people in favor of one position and a minority opposed to it. In such situations, where it was impractical or impossible to pass multiple resolutions reflecting each faction’s distinct viewpoint, it was expected that the minority would voluntarily defer to the majority, so that a decision was made and the organization would continue to function. If the minority disagreed strongly with the majority, and felt that this was an issue of supreme importance, then they were free to voluntarily dissociate and leave the organization.
+-----
-Large-scale coordination would be achieved through the organization of congresses, which were attended by delegates that each section’s general assembly had elected. According to Malatesta,
+Engels also quoted and emphasized Marx’s thoughts [in ''the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring'', citing another quote of Marx from the ''Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume I,'' further quoted in Annotation 100 above]: “The mystification which dialectics suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”<ref>Afterword to the Second German Edition of ''Capital Volume I'', Karl Marx, 1873.</ref>
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">congresses of an anarchist organization . . . do not lay down the law; they do not impose their own resolutions on others. They serve to maintain and increase personal relationships among the most active comrades, to coordinate and encourage programmatic studies on the ways and means of taking action, to acquaint all on the situation in the various regions and the action most urgently needed in each; to formulate the various opinions current among the anarchists and draw up some kind of statistics from them—and their decisions are not obligatory rules but suggestions, recommendations, proposals to be submitted to all involved, and do not become binding and enforceable except on those who accept them, and for as long as they accept them.[[#25MalatestaMethodofFreedom|25]] </div>
-In order to ensure that the delegates within the federation did not develop into a ruling minority who imposed decisions on the wider membership, Malatesta proposed a number of limits to their power. First, the delegate would be mandated to complete specific tasks by the group who elected them, such as being a treasurer or voting as instructed at a congress, rather than being granted decision-making power, which would remain in the hands of the general assembly who had elected the delegate. Second, the delegate would serve for fixed terms and the position would be rotated regularly, so that as many people as possible could learn to perform these tasks and take initiative. Third, the delegate could be instantly recalled and replaced by those who had elected them, if they did not approve of what the delegate had done.[[#26MalatestaMethodofFreedom|26]]
+-----
-A more concrete understanding of what federations built on anarchist principles actually looked like can be seen by examining the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union the CNT, which was founded in 1910, and had a membership of over 700,000 workers by 1919. Despite suffering multiple waves of state repression and being illegal for several years of its existence, the CNT was able to survive and maintain itself over time. By May 1936, the CNT was composed of 982 union sections with a total membership of 550,595 workers.[[#27JosePeiratsTheCNTinthe|27]] Its organizational structure is shown below in ''figure 1''. The CNT was initially composed of craft unions that belonged both to a federation of every union in their specific or similar crafts, and a federation composed of all the other unions, irrespective of craft, in their local area. This formally changed at a national level in 1919, when delegates at the CNT’s national congress voted to form “single unions” that united all workers in a specific industry, regardless of their profession, within the same union. These single unions were, in turn, broken down into individual trade sections that would deal with any issues specific to their craft.[[#28MurrayBookchinTheSpanish|28]]
+==== Annotation 101 ====
-Decisions in the single unions were made by a general assembly composed of the entire membership. This general assembly elected a shop steward, who was granted the power to call for work stoppages when the membership instructed them to do so, and an administrative committee. The administrative committee of the single union was, according to the activist manual issued by the CNT during the Spanish revolution of 1936, composed of a general secretary, treasurer, accountant, first secretary, second secretary, third secretary, librarian, propaganda delegate, and federal delegate(s). All the different trade sections within the single union had to be represented within the administrative committee. Who performed what role was decided upon by the elected members of the administrative committee themselves. The exceptions to this were the general secretary, treasurer, and federal delegate who were specifically chosen by the general assembly of the single union.[[#29DannyEvansprivatecommuni|29]]
+In ''the Old Preface to Anti-Dühring,'' Engels explains some of the contemporary currents of science and philosophy of his era. Engels explains that Hegelian philosophy had been dismissed by a newer current of natural scientists who dismissed “the idealist point of departure and the arbitrary, fact-defying construction of the system.” In other words, the natural scientists rejected Hegelianism because it was both idealist and was not built on a foundation of objective facts.
-The single unions in a particular area combined to form a local federation. The local federations then combined to form a regional federation and the regional federations together formed the national federation.[[#30In1931themajorityofdel|30]] The local, regional, and national federations were all self-managed by their own respective administrative committees. In order to prevent the rise of a bureaucracy within the CNT, the only paid delegates within the trade union were the general secretary of the national federation and the secretaries of the regional federations. Every other delegate was expected to earn a living working in a trade.[[#31In1934AngelPestanaclaim|31]] The administrative committees of the local, regional, and national federations lacked the ability to impose decisions on shop stewards, who were only subject to the instructions of their single union. The local, regional, and national administrative committees were, on paper, supposed to focus their activities exclusively on coordinating actions between various single unions, correspondence, collecting statistics, and prisoner support. During periods of state repression, they ended up taking on greater responsibilities because the close links between the single unions and the CNT’s main delegates were broken down.[[#32Thehighercommitteesofthe|32]]
+Engels points out, however, that Marx “was the first to have brought to the fore again the forgotten dialectical method” of Hegel.
-The committees of the regional federations were elected each year at the regional congresses, that were attended by mandated delegates from the local federations. In certain unusual situations, the members of the regional committees were expected to consult local trade unions and federations by means of either a referendum or correspondence. A regional committee could be replaced if the majority of local federations within the regional federation called for an extraordinary congress to take place, at which new delegates would be elected. The committee of the national federation was, in contrast, a role that was delegated to one of the regional committees on a temporary basis by the national federation’s congress, which was attended by mandated delegates from every single union in the country. Between national congresses, decisions in the CNT that involved multiple single unions were made at plenums. A local federation’s plenum was composed of the federal delegates from each single union’s administrative committee, who were mandated on how to vote at the plenum by those who had elected them. These local federal delegates then elected and mandated a delegate to represent the area at a regional plenum of local committees that, in turn, sent mandated delegates to a national plenum of regional committees.[[#33ThisaccountofhowtheCNT|33]]
+The dialectical method was forgotten in the sense that the natural scientists ignored and dismissed dialectics along with the rest of Hegel’s philosophy. So, Engels is pointing out that one of the great contributions of Marx was salvaging the dialectical method from Hegel while rejecting the idealist and non-fact-based characteristics of Hegelian philosophy.
-A more detailed description of how the CNT was organized is made by the brickmaker José Peirats, who was a member of the CNT from 1922 onward, and was elected as the organization’s general secretary in 1947. In the CNT,
+Marx, according to Engels, proved that the dialectical method could be separated from idealism by “[applying the dialectical method] in ''Capital'' to the facts of an empirical science, political economy.” This was the origin of dialectical materialism: the resurrection of the dialectical method and the development of a dialectical method in a materialist and scientific form.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">The unions constitute autonomous units, linked to the ensemble of the Confederation only by the accords of a general nature adopted at national congresses, whether regular or extraordinary. Apart from this commitment, the unions, right up to their technical sections, are free to reach any decision which is not detrimental to the organization as a whole. . . it is the unions which decide and directly regulate the guidelines of the Confederation. At all times, the basis for any local, regional, or national decision is the general assembly of the union, where every member has the right to attend, raise and discuss issues, and vote on proposals. Resolutions are adopted by majority vote attenuated by proportional representation. Extraordinary congresses are held on the suggestion of the assembled unions. Even the agenda is devised by the assemblies where the items on the agenda are debated and delegates appointed as the executors of their collective will. This federalist procedure, operating from the bottom up, constitutes a precaution against any possible authoritarian degeneration in the representative committees.[[#34PeiratsTheCNTintheSpan|34]]</div>
+The idealist characteristics of classical German dialectics and Hegelian philosophy was a limitation that needed to be overcome [so that it could be utilized for scientific inquiry]. Marx and Engels overcame that limitation and in so doing developed ''materialist dialectics.'' This system of dialectics is the most advanced form of dialectics in the history of philosophy to date. It is the successor of previous systems of dialectics, and it arose as a critique of the classical German dialectics.
-<div style="text-align:center;">{{clear}}
+Engels said: “Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', The 1885 Preface, Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-[[Image:Zoe_Figure_1.jpg.png|center]]</div>
-The CNT’s system of majority voting was explained in more detail within the organization’s constitution, which was printed on the trade union’s membership card. It declared that “Anarcho-syndicalism and anarchism recognize the validity of majority decisions. The militant has a right to his own point of view and to defend it, but he is obliged to comply with majority decisions, even when they are against his own feelings. . . We recognize the sovereignty of the individual, but we accept and agree to carry out the collective mandate taken by majority decision. Without this there is no organization.”[[#35QuotedinPeiratsWhatist|35]]
+=== 2. Materialist Dialectics ===
-Members of the CNT did, nonetheless, disagree about whether or not this system of majority voting, in which decisions were binding on all members, should be applied to much smaller specific anarchist organizations. The Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) was a specific anarchist organization composed of small affinity groups. The FAI initially made most of their decisions via unanimous agreement and rarely used voting. In 1934, the Z and Nervio affinity groups pushed for the FAI to adopt binding agreements established through majority vote. The Afinidad affinity group, which included Peirats, agreed with the necessity of such a system within the CNT, but opposed it being implemented within small specific anarchist organizations or affinity groups. After a confrontational FAI meeting Afinidad left the organization in protest.[[#36EalhamLivingAnarchism77|36]]
+==== a. Definition of Materialist Dialectics ====
-The extent to which anarchists within the CNT valued its federalist system of organization can be seen in the actions of the twelve to fifteen thousand former members of the Durruti Column, who had fled to France after the defeat of the Spanish revolution in 1939, and were imprisoned in the Vernet d’Ariège concentration camp. Despite the abysmal conditions of the camp—lack of adequate housing, food shortages, disease, and very cold weather—the anarchists established a mirror image of the CNT. Every anarchist belonged to a general assembly within their hut, which elected a hut committee to represent them. These hut committees then federated together and elected sector committees, which in turn voted for a camp committee. The camp committee then sent demands from the general assemblies to the French authorities running the concentration camp. In so doing, they practiced what little anarchism they could within the direst of circumstances.[[#37EalhamLivingAnarchism12|37]]
+Materialist dialectics have been defined in various ways by many prominent Marxist-Leninist philosophers.
-Mass anarchists advocated and built large-scale federations, but these were not the only kind of organizations they valued. They understood that different forms of organization were appropriate for different tasks and, to this end, also advocated the formation of affinity groups that were either permanent or formed for specific actions, and dissolved once the action was complete.[[#38MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|38]] The CNT itself contained numerous affinity groups that performed a wide variety of tasks, ranging from publishing texts, organizing debates and lectures, engaging in prisoner support, protecting prominent anarchist militants, robbing banks, and assassinating class enemies.[[#39ChrisEalhamAnarchismand|39]]
+Engels defined materialist dialectics as: “nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society, and thought.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-'''Reform not Reformism'''
+Engels also emphasized the role of the principle of general relations.<ref>See p. 107.</ref> As John Burdon
-Mass anarchists and insurrectionist anarchists agreed that fundamental social change can only be achieved by mass movements. What separated the two is that mass anarchists believed that, given their immediate social and historical context, the most realistic and effective means to develop mass movements was through the long and patient work of struggling for immediate reforms in the present, rather than isolated individuals or small anarchist groups engaging in propaganda of the deed in order to inspire a series of popular uprisings. Mass anarchists used a variety of different terms to refer to modifications to existing dominant structures and social relations, such as “gains,” “improvements,” or “reforms.”
+Sanderson Haldane noted in the 1939 preface to ''Dialectics of Nature'': “In dialectics they
-This position was originally advocated by anarchists in the First International. In 1869 Bakunin argued that a significant number of workers could develop revolutionary socialist consciousness “through [the] the collective action and practice” of “''the organization and the federation of resistance funds'' [strike funds]” and the “real struggle to reduce hours of work and increase pay.”[[#40MichaelBakuninSelectedTe|40]] An anarchist pamphlet published in 1872 claimed that the International “must gradually change the economic situation of the working class . . . improve working conditions, curtail, diminish and eliminate the privileges of capital, make these every day more dependent and precarious, until capital surrenders and disappears. . . . This can be achieved by ''resistance'', with the legal and open weapon of the ''strike''.”[[#41QuotedinWaltherLBerneck|41]]
+[Marx and Engels] saw the science of the general laws of change.”<ref>''Dialectics of Nature'', Friedrich Engels, 1883.</ref>
-This view was repeated four decades later by the CNT’s paper ''Solidaridad Obrera'', which claimed in January 1917 that radical trade union movements, such as the CNT, were simultaneously committed to achieving the “reformism” of “the reduction of the working day, the increase in wages, etc.” and the “revolutionism” of “the emancipation of the proletariat through the abolition of capital and of the wage earner.”[[#42QuotedinRalphDarlington|42]] Fourteen years later, the CNT declared in its 1931 Madrid Congress resolutions that, although they were “openly at war with the state,” and aimed “to educate the people to understand the need to unite with us to secure our complete emancipation by means of the social revolution,” they also had “the ineluctable duty of indicating to the people a schedule of minimum demands that they should press by building up their own revolutionary strength.”[[#43QuotedinPeiratsTheCNTi|43]]
+Lenin emphasized the important role of the principles of development<ref>See Annotation 117, p. 119.</ref> (including the theory of cognitive development) in the dialectics that Marx inherited from Hegelian philosophy.
-In order to understand why mass anarchists advocated this strategy, it is important to first outline their critique of insurrectionist anarchism. According to Malatesta, insurrectionists mistakenly viewed “present society as an indivisible block susceptible to no alteration beyond a radical transformation, and thus regarded as useless any attempt at improvements and concerned themselves solely with ''making revolution'' . . . which was then not made and remained a distant promise.”[[#44MalatestaPatientWork281|44]] Propaganda of the deed had been conceived as the means by which anarchists would spark a revolutionary upsurge, but the two main versions of it—small armed bands launching insurrections and individual acts of violence (assassinations or bombings)—had consistently failed to pave the way for mass uprisings, let alone achieve the social revolution. This was despite the fact that insurrectionist anarchists had engaged in numerous revolts, assassinations, and bombings between the 1870s and 1890s.
+Lenin wrote: “The main achievement was ''dialectics'', i.e., the doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest, and most comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge that provides us with a reflection of eternally developing matter.”<ref>''The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1913.</ref>
-It was argued that these tactics actively encouraged anarchists to isolate themselves from the majority of the working classes in order to avoid state repression, surveillance, and infiltration. Anarchists, thus, were unable to influence or inspire the working classes in the way that they had intended and hoped for. In 1889, twelve years after the Benevento affair, Malatesta wrote that small armed groups of anarchists failed to inspire revolts because inadequate preparation among and contact with the populace led to the group being “scattered and defeated before the people even get to learn what it is that the band wanted!”[[#45MalatestaMethodofFreedom|45]] Under these circumstances, the local populace were unable to join the band, and could merely look on impassively.
+==== b. Basic Features and Roles of Materialist Dialectics ====
-Malatesta expanded upon this argument in 1894, when he concluded that a “great spontaneous insurrection” would most likely not launch the social revolution, because “plots and conspiracies can only embrace a very limited number of individuals and are usually impotent to start a movement among the people of sufficient importance to give a chance of victory. Isolated movements, more or less spontaneous, are almost always stifled in blood before they have had time to acquire importance and become general.”[[#46MalatestaMethodofFreedom|46]] A few years later in 1897, Malatesta insisted that uprisings “''cannot be improvised''” and that “a revolution without resources, without an agreed-upon plan, without weapons, without men” would be doomed to failure.[[#47MalatestaPatientWork182|47]] Anarchists attempting to launch insurrections while they were such a small minority had only resulted in a cycle of “six months of quiet activity, followed by a few microscopic uprisings—or more often, mere threats of uprisings—then arrests, flights abroad, interruption of propaganda, disintegration of the organization. . . . Just to start the whole thing all over again two or three years further down the line.”[[#48MalatestaPatientWork374|48]] Given this, Malatesta concluded in 1899 that, in order for insurrections to be successful, anarchists must, “rather than face periodical and pointless slaughter . . . lay preparations appropriate for the force we are going to have to confront” and federate in order to accumulate “the strength required to steer the next popular uprising to victory.”[[#49MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|49]]
+There are two basic features of the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism:
-The tactics of assassination and bombings, in contrast, contributed toward the anarchist movement suffering an extreme amount of state repression, without achieving any substantial social change worth that price. Such tactics had been conceived of as acts of propaganda, but were instead a key factor in why a significant number of workers became less likely to listen to anarchists and adopt their ideas. They instead came to stereotype anarchists negatively as dangerous individuals, mindlessly spreading chaos and destruction.[[#50HaiaShpayerMakovAnarchi|50]] The French anarchist Fernand Pelloutier remarked in 1895 that “I know many workers who are disenchanted with parliamentary socialism but who hesitate to support libertarian socialism because, in their view, anarchism simply implies the individualistic use of the bomb.”[[#51QuotedinUlrichLinsePr|51]] After McKinley’s assassination in 1901, the Yiddish-speaking anarchist Yanovsky wrote, “the benefits that such an attempt can bring to the propaganda of our ideas are very questionable, the damage however is certain and sure.”[[#52QuotedinKenyonZimmerImm|52]]
+''First, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism is a system of dialectics that is based on the foundation of the scientific materialist viewpoint.''
-Even Most, who had been a fervent advocate of anarchist assassinations and bomb plots during the 1880s, ended up changing his mind.[[#53PaulAvrichandKarenAvrich|53]] He wrote in 1892 that “there is no greater error than to believe that we as anarchists need only to commit any deed, no matter when, where, and against whom. To have a propagandist effect, every deed needs to be popular. . . . If that is not the case, or if it actually meets with disapproval from the very part of the population it is intended to inspire, anarchism makes itself unpopular and hated. Instead of winning new adherents, many will withdraw.”[[#54QuotedinAvrichandAvrich|54]] Shortly afterward, Most responded to Berkman’s unexpected assassination attempt against the American capitalist Frick by publicly opposing the act. He argued that “in a country where we are so weakly represented and so little understood . . . we cannot afford the luxury of assassinations. . . . In countries like America, where we still need solid ground to stand on, we must limit ourselves to literary and verbal agitation.”[[#55QuotedinGoyensJohannMo|55]]
+-----
-Insurrectionist anarchists had above all been wrong to assume that the revolution was imminent, and that the working classes would rise up in reaction to the violent actions of a few. As early as 1885, the Spanish anarchist Serrano had insisted that “individual actions—even if they employ thousands upon thousands of kilos of dynamite—will not succeed in any region, nor will they succeed in destroying the bourgeoisie or in bringing about the Social Revolution.”[[#56QuotedinGeorgeRichardEse|56]] Over a decade later, in an 1897 interview, Malatesta said that “in the early days of the anarchist movement . . . there was the illusion that the revolution was just around the corner; and, as a result, any organizational work that required a long and patient endeavor was neglected.”[[#57MalatestaPatientWork319|57]] He recalled in 1928 that “we put our hopes in general discontent, and because the misery that afflicted the masses was so insufferable, we believed it was enough to give an example, launching with arms in hand the cry of ‘down with the masters,’ in order for the working masses to fling themselves against the bourgeoisie and take possession of the land, the factories, and all that they produced with their toil and that had been stolen from them.”[[#58QuotedinPerniconeItalian|58]]
+==== Annotation 102 ====
-In a 1902 letter to Max Nettlau, Kropotkin noted that the wave of propaganda of the deed was motivated by the belief “that all it took to trigger the revolution was a few heroic feats” and, when this failed to happen, several younger anarchists came to realize that “a revolution cannot be ''provoked'' by ten or a hundred” and that it was a delusion to imagine “that a sharp push by a few might successfully spark revolution.”[[#59KropotkinDirectStruggle|59]] A revolution, he said, could only be produced by “the slow work of organization and preparatory propaganda among the working masses.”[[#60KropotkinDirectStruggle|60]] This was, of course, not a new insight for mass anarchists, including Kropotkin. In his 1899 autobiography, he claimed that, in the late 1870s, he and other members of the Jura Federation understood that to abolish class society a period of “tedious propaganda and a long succession of struggles, of individual and collective revolts against the now prevailing forms of property, of individual self-sacrifice, of partial attempts at reconstruction and partial revolutions would have to be lived through.”[[#61PeterKropotkinMemoirsof|61]]
+Remember that ''scientific'' in Marxism-Leninism refers broadly to a systematic pursuit of knowledge, research, theory, and understanding [see Objects and Purposes of Study, p. 38]. Remember also that ''materialism'' in Marxism-Leninism has specific meaning as well, which differentiates it from other forms of materialism [see ''Dialectical Materialism — the Most Advanced Form of Materialism'', p. 52]. Here, materialism includes an understanding that the material is the first basis of reality, meaning that the material determines the ideal (though human consciousness can impact the material world through willpower and labor [see ''Nature and Structure of Consciousness'', p. 79]). Materialism is also built upon scientific explanations (rooted in empirical data and practice, i.e. systematic experimentation and observation) of the world. And finally, remember that ''viewpoint'' is the starting point of inquiry [see Annotation 11, p. 12].
-The strategy of engaging in individual acts of violence above all rested on a false view of social change. Social change is not just a matter of attacking the existing order until it collapses. The transformation of society requires the transformation of the working classes’ capacities, drives, and consciousness in an anarchist direction such that they learn to self-organize horizontally and undertake a revolution. Killing a monarch or blowing up a building might temporarily scare the ruling classes or inspire a small number of workers, but it will not lead to fundamental social change. A new monarch will be crowned and the building will be repaired. Society will carry on as normal, because the general population will have merely observed the actions of an isolated individual and not have themselves engaged in forms of practice that transform them as people. In the aftermath of any anarchist attack, a typical worker could continue to behave as before, and thereby reproduce the dominant structures of class society.
+Thus, a ''scientific materialist viewpoint'' is a perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world.
-“An edifice built upon centuries of history,” Kropotkin remarked in 1891, “cannot be destroyed by a few kilos of explosives.”[[#62QuotedinAlexandreSkirda|62]] Malatesta made the same point in 1894: “one thing is certain, namely, that with a number of bombs and a number of blows of the knife, a society like bourgeois society cannot be overthrown, being based, as it is, on an enormous mass of private interests and prejudices, and sustained, more than it is by the force of arms, by the inertia of the masses and their habits of submission.”[[#63MalatestaMethodofFreedom|63]]
+''Note:'' Materialist Dialectics contains ''Twelve Basic Pairs of Categories'', ''Two Basic Principles'' and ''Three Universal Laws''. These are summarized, respectively, in Appendix A (p. 246), Appendix B (p. 247), and Appendix C (p. 248), and explained in depth throughout the rest of this chapter.
-The mass anarchist alternative to propaganda of the deed, as understood by insurrectionists, was not inaction and relying solely on print media and speaking tours to spread anarchism until the day of revolution. Malatesta’s program of 1899 rejected this explicitly, because anarchists “would soon exhaust our field of action; that is, we would have converted all those who in the existing environment are susceptible to understand and accept our ideas.”[[#64MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|64]] Mass anarchists, in other words, held that, since what people think or are open to thinking is a product of their social environment, it follows that focusing on spreading ideas alone will not lead to fundamental social change. Under present conditions, which reproduce class society, only a small number of people will ever learn about and become anarchists through the written or spoken word.[[#65BakuninSelectedTexts186|65]]
+In this way, materialist dialectics fundamentally differs from the classical German idealist dialectics, and especially differs from Hegelian dialectics<ref>See Annotation 98, p. 100.</ref> (as these dialectics were founded on idealist viewpoints).
-Anarchists therefore had to cause a “gradual transformation of the environment. Progress must advance contemporaneously and along parallel lines between man and their environment” until an increasingly large number of workers were in a position to learn about and adopt anarchism.[[#66MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|66]] This view was repeated by Malatesta in 1922. He argued that, since “the will of humanity . . . is mostly determined by the social environment,” it follows that anarchists must “work to change social conditions in such a way as to produce a change of will in the desired direction” and thereby cause “a reciprocal interaction between the will and the surrounding conditions,” such that changed people acted and changed social structures that, in turn, changed more people, and so on.[[#67MalatestaAttheCafeConv|67]]
+Moreover, it also has a higher level of development compared to other dialectical systems of thought found in the history of philosophy going back to ancient times. Such previous forms of dialectics were fundamentally based on materialist stances, however the materialism of those ancient times was still naive, primitive and surface-level.
-Mass anarchists held that the most effective means for causing this gradual transformation in social structures, and the people who produced and reproduced them, was by organizing and participating in working-class social movements that struggled for immediate reforms in the present. In 1892, Kropotkin said that anarchists should “permeate the great labor movement which is so rapidly growing in Europe and America” in order to “bring our ideas into that movement, to spread them . . . among those masses which hold in their hands the future issue of the revolution.”[[#68KropotkinDirectStruggle|68]] In 1894, Malatesta argued that anarchists should win the working classes “over to our ideas by actively taking part in their struggles” and participating in “working-men’s associations, strikes, collective revolt.”[[#69MalatestaMethodofFreedom|69]] Three years later, he insisted that the success of anarchism required “long-term, constant, day-to-day work . . . done in conjunction with resistance societies, cooperatives, and educational circles, of gradually marshaling, organizing, and educating all the fighting forces of the proletariat.”[[#70MalatestaPatientWork101|70]]
+''Second, the materialist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism unifies dialectical materialist viewpoints and materialist dialectical methodology, so it not only explains the world, but is also a tool humans can use to perceive and improve the world.''
-Malatesta, in addition to this, referred to specific reforms that were worth struggling for. In 1899, he argued that,
+Every principle and law of Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics is both:
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">we must always push them [workers] to demand greater things; but meanwhile we must encourage and assist them in the battles they want to fight, providing that they are in the right direction, which is to say, that they tend to facilitate future gains and are fought in such a way that workers become used to thinking of their masters and governments as enemies, and to desiring to achieve what they want by themselves. Many workers wish to not work over 8 hours. . . . The reform is among those that tend to actually improve the status of workers and facilitate future gains; and we, when we cannot convince them to demand more, we must support them in such a modest claim.[[#71MalatestaTowardsAnarchy1|71]] </div>
+. An accurate explanation of the dialectical characteristics of the world.
-Organizing to win reforms through direct action was considered valuable for three main reasons. First, and most obviously, achieving reforms improved the lives of workers and put them in a position where they had more time, energy, and motivation to emancipate themselves fully. Malatesta wrote in 1897 that anarchists are “interested in people’s circumstances being improved to the greatest possible extent, starting today,” both because of the “immediate impact of reduced suffering” and “because when one is better nourished, has greater freedom, and is better educated, one has a greater determination and more strength to fully emancipate oneself.”[[#72MalatestaPatientWork25|72]]
+. A scientific methodology for perceiving and improving the world.
-This line of reasoning persuaded Goldman to support the struggle for the eight-hour day and abandon her previous view, which she had learned from Most, that it was a pointless reform that distracted workers from launching a social revolution. She changed her mind after a worker at one of her talks against the eight-hour day explained that it would improve the lives of workers, many of whom would not live long enough to see a revolution, and would give them more time to read and enjoy life.[[#73GoldmanLivingMyLifevol|73]] Rocker, in comparison, came to reject the idea that reforms should be opposed after he visited extremely poor areas of London. During these visits, he realized that “those who have been born into misery and never knew a better state are rarely able to resist and revolt. . . . It is contrary to all the experience of history and of psychology; people who are not prepared to fight for the betterment of their living conditions are not likely to fight for social emancipation.”[[#74RudolfRockerTheLondonYe|74]]
+By summarizing the general interconnections and development of all things — every phenomenon in nature, society and human thought — Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics provides the most general methodological principles for the process of perceiving and improving the world. They are not just objective methodological principles; they are a comprehensive, constantly developing, and historical methodology.
-Second, participating in daily struggles for immediate reforms, such as strikes, provided the means to organize and make contact with not only committed socialists, who seek each other out, but also the large number of workers who are yet to become revolutionaries. This was especially important because, regardless of what anarchists did, state socialists would participate in working-class social movements and funnel them toward parliamentary politics. If this happened, given the arguments previously explained in chapter 5, social movements would be transformed from potential threats to ruling class power into maintainers of the status quo. As a result, it was essential that anarchists join struggles for immediate reforms in order to promote direct action and ensure that social movements remained, or became, forces outside of and against the state.[[#75KropotkinDirectStruggle|75]]
+This methodology can be used to analyze contradictions [see Annotation 119, p. 123] in order to find the basic origins and motivations of both motion and developmental processes. Therefore, materialist dialectics is a great scientific tool for the revolutionary class to perceive and improve the world.
-Third, collectively struggling for reforms by means of direct action within prefigurative organizations is a form of practice that can positively transform workers. Whether or not a social movement wins great victories, the process of engaging in class struggle is valuable in and of itself. It enables workers to develop new skills, hopes, desires, and ways of thinking, such as learning how to organize a strike, or realizing that the police exist to violently defend the interests of the rich and powerful. As Guillaume wrote in 1914, “you think that the starting point is the revolutionary ideal and that the workers’ struggle against the bosses only comes afterwards, as a consequence of the adoption of the ‘ideal’; I think on the contrary . . . that the starting point is the struggle and the ideal comes after, that it takes form in the workers’ minds as the incidents of the class war give birth to it and cause it to develop.”[[#76QuotedinDavidBerryAHis|76]]
+With these basic features, materialist dialectics plays a very important role in the worldview and philosophical methodology of Marxism-Leninism. Materialist dialectics are the foundation of the scientific and revolutionary characteristics of Marxism-Leninism and also offer the most general worldview and methodology for creative activities in scientific study and practical activities.
-This theory was advocated for many decades by mass anarchists involved in the trade union movement. Baginski argued in 1909 that “the proletariat learns from its daily battles that it is always thrown back on itself, on its own strength and solidarity. Whenever it accomplishes small improvements of its situation, it does so as a consequence of direct intervention and struggle. Its condition is a function of the strength of its unity, its revolutionary insights, initiative, and solidarity; for exploiters concede only what is wrested from them through ''the development of proletarian power''.”[[#77BaginskiWhatDoesSyndical|77]] The practice of struggling for reforms through direct action was valued because it transformed workers—who are typically treated as objects acted upon or represented by others—into self-acting agents who fight for their own emancipation, and develop their collective power to transform society.[[#78BaginskiWhatDoesSyndical|78]] Given this, “no one disputes the utility and necessity of wrestling as much as possible for higher pay and shorter hours; but that should be considered in the light of merely preparatory exercises, as training for the final event, the Social Revolution and the overthrow of wage-slavery.”[[#79MaxBaginskiAimandTacti|79]]
+== II. Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics ==
-These same ideas were expressed by Rocker through the language of pedagogy in 1938. He claimed that “the strike is for the workers not only a means for the defense of immediate economic interests, it is also a continuous schooling for their powers of resistance, showing them every day that every last right has to be won by unceasing struggle against the existing system.”[[#80RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|80]] As a result, “the economic alliance of the producers” is both “a weapon for the enforcement of better living conditions” and “a practical school, a university of experience, from which they draw instruction and enlightenment in richest measure.”[[#81RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|81]] The experience of class struggle transformed how workers thought about themselves and the world in which they lived. By reflecting on these life experiences, workers “developed . . . new needs and the urge for different fields of intellectual life.”[[#82RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|82]] The practice of engaging in class struggle was transformative not only at the individual level; it also altered the social relations between workers. Through their experience of cooperating with one another, such as going on strike in support of other striking workers, they developed a sense of solidarity among themselves, which Rocker defined as a “feeling of mutual helpfulness.”[[#83RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|83]] Developing this sense of solidarity was essential because, without it, they would never learn to act as a united class and thereby transform society in their shared class interests.
+-----
-Although mass anarchists advocated struggling for immediate reforms, they were not reformists in the sense of people who view reforms as a political endpoint, or who hold that capitalism and the state could eventually be abolished through gradual reform. In September 1897, Malatesta wrote that “the reforms, both economic and political, that can be obtained under certain institutions, are limited by the very nature of those institutions, and sooner or later, depending on the degree of popular consciousness and the more or less blind resistance from the ruling classes, a point of irreconcilability is reached and the very existence of these institutions needs to be called into question.”[[#84MalatestaPatientWork287|84]]
+==== Annotation 103 ====
-A month later, in an interview with a state socialist, Malatesta explained that anarchists were not “a reformist party” because “in our view, reforms, if and where they can be won, should be only a first step on the way to revolution; this is why we want the people to win them for themselves and feel that reforms are a result of their vigor, so that their determination to demand ever more may develop.”[[#85MalatestaPatientWork320|85]] This was a restatement of a claim Malatesta had previously made in his 1890 article, “Matters Revolutionary”:
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-23.png|''The Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development are the most basic principles of materialist dialectics. These two principles are dialectically related to one another.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">We must immerse ourselves in the life of the people as fully as we can, encourage and egg on all stirrings that carry a seed of material or moral revolt and get the people used to handling their affairs for themselves and relying on only their own resources; but without ever losing sight of the fact that revolution, by means of the expropriation and taking of property into common ownership, plus the demolition of authority, represents the only salvation for the proletariat and for Mankind, in which case a thing is good or bad depending on whether it brings forward or postpones, eases or creates difficulties for that revolution.</div>
+The following sections will outline the Principle of General Relationships and the Principle of Development, which are the most fundamental principles of materialist dialectics. These two concepts are closely (and dialectically) related:
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">As we see it, it is a matter of avoiding two reefs: on the one hand, the indifference toward everyday life and struggles that distance us from the people, making us unfathomable outsiders to them—and, on the other, letting ourselves be consumed by those struggles, affording them greater importance than they possess and eventually forgetting about the revolution.[[#86MalatestaMethodofFreedom|86]]</div>
+-----
-Mass anarchists, in other words, saw the struggle for reforms as the means to bring increasingly large numbers of workers together under a common aim, due to their shared interest in improving their lives in the here and now. In struggling for these reforms, workers would not only change social relations, such as reducing the length of the working day, but also change themselves due to the experience of participating in prefigurative organizations and engaging in direct action against the ruling classes. The consequence of this would be that a significant number of workers would, over varying lengths of time, go from only aiming at small improvements within existing society to being revolutionaries, who were organized and united as a class within federations and who had developed the initiative to act for themselves. This process would repeat, until the conflict between the working classes and the ruling classes escalated to the point of an armed insurrection being launched by the social movements that had been developed during previous struggles for reforms. To quote Malatesta’s 1899 anarchist program, “one always comes back to insurrection, for if the government does not give way, the people will end by rebelling; and if the government does give way, then people gain confidence in themselves and make ever-increasing demands, until such time as the incompatibility between freedom and authority becomes clear and the violent struggle is engaged.”[[#87MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|87]]
+=== 1. The Principle of General Relationships ===
-Mass anarchists understood, alongside anarchists in general, that evolutionary change does not necessarily lead to progress or an anarchist revolution. They were careful about which reforms they supported, who they worked with, and the means they proposed to achieve these reforms. In 1897, Kropotkin insisted that anarchists “have to cling to our principles while working with others” and therefore must “never allow ourselves to be chosen as or turn into exploiters, bosses, leaders,” “never have any truck with the building of some pyramidal organization, be it economic, governmental or educational-religious (even be it a revolutionary one),” and “never have any hand in conjuring up man’s governance of his fellow man in the realm of production and distribution, political organization, leadership, revolutionary organization, etc.”[[#88KropotkinDirectStruggle|88]]
+''a. Definition of Relationship and Common Relationship''
-For mass anarchists, it was essential, in the words of Malatesta, to fight ''as'' anarchists, to “remain anarchists and act like anarchists before, during and after the revolution.”[[#89MalatestaMethodofFreedom|89]] To participate within working-class social movements as committed anarchists was primarily for them to persuade other workers to act in an anarchistic manner, such as taking direct action against the ruling classes, making decisions within general assemblies, or coordinating action over a large area via federations. According to Malatesta, anarchists have to “take advantage of all the means, all the possibilities and the opportunities that the present environment allows us to act on our fellow men” and thereby incite the working class “to make demands, and impose itself and take for itself all the improvements and freedoms that it desires as and when it reaches the state of wanting them, and the power to demand them.”[[#90MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|90]]
+-----
-Malatesta explained in his 1897 interview that “as a rule, we always support reforms that, more than the others, highlight the conflict between property-owners and proletarians, rulers and ruled, and therefore are apt to foster a conscious feeling of rebellion that will explode into the definitive, final revolution.”[[#91MalatestaPatientWork320|91]] He rejected “false reforms” that “tend to distract the masses from the struggle against authority and capitalism” and instead “serve to paralyze their actions and make them hope that something can be attained through the kindness of the exploiters and governments.”[[#92MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|92]] One reform that mass anarchists consistently opposed was universal suffrage within existing capitalist states. In 1873, Bakunin argued against struggling to achieve the vote, because it would legitimize the state by giving it the “false appearance of popular government” and thereby provide the economic ruling classes “with a stronger and more reliable guarantee of their peaceful and intensive exploitation of the people’s labor.”[[#93MichaelBakuninStatismand|93]] This opposition to struggling for universal suffrage included women’s suffrage, which Goldman argued against in 1910, on the grounds that it would not further the emancipation of women.[[#94EmmaGoldmanRedEmmaSpeak|94]]
+==== Annotation 104 ====
-Mass anarchists also rejected methods of winning reforms that consolidated the dominant structures of class society, rather than building the revolutionary strength of the working classes. In Malatesta’s words, anarchists “should never recognize the [existing] institutions. We shall carry out all possible reforms in the spirit in which an army advances ever forward by snatching the enemy-occupied territory in its path.”[[#95MalatestaAnarchistRevolut|95]] This led mass anarchists to argue that reforms should be won by imposing external pressure onto the ruling classes through direct action, rather than by campaigning for new legislation. For example, in 1875, Schwitzguébel wrote that “instead of begging the State for a law compelling employers to make them work only so many hours, the trade associations [''sociétés de métiers''] ''directly impose'' this reform on the employers [''patrons'']; in this way, instead of a legal text which remains a dead letter, a real economic change is effected ''by the direct initiative of the workers''.”[[#96QuotedinCarolineCahmKro|96]] Or, as Malatesta told a court while on trial in April 1898, “there cannot be reforms on the part of a government, unless the people demand and impose them.”[[#97MalatestaPatientWork443|97]]
+The ''Principle of General Relationships'' describes how all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships
-The extent to which some mass anarchists were in favor of winning reforms through extremely radical means can be seen in the history of the CNT. In 1931, brick workers used a diversity of tactics to successfully end a system in which they worked for capitalists via exploitative contractors. They not only went on strike but also formed armed groups that would both hunt down scabs escorted by the police, and commit arson attacks against several brickworks. Bakery workers went further and, without even going on strike, forced capitalists to give in to their demands for the abolition of night work and changing the start of the working day to 5 a.m. This was achieved by bombing a number of bakeries. Those capitalists who refused to recognize the deal and punished organizers were subject to an escalation of resistance. This began with boycotts that, after they proved unsuccessful, were followed up with more militant activity, such as more bombings. On one occasion, Peirats and a comrade visited a capitalist armed with pistols in order to make him change his mind.[[#98EalhamLivingAnarchism57|98]]
+The ''Principle of Development'' relates to the idea that motion, change, and development are driven by internal and external relationships.
-It is clear that mass anarchists within the CNT did not reject the use of guns and bombs to achieve reform. They also used them in self-defense against the violence of the ruling classes. From 1914 onward, gunmen hired by capitalists and the state attempted to assassinate a significant number of anarchist trade unionists. In Catalonia, between 1920 and 1923, 104 anarchists were killed—including the former general secretary of the Catalan Regional Federation, Salvador Seguí—and thirty-three were wounded. The militant wing of the CNT responded to these violent attacks by organizing armed affinity groups to identify, locate, and kill those responsible.[[#99ChristieWetheAnarchists|99]] This included the assassination of the Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato on March 8, 1921, by members of an action group in the metal industry.[[#100ASmithAnarchismRevolu|100]] These kinds of assassinations had previously been viewed by insurrectionist anarchists in the 1880s and 1890s as one of the means that anarchists could use to develop a mass movement. Mass anarchists who supported assassinations, in contrast, appear to have viewed them as a means to defend already existing mass movements that had been developed through the struggle for immediate reforms.
+These two principles are dialectically linked: any given subject is defined by its internal relationships, and these same relationships drive the development of every subject.
-Armed self-defense by anarchist militants continued over the following years. In July 1931, the CNT’s builders’ union responded to a police raid on their offices with gunfire. This led to a four-hour siege, during which the building was surrounded by hundreds of policemen, assault guards, and soldiers. Six workers were killed and dozens were wounded on both sides.[[#101EalhamAnarchismandtheC|101]] Violence was also used by some mass anarchists to acquire funds for the revolution. From 1933 to 1935, militants within the CNT responded to the trade union’s dire financial problems by launching armed robberies against banks, which on several occasions involved shoot-outs with the police and fleeing the scene of the crime in stolen cars. Despite the financial gains these armed expropriations bought to the union, a significant section of the CNT opposed them, including Peirats.[[#102EalhamAnarchismandtheC|102]]
+Note: The foundation of the principles of Materialist Dialectics were laid out by
-Another disagreement among mass anarchists concerned when social movements should shift from focusing on immediate reforms to attempting to spark the social revolution via armed insurrection. During the 1920s and 1930s, there was a long-lasting dispute within the CNT between moderate and radical syndicalist anarchists. The moderates sought to build up the trade union’s strength gradually through workplace organizing, while the radicals, who belonged to CNT’s defense committees and to armed affinity groups like Nosotros, thought that the social revolution was near and that the time for reform had passed. This led the radical faction to engage in what they termed “revolutionary gymnastics,” which referred to the strategy of dedicated anarchist militants launching insurrections that would be repressed and thereby inspire an increasing number of workers to rise up. In practice, the series of armed uprisings they organized in January 1932, January 1933, and December 1933 were all unsuccessful and defeated quickly, due to a combination of lack of popular support, insufficient weaponry, and the state being prepared to repress them.[[#103JasonGarnerGoalsandMea|103]]
+Engels in ''Dialectics of Nature''. Engels began working on ''Dialectics of Nature'' in February, 1870 and had to stop in 1876 to work on ''Anti-Dühring''. He then restarted work on ''Dialectics of Nature'' in 1878 and continued working on it until 1883, when Karl Marx died. Engels felt that it was more important to try and put together Marx’s great unfinished works, ''Capital Volumes 2, 3, and 4'', and so stopped working on ''Dialectics of Nature'' once again. So, unfortunately, Engels died before this seminal work on Materialist Dialectics could be completed, and what we have instead is an unfinished assemblage of notes.
-'''Militant Minority'''
+What follows in the rest of this book is a cohesive system of Materialist Dialectics which was built upon the foundations laid out by Engels in ''Dialectics of Nature'' and many other works of political and scholarly writing from various sources. This is the system of Materialist Dialectics studied by Vietnamese students and applied by Vietnamese communists today.
-Mass anarchists believed that it was necessary to participate in social movements as a militant minority in order to ensure that struggles for reforms did not collapse into reformism and, instead, developed a revolutionary mass movement that could launch a large-scale armed insurrection. This meant spreading anarchist ideas, acting as key and effective organizers, encouraging or inspiring workers to take direct action, and ensuring that formal organizations or informal groups were horizontally structured and made decisions in a manner that prefigured an anarchist society. In 1931, Malatesta wrote that “anarchy can only come about gradually, as the masses become able to conceive it and desire it; but will never come to pass unless driven forward by a more or less consciously anarchist minority operating in such a way as to create the appropriate climate.”[[#104MalatestaMethodofFreedo|104]]
+Because this text comes from predominantly Vietnamese scholarship and ideological development, we have had to translate some terms into English which are not derived from the “canon” of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. In some cases, various terms have been consolidated into one concept. For example: Engels used the term “interconnection” (German: ''innern'' ''Zusammenhang'', literally: “inner connections”) in ''Dialectics of Nature'', but Vietnamese political scientists use the term “relationship.” Where Engels uses the term “motion” (German: ''Bewegung'') modern Vietnamese communists tend to use the word “development.” Wherever this is the case, we have chosen to use the words in English which most closely match the language used in the original Vietnamese of this text.
-The notion of a militant minority within working-class social movements was expressed by mass anarchists in a number of different ways. An 1892 article published in ''La Révolte'' claimed that, although the revolution would “be made by the pressure of the masses . . . these masses themselves are looking for people to take the initiative, they are looking for men and women who can better formulate their thoughts, who will be able to win over the hesitant and carry with them the timid.”[[#105QuotedinDavidBerryAHi|105]] This required “active minorities,” who were “avant-gardist” and embodied “individual initiative, put at the service of the collectivity.”[[#106QuotedinBerryFrenchAna|106]] Malatesta referred to anarchists as a “conscious minority” and “vanguard.”[[#107MalatestaCafe107149|107]] Berkman thought that anarchists were “the most advanced and revolutionary element.”[[#108AlexanderBerkmanWhatis|108]] In Spain, the anarchist militants of the CNT were known among other workers as “the ones with ideas.”[[#109EalhamAnarchismandtheC|109]]
+In materialist dialectics, the word ''relationship'' refers to the regulating principles, mutual interactions, and mutual transformations which exist between things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as those existing between aspects and factors within things, phenomena, and ideas.
-Such language did not mean that anarchists viewed themselves as separate from the working classes or the workers’ movement. Anarchism was a social movement whose members were overwhelmingly drawn from the working classes. As Fabbri noted, it “is ''de facto'' a teaching whose followers are almost exclusively proletarians: bourgeois, petit bourgeois, so-called intellectuals or professional people, etc. are very few and far between and wield no predominate influence.”[[#110LuigiFabbriAnarchyand|110]] In referring to themselves as a militant minority, anarchists were only expressing the view that they had the most advanced revolutionary ideas within the working classes and, by virtue of this, had a key role to play in the collective struggle for human emancipation.
+-----
-The main task of anarchists as a militant segment of the working classes was to bring about a transformation in the consciousness of other workers such that they came to adopt anarchist ideas, overthrow capitalism and the state, and build an anarchist society. For Dunois, “our task as anarchists, the most advanced, the boldest and the most uninhibited sector of the militant proletariat, is to stay constantly by its side, to fight the same battles amongst its ranks . . . to provide this enormous moving mass that is the modern proletariat . . . with a goal and the means of action” and so act as the “educators, stimulators and guides of the working masses.”[[#111AntonioliedInternationa|111]] This point was repeatedly made by Malatesta. In 1897, he wrote that anarchists should “cultivate in the proletariat a consciousness of the class antagonism and the need for collective struggle, and a yearning to . . . [establish] equality, justice, and freedom for everyone.”[[#112MalatestaPatientWork32|112]] During his trial in April 1898, Malatesta told the court that anarchists “want the complete transformation of society, which must spring from the will of the masses, once they become conscious. It is precisely toward the formation of that consciousness that we are working, through the press, the talks and organization.”[[#113MalatestaPatientWork44|113]]
+==== Annotation 105 ====
-How anarchists acted as a militant minority varied according to the context. In 1891, it took the form of anarchists in Rome launching a preplanned riot by attacking the police at a May Day demonstration. This attack was triggered by the anarchist Galileo Palla giving his comrades a signal to begin when he ended his speech by declaring, “Long live the revolution!” and then jumped off the speaker’s platform into the crowd. This riot, which the anarchist militant minority initiated, lasted for several hours after it spread quickly to the rest of the crowd and other districts of Rome. So sudden was the riot that both contemporary observers and modern historians have mistaken it for a purely spontaneous affair and failed to realize that it was the outcome of conscious anarchist activity. Six years later in 1897, Italian anarchists in Ancona, including Malatesta, acted as a militant minority in a different manner by actively supporting the unionization of dock workers, bakers, barbers, and shoemakers.[[#114TurcatoMakingSense163|114]]
+Throughout this book, ''phenomenon/phenomena'' simply refers to anything that is observable by the human senses.
-The Yiddish-speaking anarchist Yanovsky acted as a militant minority during the early 1890s in London when he opposed a trade unionist called Lewis Lyons, who sought to organize master tailors, who were employers, alongside wage laborers. Yanovsky combated this attempt to unite groups with opposed class interests by denouncing Lyons’s plans in articles he wrote for the ''Arbeter Fraint'' and by speaking at every public meeting that was held on the question, regardless of which side in the dispute organized it. In this way, Yanovsky was able to defeat Lyons and force him to leave the Jewish labor movement.[[#115RockerLondonYears6263|115]] Yanovsky was not unique in this respect. Jewish anarchists living in London, alongside Rocker, played a key role in organizing trade unions and strikes. According to Rocker, “all the Jewish trade unions in the East End, without exception, were started by the initiative of the Jewish anarchists.”[[#116RockerLondonYears90|116]]
+Materialist dialectics examines relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas and ''within'' things, phenomena, and ideas. A relationship which occurs between two separate things or phenomena is referred to as an ''external relationship''. A relationship which occurs ''within'' a thing or phenomenon is referred to as an ''internal relationship''.
-In 1912, this activity culminated in Jewish tailors launching a general strike to abolish sweatshops in the East End. The strike, which mobilized 13,000 workers in two days, was launched in solidarity with striking tailors in the West End, whose strike had initially been undermined by strike-breaking work within the East End sweatshops. Rocker acted as a militant minority by attending all the meetings of the strike committee, acting as Chairman of the Finance Committee, editing the daily ''Arbeter Fraint'', and addressing three or four strike meetings a day. After three weeks on strike, the workers employed in men’s tailoring emerged victorious having won shorter hours; an end to piecework; better sanitary conditions; and the employment of union labor only. The strike continued within the women’s garment industry, where Jewish workers were overwhelmingly employed, until the capitalists gave in. In so doing they had, according to Rocker, ended the sweatshop system.[[#117RockerLondonYears1263|117]]
+These terms are relative; sometimes a relationship may be internal in one context but external in a different context. For example, consider a solar system:
-The majority of anarchist militants who played key roles as organizers were not famous authors like Malatesta or Kropotkin, but self-taught workers whose names rarely appear in surviving primary sources. In the Spanish village of Casas Viejas, a trade union was formed by workers in 1914. One of the main organizers of the local union was a poor charcoal burner named José Olmo García, who provided other workers with anarchist literature, gave fiery speeches on anarchist ideas, and made persuasive points at group meetings.[[#118JMintzCasasViejas14|118]] Anarchist attempts to organize or participate in mass movements as a militant minority were of course not always successful. To focus on England, Italian anarchists living in London failed on several occasions to organize restaurant workers into a long-lasting trade union due, in part, to the temporary and seasonal nature of the work.[[#119DiPaolaKnightsErrant3|119]] In September 1908, English anarchists in Leeds participated in a movement of unemployed people that began positively, from an anarchist perspective, by engaging in direct action but ended up being taken over by politicians, despite anarchist attempts to push it in a radical direction.[[#120JohnQuailTheSlowBurnin|120]]
+When considering a solar system as a whole, the orbit of a moon around a planet may be considered as an internal relationship of the solar system. But when considering the moon as an isolated subject, its orbit around a planet may be seen as an external relationship which the moon has with the planet.
-Although mass anarchists viewed themselves as a militant minority who sought to influence the consciousness of other workers, they explicitly rejected authoritarian forms of vanguardism due to their commitment to the self-emancipation of the working classes. This rejection took four main forms. First, mass anarchists sought only to influence other members of the working classes through persuasion and engaging in actions that provided an example to others. For Malatesta, while “authoritarians see the mass of the people as raw material to be manipulated into whatever mold they please through the wielding of power by decree, the gun and the handcuff,” anarchists “need the consent of the people and must therefore persuade by propaganda and by example.”[[#121MalatestaAnarchistRevolu|121]] The Russian anarchist Voline similarly wrote that, since revolutionary success can only be achieved by “''the broad popular masses''. . . . Our role in this realization will be limited to that of a ferment, an element providing assistance, advice, and an example.”[[#122VolineSynthesisanarchi|122]] Such influence was entirely consistent with the goal of anarchism since, according to Malatesta, an anarchist society is one in which nobody is “in a position to oblige others to submit to their will or to exercise their influence other than through the power of reason and by example.”[[#123MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|123]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-24.png]]
-Second, mass anarchists encouraged other workers to act for themselves and self-organize. In 1894, Malatesta claimed that “it is necessary that the people be conscious of their rights and their strength; it is necessary that they be ready to fight and ready to take the conduct of their affairs into their own hands. It must be the constant preoccupation of the revolutionists, the point toward which all their activity must aim, to bring about this state of mind among the masses.”[[#124MalatestaMethodofFreedo|124]] In a 1929 letter to Makhno, he wrote, “what matters most is that the people, men and women lose the sheeplike instincts and habits that thousands of years of slavery have instilled in them, and learn to think and act freely. And it is to this great work of moral liberation that the anarchists must specially dedicate themselves.”[[#125MalatestaAnarchistRevolu|125]]
+The diagram above illustrates different types of relationships:
-Third, influential mass anarchist authors, rejected the view that they were superior to others and instead sought to treat nonanarchist workers as their equals. In 1890, Kropotkin wrote that anarchists who label others as unintelligent if they do not immediately embrace anarchism “forget that they were not anarchists from birth,” and that it took an extended period of transformation for them to unlearn the prejudices they had been socialized into by class society.[[#126KropotkinDirectStruggle|126]] Five years later, in 1895, he argued that, although anarchist militants had “an obligation to do everything possible to spread the anarchist idea among the working masses,” they should not view themselves as “better than the ‘ignorant masses’ just because we are anarchists and they are not yet.”[[#127KropotkinDirectStruggle|127]] As Malatesta argued in 1894, anarchists should not “refuse to associate with working men who are not already perfect Anarchists” since “it is absolutely necessary to associate with them in order to make them becomes Anarchists.”[[#128MalatestaMethodofFreedo|128]] Anarchists had to, in short, “take the people as they are and . . . move forward with them.”[[#129MalatestaMethodofFreedo|129]] This coincided with the view that anarchists had to not only teach anarchist ideas to other workers, but also themselves learn from the various collective struggles that were organized by workers independently of anarchists.[[#130MalatestaTowardsAnarchy|130]]
+Object 1 has its own internal relationships (A), and, from its own perspective, it also has external relationships with Object 2 (B). From a wider perspective, the relationship between Object 1 and Object 2 (B) may be viewed as an internal relationship.
-Fourth, mass anarchists opposed the seizure of state power in the name of the working classes because, as was explained in chapter 5, it would lead to the death of the revolution, and the establishment of a new system of minority rule in which the majority of workers were oppressed and exploited. The social revolution could only be achieved if workers decided to reorganize society themselves through their own organs of self-management. All mass anarchists could do to facilitate this process was to act as a militant minority in the same manner that they had done prior to the revolution: spreading anarchist ideas and engaging in actions that implemented the anarchist program and thereby served as an example to others. For Kropotkin, anarchists should not “let themselves be hoisted into power” during a revolution, but should instead “remain on the streets, in their own districts, with the people—as propagandists and organizers . . . joining in with the people as they looked to their food and their livelihoods and the city’s defenses; living alongside the poor, getting impassioned about ''their'' everyday issues, their interests, and rebuilding, in the sections, the life of society with them.”[[#131KropotkinDirectStruggle1|131]]
+This ''system of relationships'' (between Object 1 and Object 2) will also have external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas (C).
-Mass anarchists continued to advocate this position in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolution. In 1922, Goldman opposed “the political power of the Party, organized and centralized in the state,” in favor of “the industrial power of the masses, expressed through their libertarian associations.”[[#132GoldmanRedEmma39091|132]] Given this aim, the role of anarchists was “to guide the released energies of the people toward the reorganization of life on a libertarian foundation.”[[#133GoldmanRedEmma393|133]] Two years later, Malatesta explained that “we cannot make the revolution exclusively ‘ours’ because we are a small minority. . . . [W]e must therefore content ourselves with a revolution that is as much ‘ours’ as possible, favoring and taking part, both morally and materially, in every movement directed toward justice and liberty and, when the insurrection has triumphed, ensure that the pace of the revolution is maintained, advancing toward ever greater freedom and justice.”[[#134MalatestaAnarchistRevolu|134]] If anarchists were successful in this, their position as a militant minority would fade away during the course of, or in the aftermath of, the social revolution itself, as more and more workers came to adopt and implement anarchist ideas themselves.[[#135KropotkinRebel75Kropo|135]]
+-----
-According to Kropotkin and Malatesta, one of the main ways that anarchists should act as a militant minority during a revolution was by establishing autonomous regions, which refused to recognize the authority of any revolutionary government that was formed. In 1891, Kropotkin wrote that, during a revolution, anarchists would not “be able to avert . . . attempts at revolutionary government,” but could instead only “conjure up from within the people itself a force that is mighty in its actions and in the constructive revolutionary tasks that it is to carry out, ignoring the authorities, no matter what name they may go under, growing exponentially by virtue of its revolutionary enterprise, its revolutionary vigor and its achievements in terms of tearing down and reorganizing.”[[#136KropotkinDirectStruggle|136]] This self-organized, federated force would undermine any attempts at revolutionary government because
+Relationships have a quality of ''generality'', which refers to how frequently they occur between and within things, phenomena, and ideas. When we refer to ''general relationships'', we are usually referring to relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, ''within'' things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, ''between'' things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">a people that will itself have organized the consumption of wealth and the reproduction of such assets in the interest of society as a whole will no longer be governable. A people that will itself be the armed strength of the country and which will have afforded armed citizens the requisite cohesion and concerted action, will no longer be susceptible to being ordered around. A people that will itself have organized railways, its navy, its schools is not going to be susceptible to being administered anymore. And finally, a people that will have shown itself capable of organizing arbitration to settle minor disputes will be one where every single individual will deem it his duty to stop the bully misusing the weakling, without waiting for providential intervention by the town sergeant, and will have no use for warders, judges or jailors.[[#137KropotkinDirectStruggle|137]]</div>
+The most general relationships are ''universal relationships'': these are relationships that exist between and within ''everything'' and ''all phenomena'', and they are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. [The other primary subject of study is the ''Principle of Development''; see page 119.]
-In the 1920 edition of Malatesta’s anarchist program, which was based on the previous 1899 version and adopted by the Italian Anarchist Union, he recommended that anarchists “push the people” to expropriate the ruling classes, establish workplace and community assemblies that collectively own and control the means of production, and refuse “to nominate or recognize any government.”[[#138ErricoMalatestaLifeand|138]] If the wider working classes choose not to do so, then anarchists “must—in the name of the right we have to be free even if others wish to remain slaves and because of the force of example—put into effect as many of our ideas as we can, refuse to recognize the new government and keep alive resistance and seek that those localities where our ideas are received with sympathy should constitute themselves into anarchist communities, rejecting all governmental interference and establishing free agreements with other communities which want to live their own lives.”[[#139MalatestaLifeandIdeas|139]]
+-----
-In 1925, Malatesta clarified that this included, if necessary, engaging in armed self-defense against the violence of the new state:
+==== Annotation 106 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">If, despite our efforts, new forms of power were to arise that seek to obstruct the people’s initiative and impose their own will, we must have no part in them, never give them any recognition. We must endeavor to ensure that the people refuse them the means of governing—refuse them, that is, the soldiers and the revenue; see to it that those powers remain weak… until the day comes when we can crush them once and for all. Anyway, we must lay claim to and demand, with force if needs be, our full autonomy, and the right and the means to organize ourselves as we see fit and to put our own methods into practice.[[#140MalatestaMethodofFreedo1|140]]</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-25.png]]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#17|1]]. Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, ''Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009), 20, 124, 133–41.</div>
+The discussion of generality of relationships can seem confusing at first. What’s important to understand is that generality is a spectrum ranging from the least general relationships (''unique relationships'', which only occur between two ''specific'' things/phenomena/ideas) and the most general relationships (''universal relationships'', which occur between or within ''all'' things/phenomena/ideas).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#27|2]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 318, 360.</div>
+Of particular importance in the study of materialist dialectics are ''universal'' relationships which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas [see below].
-[[#37|3]]. Quoted in René Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism in the International Workers’ Association, 1864–1877'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2015), 31.
+''Translation Note'': In the original Vietnamese, the word “universal” is not used. Instead, the compound term “phổ biến nhất” is used, which literally means “most general.” In Vietnamese, this phrasing is commonly used to describe the concept of “universal” and it is thus not confusing to Vietnamese speakers. For this translation, we have opted to use the word “universal” because we feel it is less confusing and better explains the concept in English.
-[[#47|4]]. Quoted in Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 31.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#57|5]]. Michael Bakunin, ''The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869–1871'', ed. and trans. Robert M. Cutler (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), 139.</div>
+The universal relationships include (but are not limited to):
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#67|6]]. Quoted in Nunzio Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),'' ''178.</div>
+* Relationships between basic philosophical category pairs (Private and Common, Essence and Phenomenon, etc.). <ref>See ''Private and Common'', p. 128; ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156.</ref>
+* Relationships between quantity and quality. <ref>See Annotation 117, p. 119.</ref>
+* Relationships between opposites. <ref>See Annotation 190, p. 181.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#77|7]]. Maurizio Antonioli, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam (1907)'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press 2009), 89–90. See also 83. In the original, Dunois uses the word “spontaneously.” I altered the translation to “voluntarily,” given how the French word “spontanément” was used by anarchists at the time.</div>
+Together, in all forms of relationships in nature, society and human thought (special, general, and universal) there is unity in diversity and diversity in unity.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#87|8]]. Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''163.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#97|9]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''163.</div>
+==== Annotation 107 ====
-[[#107|10]]. Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 158.
+==== Principle of General Relationships ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#117|11]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 158.</div>
+According to ''Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought: “''Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation. That is the core idea of the ''Principle of General Relationships''.”
-[[#127|12]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''148–54; Antonioli, ed. ''International Anarchist Congress'','' ''98–100.
+From this Principle, we find the characteristics of ''Diversity in Unity'' and ''Unity in Diversity''; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, or idea, contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist — unified — within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#136|13]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''153;'' ''Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''64, 73.</div>
+==== Diversity in Unity ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#146|14]]. Ricardo Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: A Ricardo Mella Anthology'','' ''ed. Stephen Luis Vilaseca (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 58–59.</div>
+There exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#156|15]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''474–75.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-26.png|''An infinite diversity of relationships exist within the unity of the material world.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#166|16]]. Max Baginski, ''What Does Syndicalism Want? Living'','' Not Dead Unions'' (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2015), 18.</div>
+The material world is not a chaotic and random assortment of things, phenomena, and ideas. Rather, it is a system of relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas. Likewise, since the material world exists as the foundation of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the material world is thus the foundation for all relationships within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. Because all relationships share a foundation in the material world, they also exist in unity, even though all relationships are diversified and different from one another.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#176|17]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 60.</div>
+-----
-[[#186|18]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 61.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-27.png|''Universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas manifest in infinitely diverse ways.'']]
-[[#196|19]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 61.
+'''Unity in Diversity'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#206|20]]. The following account is largely based on Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 63–65, 101–4; ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''61–66, 73–74, 92–95, 130–35, 208–10. For the historical context of this debate, see Pietro Di Paola, ''The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora, 1880–1917 ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 59–91; Davide Turcato, ''Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution'','' 1889–1900 ''(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 188–95.</div>
+When we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#216|21]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''439–40.</div>
+''Paraphrased From: Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#226|22]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''63.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#236|23]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''64,'' ''73.</div>
+==== b. Characteristics of Relationships ====
-[[#246|24]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''134; ''Method of Freedom'','' ''489–90.
+Objectiveness, generality, and diversity are the three basic characteristics of relationships.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#256|25]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''489–90.</div>
+''-'' ''The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Relationships''
-[[#266|26]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''63, 437–39; ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''133–4; ''Patient Work'','' ''42, 153.
+According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint, relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas have objective characteristics.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#276|27]]. José Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1 (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011), ed. Chris Ealham, 7–10, 93.</div>
+-----
-[[#286|28]]. Murray Bookchin, ''The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868–1936'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 1998),'' ''154–55,'' ''164–65; Angel Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State'','' 1989–1923'' (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 195,'' ''237–49.
+==== Annotation 108 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#296|29]]. Danny Evans, private communication, June 27, 2020.</div>
+In materialist dialectics, objectiveness is an abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject (i.e., each individual thing/phenomena/idea), all other things, phenomena, and ideas are external objects
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#306|30]]. In 1931, the majority of delegates at the CNT’s national congress voted to form national industrial federations, which would unite all the single unions in a given industry together. These were to exist in parallel to the other geographical federations that united workers from different industries together, based on their location. This decision was never implemented and was actively opposed by several anarchist delegates on the grounds that it would decrease the importance and autonomy of the local single unions. See Bookchin, ''Spanish Anarchists'','' ''218–19; Stuart Christie, ''We'','' the Anarchists! A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), 1927–1937'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2008),'' ''90–92; Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1,'' ''33–37.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-28.png|''All things, phenomena, and ideas have the relative characteristic of objectiveness.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#316|31]]. In 1934, Ángel Pestaña claimed that some local federations and local unions paid for two or three full-time delegates “off the record” and “under the table.” I have been unable to verify this claim or discover how other members responded to these allegations. Quoted in Frank Mintz, ''Anarchism and Workers’ Self-Management in Revolutionary Spain ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2013), 54–55.</div>
+All together, the collection of all things, phenomena, and ideas in the universe create the external reality of any given subject. So, objectiveness is relative. In the case of human beings, every individual person exists as an individual subject to which all other things, phenomena, and ideas (including other human beings) have ''objective characteristics.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#326|32]]. The higher committees of the CNT amassed far more power during the Spanish revolution and civil war of 1936–39. See Danny Evans, ''Revolution and the State: Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020), 39–40, 45–49.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-29.png|''Alice and Bob are external to one another; each is objective from the other’s perspective.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#336|33]]. This account of how the CNT was organized is based on Bookchin, ''Spanish Anarchists'','' ''144–46; Christie, ''We'','' the Anarchists'', 11, 13, 73; Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1, 353n16; Evans, ''Revolution and the State'', 12. For examples of CNT plenums see Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'', 52–53, 69–70, 255–56, 259–60.</div>
+Of course, objectiveness is always relative. Something might be external from a certain perspective but not from another perspective. For example, say there are two people: Bob and Alice. From Bob’s perspective, Alice has objective characteristics. But from Alice’s perspective, Bob would have objective characteristics.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#346|34]]. Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1,'' ''5. For the biographical details about Peirats, see Chris Ealham, ''Living Anarchism: José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015), 29–30, 141–42.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-30.png|''The relationship between Alice and Bob has objective characteristics to both Alice and Bob.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#356|35]]. Quoted in Peirats, ''What is the C.N.T?'' (London: Simian, 1974), 19.</div>
+As all relationships are inherently external to any given subject (even subjects which are party to the relationship), relationships also have objective characteristics.
-[[#366|36]]. Ealham, ''Living Anarchism'','' ''77; Agustín Guillamón, ''Ready for Revolution: The CNT Defense Committees in Barcelona, 1933–1938 ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014),'' ''28–29.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#376|37]]. Ealham, ''Living Anarchism'','' ''122–23.</div>
+Whenever two things, phenomena, or ideas have a relationship with one another, they form a pair. The relationship is inherent to this pair and external to any subject which exists outside of the pair. The mutual interaction and mutual transformation which occurs to the things, phenomena, or objects within the pair as the result of the relationship are ''inherent'' and ''objective'' properties of the pair.
-[[#386|38]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''83; ''Patient Work'','' ''155.
+-----
-[[#396|39]]. Chris Ealham: ''Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona'','' 1898–1937 ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 49–50; Guillamón, ''Ready for Revolution'','' ''28–30.
+==== Annotation 109 Translation note: ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#406|40]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', ed. A. W. Zurbrugg (London: Merlin Books, 2016), 49. See also, 138–41.</div>
+In the original Vietnamese text, the word for “objective” is ''“khách quan.”'' This is a compound word in which ''“khách”'' means “guest,” and ''“quan”'' means “point of view.” Therefore, ''“khách quan”'' literally means “the guest’s (or outsider’s) point of view.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#416|41]]. Quoted in Walther L. Bernecker, “The Strategies of ‘Direct Action’ and Violence in Spanish Anarchism,” in ''Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe'', ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld (London: The Macmillan Press, 1982), 90.</div>
+Thus we translate this to “objectiveness/objective,” the characteristic of being viewed from the outside.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#426|42]]. Quoted in Ralph Darlington, ''Radical Unionism: The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Syndicalism ''(Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013), 29.</div>
+The word “inherent” in the original Vietnamese is ''“vốn có.”'' This is another compound word: ''“vốn”'' is a shortened form of the word ''“vốn dĩ,”'' which means “by or through nature,” “naturally,” and “intrinsically.” ''“Có”'' means “to have” or “to exist.” '''''“Vốn có”''''' thus means “already existing naturally” or “already there, through nature.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#436|43]]. Quoted in Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1, 39. Some trade unions within the CNT opposed the idea of a minimum program. See Bookchin, ''Spanish Anarchists'','' ''218.</div>
+So we use the word “inherent” to mean “existing intrinsically or naturally within, without external influence.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#446|44]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''281.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#456|45]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 82.</div>
+Human beings can’t change or impact external things and phenomena — and the relationships between them — through human will alone. Humans are limited to perceiving relationships between things and phenomena and then impacting or changing them through our practical activities.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#466|46]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 181.</div>
+''-'' ''The Characteristic of Generality of Relationships''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#476|47]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 182.</div>
+According to the dialectical viewpoint, there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea that exists in absolute isolation from other things, phenomena and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#486|48]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''374.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#496|49]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 19, 23.</div>
+==== Annotation 110 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#506|50]]. Haia Shpayer-Makov, “Anarchism in British Public Opinion 1880–1914,” ''Victorian Studies'' 31, no. 4 (1988): 487–516; Luigi Fabbri, ''Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism'' (Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2001).</div>
+Although all things, phenomena, and ideas have the characteristic of ''externality'' and ''objectiveness'' to all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], this does not mean that they exist in ''isolation''. Isolation implies a complete lack of any relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. On the contrary, according to the ''Principle of General Relationships'' [see p. 107], ''all'' things, phenomena, and ideas have relationships with ''all other'' things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#516|51]]. Quoted in Ulrich Linse, “‘Propaganda by Deed’ and ‘Direct Action’: Two Concepts of Anarchist Violence,” in ''Social Protest'','' Violence and Terror'', 215.</div>
+Simultaneously, there is also no known thing, phenomenon, nor idea that does not have a systematic structure, including component parts which in turn have their own internal relationships. This means that every existence is a system, and, moreso, is an ''open'' system that exists in relation with other systems. All systems interact and mutually transform one another.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#526|52]]. Quoted in Kenyon Zimmer, ''Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 34.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#536|53]]. Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich, ''Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012),'' ''87–90.</div>
+==== Annotation 111 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#546|54]]. Quoted in Avrich and Avrich, ''Sasha and Emma'', 89.</div>
+As explained above, a ''systematic structure'' is a structure which includes within itself a system of ''component'' parts and relationships. It has been postulated by some scientific models that there may be some “fundamental base particle” (quarks, preons, etc.), which, if true, would mean that there is a certain basic material component which cannot be further broken down. However, this would not contradict the Principle of Materialist Dialectics of General Relationships (which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact with and mutually transform one another — see Annotation 107, p. 110).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#556|55]]. Quoted in Goyens, “Johann Most and the German Anarchists,” in ''Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab’s Saloon to Occupy Wall Street'', ed. Tom Goyens (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 21–22. In response, Goldman attacked Most with a whip during one of his lectures. See Emma Goldman, ''Living My Life'','' ''vol. 1'' ''(New York: Dover Publications, 1970),'' ''105–6.</div>
+''- The Characteristic of Diversity of Relationships''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#566|56]]. Quoted in George Richard Esenwein,'' Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain'','' 1868–1898 ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 114.</div>
+In addition to affirming the objectiveness<ref>See Annotation 108, p. 112.</ref> and generality<ref>See p. 108.</ref> of relationships, the dialectical viewpoint of Marxism-Leninism also emphasizes the ''diversity'' of relationships. The characteristic of diversity is defined by the following features:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#576|57]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 319.</div>
+* All things, phenomena, and ideas have different relationships. Every relationship plays a distinct role in the existence and development of the things, phenomena, and ideas which are included within.
+* Any given relationship between things, phenomena, and ideas will have different characteristics and manifestations under different conditions and/or during different periods of motion and/or at different stages of development.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#586|58]]. Quoted in Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 84. See also Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''526–29.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#596|59]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 150, 154.</div>
+==== Annotation 112 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#606|60]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 150.</div>
+One of Marx’s most critical observations was that things are defined by their internal and external relationships, including human beings. For example, in ''Theses on Feuerbach,'' Marx wrote that “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.” It is only through relationships — through mutual impacts and transformations — that things, phenomena, and ideas (including human beings and human societies) change and develop over time. All of these relationships — which both define and transform all things, phenomena, and ideas in existence — exist in infinite diversity [see Annotation 107, p. 110].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#616|61]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Memoirs of a Revolutionist ''(Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 373.</div>
+Just as things, phenomena, and ideas change and transform through the course of relations with one another, the nature of the relationships themselves also change and develop over time.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#626|62]]. Quoted in Alexandre Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968 ''(Oakland CA: AK Press, 2002), 55. Kropotkin opposed the tactics of assassination and bombings within the Russian anarchist movement. See Martin A. Miller, ''Kropotkin'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 206–07; Paul Avrich, ''The Russian Anarchists'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 59–60. For an overview of Russian anarchist’s engaging in this kind of violence, see ibid., 44–55, 63–70.</div>
+''Characteristics'' refer to the features and attributes that exist ''internally'' within a given thing, phenomena, or idea.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#636|63]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 176.</div>
+''Manifestation'' refers to ''how'' a given thing, phenomena, or idea is expressed ''externally'' in the material world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#646|64]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''49.</div>
+For example, a ball may have the ''characteristics'' of being made of rubber, having a mass of 100 grams, and having a melting point of 260℃. It may ''manifest'' by bouncing on the ground, having a spherical shape, and having a red appearance to human observers.
-[[#656|65]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', 14; Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''160; ''Method of Freedom'','' ''470–71.
+If ten such balls exist, they will all be slightly different. Even if they have the same mass and material composition, they will have slightly different variations in size, shape, etc. Even if each ball will melt at 260℃, the melting will manifest differently for each ball — they will melt into slightly different shapes, at slightly different speeds, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#666|66]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''49.</div>
+Relationships also have characteristics and manifestations. For example, the moon’s orbit around the Earth is a relationship. It has characteristics such as the masses of each related body, forces of gravity, and other factors which produce and influence the orbit. The same orbital relationship also has manifestations such as the duration of the moon’s orbit around the Earth, the size of its ellipse, the orbit’s effects on the tides of the Earth’s ocean, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#676|67]]. Malatesta, ''At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism'' (London: Freedom Press, 2005), 82–83.</div>
+''Characteristics'' and ''Manifestation'' correspond, respectively, to the philosophical category pair of ''Content'' and ''Form,'' which is discussed in section page 147.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#686|68]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''344. See also 315–33.</div>
+Therefore, no two relationships are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#696|69]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''179.</div>
+It is also important to note that the characteristic of diversity also applies to things, phenomena, and ideas themselves. In other words, every individual thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence also manifests differently from every other thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence, even if they seem quite similar.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#706|70]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'', 101.</div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#716|71]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''67.</div>
+Based on the objective and popular characteristics of relationships, we can see that in our cognitive and practical activities, we have to have a ''comprehensive viewpoint''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#725|72]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''25.</div>
+Having a ''comprehensive viewpoint'' requires that in the process of perceiving and handling real life situations, humans have to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon. We also need to consider the external mutual interactions they have with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Only on such a comprehensive basis can we properly understand things and phenomena and then effectively handle problems in real life. So, the comprehensive viewpoint is the opposite of a unilateral and/or metaphysical viewpoint [see Annotation 51, p. 49] in both perception and practice.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#735|73]]. Goldman, ''Living My Life'','' ''vol. 1,'' ''47–48, 52–53.</div>
+Lenin said: “If we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all of its facets, its connections, and ‘mediacies [indirect relationships].’”<ref>''Once Again On The Trade Unions'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#745|74]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''The London Years ''(Nottingham, UK: Five Leaves, 2005), 25–26.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#755|75]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''309; Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''156,'' ''189.</div>
+==== Annotation 113 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#765|76]]. Quoted in David Berry, ''A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917 to 1945'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009),'' ''26.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-31.png|''The comprehensive viewpoint sees the subject in terms of all of its internal and external relationships.'']]
-[[#775|77]]. Baginski, ''What Does Syndicalism Want'', 11.
+Consider a factory. A factory exists as a collection of internal relationships (between the workers, between machines, between the workers and the machines, etc.) and external relationships (between the factory and its suppliers, between the factory and its customers, between the factory and the city, etc.). In order to have a comprehensive viewpoint when examining the factory, one must consider and understand all of the internal and external relationships which define it.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#785|78]]. Baginski, ''What Does Syndicalism Want'', 10–12, 15–16.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#795|79]]. Max Baginski, “Aim and Tactics of the Trade-Union Movement,” in ''Anarchy: An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth'', ed. Peter Glassgold, (New York: Counterpoint, 2000), 305.</div>
+The diversified characteristic of relationships [see Annotation 107, p. 110] shows that in human cognitive and practical activities, we have to simultaneously use a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint.
-[[#805|80]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 78.
+Having a ''historical viewpoint'' requires that, in perceiving and handling real life situations, we need to consider the specific properties of subjects, including their current stage of motion and development. We also need to consider that the exact same methods can’t be used to deal with different situations in reality — our methods must be tailored to suit the exact situation based on material conditions.
-[[#815|81]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 79.
+-----
-[[#825|82]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 79.
+==== Annotation 114 ====
-[[#835|83]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 79.
+While the ''comprehensive viewpoint'' focuses on internal and external ''relationships'' of subjects, the ''historical viewpoint'' focuses on the specific ''properties'' of subjects — especially the current stage of motion and development. In order to have a proper historical viewpoint, we must study and understand the way a subject has developed and transformed over time. To do this, we must examine the history of the subject’s changes over time, hence the term “historical viewpoint.” In addition, it’s important to understand that no two situations which we might encounter will ever be exactly the same. This is because the component parts and relationships that make up any given situation will manifest differently.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#845|84]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''287.</div>
+So, in order to properly deal with situations, we have to understand the component parts and relationships of examined subjects as well as their histories of development so that we can develop plans and strategies that are suitable to the unique circumstances at hand.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#855|85]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''320.</div>
+For example, it would be disastrous if communists today tried to employ the ''exact same'' methods which were used by the Communist Party of Vietnam in the 20<sup>th</sup> century to defeat Japan, France, and the USA. This is because the material conditions and relationships of Vietnam in the 20<sup>th</sup> century were very different from any material conditions existing on Earth today. It is possible to learn lessons from studying the methods of the Vietnamese revolution and to ''adapt'' some such methods to our modern circumstances, but it would be extremely ineffective to try to copy those methods and strategies — ''exactly'' as they manifested then and there — to the here and now.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#865|86]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''106.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#875|87]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''55.</div>
+In order to come up with suitable and effective solutions to deal with real life problems, we must clearly define the roles and positions of each specific relationship that comes into play, and the specific time, place, and material conditions in which they exist.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#885|88]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''145–46.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#895|89]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 427.</div>
+==== Annotation 115 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#905|90]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''49.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-32.png|''A historical viewpoint focuses on the roles and positions of relationships and properties of subjects as well as their development over time.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#915|91]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''320.</div>
+The role of a relationship has to do with how it functions within a system of relationships and the position refers to its placement amongst other subjects and relationships.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#925|92]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''168. See also Malatesta, ''The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles, 1924–1931'', ed. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1995), 80; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''293–94.</div>
+Consider once again the example of the factory [see Annotation 113]. In addition to its internal and external relationships, the factory also has various roles — it functions within various systems and from various perspectives. For instance, the factory may have the role of financial asset for the corporation that owns it, it may have the role of place of employment for the surrounding community, it may have the role of supplier for various customers, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#935|93]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Statism and Anarchy ''(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,'' ''1990), ed. Marshall Shatz, 114, 25. For another example, see Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''98–103.</div>
+The factory is also ''positioned'' among other subjects and relations. If it’s the only employer in town then it would have a position of great importance to the people of the community. If, on the other hand, if it’s just one of hundreds of factories in a heavily industrialized area, it may have a position of much less importance. It may have a position of great importance to an individual factory worker who lives in poverty in an economy where there are very few available jobs, but of less importance to a freelance subcontractor for whom the factory is just one of many customers, and so on.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#945|94]]. Emma Goldman, ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader'', ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 190–203.</div>
+These positions and roles will change over time. For example, the factory may initially exist as a small workshop with a small handful of workers, but it may grow into a massive factory with hundreds of employees. It is vital to understand this Principle of Development, which is discussed in more detail on the next page.
-[[#955|95]]. Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'','' ''81.
+In summary, proper dialectical materialist analysis requires a ''comprehensive and historical viewpoint'' — we must consider subjects both ''comprehensively'' in terms of the internal and external relationships of the subject itself as well as ''historically'' in terms of roles and positions of subjects, as well as their relationships, material conditions, and development over time.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#965|96]]. Quoted in Caroline Cahm, ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism'','' 1872–1886'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),'' ''226.</div>
+So, in both perception and practice, we have to avoid and overcome sophistry and eclectic viewpoints.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#975|97]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''443. See also Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''67–69.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#985|98]]. Ealham, ''Living Anarchism'','' ''57–59.</div>
+==== Annotation 116 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#995|99]]. Christie, ''We'','' the Anarchists'','' ''18–22; Ealham, ''Anarchism and the City'', 48–51; Guillamón, ''Ready for Revolution'','' ''31–32; Peirats, ''CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1,'' ''11–6; For an in-depth overview of this topic, see A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'','' ''210–11, 250–53, 300–301, 312, 316–17, 323–37, 343–49, 351.</div>
+''Sophistry'' is the use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.
-[[#1005|100]]. A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'','' ''337.
+''Eclecticism'' is an incoherent approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject, applying different theories in different situations without any consistency in analysis and thought. Eclectic arguments are typically composed of various pieces of evidence that are cherry picked and pieced together to form a perspective that lacks clarity. By definition, because they draw from different systems of thought without seeking a clear and cohesive understanding of the totality of the subject and its internal and external relations and its development over time, eclectic arguments run counter to the comprehensive and historical viewpoints. Eclecticism is somewhat similar to dialectical materialism in that it attempts to consider a subject from many different perspectives, and analyzes relationships pertaining to a subject, but the major flaw of eclecticism is a lack of clear and coherent systems and principles, which leads to a chaotic viewpoint and an inability to grasp the true nature of the subject at hand.
-[[#1015|101]]. Ealham, ''Anarchism and the City'','' ''98.
+=== 2. Principle of Development ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1025|102]]. Ealham, ''Anarchism and the City'','' ''144–48, 163; ''Living Anarchism'','' ''66–67. It should be noted that some of the robberies were carried out by self-described individualist anarchist affinity groups.</div>
+==== a. Definition of Development ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1035|103]]. Jason Garner, ''Goals and Means: Anarchism'','' Syndicalism'','' and Internationalism in the Origins of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica'' (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 139–45; Ealham, ''Anarchism and the City'','' ''87–89, 100–1, 130–40, 161–64; ''Living Anarchism'','' ''60–70; Evans, ''Revolution and the State'', 7–10, 15–23; Jerome R. Mintz, ''The Anarchists of Casas Viejas ''(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 177–225. It has been argued by Christie that the moderate syndicalist anarchists were not in fact anarchists or only paid lip service to anarchism. I have not been convinced by this claim. See Christie, ''We'','' the Anarchists'', vii, 15, 26–28, 59–65, 68–73, 84–87, 93–94, 100–121.</div>
+According to the metaphysical viewpoint, development is simply a ''quantitative'' increase or decrease; the metaphysical viewpoint does not account for ''qualitative'' changes of things and phenomena. Simultaneously, the metaphysical viewpoint also views development as a process of continuous progressions which follow a linear and straightforward path.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1045|104]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''529.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1055|105]]. Quoted in David Berry, ''A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917 to 1945'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009),'' ''23.</div>
+==== Annotation 117 ====
-[[#1065|106]]. Quoted in Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'','' ''23.
+In materialist dialectics, it is important to distinguish between ''quantity'' and ''quality''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1075|107]]. Malatesta, ''Café'','' ''107, 149, 155; ''Method of Freedom'','' ''344, 529.</div>
+''Quantity'' describes the total ''amount'' of component parts that compose a subject.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1085|108]]. Alexander Berkman, ''What is Anarchism? ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003),'' ''114.</div>
+''Quality'' describes the unity of component parts, taken together, which defines the subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.
-[[#1095|109]]. Ealham, ''Anarchism and the City'','' ''41.
+Both quantity and quality are dynamic attributes; over time, the quantity and quality of all things develop and change over time through the development of internal and external relationships. Quantity and quality itself form a dialectical relationship, and as quantity develops, quality will also develop. A given subject may be described by various quantity and quality relationships.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1104|110]]. Luigi Fabbri, “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism,” in ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', ed. Friends of Aron Baron (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 16. For an overview of the class composition of anarchist and syndicalist movements around the world, see Schmidt and van der Walt, ''Black Flame'','' ''271–91.</div>
+'''''Example 1:'''''
-[[#1114|111]]. Antonioli, ed. ''International Anarchist Congress'','' ''87–88.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-33.png|''In the process of development, Quantity Change leads to Quality Change'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1124|112]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''325.</div>
+A single football player, alone, has the quantity value of 1 football player and the quality of ''a football player''. Eleven football players on a field would have the quantity value of 1 and will develop the quality of ''a football team''. This subject, ''football'' ''team'', is composed of the same component parts as the subject ''football player'', but the quantity change and other properties (being on a field, playing a game or practicing, etc.) change the quality of the component parts into a different stable and unified form which we call a ''football team''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1134|113]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''443.</div>
+The relationship between quantity and quality is dynamic:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1144|114]]. Turcato, ''Making Sense'','' ''163–68; Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'','' ''261–67.</div>
+If one of the players doesn’t show up for practice, and there are only ten players on the field, it might still have the quality of ''football team'', but in a live professional game there will be a certain threshold — a minimum number of players who must be present to officially be considered a ''team''. If this number of players can’t be fielded then they will not be considered a full ''team'' and thus won’t be allowed to play.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1154|115]]. Rocker, ''London Years'','' ''62–63.</div>
+Likewise, if there are only one or two players practicing together in a park, they would probably not be considered a ''football team'' (though they might be described in terms of having the quality of being ''on the same team).''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1164|116]]. Rocker, ''London Years'', 90.</div>
+'''''Example 2:'''''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1174|117]]. Rocker, ''London Years'', 126–31.</div>
+Quantity: 1 O + 2 H atoms Quantity: Billions of H2O Molecules Quantity: ~5,000 Drops of Water Quality: Water Quality: Drop of Water Quality: Cup of Water
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1184|118]]. J. Mintz, ''Casas Viejas'','' ''14–16, 29–31, 79–80, 83–85.</div>
+DEVELOPMENT: QUANTITY CHANGE LEADS TO QUALITY CHANGE
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1194|119]]. Di Paola, ''Knights Errant'', 34–35,'' ''95–96,'' ''111–13, 205.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-34.png|''All of these have the quality of water because of the molecular quantities of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, however, from the perspective of volume, quantity changes still lead to quality changes.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1204|120]]. John Quail, ''The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of British Anarchists'' (London: Granada Publishing Limited, 1978),'' ''250–51. Anarchists were able to more effectively organize unemployed people in the United States. See Avrich and Avrich, ''Sasha and Emma'','' ''217–23.</div>
+The properties of quantity and quality are relative, depending on the viewpoint of analysis.
-[[#1214|121]]. Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'','' ''81.
+A single molecule of water has a quantity of one in terms of molecules, but it still retains the quality of “water” because of the ''quantities'' of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms per molecule which, in this stable form, give it the ''quality'' of water.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1224|122]]. Voline, “Synthesis (anarchist),” in ''The Anarchist Encyclopedia Abridged'', ed. Mitchell Abidor (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019), 202–3.</div>
+A drop of water might have a quantity of many billions of molecules, but it would still have the quality of “water.” It would also now assume the quality of a “drop.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1234|123]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''56.</div>
+When you combine enough drops of water, you will eventually have a quality shift where the “drops” of water combine to form another quality — i.e., a “cup” of water. The quantity change leads to a change in quantity; we would no longer think of the water in terms of “drops” after the quantity rises to a certain level.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1244|124]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''176.</div>
+In terms of ''temperature'' and physical properties, if the water is heated to a certain point it will boil and the water will become ''steam''. The quantity of water in terms of drops wouldn’t change, but the quantity-value of temperature would eventually lead to a quality value change from “water” to “steam.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1254|125]]. Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'','' ''110–11.</div>
+'''''Example 3:'''''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1263|126]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''332.</div>
+AS QUANTITY OF AGE INCREASES, QUALITY CHANGES
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1273|127]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''348. See also Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism'', 62–64.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-35.png|''The same human being will undergo various quality changes as age quantity increases over time.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1283|128]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''179.</div>
+As humans age and the quantity of years we’ve lived builds up over time, our “quality” also changes, from baby, to child, to teenager, to young adult, to middle age, to old age, and eventually to death. The individual person is still the same human being, but the quality of the person will shift over time as the quantity-value of age increases.
-[[#1293|129]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''87.
+'''Metaphysical vs. Dialectical Materialist Conceptions of Change'''
-[[#1303|130]]. Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'', 41–42; ''Patient Work'','' ''190.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-36.png|''Metaphysics only consider linear properties of'' quantity''change; Materialist Dialectics takes'' quantity changes ''and'' quality shifts ''into consideration when considering change over time.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1313|131]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''554.</div>
+Because the metaphysical perspective tries to define the world in terms of static, isolated subjects, only ''quantity'' is considered and ''quality shifts'' are not taken into account. Thus, metaphysical logic sees development as linear, simple, and straightforward. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, sees development as a more complicated, fluid, and dynamic process involving multiple internal and external relationships changing in quantity and quality over time.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1323|132]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'','' ''390–91, 395.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1333|133]]. Goldman, ''Red Emma'','' ''393.</div>
+In contrast to the metaphysical viewpoint, in materialist dialectics, ''development'' refers to the ''motion'' of things and phenomena with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced, from a less complete to a more complete level.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1343|134]]. Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'', 88–89.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1353|135]]. Kropotkin, ''Rebel'','' ''75; Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 553–55.</div>
+==== Annotation 118 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1363|136]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''578.</div>
+In materialist dialectics, ''motion (also known as change)'' is the result of mutual impacts between or within things, phenomena, and ideas, and all motion and change results from mutual impacts which themselves result from internal and external relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Any given ''motion/change'' leads to quantity changes, and these quantity changes cumulatively lead to quality changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Grasping this concept — that development is driven by relations — is critically important for understanding materialist dialectics.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1373|137]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''578.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-37.png|''The concept of “change” in materialist dialectics centers on internal and external relationships causing mutual impacts which lead to quantity changes which build into quality shifts.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1383|138]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta'','' ''ed. Vernon Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 186.</div>
+This process, taken in total, is referred to as ''development''. Development represents the entire process in which internal and external change/motion leads to changes in quantity which in turn lead to changes in quality over time. The process of development can be fast or slow, complex or simple, and can even move backwards, and all of these properties are relative. Development has a ''tendency'' to develop from less advanced to more advanced forms. The word ''tendency'' is used to denote phenomena, development, and motion which inclines in a particular direction. There may be exceptional cases which contradict such tendencies, but the general motion will incline towards one specific manner. Thus, it is important to note that “development” is not necessarily “good” nor “bad.” In some cases, “development” might well be considered “bad,” or unwanted. For example, rust developing on a car is typically not desired. So, the tendency of development from lower to higher levels of advancement implies a “forward motion,” though this motion can take an infinite number of forms, depending on the relative perspective. Development can also (temporarily) halt in a state of equilibrium [see Annotation 64, p. 62] or it can shift direction; though it can never “reverse,” just as time itself can never be “reversed.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1393|139]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''187. To compare these sections to the previous 1899 version, see Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy'','' ''55–56.</div>
+For example, during a flood, water may “develop” over the land, and as the floodwaters recede this may alternatively be viewed as another “forward” development process of ''recession'' — a development of the overall “flooding and receding” process. The flood is not actually “reversing” — the development is not being “undone.” Flood water may recede but it will leave behind many traces and impacts; thus it is not a true “reversal” of development.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1403|140]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 472.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-38.png|''Both flooding and flood recession are development processes with the same forward tendency. Flood recession may appear to be a “reversal,” but it is in fact forward development.'']]
-== {{anchor|Chapter8TheHistoryofSyndic1}} {{anchor|Chapter8TheHistoryofSyndic}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook11}} Chapter 8: The History of Syndicalist Anarchism ==
+The false belief that development can be reversed is the root of conservative and reactionary positions [see Annotation 208].
-Syndicalist anarchism advocated the formation of federally structured trade unions that united the working classes into a collective force, were independent of political parties, and engaged in direct action against the ruling classes. This was to be achieved either by forming whole new revolutionary trade unions, or by participating within existing reformist trade unions and transforming them from within. Historically, anarchist authors used a variety of different terms to refer to trade unions, such as ''societies of resistance against capital'', ''resistance societies'', ''workers’ associations'', or simply the ''labor movement''.[[#1GeorgeRichardEsenweinAnar|1]] The term ''syndicalism'' is itself derived from the French word for trade union—''syndicat''—and the phrase ''syndicalisme révolutionnaire'', meaning trade unionism that is revolutionary.[[#2WayneThorpeUneasyFamily|2]] For the sake of simplicity, I shall be using the English term trade union, rather than such historical terms.
+Development can be considered positive or negative, depending on perspective. Some ecosystems have natural flood patterns which are vital for sustaining life. For a person living in a flood zone, however, the flood would most likely be considered an unwanted development, whereas flood recession would be a welcomed development.
-Syndicalist anarchism was a form of mass anarchism, and so argued that anarchists should struggle for immediate reforms via direct action, especially strikes, sabotage, and boycotts. These collective struggles for reforms would, over time, develop an organized mass trade union movement with the necessary radical capacities, drives, and consciousness for abolishing capitalism and the state, in favor of an anarchist society. The social revolution would unfold through an insurrectionary general strike, during which the working classes would stop work, occupy their workplaces, expropriate the means of production from the ruling classes, and smash the state. In the course of the social revolution, the federally structured trade unions would evolve, from organizations engaged in economic resistance against the ruling classes into organizations that self-managed the economy, either in part or whole.[[#3MarcelvanderLindenandWay|3]]
+-----
-Although all syndicalist anarchists generally agreed on the above strategy, they disagreed with one another on two main questions. These were:# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">Should trade unions be politically neutral, or should they be explicitly committed to achieving an anarchist society through anarchist means?</div>
+It is important to note that the definition of development is not identical to the concept of “motion” (change) in general. It is not merely a simple quantitative increase or decrease, nor a repetitive cyclic change in quantity. Instead, in materialist dialectics, development is defined in terms of ''qualitative'' changes with the direction of advancing towards higher and more advanced levels. [See diagram ''Relationship Between Motion,''
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">Are trade unions sufficient in and of themselves to achieve an anarchist society, or do they need to be assisted by a specific anarchist organization?</div>
+''Quantity/Quality Shifts, and Dialectical Development'', Annotation 119, below]
+Development is also the process of creating and solving objective ''contradictions'' within and between things and phenomena. Development is thus the unified process of negating negative factors while retaining and advancing positive factors from old things and phenomena as they transform into new things and phenomena.
-Three main forms of syndicalist anarchism emerged in response to these two questions: revolutionary syndicalism, syndicalism-plus, and anarcho-syndicalism.[[#4Thelanguageofsyndicalism|4]] In this chapter, I will establish what these positions meant, and why anarchists came to advocate them. This will be achieved through a detailed overview of the history of syndicalist anarchism, from its prehistory in the First International, to the formation of anarcho-syndicalism as an international movement in the early twentieth century. With this context in place, I will explain the main strategies that were generally advocated by syndicalist anarchists in chapter 9.
+-----
-'''The Prehistory of Syndicalism'''
+==== Annotation 119 ====
-The strategy of revolutionary trade unionism, which would come to be known as syndicalism, was first advocated during debates within the First International and Saint-Imier International. At the September 1868 Brussels Congress of the First International, the Belgian delegate and typesetter César De Paepe advocated the formation of ''resistance societies'' that organized strikes to win immediate improvements and revolt against the ruling classes. In order to do so, they had to be “federated with one another—not only at the level of a trade or country, but across different countries and trades.”[[#5CesarDePaepeStrikesUni|5]] In the long term they would aim to achieve “the abolition of the wages system” through “the absorption of capital by labor.”[[#6DePaepeStrikesUnionsa|6]] The Brussels section of the International supported resistance societies “not only from regard to the necessities of the present, but also the future social order . . . we see in these trade unions the embryos of the great workers’ companies which will one day replace the capitalist companies” and “embrace whole industries.”[[#7RaymondWPostgateedDeb|7]] In February 1869, De Paepe expanded upon this point by arguing that “the International already offers the model of the society to come and that its various institutions, with the required modifications, will form the future social order. . . the society of resistance is destined to organize labor in the future. . . . Nothing will be more easy, when the moment comes, than to transform the societies of resistance into cooperative workshops, when the workers have agreed to demand the liquidation of the present society.”[[#8CesarDePaepeThePresent|8]]
+A ''contradiction'' is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another. Although a contradiction might exist in ''equilibrium'' for some amount of time [see Annotation 64, p. 62], eventually, one force will overcome the other, resulting in a change of ''quality''. This process of overcoming is called ''negation''. In short, ''development'' is a process of change in a subject’s quantity as well as negation of contradictions within and between subjects, leading to quality shifts over time.
-Several months later, the Swiss Courtelary District section of the First International held a general assembly on August 29, 1869, in which a report on strike funds was approved. The report had been written by the engraver Adhémar Schwitzguébel, who would go on to become the corresponding secretary of the anarchist Jura Federation’s Federal Committee.[[#9EckhardtFirstSocialistSch|9]] The report advocated the formation of an international federation of trade unions, with a shared strike fund, on the grounds that they were an effective means to collectively resist the domination of capitalists and win higher wages. At the same time, they were viewed as having “the great advantage of preparing the general organization of the proletariat, of accustoming workers to identify their interests, to practice solidarity and to act in common for the interests of all. In short, they are the basis for the coming organization of society, since workers’ associations will have to do no more than take over the running of industrial and agricultural enterprises.”[[#10AdhemarSchwitzguebelOnR|10]]
+==== b. Characteristics of Development ====
-The strategy of revolutionary trade unionism continued to be articulated within the First International at its Basel Congress, held between September 5 and 12, 1869, and attended by, among others, Bakunin and Guillaume. During the morning session of September 11, the delegate Jean-Louis Pindy, who would go onto participate in the Paris Commune and become an anarchist, presented a report that was subsequently passed as a resolution of the congress.[[#11JulianPWArcherTheFir|11]] Pindy, a cabinetmaker and the delegate of the Paris Construction Workers’ Trade Union, proposed that all workers should establish strike funds, organize local trade unions, and then link these local trade unions together at national and international levels. In so doing, workers would create an organizational structure that enabled the exchange of information and coordinated strike action both within a country and between countries. The goal of these trade unions would be to engage in strikes until capitalism had been abolished and replaced by the federation of free producers. As capitalism was abolished, the trade unions would take over the organization of production, and be converted from organs of class struggle into organs of economic self-management. The federation of workers at the level of the town would form “the commune of the future” just as the federation of workers at the national and international level would form “the workers’ representation of the future” under which “politics” would be replaced by “the associated councils of the various trades and a committee of their respective delegates” administrating and regulating “work relations.”[[#12JeanLouisPindyResolutio|12]] The formation of national and international federations of trade unions was, therefore, not only necessary in order to engage in effective class struggle. It was also an essential component of establishing the social structures through which workers could organize a global socialist economy that “no longer recognizing frontiers, establishes a vast allocation of labor from one end of the world to the other.”[[#13JeanLouisPindyResolutio|13]]
+Every development has the characteristics of objectiveness,<ref>See: Annotation 108, p. 112.</ref> generality,<ref>See: Annotation 106, p. 109.</ref> and diversity.<ref>See: Annotation 107, p. 110.</ref>''The characteristic of objectiveness of development'' stems from the origin of motion.
-The same idea was advocated by the French bookbinder, collectivist, and trade union organizer Eugène Varlin, who later played a key role in the Paris Commune and was murdered by the French state in May 1871. He argued that working-class social movements “must actively work to prepare the organizational elements of the future society in order to make the work of social transformation that is imposed on the Revolution easier and more certain.”[[#14EugeneVarlinWorkersSoci|14]] He was convinced that trade unions were one of the main forms of working-class self-organization that could do so: “trade societies (resistance, solidarity, union) deserve our encouragement and sympathy, for they are the natural elements of the social construction of the future; it is they who can easily become producer associations; it is they who will be able to operate social tools and organize production.”[[#15EugeneVarlinWorkersSoci|15]]
+-----
-One of the main proponents of revolutionary trade unionism in the First International was Bakunin. In August 1869, he argued that, prior to the social revolution, the main task of the First International should be to “give an essentially ''economic character'' to workers’ agitation in every land; setting as its goal the reduction of working hours and higher wages” through “''the organization of the mass of workers'' and ''the creation of resistance'' [strike] funds.”[[#16MichaelBakuninSelectedTe|16]] In so doing, the First International would, Bakunin predicted, grow into a mass movement that unified and organized millions of workers across Europe, if not the entire world, into trade unions with “the capacity to replace the political world of the state, and the departing bourgeois.”[[#17BakuninSelectedTexts56|17]] In a revolutionary situation, the First International would, due to its extensive experience of collective struggle, be “capable of taking things in hand and capable of giving them a sense of direction that will be really salutary for the people.”[[#18BakuninSelectedTexts56|18]] This included trade unions being converted from organs of class struggle into organs of economic self-management. In 1871 Bakunin declared that “the organization of the sections of skilled workers, their federations within the International Association, and their representation through the chambers of labor . . . sow the living seed of a new social order which shall replace the bourgeois world. They create not only the ideas but also the very facts of the future.”[[#19QuotedinMaxNettlauASho|19]]
+==== Annotation 120 ====
-The strategy of revolutionary trade unionism was also embraced by the sections of the First International that would go onto form the anarchist movement. On April 4, 1870, what would become the Jura Federation passed a resolution at the La Chaux-de-Fonds Congress. It recommended to all sections of the First International that they “direct all their activity toward the federative constitution of labor organizations, the sole means of assuring the success of the social revolution. This federation is the true representation of labor, which absolutely must take place outside of the political governments.”[[#20QuotedinWolfgangEckhardt|20]] An almost identical resolution was passed by the Spanish section of the First International at its founding congress in 1870, attended by ninety delegates representing 40,000 members.[[#21EckhardtFirstSocialistSc|21]]
+Remember that, in materialist dialectics, objectiveness is the relative characteristic that every subject has of existing and developing externally to all other subjects [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.
-The first congress of the Saint-Imier International in 1872 declared that trade unions “increase the sense of fraternity and community of interests” among the proletariat, and “give some experience in collective living and prepare for the supreme struggle.”[[#22ResolutionsoftheSaintIm|22]] Given this, “our broad intent is to build solidarity and organization. We regard strikes as a precious means of struggle, but we have no illusions about their economic result. We accept them as a consequence of the antagonism between labor and capital; they have as a necessary consequence that workers should become more and more alive to the abyss that exists between the proletariat and bourgeoisie and that workers’ organizations should be strengthened, and, through ordinary economic struggles, the proletariat should be prepared for the great and final revolutionary struggle.”[[#23ResolutionsoftheSaintIm|23]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-39.png|''Dialectical Development consists of Quantity and Quality Shifts, which in turn derive from motion.'']]
-The resolutions of the 1877 Verviers Congress expanded upon this point: “Congress, while it recognizes the importance of trades’ organizations and recommends their formation on an international basis, declares that trades’ organizations that have as their goal only the improvement of workers’ situations, either through the reduction of working hours, or by the organization of wage levels, will never accomplish the emancipation of the proletariat, and that trade’s organizations should adopt as their principal goal the abolition of the proletariat” through the forceful expropriation of the ruling classes.[[#24ResolutionsoftheCongress|24]]
+Development is derived from motion as a process of quality shifting which arise from quantity changes which arise from motion [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. Since development is essentially an accumulation of motion, and motion is objective, development itself must also be objective.
-After the collapse of the Saint-Imier International, this strategy continued to be endorsed by a number of prominent anarchists. In 1884, Malatesta advocated “organizing the laboring masses into trades associations based on the principle of resistance and of attacking the bosses.”[[#25MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|25]] Three years earlier, Kropotkin wrote that anarchists should organize workers to wage war against capitalist exploitation “relentlessly, day by day, by the strike, by agitation, ''by every revolutionary means''” in order to build “a formidable MACHINE OF STRUGGLE AGAINST CAPITAL,” that united workers from every city, village, and trade into one union.[[#26PeterKropotkinDirectStru|26]] This process of class struggle would, at the same time, lead to an increasingly large number of workers becoming aware of their distinct class interests, developing a hatred of their oppressors, and acquiring the belief that capitalism must be overthrown.
+The ''Principle of Development'' states that development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.
-For Kropotkin, the primary contemporary example of this strategy in action were Spanish anarchists who “remain within the working class, they struggle with it, for it” and “bring the contribution of their energy to the workers’ organization and work to build up a force that will crush capital, come the day of the revolution: the revolutionary trades associations.”[[#27KropotkinDirectStruggle|27]] In so doing, they were not only furthering the cause of working-class self-emancipation, but were also being “faithful to the anarchist traditions of the International.”[[#28KropotkinDirectStruggle1|28]] The Spanish anarchists to which Kropotkin was referring had founded the Workers’ Federation of the Spanish Region, on September 24, 1881. The organization, which grew out of the Spanish section of the First International (FRE), was a federation of trade unions that by the end of 1882 was composed of 218 federations, 663 sections, and 57,934 members. Its main paper, ''La Revista Social'', had 20,000 subscribers.[[#29EsenweinAnarchistIdeology|29]]
+-----
-Spanish anarchists were not the only anarchists to actively participate within the trade union movement during the 1880s. Anarchists in Chicago, including the future Haymarket martyrs Albert Parsons and August Spies, attempted to build revolutionary trade unions and joined the struggle for the eight-hour day as a means to spread anarchist ideas.[[#30PaulAvrichTheHaymarketT|30]] In Turin and Piedmont, Italian anarchists played a key role within trade unions as organizers, delegates or editors of newspapers. This included Galleani, who had yet to adopt his later rejection of trade unions and formal organizations but was already beginning to move in this direction by 1889.[[#31CarlLevyGramsciandtheA|31]] The extent to which anarchists participated in trade union movements during the late nineteenth century only becomes fully apparent when one looks beyond the United States and Europe. Between 1870 and 1900 anarchists were instrumental in the creation of trade unions and the organization of strikes in, at least, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay.[[#32AngelJCappellettiAnarch|32]]
+==== Annotation 121 ====
-'''The Emergence of Revolutionary Syndicalism'''
+The “thing-in-itself” refers to the actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. Development arises from motion and self-motion [see Annotation 62, p. 59] with objective characteristics. Although human will can impact motion and development through conscious activity in the material world [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88], motion and development can and does occur without being dependent on human will. Human will is neither a requirement nor prerequisite for motion and development to occur.
-Within Europe, the strategy of revolutionary trade unionism came to be endorsed by an increasingly large number of anarchists in response to the London dockland strike of 1889, during which a strike by casual laborers grew over two weeks into a mass mobilization of 130,000 workers that shut down the entire dock and disrupted supply chains such that factories in multiple industries were forced to close. The strike, which ended with workers winning a wage increase, was reported on by Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Pouget in several anarchist papers.[[#33ConstanceBantmanFromTra|33]] In response to these events, Malatesta critiqued anarchists who had opposed participating in the trade union movement, and thereby enabled it to be taken over by moderates and parliamentary socialists. He argued that anarchists should instead “get back among the people . . . let us organize as many strikes as we can; let us see to it that the strike becomes a contagion and that, once one erupts, it spreads to ten or a hundred different trades in ten or a hundred towns.”[[#34MalatestaMethodofFreedom|34]]
+Development has the ''characteristic of generality'' because development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every idea and at every stage* of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every transformation process contains the possibility that it might lead to the birth of a new thing, phenomenon, or idea [through a change in quality, i.e. development].
-In parallel to these developments, revolutionary syndicalism as a self-organized working-class movement began to emerge in France, with the creation of the first ''bourse du travail'' in 1887, three years after trade unions had been legalized in the country. The bourses du travail were initially labor exchanges where workers could find employment, but over the next decade morphed into working-class cultural, educational, and mutual aid centers, and then eventually trade unions that collected strike funds and organized strikes. In 1892, the delegates of ten bourses, including Fernand Pelloutier, met at Saint-Etienne and formed a national federation. A few years later, in 1895, Pelloutier, who had since become an anarchist after moving to Paris in 1893, was appointed general secretary of the Federation of Bourses du Travail.[[#35VadimDamierAnarchoSyndic|35]]
+-----
-It was within this context that a significant number of French speaking anarchists came to publicly advocate anarchist participation within the trade union movement. This included Kropotkin, who wrote several articles for ''La Révolte ''between 1890 and 1891, that advocated revolutionary trade unionism.[[#36KropotkinDirectStruggle3|36]] A few years later, in October 1894, Pouget argued in ''Le Père Peinard'' that trade unions provided anarchists with an excellent space in which to act and make contact with the wider working class that existed beyond anarchist affinity groups and subcultures.[[#37JenningsSyndicalisminFra|37]] A year later in 1895, Pelloutier wrote an article called “Anarchism and the Workers’ Union” for ''Les Temps Nouveaux''. In it, he called on fellow anarchists to join the trade union movement en masse, and thereby spread their ideas among the working classes and instill in them the idea that they should self-manage their own affairs. Previous and ongoing anarchist participation within the trade union movement had, according to Pelloutier, already been successful in teaching workers “the true meaning of anarchism” and expanding their notion of what a trade union could be and become.[[#38PelloutierAnarchismandt|38]]
+==== Annotation 122 ====
-Pouget and Pelloutier’s call for anarchist participation within the trade union movement was even echoed by some anarchist groups who had previously been opposed to revolutionary trade unionism, due to their commitment to the iron law of wages. By 1899, ''Le Libertaire'' had begun to change its attitude and published an article by Luis Grandidier that claimed anarchists should “leave this ivory tower in which we are suffocating” and “enter the trade unions.”[[#39QuotedinDavidBerryAHis|39]] The ideas of French syndicalism also influenced anarchists from other countries. In 1900, Goldman visited France as a delegate for the international anarchist congress in Paris, which ended up being banned by the police and occurring in secret. During her visit, she became an advocate of syndicalism after seeing it in action as a social movement, and hearing so many positive things about Pelloutier. In 1913, she claimed that “on my return to America I immediately began to propagate Syndicalist ideas, especially Direct Action and the General Strike.”[[#40EmmaGoldmanRedEmmaSpeak|40]]
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> In materialist dialectics, “stage” (or “stage of development”) refers to the current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into.
-By the time of Pelloutier’s premature death in 1901 at the age of thirty-three, the National Federation of Bourses du Travail was composed of sixty-five bourses to which 782 dues-paying local unions were affiliated. A year later in 1902, the federation merged with the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) to form a new CGT. This resulted in the emergence of revolutionary syndicalism as a mass movement.[[#41WayneThorpeTheWorkersT|41]] The CGT had, according to its own congress reports, a membership of 100,000 workers at its refounding in 1902. Over the next decade, it rapidly grew to 300,000 members by 1906, and 600,000 by 1912. Of these 600,000 members, an estimated 400,000 paid their dues. The scale of the CGT can only be understood relative to its historical context. In 1912, an estimated 1,027,000 workers belonged to a trade union in France. The CGT therefore contained, if you limit the figure to dues-paying members, almost half of the unionized workers in France.[[#42RidleyRevolutionarySyndic|42]]
+---------
-The CGT was not itself a majority anarchist organization and contained several different factions. This included, but was not limited to, reformist syndicalists; anarchists who also identified as revolutionary syndicalists; anarchists who did not identify as revolutionary syndicalists; and revolutionary syndicalists who did not view themselves as anarchists. Nevertheless, anarchists did exert a significant influence on the organization in the early years of its existence.[[#43DamierAnarchoSyndicalism|43]] In 1901, the anarchists Georges Yvetot and Paul Delesalle were elected as the general secretary and vice secretary of the National Federation of Bourses du Travail. That same year Pouget, who had been the editor of the CGT’s paper ''La Voix du peuple'' since its creation in 1900, was elected as the vice secretary of the CGT. Pouget would remain in this position until late 1908, when he was briefly imprisoned for his involvement in the CGT’s campaign for the eight-hour day and subsequently, after his release on October 31, ceased to be active within the organization. Delesalle, likewise, resigned from his position as vice secretary of the National Federation of Bourses du Travail at the CGT’s 1908 congress of Marseilles, and instead focused his energies on running a second-hand bookshop and publishing radical literature. By 1914, despite anarchist influence within the CGT waning, roughly 100,000 members of the CGT supported anarchist positions at congresses through their elected delegates.[[#44JenningsSyndicalisminFra|44]]
+Development has the ''characteristic of diversity'' because every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. Things and phenomena will develop differently in different spaces and times. Simultaneously, within their own processes of development, things, phenomena, and ideas are impacted by other things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as by many other factors and historical conditions. Such impacts can change the direction of development of things, phenomena, and ideas. They can even temporarily set development back, and/or can lead to growth in one aspect but degeneration in another.
-The ideas of revolutionary syndicalism were formally crystalized by the CGT at its October 1906 congress, where it adopted the Charter of Amiens with 830 votes in favor and only eight opposed. The Charter, which was drafted in a restaurant by Victor Griffuelhes, Louis Niel, André Morizet, Pouget, and Delesalle, emerged out of a compromise between the revolutionary and reformist factions within the CGT.[[#45ThorpeWorkersThemselves|45]] It declared that the CGT sought to unite “all workers conscious of the struggle to be conducted for the disappearance of the system of wage-earning and management” regardless of “their political schooling” in order to win immediate improvements, and eventually overthrow capitalism via expropriation and the general strike.[[#46QuotedinAWZurbruggAna|46]] It affirmed
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">the complete liberty of members to participate, outside the union, in whatsoever forms of struggle conform to their political or philosophical views, and limits itself to requesting, in reciprocity, that they should not introduce into the unions opinions held outside it. As for the organization, Congress resolves, that since economic action must be conducted directly against employers for syndicalism to achieve its maximum effect, the organization of the confederation, insofar as they are unions should not concern themselves with parties and sects, which, outside and alongside, may pursue social transformation in complete freedom.[[#47QuotedinZurbruggAnarchis|47]]</div>
+==== Annotation 123 ====
-The charter’s advocacy of political neutrality was worded in such a manner that revolutionaries and reformists could interpret the text in contradictory ways. For revolutionaries, the charter only committed the CGT to independence from political parties and so parliamentarism. Reformists, in comparison, interpreted the charter as entailing a much stricter commitment to independence from all forms of politics, including anarchism. This had the effect that, when the CGT engaged in propaganda campaigns against militarism and patriotism, reformists viewed this as contradicting its commitment to political neutrality.[[#48JenningsSyndicalisminFra|48]] This disagreement over the meaning of political neutrality went alongside multiple attempts by some reformist factions within the CGT to establish a formal alliance or tie between the trade union and socialist parties.[[#49NicholasPapayanisAlphonse|49]]
+Because development has the characteristic of generality and the characteristic of diversity, the principle of diversity in unity and unity in diversity also applies to development [see: Annotation 107, p. 110].
-Anarchists who were revolutionary syndicalists advocated political neutrality because they believed that the function of a trade union was to unite workers on the basis of their shared class interests, rather than on the basis of the specific school of political thought they subscribed to. The trade union, to quote Pouget, “groups together those who work against those who live by human exploitation: it brings together interests and not opinions.”[[#50QuotedinJenningsSyndical|50]] He held that the CGT should be open to all workers, whatever their political or religious beliefs, including those amenable to the state. In theory, workers would join the trade union “imbued with the teachings of some (philosophical, political, religious, etc.) school of thought or another” and, through their experiences of engaging in direct action, “have their rough edges knocked off until they are left only with the principles to which they all subscribe: the yearning for improvement and comprehensive emancipation.”[[#51PougetThePartyofLabour|51]]
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-This perspective on trade unions was articulated by the anarchist and revolutionary syndicalist Pierre Monatte on August 28 at the 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam. According to Monatte,
+Materialist dialectics upholds that the principle of development is the scientific theoretical basis that we must use to guide our perception of the world and to improve the world. Therefore, in our perception and reality, we have to have a ''development viewpoint''.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">instead of opinion-based syndicalism, which gave rise to anarchist trade-unions in, for example, Russia and to Christian and social-democratic trade unions in Belgium and Germany, anarchists must provide the option of French-style syndicalism, a neutral—or more precisely, independent—form of syndicalism. Just as there is only one [working] class, so there should be only one single workers’ organization, one single syndicate, for each trade and in each town. Only on this condition can the class struggle—no longer facing the obstacle of arguments between the various schools of schools of thought and rival sects on every point—develop to its fullest extent and have the greatest possible effect.[[#52MaurizioAntonioliedThe|52]]</div>
+According to Lenin: “dialectical logic requires that an object should be considered in development, in change, in ‘self-movement.”<ref>''Once Again On The Trade Unions,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921. See also: ''Mode and Forms of Matter'', p. 59.</ref>
-From this, it followed that revolutionary syndicalism was sufficient unto itself. By this, he meant that revolutionary syndicalist trade unions could, by themselves, abolish class society. They could: (a) unite workers as a class; (b) organize direct action that enabled workers to develop radical capacities, drives, and consciousness; (c) launch the social revolution through a general strike; and (d) provide the organizational framework through which workers would take over and self-manage the economy. For Monatte to say that “syndicalism is sufficient unto itself” was merely to say “that the now-mature working class finally intends to be sufficient unto itself and not to entrust its emancipation to anyone other than itself.”[[#53AntonioliedInternational|53]] This position was shared by Pouget who argued in 1908 that “the trade union is . . . sufficient for all purposes” including “the expropriation of capital and the reorganization of society.”[[#54EmilePougetTheBasisof|54]]
+This development viewpoint [which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly developing, and that development is thus unavoidable] requires us to overcome conservatism, stagnation<ref>See Annotation 62, p. 59.</ref>, and prejudice, which are all opposed to development.
-Anarchists who advocated revolutionary syndicalism held that syndicalism was sufficient unto itself because trade unions could independently develop a large organized working-class social movement with the necessary radical traits to launch a social revolution and establish an anarchist society. They thought that, in order to achieve this, trade unions had to be politically neutral toward different left-wing factions, including political parties, and therefore not have an explicitly anarchist program. This was because they believed that the goal of a trade union was to unite as many workers as possible on the basis of their shared class interests, rather than because of their shared ideological commitment to, for example, anarchism or Marxism. Anarchists who were revolutionary syndicalists did write critiques of political parties and parliamentarism, but they did not think that such positions should be the official position of the trade union. The trade union only had to be independent of political parties, rather than being explicitly opposed to them.
+-----
-The CGT was the first self-described revolutionary syndicalist trade union, but it was not the only one. After the CGT’s merger with the National Federation of Bourses du Travail in 1902, numerous trade unions around the world either came to adopt syndicalist programs, or were founded as syndicalist organizations. This occurred due to the combined activity of anarchist syndicalists and syndicalists who did not identify as anarchists, acting as a militant minority during a global wave of working-class revolt against the ruling classes. In Europe and the United States, at least seven syndicalist trade unions emerged between 1905 and 1912: the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, Dutch National Secretariat of Labor (NAS), American IWW, Central Organization of Swedish Workers (SAC), Spanish National Confederation of Labor (CNT), Italian Syndicalist Union (USI), and Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG), which would develop into the Free Workers’ Union of Germany (FAUD). In England the Industrial Syndicalist Education League (ISEL) was founded in order to spread syndicalism within existing reformist trade unions.[[#55Forabroadoverviewofthes|55]]
+==== Annotation 124 ====
-Anarchists in Latin America were actively involved in the formation of various syndicalist trade unions, including the Argentine Regional Workers’ Federation (FORA) in 1904, Uruguayan Regional Workers’ Federation (FORU) in 1905, and Brazilian Workers’ Confederation (COB) in 1906. This was followed by the creation of the Peruvian Regional Workers’ Federation (FORP) and Bolivian International Workers’ Federation in 1912. Anarchists in Cuba organized trade unions and strikes throughout the early 1900s, and this culminated in the founding of the Workers Federation of Havana in 1922, and then the Cuban National Confederation of Labor in 1925. Branches of the IWW were established around the world, including Canada, Mexico, Chile, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. A series of trade unions were also founded by anarchists in Asia, including China’s first modern trade unions in 1917 and the All-Japan Libertarian Federation of Labor Unions (Zenkoku Rôdô Kumiai Jiyû Rengôkai) in 1926.[[#56DamierAnarchoSyndicalism|56]]
+Conservatism and prejudice are mindsets which seek to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, we must avoid and fight against such stagnant mindsets.
-The fact that multiple trade unions in Europe, North America, and Latin America embraced syndicalism shortly after the appearance of the CGT can make it appear that they were established simply due to revolutionaries hearing of and deciding to copy the French example. This narrative ignores the fact that they were created after an extended period of anarchists, and other socialists, actively participating within trade union movements. In the United States, for example, Italian anarchists helped organize strikes and founded local trade unions during the 1890s and early 1900s. After the founding of the IWW in 1905, which anarchists participated in, these anarchist-led trade unions decided to affiliate with the IWW and form sections, such as the IWW Silk Workers’ Union Local 152. Italian anarchists within the IWW then continued to act as a militant minority and push the class struggle forward. This included Local 152, which was the main organizing force behind the IWW’s 1913 strike among silkworkers in Paterson, New Jersey. This is not to say that the Italian anarchists were not influenced by French syndicalism at all. Italian anarchist papers, including ''La Questione Sociale'', published translations of French syndicalist texts prior to the founding of the IWW. The actions of Italian anarchists cannot, however, be entirely reduced to this influence.[[#57KenyonZimmerImmigrantsAg|57]]
+According to this development viewpoint, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind. On the other hand, the path of development is a dialectical process that is reversible and full of contradictions. Therefore, we must be aware of this complexity in our analysis and planning. This means we need to have a ''historical viewpoint'' [see Annotation 114, p. 116] which accounts for the diversity and complexity of development in perceiving and solving issues in reality.
-This point only becomes more apparent when examining the history of syndicalism in Latin America. In Argentina, anarchists organized trade unions and strikes from 1887 onward. This included Spanish and Italian immigrants who had previous experiences of participating in anarchist-led trade unions, such as Errico Malatesta, Pietro Gori, Antonio Pellicer Paraire, Gregorio Inglán Lafarga, and José Prat. The participation of anarchists and state socialists in the labor movement led to the founding of the Argentine Workers’ Federation (FOA) in 1901. After a series of conflicts between anarchist and state socialist workers within the trade union, the anarchist wing emerged as the majority, and the state socialists left the organization in June 1902. That year, the FOA organized a series of strikes that, in November, escalated into the first general strike in Argentina’s history. In 1904, the FOA was renamed the FORA. The FORA then explicitly committed itself to anarchist communism in 1905. In Latin America it was the FORA, rather than just the French CGT, which served as a key source of inspiration for how to organize a revolutionary trade union.[[#58CappellettiAnarchisminLa|58]]
+-----
-In addition, French syndicalist theory repeated ideas that had previously been articulated and implemented by anarchists in multiple countries over several decades. In Spain, where anarchists had organized within trade unions since the 1870s, the anarchist journal ''Natura'' responded to the translation of a pamphlet on syndicalism by Pouget in 1904 by claiming it covered topics “well known here” and showed that “the spirit of free syndicalism, common in Spain, is making strides in France.”[[#59QuotedinAngelSmithAnarc|59]] Anselmo Lorenzo, who translated pamphlets by Pouget and Yvetot, held that the French syndicalists had “returned to us, amplified, corrected and perfectly systematized, ideas with which the Spanish anarchists inspired the French.”[[#60QuotedinASmithAnarchis|60]]
+==== Annotation 125 ====
-The Spanish anarchists were not unique in this respect. During this period, many anarchists looked upon the theory and practice of revolutionary syndicalism as a direct continuation of collectivism within the First International. Pouget himself wrote that the CGT emanated from and was the “historical continuation” of “the International Working Men’s Association” and “the federalists or autonomists” within it who opposed the conquest of state power.[[#61PougetThePartyofLabour|61]] In 1907, Malatesta remarked, during his speech at the International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam, that what some syndicalists considered to be a new path had already been “established and followed within the international” by “the first anarchists.”[[#62AntonioliedInternationa|62]] That same year, Kropotkin wrote in the preface to a pamphlet on syndicalism by the Georgian anarchist Georgi Gogeliia that “the current opinions of the French syndicalists are organically linked with the early ideas formed by the left wing of the International.”[[#63QuotedinNettlauShortHis|63]] The connection between revolutionary syndicalism and anarchism was, in addition to this, understood by at least some Marxists at the time. In 1909, Karl Kautsky, who was one of the most influential Marxists within the Social Democratic Party of Germany, wrote that “syndicalism” was “the latest variety of anarchism” and that “the syndicalism of the Romance countries” was committed to “anti-parliamentarism” due to its “anarchistic origin.”[[#64KarlKautskyRoadtoPower|64]]
+Materialist dialectics requires us to consider the complexity and constant motion of reality. By comparison, the metaphysical viewpoint (which considers all things, phenomena, and ideas as static, isolated entities which have linear and simple processes of development) stands as a barrier to understanding this complexity and incorporating it into our worldview. Thus, it is vital that we develop comprehensive and historical viewpoints which acknowledge the diversity and complexity of reality.
-Despite the connection between the politics of revolutionary syndicalism and the collectivists of the First International, a growing number of syndicalist anarchists came to believe that the revolutionary syndicalism of the CGT was not sufficient to achieve a social revolution that would abolish class society and build an anarchist society. These critics came to embrace either syndicalism-plus or anarcho-syndicalism. Anarchists who advocated syndicalism-plus agreed with revolutionary syndicalists that trade unions should be politically neutral but explicitly rejected the idea that syndicalism was sufficient unto itself. They held that anarchists had to both actively participate within the trade union movement and at the same time maintain an independent existence by organizing outside trade unions within specific anarchist organizations. For proponents of syndicalism-plus, these specific anarchist organizations were essential for spreading anarchist values, theory, and practices among the working classes both in and outside of trade unions. They argued, in short, that revolutionaries should create a syndicalist trade union plus a specific anarchist organization. The details of this position will be discussed in chapter 10 as part of my overview of organizational dualism.
+In summary, as a science of common relations and development, Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectics serve a very important role in perception and practice. Engels affirmed the role of materialist dialectics in this passage:
-Anarcho-syndicalists, unlike proponents of revolutionary syndicalism and syndicalism-plus, believed that trade unions should not be politically neutral, and had to instead be explicitly committed to achieving an anarchist society through anarchist means. This typically took the form of trade unions advocating an anarchist society as their end goal, and opposing state socialist strategies and political parties within the union’s constitution, declaration of principles, or congress resolutions. Some anarcho-syndicalists argued that specific anarchist organizations should be formed in parallel with anarcho-syndicalist trade unions, while others opposed it.
+“An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics, with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.”
-'''Anarcho-Syndicalism'''
+Lenin also said: “Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development, but not a patchwork of bits and pieces.”<ref>''Once Again On The Trade Unions'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.</ref>
-The phrase “anarcho-syndicalist,” like many left-wing terms, began life as an insult. The earliest known usage of the term occurred in 1907, when some French state socialists used it as a pejorative against revolutionary syndicalists who advocated the independence of trade unions from political parties.[[#65WayneThorpeUneasyFamily|65]] During this same period, anarchists in Argentina and Russia, who do not appear to have been aware of one another’s ideas, came to argue that trade unions should be committed to an explicitly anarchist program. This position was not initially referred to as “anarcho-syndicalism.” On August 26, 1905, the FORA explicitly committed itself to an anarchist program at its fifth congress, which was attended by delegates representing ninety-eight trade unions. It was agreed that “the Fifth Congress of the Regional Workers’ Federation of Argentina consistent with the philosophical principles that have provided the ''raison d’être'' of the organization of workers’ federations declares: We advise and recommend to all our followers the broadest possible study and propaganda with the aim of instilling in workers the economic and philosophical principles of anarchist-communism. This education, not content with achieving the eight-hour day, will bring total emancipation and, consequently, the social evolution we pursue.”[[#66QuotedinCappellettiAnarc|66]]
+== III. Basic Pairs of Categories of Materialist Dialectics ==
-Independently, anarchists in Russia also came to advocate the same approach. A notable example is the South Russian Group of Syndicalist Anarchists, whose membership included factory workers, sailors, dockworkers, bakers, and tailors. Yakob Isaevich Kirillovsky, who was the group’s main theorist and wrote under the pen name Daniil Novomirsky, advocated what would later be called anarcho-syndicalism in his 1907 book ''The Programme of Syndicalist Anarchism''.[[#67AlexandreSkirdaFacingthe|67]] He argued that anarchists should participate in the revolutionary trade union movement in order to “make that movement anarchist,” advocating the formation of “anarchist revolutionary syndicates which are bent on bringing syndicalist anarchism to pass.”[[#68QuotedinSkirdaFacingthe|68]] It is not a coincidence that, in August 1907, the revolutionary syndicalist and anarchist Monatte contrasted the politically “neutral” trade unions he advocated with “anarchist trade-unions in, for example, Russia.”[[#69AntonioliedInternationa|69]]
+''Category*'' is the most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another.
-Anarcho-syndicalism continued to be advocated by anarchists a decade later in the Russian revolution. On June 4, 1917, the Petrograd Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda adopted a founding declaration of principles that proclaimed that the social revolution had to be “anti-statist in its method of struggle, Syndicalist in its economic content and federalist in its political tasks,” with “the Anarcho-Communist ideal” as its goal.[[#70GolosTrudaDeclarationof|70]] The meaning of Russian “anarcho-syndicalism” can also be seen in ''The Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists'' (1926), which was written by Russian and Ukrainian anarchists who had fled to Germany and then France in order to escape being killed or imprisoned by the Bolshevik government. The'' Platform'' carefully distinguishes between “revolutionary syndicalism,” which exists “solely as a trades movement of the toilers possessed of no specific social and political theory,” and “Anarcho-syndicalism,” which advocates “the creation of anarchist-type unions.”[[#71TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|71]]
+-----
-The term “anarcho-syndicalist” did not immediately catch on and spread outside the Russian anarchist movement. Alexander Schapiro, who had been active within the anarcho-syndicalist movement during the Russian revolution, claimed years later that “when the Russian anarchists nearly a half a century ago pioneered the hoisting of the anarcho-syndicalist colors, the word was rather coldly received by the anarchist movement.”[[#72AlexanderSchapiroIntrodu|72]] Anarchists instead continued to refer to their ideas as revolutionary syndicalism, while advocating what Russian anarchists called anarcho-syndicalism.
+==== Annotation 126 ====
-This can be seen in the resolutions of the 1913 International Syndicalist Congress in London, which was organized in order to establish a revolutionary alternative to the state socialist Second International and the reformist International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centers (ISNTUC). It was attended by delegates representing the major syndicalist trade unions in Europe, including the FVdG, USI, NAS, SAC, ISEL, and the Catalonian Regional Confederation of the CNT. Only a few French trade union sections affiliated with the CGT attended. This was because the CGT supported participating in the much larger ISNTUC in order to radicalize it from within. The congress was not a strictly European affair, and was also attended by delegates representing the COB, the explicitly anarchist FORA, the politically neutral Regional Workers’ Confederation of Argentina, and the Havana Union of Café Employees. According to Schapiro, the thirty-three delegates of the London Congress represented in total roughly sixty local, regional, and national trade unions that had a collective membership of 250,000 members.[[#73ThorpeWorkersThemselves|73]]
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> ''Translation note:'' In Vietnamese, the word “phạm trù” is used here, which translates in this context more closely to the English philosophical term “category of being,” which means “the most general, fundamental, or broadest class of entities.” “Category of being” is sometimes simplified in English-language philosophical discourse to “category,” which we have chosen to do here for ease of reading and to better reflect the way it reads in the original Vietnamese.
-Despite the congress featuring a great deal of personal animosity and conflict between certain delegates, it nonetheless succeeded in passing a declaration of principles and establishing an International Syndicalist Information Bureau based in Amsterdam. The declaration of principles broke with the CGT’s Charter of Amiens and its commitment to political neutrality by endorsing a number of anarchist positions, including the abolition of the state and an opposition to state socialist strategies. It claimed that
+Every science has its own systems of categories that reflect the aspects, attributes, and basic relations that fall within its scope of study. For example, mathematics contains the categories “arithmetic,” “geometry,” “point,” “plane,” and “constant.” Physics contains the categories of “mass,” “speed,” “acceleration,” and “force,” and so on. Economics includes “commodity,” “value,” “price,” “monetary,” and “profit” categories.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">this Congress, recognizing that the working class of every country suffers from capitalist slavery and State oppression, declares for the class struggle and international solidarity, and for the organization of the workers into autonomous industrial Unions on a basis of free association. Strives for the immediate uplifting of the material and intellectual interests of the working class, and for the overthrow of the capitalist system and the State. . . . Recognizes that, internationally, Trade Unions will only succeed when they cease to be divided by political and religious differences; declares that their fight is an economic fight, meaning thereby that they do not intend to reach their aim by trusting their cause to governing bodies or their members, but by using Direct Action, by workers themselves relying on the strength of their economic organizations. . . . Congress appeals to the workers of all countries to organize into autonomous industrial unions, and to unite themselves on the basis of international solidarity, in order finally to obtain their emancipation from capitalism and the State.[[#74TheLondonDeclaration191|74]]</div>
+Every such category reflects only the common relations found within the specific fields that fall within the scope of study of a specific science.
-From 1919 onward, multiple syndicalist trade unions moved in an increasingly anarcho-syndicalist direction. The idea that it was necessary to commit trade unions to an explicitly anarchist program largely gained popularity in reaction to a wider international context. The politically neutral CGT had, in contrast to the majority of the anarchist movement, recently abandoned its commitment to working-class internationalism and collaborated with the French state in World War I. Around the same time, a one-party Bolshevik dictatorship was established during the 1917 Russian revolution, which proceeded to dismantle organs of workers’ control and violently repress other forms of socialism—including anarchism—in order to maintain a system of minority rule. This created a situation in which many anarchists felt compelled to ensure that trade unions were opposed to state socialist strategies, and were not taken over by Bolshevik supporters.[[#75DamierAnarchoSyndicalism|75]]
+''Categories of materialist dialectics'', on the other hand, such as “matter,” “consciousness,” “motion,” “contradiction,” “quality,” “quantity,” “reason,” and “result,” are different. Categories of materialist dialectics reflect the most general aspects and attributes, as well as the most basic and general relations, of not just some specific fields of study, but of the whole of reality, including all of nature, society and human thought.
-Although the CNT had been founded in 1910, it was not originally committed to an explicitly anarchist program. This began to change in late 1918, when the National Conference of Anarchist Groups called on anarchists in Spain to actively participate in the CNT and take on positions of responsibility within the trade union, such as delegates within committees.[[#76JuanGomezCasasAnarchists|76]] The CNT passed a resolution at its December 1919 Second Congress, held at the La Comedia Theater in Madrid, that declared that the CNT was “a staunch advocate of the principles of the First International as upheld by Bakunin.”[[#77QuotedinJosePeiratsThe|77]] A number of key delegates, including the organization’s national committee, went further and signed a declaration of principles that was unanimously approved by the congress:
+Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has many properties, including: a reason for existing in its current form, a process of motion and change, contradictions, content, form, and so on. These properties are aspects, attributes, and relations that are reflected in the categories of materialist dialectics. Therefore, the relationship between the categories of specific sciences and categories of materialist dialectics is a dialectical relationship between the Private and the Common [see ''Private and Common,'' p. 128].
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Bearing in mind that the tendency most strongly manifested in the bosom of workers’ organizations in every country is the one aiming at the complete and absolute moral, economic and political liberation of mankind, and considering that this goal cannot be attained until such time as the land, means of production and exchange have been socialized and the overweening power of the state has vanished, the undersigned delegates suggest that, in accordance with the essential postulates of the First International, it declares the desired end of the CNT to be anarchist communism.[[#78QuotedinPeiratsTheCNTi|78]]</div>
+-----
-That same month, the FVdG transformed itself into the FAUD at its Twelfth Congress, attended by 109 delegates representing over 110,000 members. As part of this transformation, the FAUD asked Rocker, recently released from the British internment camp where he had been imprisoned for opposing World War I, to write a new declaration of principles for the organization. Rocker’s speech on the principles of syndicalism, which was passed by the congress with minor changes, contained what would become the defining features of anarcho-syndicalism.[[#79ThorpeWorkersThemselves|79]] Although Rocker presented himself as just describing what syndicalists believe, he was in fact articulating a specific understanding of syndicalism that was not shared by everybody who used the label.
+==== Annotation 127 ====
-According to Rocker the aim of syndicalism is the creation of “free, i.e. stateless, communism, which finds its expression in the motto ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’”[[#80RockerDeclarationofthe|80]] He not only claimed that syndicalists should aim for an anarchist society, but also that they should use anarchist means to get there. He described syndicalists as advocates of revolutionary trade unionism, direct action, and the simultaneous abolition of capitalism and the state. This went alongside a rejection of trying to build socialism through parliamentarism, the conquest of state power, and the nationalization of the economy. These anarchist strategies were explicitly grounded by Rocker in the unity of means and ends. He wrote, “syndicalists are firmly grounded in direct action and support all endeavors and struggles of the people that do not conflict with their goals – the abolition of economic monopolies and of the tyranny of the state.”[[#81RockerDeclarationofthe|81]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-40.png|''The categories of specific sciences are limited to the scope of study, while the categories of materialist dialectics encompass all things, phenomena, and ideas.'']]
-The final shift toward the theory of anarcho-syndicalism as an idea, but not yet as a label, occurred with the formation of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA), at an illegal congress held in Berlin between December 25, 1922, and January 2, 1923. The congress was attended by over thirty delegates representing an estimated 1.5 to 2 million workers within various trade unions around the world. This included the FAUD, SAC, FORA-V, USI, and NAS as well as the Mexican General Confederation of Workers (CGT-M), Norwegian Syndicalist Federation (NSF), Dutch National Secretariat of Labor (NAS) and Danish Syndicalist Propaganda Association. The delegates representing the CNT were arrested in Paris while traveling to Berlin, and so were unable to attend. The Portuguese General Confederation of Labor (CGT-P) sent a written endorsement. The delegates representing the Chilean Industrial Workers of the World (IWW-C) and FORU arrived too late to participate in the congress.[[#82Foranoverviewofthecongr|82]]
+Unlike the categories contained within specific scientific fields, the philosophical categories of materialist dialectics can be used to analyze and define all things, phenomena, and ideas. The categories of specific scientific fields and the materialist dialectical categories have a Private/Common dialectical relationship [discussed on the next page].
-The congress adopted a declaration of ten principles of “revolutionary syndicalism,” which had been agreed upon at a previous conference in June and were written by Rocker. The principles, which Rocker had based on his earlier speech in 1919 at the founding congress of the FAUD, committed the IWMA to an anarcho-syndicalist program in all but name.[[#83GarnerGoalsandMeans126|83]] This occurred as part of syndicalist anarchists formally breaking with the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU), which was affiliated with the Bolshevik-led Communist Third International, after the congresses of the RILU and Comintern declared themselves in favor of core state-socialist tenets that syndicalist anarchists could not subscribe to. Those tenets included parliamentarism, the seizure of state power by a Communist Party, joining reformist unions, centralization, and the subordination of trade unions to Communist parties.[[#84ThorpeWorkersThemselves|84]]
+-----
-The IWMA’s declaration of principles were, unlike those of the RILU and Comintern, explicitly in favor of the anarchist goal of “free communism” and the establishment of “economic communes and administrative organs run by the workers in the fields and factories, forming a system of free councils without subordination to any authority or political party.”[[#85IWADeclarationofthePri|85]] This goal was to be achieved through anarchist means: the activity of workers themselves, direct action, the general strike, and freely federated, bottom-up organizational structures. The state socialist strategies of parliamentary activity and conquering political power were explicitly rejected because “no form of statism, even the so-called ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat,’ can ever be an instrument for human liberation . . . on the contrary, it will always be the creator of new monopolies and new privileges.”[[#86IWADeclarationofthePri|86]] The “defense of the revolution” would “be the task of the masses themselves and their economic organizations, and not of a particular military body, or any other organization, outside of the economic associations.”[[#87IWADeclarationofthePri|87]]
+As a science of general relations and development, materialist dialectics summarizes the most general relations of every field of nature, society, and human thought into basic category pairs: ''Private and Common, Reason and Result, Obviousness and Randomness, Content and Form, Essence and Phenomenon, Possibility and Reality.''
-After its founding congress, a total of thirty trade unions affiliated with the IWMA. Of these, fifteen were from Europe, fourteen were from Latin America, and one was from Asia. Within Europe, this included the FAUD, USI, SAC, NSF, CNT, and CGT-P. They were joined by the Dutch Syndicalist Federation (NSV), which split from the NAS in 1923, and the French Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labor (CGTSR), which split from the United General Confederation of Labor in 1926. Other European sections included the Russian Anarcho-Syndicalist Minority; Bulgarian Federation of Autonomous Unions; Polish Trade Union Opposition, Romanian anarcho-syndicalist propaganda organization; and anarcho-syndicalist groups in Austria, Denmark, Belgium, and Switzerland. In Latin America, the FORA-V, CGT-M, IWW-C, and FORU affiliated in 1923–4. This was followed by the affiliation of the Regional Workers’ Federation of Paraguay (FORP), and various workers’ federations in Brazil, including those based in Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, and São Paulo.[[#88Thorpemistakenlyclaimstha|88]] Several propaganda groups or local unions in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Cuba, Costa Rica, and El Salvador also affiliated. The American IWW did not affiliate with the IWMA, despite multiple requests to do so, and the support of various sections, including the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union.[[#89ThorpeWorkersThemselves|89]]
+-----
-The one trade union in Asia that affiliated with the IWMA was the All-Japan Libertarian Federation of Labor Unions. It had, according to Rocker, “entered into formal alliance with the IWMA” and “held connections with the Bureau of the IWMA in Berlin.”[[#90RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|90]] The IWMA also maintained contact with anarchist groups in China and India. The founding December 1922 Berlin congress of the IWMA had itself been attended by a group of Indian revolutionaries, including M.P.T. Acharya. Having been persuaded of the truth of anarchism, they set up a committee to send anarcho-syndicalist literature into India. The British empire responded by banning the importation of IWMA literature into the country.[[#91OleBirkLaursenAnarchis|91]]
+==== Annotation 128 ====
-It was only after the founding of the IWMA that anarchists within Europe began to call themselves anarcho-syndicalists on a significant scale. This shift in language can be seen in the fact that, in 1925, Malatesta felt the need to critique what he called “Anarcho-Syndicalists” within the periodical ''Pensiero e Volontà''.[[#92MalatestaMethodofFreedom|92]] In September 1927, Fabbri distinguished between “a labor organization open to all workers, and thereby having no particular ideological program” and “the anarcho-syndicalists in Germany and Russia” who advocate a “labor organization which has an anarchist program, tactics and ideology.”[[#93LuigiFabbriAboutaProje|93]] A year later, the French anarchist Sébastien Faure wrote a text advocating a synthesis of the different forms of anarchism, and included “anarcho-syndicalism” as one of the three main “anarchist currents.”[[#94SebastienFaureTheAnarch|94]] Valeriano Orobón Fernández, who worked within the secretariat of the IWMA from 1926 to 1931, wrote a letter to Ángel Pestaña on August 9, 1930, claiming:
+Every individual materialist dialectical category has a dialectical relationship with another materialist dialectical category. Thus, all categories in materialist dialectics are presented as ''category pairs.'' So, a ''category pair'' is simply a pair of categories within materialist dialectics which have a dialectical relationship with one another.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">The evolution of politics following the war has spelt the end of the syndical neutrality of the Amiens Charter. In the whole world there is not a syndicalist organization existing today that does not practice politics, either directly or as an appendage of a political party. The CNT brought itself up to date with this international trend, adopting at the congress at La Comedia [Madrid 1919] an ideological platform, and, at the Zaragoza conference, a political platform. The CNT is therefore a complete organization. Whereas pure syndicalism is not “sufficient in itself,” anarcho-syndicalism clearly is.[[#95QuotedinGarnerGoalsand|95]]</div>
+Note that the this formalized system of category pairs reflects many decades of work by Vietnamese philosophical and political scientists based on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other socialist thinkers. Also note that these are not the only category pairs that can be discussed; there are potentially an infinite number of categories which can be used in materialist dialectical analysis. However, universal category pairs, which can be applied to analyze any and all things, phenomena, and ideas, are much fewer and farther between. That said, the universal category pairs discussed in this book are the ones which have most often been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other prominent materialist dialecticians.
-It is important to note that this shift in language did not occur everywhere at once. In France, the CGTSR was founded in 1926 after a series of splits within the CGT. Its founding declaration of principles, the Lyon Charter, explicitly committed the trade union to opposition to political parties. Despite this, members of the organization referred to themselves as “revolutionary syndicalists” or “federalist anti-statist revolutionary syndicalists,” rather than “anarcho-syndicalist,” until 1937.[[#96BerryFrenchAnarchistMove|96]] That year, Pierre Besnard, who was the secretary of the CGTSR, publicly used the term “anarcho-syndicalist” for the first time to describe the ideology of the trade union he belonged to.[[#97BerryFrenchAnarchistMove|97]] During his speech, he stated that “Anarcho-Syndicalism is an organizational and organized movement. It draws its doctrine from Anarchism and its organizational format from Revolutionary Syndicalism.”[[#98PierreBesnardAnarchoSyn|98]]
+=== 1. Private and Common ===
-The view that anarcho-syndicalism was the synthesis of anarchist theory with revolutionary syndicalist modes of organization was repeated and popularized by Rocker in his 1938 book ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice'', but with one major difference. Unlike Besnard, Rocker did not specify that he was describing what it is for an organization or movement to be anarcho-syndicalist. He instead wrote as if he was describing anarcho-syndicalism as a set of ideas such that an anarcho-syndicalist is anyone who advocates both anarchist theory and syndicalist organizational structures, rather than the position that trade unions should have a syndicalist organizational structure and be committed to an anarchist program.[[#99RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|99]] This had the effect that the distinction between anarcho-syndicalism and revolutionary syndicalism was blurred, because if anarcho-syndicalism is an ideology based on the combination of anarchist theory with revolutionary syndicalist forms of organization, then anarchists who were revolutionary syndicalists, such as Pouget, could now be viewed as anarcho-syndicalists. Doing so would be a mistake, due to the important debates and differences between revolutionary syndicalist anarchists, who advocated politically neutral trade unions, and anarcho-syndicalists, who advocated explicitly anarchist trade unions.
+==== a. Categories of Private and Common ====
-Rocker not only blurred the distinction between anarcho-syndicalism and revolutionary syndicalism. He wrote that “Anarcho-Syndicalism had maintained its hold upon organized labor [within Spain] from the days of the First International” and in so doing anachronistically imposed anarcho-syndicalism as a category onto the prehistory of syndicalism before the term and idea had been formed.[[#100RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|100]] Rocker’s 1946 essay, “Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism,” which is an abridged and slightly revised version of ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice'', only made things more unclear for future generations.'' ''He repeated his previous claim that anarcho-syndicalism is a synthesis of anarchist theory and syndicalist modes of organization, but then goes on to equate the two by writing that “Revolutionary Syndicalism . . . was later called, Anarcho-Syndicalism.”[[#101RockerAnarchismandAnarc|101]]
+The ''Private Category'' encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the ''Common Category'' defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena.
-Rocker’s claim was technically correct in the sense that the organizations he belonged to, the FAUD and the IWMA, did initially call themselves revolutionary syndicalists while advocating anarcho-syndicalism as an idea and then, as language evolved, switched to calling themselves anarcho-syndicalists. This can be seen in the fact that Rocker himself referred to “syndicalism” in his declaration of principles adopted at the founding of the FAUD in 1919 and “revolutionary syndicalism” in his declaration of principles adopted at the founding of the IWMA in 1922. By 1938, his language had shifted. He now referred to the trade unions that formed the IWMA, including the FAUD, as the representatives of “MODERN Anarcho-Syndicalism.”[[#102RockerDeclarationofthe|102]] Unfortunately, twenty-first-century readers of Rocker have often been unaware of these historical details and have misunderstood both the origins and nature of anarcho-syndicalism, and how it differed from the revolutionary syndicalism of politically neutral trade unions like the CGT. It should also be noted that sections of the IWMA continued to have members who did not identify as anarchists or anarcho-syndicalists.
+Within every Private thing, phenomenon, and idea, there exists the Common, and also the Unique. The Unique encompasses the attributes and characteristics that exist in only one specific thing, phenomenon, or idea, and does not repeat in any other things, phenomena, or ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#18|1]]. George Richard Esenwein,'' Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain'','' 1868–1898 ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 118; Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 104; Errico Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''170, 172, 338, 463.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#28|2]]. Wayne Thorpe, “Uneasy Family: Revolutionary Syndicalism in Europe From the Charte d’Amiens to World War One,” in ''New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational'', ed. David Berry and Constance Bantman (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 25–26.</div>
+==== Annotation 129 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#38|3]]. Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe, “The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Syndicalism,” in ''Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective'','' ''ed Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe'' ''(Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1990), 1–2; Lucien van der Walt, “Syndicalism” in ''The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism'', ed. Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 249–50.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-41.png]]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#48|4]]. The language of “syndicalism-plus” was coined by Iain McKay, “Communism and Syndicalism,” Anarchist Writers website, May 25, 2012. http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/communism-syndicalism. Thanks to McKay for suggesting this phrase to me.</div>
+The ''Private'' category includes specific individual things, phenomena and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#58|5]]. César De Paepe, “Strikes, Unions, and the Affiliation of Unions with the International” in'' Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later'', ed. Marcello Musto (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 128.</div>
+The ''Common'' category includes aspects, factors, and relations that exist in many things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, say there are two apples: Apple A and Apple B. Apple A is a specific individual object. Apple B is another distinct, separate object. In that sense, both apples are ''private'' apples, and fall within the ''Private'' category.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#68|6]]. De Paepe, “Strikes, Unions, and the Affiliation of Unions with the International,” 128–29.</div>
+However, both Apple A and Apple B share common attributes. For instance, they are both fruits of the same type: “apple.” They may have other attributes in common: they may be the same color, they may have the same basic shape, they may be of similar size, etc. These are ''common'' attributes which they share. Thus, Apple A and Apple B will also fall within the ''common'' category, based on these common attributes.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#78|7]]. Raymond W. Postgate, ed. “Debates and Resolutions of the First International on The Control of Industry,” in ''Revolution from 1789 to 1906'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921), 393–94.</div>
+Apple A and Apple B will also have ''unique'' attributes. Only Apple A has the exact molecules in the exact place and time which compose Apple A. There is no other object in the world which has those same molecules in that same place and time. This means that Apple A also has ''unique'' properties.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#88|8]]. César De Paepe, “The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth website, March 20, 2018, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-translations/the-present-institutions-of-the-international-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-future-1869.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-42.png|''All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#98|9]]. Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'', 193; Musto, ed. ''Workers Unite'','' ''138n28.</div>
+The Common and Private categories have a dialectical relationship. The Common contains the Private, and the Private contains the Common. Every private subject has some attributes in common with other private subjects, and common attributes can only exist among private subjects. Thus every thing, phenomenon, and idea in existence contains internally within itself dialectical relationships between the Private and the Common, and has dialectical Private/Common relationships externally within other things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#108|10]]. Adhémar Schwitzguébel, “On Resistance Funds,” in'' Workers Unite!'', 138–39.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-43.png|''All private subjects have attributes in common with other private subjects.'']]
-[[#118|11]]. Julian P. W. Archer, ''The First International in France, 1864–1872: Its Origins, Theories, and Impact'' (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997), 166–75; Robert Graham, ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy'','' We Invoke It: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015), 117–19.
+It is also true that every private subject contains within itself ''Unique'' attributes which it does ''not'' share with any other thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, Mount Everest is unique in that it is 8,850 meters tall. No other mountain on Earth has that exact same height. Therefore, the private subject “Mount Everest” has unique properties which it does not share with any other subject, even though it has other attributes in common with countless other private entities.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#128|12]]. Jean-Louis Pindy, “Resolution on Resistance Funds,” in'' Workers Unite!'', 133.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-44.png|''All things, phenomena, and ideas contain the unique, the private, and the common.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#137|13]]. Jean-Louis Pindy, “Resolution on Resistance Funds,” 133.</div>
+Whenever two individual subjects have a relationship with one another, that relationship is a ''unique relationship'' in the sense that it is a relationship that is shared only by those two specific subjects; however, there will also be common attributes and properties which any such relationship will share with other relationships in existence. This recalls the ''principle of Unity in Diversity and Diversity in Unity'' [see Annotation 107, p. 110]. So, every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains the Common ''and'' the Unique and has unique ''and'' common relationships with other things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#147|14]]. Eugène Varlin, “Workers Societies,” trans. Iain McKay, Anarchist Writers website, October 6, 2018. https://anarchism.pageabode.com/precursors-of-syndicalism.</div>
+This category pair is very useful in developing a comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. Remember that a comprehensive viewpoint indicates an understanding of the internal and external relations of a given subject. This means that in order to develop a comprehensive viewpoint, you must know the private aspects of each individual relation, component, and aspect of the subject, and you must also study the commonalities of the subject as well. It’s also important to study a variety of ''private'' information sources or data points to look for ''commonalities'' between them. In other words, if you want to have a proper comprehensive viewpoint [see Annotation 113, p. 116] about any subject, you have to find and analyze as many ''private'' data points and pieces of evidence as possible.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#157|15]]. Eugène Varlin, “Workers Societies.”</div>
+For example: If a person only ever saw one apple, a green apple, then that person might believe that “all apples are green.” This conclusion would be premature: the person is attempting to make an assumption about the ''Common'' without examining enough ''Privates''. This is a failure of mistaking mistaking the ''Private'' for the ''Common'' which stems from a lack of a comprehensive viewpoint.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#167|16]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', ed. A. W. Zurbrugg (London: Merlin Books, 2016),'' ''56.</div>
+Now, let’s take a look at an example of how the “Unique” can become “Common,” and vice-versa: 1947 TODAY
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#177|17]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 56.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-45.png]]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#187|18]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 56.</div>
+''“Unique” things, phenomena, and ideas can become “common” through development processes (and vice-versa).''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#197|19]]. Quoted in Max Nettlau, ''A Short History of Anarchism'', ed. Heiner M. Becker (London: Freedom Press, 1996),'' ''122.</div>
+In 1941, a Soviet soldier named Mikhail Kalashnikov was in the hospital after being wounded in the Battle of Bryansk. Another soldier in the hospital said to Kalashnikov, “why do our soldiers only have one rifle for two or three of our men, while the Germans have automatics?” To solve this problem, Kalashnikov designed the AK-47 machine gun. When he finished making the first prototype, it was the only AK-47 in the world.
-[[#207|20]]. Quoted in Wolfgang Eckhardt, ''The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association'' (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016),'' ''54.
+At this precise moment, the AK-47 was simultaneously ''Unique'', ''Private'', and ''Common.''
-[[#217|21]]. Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'', 159–60.
+It was ''Unique'' because it was the first and only AK-47 in the world, and no other object in the world had those properties. It was ''Private'' because it was a specific object with its own individual existence. It was ''Common'' — even though it was the only existing prototype — because it shared Common features with other rifles, and with other prototypes. It was the only AK-47 in existence.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#227|22]]. “Resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress of the International Workers’ Association, 15–16 September 1872,” in Appendix to René Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism in the International Workers’ Association, 1864–1877'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2015), 182.</div>
+Soon, however, the Soviet Union began manufacturing them, and they became very common. Now there are millions of AK-47s in the world. So, today, that prototype machine gun remains simultaneously ''Unique, Private,'' and ''Common,'' with some slight developments:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#237|23]]. “Resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress,” 182–83.</div>
+It remains ''Private'' because it is a specific object with its own individual existence. Even though it is no longer the only AK-47 in existence, it remains ''Unique'' because it is still the very first AK-47 that was ever made, and even though there are now many other AK-47s, there is no other rifle in the universe that shares that same unique property. It remains ''Common'' because it still shares common features with other rifles and other prototypes, but it now also shares ''commonality'' with many other AK-47 rifles. It is no longer ''Unique'' for having the properties of an AK-47 in and of itself.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#247|24]]. “Resolutions of the Congresses of Verviers, 5 to 8 September 1877, and Ghent, 9 to 14 September 1877,” in Appendix to Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 190–91.</div>
+If someone were to destroy Kalashnikov’s prototype AK-47, the ''Private'' of that ''object'' would no longer exist — it would remain only as an ''idea'', and the Private would transform to whatever becomes of the material components of the rifle. The ''Unique'' would also no longer remain specifically as it was before being destroyed. However, there would still be many other AK-47s which would share common features related to that prototype; for instance, that they were all designed based on the prototype’s design.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#257|25]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''56. Malatesta appears to have previously opposed participating in trade unions at the 1876 Berne Congress of the Saint-Imier International. It is unclear when he changed his mind, because most of the articles he wrote in this period are currently untranslated. See Caroline Cahm, ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism'','' 1872–1886'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),'' ''229.</div>
+''Translator’s Note:'' The words “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” may seem unusual because they are direct translations from the Vietnamese words used to describe these concepts in the original text. Various other words have been used by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other materialist dialecticians when discussing the underlying concepts of these philosophical categories. For instance, in most translations of Lenin, his discussion of such topics is typically translated into English using words such as “universal,” “general,” “special,” “particular,” etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#267|26]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 294.</div>
+Example (from Lenin’s ''Philosophical Notebooks''): “Language in essence expresses only the universal; what is meant, however, is the special, the particular. Hence what is meant cannot be said in speech.” Here, “universal” refers to that which is ''Common'' in all things, phenomena, and ideas, and “special/particular” refers to the ''Private — s''pecific individual things, phenomena, and ideas — along with their ''Unique'' properties.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#277|27]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 299.</div>
+Here are excerpts from Lenin’s ''Philosophical Notebooks'' discussing these concepts:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#287|28]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 299.</div>
+<blockquote>
+(‘It?’ The most universal word of all.) Who is it? I. Every person is an I.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#297|29]]. Esenwein, ''Anarchist Ideology'', 80–4. The trade union was forced to suspend its activities in 1884 in response to state repression and was replaced by a new organization in 1888. See ibid., 84–97, 117–22.</div>
+Das Sinnliche? It is a universal, etc., etc. ‘This??’ Everyone is ‘this.’
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#307|30]]. Paul Avrich, ''The Haymarket Tragedy'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 72–73, 89–92, 181–88.</div>
+Why can the particular not be named? One of the objects of a given kind (tables) is distinguished by something from the rest...
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#317|31]]. Carl Levy, ''Gramsci and the Anarchists ''(Oxford: Berg, 1999), 19–20; Antonio Senta, ''Luigi Galleani: The Most Dangerous Anarchist in America ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019), 18–19, 24–29.</div>
+Leaves of a tree are green; John is a man; Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal... And a naïve confusion, a helplessly pitiful confusion in the dialectics of the universal and the particular — of the concept and the sensuously perceptible reality of individual objects, things, phenomena.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#327|32]]. Ángel J. Cappelletti, ''Anarchism in Latin America ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 52, 56, 116–18, 120–1, 172–73, 203–5, 273–76; Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt, eds., ''Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World'', ''1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation'','' Internationalism'','' and Social Revolution'' (Leiden: Brill, 2010),'' ''xl–xliii; Frank Fernández, ''Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement'','' ''trans. Charles Bufe'' ''(Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2001), 19–29, 40–41; John M. Hart, ''Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class 1860–1931 ''(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), 46–59, 75–80, 83–84.</div>
+Further, the ‘subsumption’ under logical categories of ‘sensibility’ (Sensibilität), ‘irritability’ (irritabilität) — this is said to be the particular in contrast to the universal!! — and ‘reproduction’ is an idle game.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#337|33]]. Constance Bantman, “From Trade Unionism to Syndicalisme Révolutionnaire to Syndicalism: The British Origins of French Syndicalism” in ''New Perspectives on Anarchism'','' Labour and Syndicalism'', 128–132; Constance Bantman, ''The French Anarchists in London'','' 1880–1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation'' (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 40–41; Bantman, “The Militant Go-between: Émile Pouget’s Transnational Propaganda (1880–1914),” ''Labour History Review'' 74, no. 3 (2009): 279–80; Davide Turcato, ''Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution'','' 1889–1900 ''(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 36–42; Henry Pelling, ''A History of British Trade Unionism'', 5th ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 94–96.</div>
+Marx, too, discussed these concepts using words which are commonly translated into English using different terms. For example, in ''Capital'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#347|34]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 76–77.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent – here the linen – into the universal equivalent.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#357|35]]. Vadim Damier, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism in the Twentieth Century'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2009), 13; F. F. Ridley, ''Revolutionary Syndicalism in France: The Direct Action of Its Time'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970),'' ''20–23, 65, 74–75; Jeremy Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France: A Study of Ideas'' (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990),'' ''11; Fernand Pelloutier, “Anarchism and the Workers’ Union,” in ''No Gods'','' No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'','' ''ed. Daniel Guérin (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005),'' ''409.</div>
+Here, “general form” refers to the ''commonalities'' of form that exist between all commodities. The “single commodity” refers to a private commodity; a specific commodity that exists separately from all other commodities. And when referring to a “universal equivalent,” Marx is referring to equivalence which such a commodity has in ''common'' with every other commodity.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#367|36]]. Kropotkin ''Direct Struggle'', 317–39.</div>
+The rest of this passage continues as a materialist dialectical analysis of the ''Private, Common,'' and ''Unique'' features and aspects of commodities:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#377|37]]. Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 24–26; Turcato, ''Making Sense'','' ''134–35; Bantman, “The British Origins of French Syndicalism,” 132–35.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power. The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#387|38]]. Pelloutier, “Anarchism and the Workers’ Union,” 409–15. See also Paul Delesalle, “Anarchists and the Trade Unions,” Libcom website, December 9, 2013, https://libcom.org/article/anarchists-and-trade-unions-paul-delesalle.</div>
+We have chosen to use the terms “Private,” “Common,” and “Unique” in the translation of this text because they most closely match the words used in the original Vietnamese. In summary, it is important to realize that you may encounter the underlying ''concepts'' which are related by these words using various phrasings in the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#397|39]]. Quoted in David Berry, ''A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917 to 1945'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009),'' ''24.</div>
+==== b. Dialectical Relationship Between Private and Common ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#407|40]]. Emma Goldman, ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader'', ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 90. For Goldman’s in-depth description of her visit to Paris in 1900, see Emma Goldman, ''Living My Life'','' ''vol. 1'' ''(New York: Dover Publications, 1970),'' ''264–80, 401. Her views on syndicalism were also influenced by her later visit to Paris in 1907. See ibid., 406–07.</div>
+According to the materialist dialectical viewpoint: the Private, the Common and the Unique exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. The Common only exists within the Private. It expresses its existence through the Private.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#417|41]]. Wayne Thorpe, ''“The Workers Themselves”: Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labour 1913–1923'' (Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 25. For details see Ridley, ''Revolutionary Syndicalism in France'', 63–71; Phil H. Goodstein, ''The Theory of the General Strike from the French Revolution to Poland'' (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984), 53–59; Émile Pouget, “The Party of Labour,” Libcom website, November 19, 2010, https://libcom.org/article/party-labour-emile-pouget.</div>
+-----
-[[#427|42]]. Ridley, ''Revolutionary Syndicalism in France'', 77–79.
+==== Annotation 130 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#437|43]]. Damier, ''Anarcho-''Syndicalism, 15; Wayne Thorpe, ''“The Workers Themselves,”'' 26–27. For an in-depth overview of reformist syndicalism, see Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 114–40.</div>
+The ''Common'' can’t exist as a specific thing, phenomenon, or idea. However, every specific thing, phenomenon, or idea exists as a ''private'' subject which has various features in ''common'' with other ''private'' things, phenomena, and ideas. We can therefore only understand the ''Common'' through observation and study of various ''private'' things, phenomena, and ideas. For example, a human can’t perceive with our senses alone the ''Common'' of apples. Only by observing many ''private'' apples can begin to derive an understanding of what all ''private'' apples have in ''common''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#447|44]]. Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 24, 138, 145–46; Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'', 32n37. According to Joll, anarchists only seriously influenced the CGT “for ten or fifteen years” and had little influence within the CGT after 1914. James Joll, ''The Anarchists'' (London: Methuen, 1969), 216.</div>
+The Common does not exist in isolation from the Private. Therefore, commonality is inseparable from things, phenomena, and ideas. The Private only exists in relation to the Common. Likewise, there is no Private that exists in complete isolation from the Common.
-[[#457|45]]. Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'', 27; Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 137.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#467|46]]. Quoted in A.W. Zurbrugg, ''Anarchist Perspectives in Peace and War, 1900–1918'' (London: Anarres Editions, 2018), 42.</div>
+==== Annotation 131 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#477|47]]. Quoted in Zurbrugg, ''Anarchist Perspectives'','' ''42.</div>
+No commonality can possibly exist outside of private things, phenomena, and ideas because commonality describes features which different things, phenomena, and ideas share. No private thing, phenomenon, or idea can possibly exist ''absolutely without'' commonality because there is no thing, phenomenon, or idea that shares ''absolutely no features'' with ''any other'' thing, phenomenon, or idea.
-[[#487|48]]. Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 134, 137–140; Ridley, ''Revolutionary Syndicalism in France'', 88–94, 180.
+The Private category is more all-encompassing and diverse than the Common category; Common is a part of Private but it is more profound and more “essential” than the Private. This is because Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique; the Common expresses generality and the regular predictability of many Privates.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#497|49]]. Nicholas Papayanis, ''Alphonse Merrheim: The Emergence of Reformism in Revolutionary Syndicalism, 1871–1925 ''(Dordrecht, NL: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985), 39–41, 44–45.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#507|50]]. Quoted in Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 30–31.</div>
+==== Annotation 132 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#517|51]]. Pouget, “The Party of Labour.”</div>
+The Private encompasses all aspects of a specific, individual thing, phenomenon, or idea; thus it encompasses all aspects, features, and attributes of a given subject, including both the Common and the Unique. In this way, the Private is the synthesis of the Common and the Unique.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#527|52]]. Maurizio Antonioli, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam (1907)'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press 2009), 115.</div>
+Common attributes require more consideration, effort, and study to properly determine, because multiple private subjects must be considered and analyzed before common attributes can be confidently discovered and understood. They offer us a more profound understanding of the essence [see ''Essence and Phenomenon,'' p. 156] and nature of things, phenomena, and ideas because they offer insights into the ''relationships'' between and within different things, phenomena, and ideas. As we discover more commonalities, and understand them more deeply, we begin to develop a more comprehensive perspective of reality. We begin to develop an understanding of the laws and principles which govern relations between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, and this gives us the power to more accurately predict how processes will develop and how things, phenomena, and ideas will change and mutually impact one another over time.
-[[#537|53]]. Antonioli, ed. ''International Anarchist Congress'', 115.
+Under specific conditions, the Common and the Unique can transform into each other [See Annotation 129, p. 128].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#547|54]]. Émile Pouget, “The Basis of Trade Unionism,” Libcom website, November 19, 2010, https://libcom.org/article/basis-trade-unionism-emile-pouget.</div>
+The dialectical relationship between Private and Common was summarised by Lenin:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#557|55]]. For a broad overview of these movements see Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe, eds., ''Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective'' (Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1990).</div>
+“Consequently, the opposites (the individual as opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other '''kinds''' of individuals (things, phenomena, ideas) etc.”<ref>''On the Question of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref> [Note: “individual and universal” here refer the same underlying concepts of “Private and Common” (respectively); see translator’s note on p. 132].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#567|56]]. Damier, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20th Century'', 34–37, 57–63; Cappelletti, ''Anarchism in Latin America'', 165, 173-74, 284–85; Hirsch and van der Walt, eds., ''Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial Worl''d; Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer, eds., ''Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW'', (London: Pluto Press, 2017).</div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#577|57]]. Kenyon Zimmer, ''Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America'' (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 75–79, 83–87.</div>
+We must acknowledge and recognize the Common in order to study the Private in our cognitive and practical activities. If we fail to acknowledge the Common, then whenever we attempt to understand and comprehend any Private thing, phenomenon or idea, we will make mistakes and become disoriented. To understand the Common we have to study and observe the Private because the Common does not exist abstractly outside of the Private.
-[[#587|58]]. Cappelletti, ''Anarchism in Latin America'', 51–65; Juan Suriano, ''Paradoxes of Utopia: Anarchist Culture and Politics in Buenos Aires, 1890–1910'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 14–16.
+-----
-[[#597|59]]. Quoted in Angel Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State'','' 1989–1923'' (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 142n44.
+==== Annotation 133 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#607|60]]. Quoted in A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'', 129. For details about how syndicalism became the dominant position in Spain during the early 1900s, see James Yeoman, ''Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890–1915'' (New York: Routledge, 2020), 198–249.</div>
+Our understanding of Common attributes arise from the observation and study of private things, phenomena, and ideas. At the same time, developing our understanding of Commonalities between and within Private subjects deepens our understanding of their essential nature [see: Essence and Phenomenon].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#617|61]]. Pouget, “The Party of Labour.”</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-46.png|''Dialectical analysis of private and common characteristics involves observing private subjects to determine common attributes and considering common attributes to gain insights about private subjects.'']]
-[[#627|62]]. Antonioli, ed., ''International Anarchist Congress'', 122.
+It is impossible to know anything at all about the Common without observing Private subjects, and attempting to understand Private subjects without taking into consideration the attributes and features which they have in Common with other Private subjects will lead to incomplete and erroneous analysis.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#637|63]]. Quoted in Nettlau, ''Short History'', 279. See also Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'','' ''392, 403–11; Rudolf Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 52–3; Maxim Raevsky, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism and the IWW ''(Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2019), 1–2.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#647|64]]. Karl Kautsky, ''Road to Power'' (Chicago: Samuel A. Bloch, 1909), 61, 95.</div>
+In addition, we must identify the Common features and attributes of every specific Private subject we study. We must avoid being dogmatic, metaphysical, and inflexible in applying our knowledge of commonalities to solve problems and interpret the world.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#657|65]]. Wayne Thorpe, “Uneasy Family,” 17n2. It has been alleged by Albert Meltzer that the term was first coined by the Welsh anarchist Sam Mainwaring (1841–1907) in order to distinguish between British syndicalists, who did not think of themselves as anarchists, and syndicalists in continental Europe who self-identified as anarchists. He does not provide a source or a date for when this occurred. I have been unable to verify this claim or determine, if true, what Mainwaring meant by anarcho-syndicalism. Meltzer claimed he was told the information by Emma Goldman. See Albert Meltzer, ''The Anarchists in London, 1935–1955 ''(London: Cienfuegos Press, 1976), 10; Kenneth John, “Anti-Parliamentary Passage: South Wales and the Internationalism of Sam Mainwaring (1841–1907)” (PhD diss., University of Greenwich, 2001), 109–10.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#667|66]]. Quoted in Cappelletti, ''Anarchism in Latin America'', 64. In 1915, there was a split within the FORA between the FORA-V, which remained committed to the anarchist program of the fifth congress, and the FORA-IX, which endorsed a politically neutral program. See ibid., 66–68, 74.</div>
+==== Annotation 134 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#677|67]]. Alexandre Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968 ''(Oakland CA: AK Press, 2002), 76–78; Paul Avrich, ''The Russian Anarchists'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 61–62, 77–78; Daniil Novomirsky, ''Anarchism’s Trade Union Programme'', trans. Paul Sharkey, Kate Sharpley Library website, https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/3bk4c0. In these translations, the phrase “anarcho-syndicalism” is used. This is an error. In the original Russian only the phrase “syndicalist anarchism” appears. Thanks to Kenyon Zimmer for showing this to me.</div>
+==== Dogmatism and Revisionism in Relation to the Private and Common ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#687|68]]. Quoted in Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 77; Novomirsky, ''Anarchism’s Trade Union Programme''. In Skirda, the Russian for “revolutionary trade union” has been translated as “revolutionary syndicalist movement.” To avoid potential confusion with revolutionary syndicalism in the distinct CGT sense, I have decided to alter the translation. See also N. Rogdaev, “On the Anarchist Movement in Russia,” in ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam'', 191.</div>
+''Dogmatism'' is the inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence.
-[[#697|69]]. Antonioli, ed., ''International Anarchist Congress'', 115.
+Dogmatism typically arises when the Common is overemphasized without due consideration of the Private. A dogmatic position is one which adheres to ideals about commonalities without taking Private subjects into consideration.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#707|70]]. Golos Truda, “Declaration of the Petrograd Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda,” in ''The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution'', ed. Paul Avrich (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), 71. For the history of anarcho-syndicalism in the Russian revolution, see Avrich, ''Russian Anarchists'','' ''135–51, 185, 190–95; Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'','' ''98–100,'' ''163–64.</div>
+Dogmatism can be avoided by continuously studying and observing and analyzing
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#717|71]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “The Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft),” in Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 204.</div>
+Private subjects and taking any evidence which contradicts erroneous perceptions of “false commonalities” into consideration. This will simultaneously deepen our understanding of the Private while improving our understanding of the Common. For example: Sally might observe a few red apples and arrive at the conclusion: “all apples are red.” If Sally is then presented with a green apple, yet refuses to acknowledge it by continuing to insist that “all apples are red,” then Sally is engaging in dogmatism.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#726|72]]. Alexander Schapiro, “Introduction to Anarcho-Syndicalism and Anarchism,” trans. Paul Sharkey, Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog, March 15, 2009, https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/alexander-schapiro-pierre-besnard-anarcho-syndicalism-and-anarchism. For an overview of Schapiro’s activity during the Russian revolution, see Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'', 238–44.</div>
+According to Vietnam’s ''Curriculum of the Philosophy of Marxism-Leninism For University and College Students Specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought,'' the opposite of Dogmatism is ''Revisionism''. Revisionism occurs when we overestimate the Private and fail to recognize commonalities. In failing to recognize common attributes and features between and within things, phenomena, and ideas, the Revisionist faces confusion and disorientation whenever they encounter any new things, phenomena, and ideas, because they lack any insight into essential characteristics of the subject and its relations with other subjects.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#736|73]]. Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'', 53–80. The CNT as a national organization could not attend the congress because it had been made illegal in 1911 and was still in the process of reorganizing itself.</div>
+For example: if Sally has spent a lot of time studying a red apple, she may start to become confident that she understands everything there is to know about apples. If she is then presented with a green apple, she might become confused and disoriented and draw the conclusion that she has to start all over again with her analysis, from scratch, thinking: “this can’t possibly be an apple because it’s not red. It must be something else entirely.” Sally can avoid this revisionist confusion by examining the other common features which the red and green apples share before making any conclusions.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#746|74]]. “The London Declaration (1913),” in Appendix to Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'', 320.</div>
+==== Metaphysical Perception of the Private and Common ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#756|75]]. Damier, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 43–46, 64–84. For details about the CGT and World War I, including the minority within the CGT who remained internationalists, see Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 161–67; Nicholas Papayanis, ''Alphonse Merrheim'', 85–110.</div>
+The ''metaphysical'' position attempts to categorize things, phenomena, and ideas into static categories which are isolated and distinct from one another [see Annotation 8,
-[[#766|76]]. Juan Gómez Casas, ''Anarchists Organization: The History of the F.A.I'' (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1986), 56; Stuart Christie, ''We'','' the Anarchists! A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927–1937'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2008),'' ''7–11.
+p. 8]. In this way, the metaphysical perception ultimately fails to properly understand the role of both the Private ''and'' the Common. Categories may be arranged in taxonomic configurations based on shared features, but ultimately every category is seen as distinct and isolated from every other category. This perspective severs the dialectical relationship between the Private, the Common, and the Unique, and thus leads to a distorted perception of reality. As Engels wrote in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#776|77]]. Quoted in José Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'', vol. 1 (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011), ed. Chris Ealham, 10. For more information on the La Comedia Congress, see Casas, ''The History of the F.A.I'', 57–60; A. Smith, ''Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction'','' ''313–15</div>
+<blockquote>
+The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.”
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#786|78]]. Quoted in Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1, 8–9. The CNT’s commitment to achieving libertarian communism was reaffirmed at the 1924 Granollers Congress where 236 delegates voted in favor and only one against. See Christie, ''We, the Anarchists'','' ''25.</div>
+In other words, Engels points out that separating and dividing Private subjects into distinct and isolated categories without acknowledging the dialectical nature of the Private and the Common leads to severe limitations on what we can learn about the world. Instead, we have to examine things, phenomena, and ideas ''in relation to one another'', which must include the analysis of Commonalities.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#796|79]]. Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'', 120–23; Rudolf Rocker, “Declaration of the Principles of Syndicalism,” trans. Cord-Christian Casper, Academia.edu website, https://www.academia.edu/39134774/Rudolf_Rocker_Syndicalist_Declaration_of_Principles. For an account of his imprisonment, see Rudolf Rocker, ''The London Years ''(Nottingham, UK: Five Leaves, 2005), 142–215.</div>
+Rather than divide subjects into distinct, separate categories, materialist dialectics seek to examine Private subjects as they really exist: as a synthesis of Unique and Common attributes; and simultaneously to examine commonalities as they really exist: as properties which emerge from the relations of Private objects.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#806|80]]. Rocker, “Declaration of the Principles of Syndicalism,” 2.</div>
+In our cognitive and practical activities, we must be able to take advantage of suitable conditions that will enable transformations from the Unique and the Common (and vice versa) for our specific purposes.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#816|81]]. Rocker, “Declaration of the Principles of Syndicalism,” 3.</div>
+-----
-[[#826|82]]. For an overview of the congress see Jason Garner, ''Goals and Means: Anarchism'','' Syndicalism'','' and Internationalism in the Origins of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica'' (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 113–27; Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'','' ''244–56, 313n13.
+==== Annotation 135 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#836|83]]. Garner, ''Goals and Means'', 126, 306n52; Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'', 120–23, 224–26, 253.</div>
+In advancing the cause of socialism, revolutionaries must work to transform our Unique positions into common positions. For instance, the process of developing revolutionary public knowledge [see Annotation 94, p. 93] begins with studying and understanding revolutionary knowledge. Initially, this knowledge will be ''unique'' to the socialist movement. By disseminating the knowledge to the public, we hope to transform this knowledge into ''common knowledge''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#846|84]]. Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'','' ''chapters 3–7. For overviews of the congresses of the Comintern and RILU, see ibid., 100–106, 132–45, 181–94.</div>
+Likewise, we hope to transform other common things, phenomena, and ideas back towards the Unique. For instance, the capitalist mode of production is currently the most common mode of production on Earth. In order to advance humanity towards communism, we must transition the capitalist mode of production from the Common towards the Unique, with the ambition of eventually eliminating this mode of production altogether.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#856|85]]. IWA, “Declaration of the Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism,” in ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas'','' ''vol. 1,'' From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'','' ''ed. Robert Graham (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005), 418, 416. This version of the text refers to “libertarian communism.” I have altered the translation because Rocker in fact used the term “free communism” in the 1922 declaration, the 1920 Berlin declaration, and the 1919 speech at the founding of the FAUD it was based on. This is significant because “libertarian” means anarchist, while “free communism” could potentially be supported by people who identified as syndicalists but not anarchists. See Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'', 321, 322; Rocker, “Declaration of the Principles of Syndicalism,” 2.</div>
+=== 2. Reason and Result ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#866|86]]. IWA, “Declaration of the Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism (1922),” 416–17.</div>
+==== a. Categories of Reason and Result ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#876|87]]. IWA, “Declaration of the Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism (1922),” 418.</div>
+The ''Reason'' category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#886|88]]. Thorpe mistakenly claims that the Regional Workers’ Federation of Brazil affiliated. An organization with this name was founded in 1905 but changed its name to the Workers’ Federation of Rio de Janeiro after the founding of the Brazilian Workers’ Confederation (COB) in 1906. The COB ceased to exist in 1915. Some surviving regional federations of the COB went onto affiliate with the IWMA. Thanks to Maurício Knevitz for explaining this to me.</div>
+The ''Result'' category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors ''within'' a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or ''externally'' between different things, phenomena, or ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#896|89]]. Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'','' ''256–67; Thorpe, “The IWW and the Dilemmas of Internationalism” in ''Wobblies of the World'', 105–123.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#906|90]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 104, 115. See also Thorpe, ''Workers Themselves'', 267.</div>
+==== Annotation 136 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#916|91]]. Ole Birk Laursen, “‘Anarchism, Pure and Simple’: M. P. T. Acharya, Anti-Colonialism and the International Anarchist Movement,” ''Postcolonial Studies'' 23, no. 2 (2020): 1, 7.</div>
+''Translation note:'' the Vietnamese words for “reason and result” can also be translated as “cause and effect.” We have chosen to use the words “reason and result” to distinguish materialist dialectical categories from metaphysical conceptions of development.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#926|92]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 464.</div>
+In metaphysics [see Annotation 8, p. 8], any given ''effect'' is seen to have a single ''cause''. In materialist dialectics, we instead examine the ''mutual impacts'' which occur within and between subjects through motion and development processes.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#936|93]]. Luigi Fabbri, “About a Project of Anarchist Organization,” Institute for Anarchist Theory and History website, n.d., https://ithanarquista.wordpress.com/about-a-project-for-anarchist-organization-luigi-fabbri.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-47.png|''Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of development.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#946|94]]. Sébastien Faure, “The Anarchist Synthesis: The Three Great Anarchist Currents,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth website, August 3, 2017, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/sebastien-faure-the-anarchist-synthesis-1828.</div>
+In the metaphysical conception of cause and effect, (A) causes effect (B), then effect (B) causes effect (C), and so on. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, uses the model of ''development'' (see Annotation 117, p. 119), wherein objects (A) and (B) mutually impact one another, resulting in development (C). (C) will then have relations with other things, phenomena, and/or ideas, and the mutual impacts from these new relations will become the reasons for future results. Consider the following example:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#956|95]]. Quoted in Garner, ''Goals and Means'', 151. For biographical information on Fernández, see ibid., 314n37. The phrase “anarcho-syndicalism” appears to have only become popular in Spain in the late 1920s. See Frank Mintz, ''Anarchism and Workers’ Self-Management in Revolutionary Spain ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2013), 286; Garner, ''Goals and Means'', 64.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-48.png|''Metaphysical vs. Materialist Dialectical conceptions of frying and eating an egg.'']]
-[[#966|96]]. Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'', 150–53.
+In the metaphysical “cause and effect” model, putting an egg in a hot pan is the cause which results in the effect of producing a fried egg. The egg being fried has the effect of the egg now being suitable for eating, which is the cause of the egg being eaten by a hungry person.
-[[#976|97]]. Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'', 152.
+This is a simplification of the metaphysical conception of causes and effects, since metaphysics does recognize that one cause can have branches of multiple effects, but the essential characteristic of the metaphysical conception of causality is to break down all activity and change in the universe into static and distinct episodes of one distinct event causing one or more other distinct events.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#986|98]]. Pierre Besnard, “Anarcho-Syndicalism and Anarchism,”'' ''trans. Paul Sharkey, Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog, March 15, 2009, https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/alexander-schapiro-pierre-besnard-anarcho-syndicalism-and-anarchism.</div>
+In contrast, the materialist dialectical model of development holds that every result stems from mutual impacts which occur relationally between things, phenomena, and ideas, and that the resulting synthesis — the newly developed result of mutual impacts — will then have new relations with other things, phenomena, and ideas, and that these ''relations'' will become new reasons for new results through ''mutual impact''.
-[[#996|99]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 54.
+In this example, the egg and the hot pan will mutually impact each other. The frying pan will become dirty and need to be washed (the result of putting an egg in the frying pan); meanwhile, the egg will become a fried egg, which is fit for human consumption (the result of being cooked in the frying pan). The fried egg will then have a relationship with a hungry human, and this relationship will be a new reason which will lead to further results (i.e., the human eating and digesting the egg).
-[[#1006|100]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 60.
+So, the key difference between the classical metaphysical conception of causality and the materialist dialectical model of development is that metaphysics focus more on individual events in time whereas materialist dialectics focus on the relations and mutual impacts between things, phenomena, and ideas over time.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1016|101]]. Rocker, ''Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism'' (London: Freedom Press, 1988), 5–6, 25, 31.</div>
+==== b. Dialectical relationship between Reason and Result ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1026|102]]. Rocker, “Declaration of the Principles of Syndicalism,” 3–4; IWA, “Declaration of the Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism,''” ''416–18; Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 54.Chapter 9: The Theory and Practice of Syndicalist Anarchism</div>
+The relationship between Reason and Result is objective, and it contains inevitability: there is no Reason that does not lead to a Result; and likewise, there is no Result without any Reason.
-== {{anchor|Chapter9TheTheoryandPracti}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook12}} {{anchor|Chapter9TheTheoryandPracti1}} Chapter 9: The Theory and Practice of Syndicalist Anarchism ==
+Reasons cause Results, which is why Reason always comes before Result, and Result always comes after Reason.
-All forms of syndicalist anarchism argued that workers should form federally structured trade unions that engaged in direct action and were independent of political parties. It was believed that, in order to achieve working-class self-emancipation, these syndicalist trade unions had to pursue the ''double aim'' of winning immediate improvements in the present, and overthrowing capitalism and the state via a social revolution in the long term. These unions also had a ''dual function''. Under present conditions, they performed the function of engaging in class struggle against the ruling classes. During the social revolution, they would expropriate the means of production from the ruling classes and take over the organization of the economy in part or whole. In so doing, they would acquire the new function of being the organs through which the self-management of production and distribution occurred. This social revolution could be initiated by workers launching an insurrectionary general strike.
+A Reason can cause one or many Results and a Result can be caused by one or many Reasons.
-'''The Double Aim of Syndicalist Anarchist Unions'''
+When many Reasons lead to a single Result, the impacts which lead to the Result are mutual between all things, phenomena, and ideas at hand. These mutual impacts can have many relational positions or roles, including: direct reasons, indirect reasons, internal reasons, external reasons, etc.
-Syndicalist anarchists held that trade union activity should have two main goals. These were: (a) defending and advancing the interests of the working classes within existing society and (b) preparing for and ultimately carrying out a social revolution that abolishes capitalism and the state in favor of an anarchist society.[[#1RudolfRockerAnarchoSyndic|1]] For Pouget, “trade union endeavor has a double aim: with tireless persistence, it must pursue betterment of the working class’s current conditions. But, without letting themselves become obsessed with this passing concern, the workers should take care to make possible and imminent the essential act of comprehensive emancipation: the expropriation of capital.”[[#2PougetWhatistheTradeUn|2]]
+-----
-Syndicalist anarchism, therefore, like mass anarchism in general, sought to win immediate reforms in the interests of the working classes—such as shorter working hours, better pay, and improved conditions—force the ruling classes to actually implement previously won reforms, and protect these previously won reforms from encroachment by the ruling classes. Crucially, syndicalist anarchists held that reforms had to be achieved, enforced, and protected through the direct action of the working classes. Even reforms that involved changes to the law had to be achieved “through outside pressure brought to bear upon the authorities and not by trying to return specially mandated deputies to Parliament.”[[#3PougetWhatistheTradeUn|3]]
+==== Annotation 137 ====
-This strategy generally, but not always, involved a rejection of the iron law of wages, which held that under capitalism real wages would always tend toward the amount required to secure the subsistence of the worker due to either population growth decreasing the value of labor, or higher wages being neutralized by increased costs of living. Pouget labeled it as “illusory” and “false,” because it was empirically untrue, and ignored the fact that increased living costs were themselves a product of class struggle, such as those between landlords and tenants.[[#4EmilePougetDirectAction|4]] Malatesta argued against the iron law of wages on the grounds that between the minimum limit of a worker being paid enough to survive and the maximum limit of a capitalist earning some profit, “wages, hours and other conditions of employment are the result of the struggle between bosses and workers” and so could be changed through collective action.[[#5ErricoMalatestaTowardsAna|5]]
+As stated in the previous annotation, Reasons which lead to Results stem from mutually impacting relations between things, phenomena, and ideas. There is no way for one subject to affect another subject without also being affected itself in some way.
-Pouget and Malatesta’s position was not shared by all syndicalist anarchists. Pelloutier, for example, opposed partial strikes; he subscribed to the iron law of wages while still being a syndicalist, because he advocated revolutionary trade unionism as the means to overthrow class society.[[#6JeremyJenningsSyndicalism|6]] Others held that, although any increase in wages would be canceled out by increases in the cost of living, partial strikes were nonetheless important and should be encouraged due to their transformative effect on workers. A 1900 article by Delesalle’s for ''Les Temps Nouveaux'' argued that, while any increase in wages would only be temporary due to the iron law, a strike would still promote “a state of rebellion,” develop class consciousness, and “could be the spark that heralds the revolution.”[[#7PaulDelesalleTheStrike|7]]
+Reasons can take many forms, including (but not limited to):
-The main forms of direct action that syndicalist anarchists advocated to achieve reforms were strikes, boycotts, and sabotage. By sabotage, syndicalist anarchists meant “workers putting every possible obstacle in the way of the ordinary modes of work.”[[#8RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|8]] This included such tactics as working slowly, strictly following legislation or contracts in order to reduce productivity and, at its most militant, damaging machinery or infrastructure so that strike breakers could not continue production.
+'''Types of Reasons and Results'''
-This strategy of struggling for reforms through militant tactics was put into practice on multiple occasions by syndicalist trade unions. In 1904 the CGT agreed at its congress in Bourges to campaign for the eight-hour day, which workers had unsuccessfully been petitioning for since 1889. Instead of begging the state to grant this reform, the CGT, following Pouget’s suggestion, decided that they should try to force the ruling classes to give in to their demands by engaging in direct action: workers were to either cease work after eight hours, or go on strike until their demands were met. The CGT selected May 1, 1906, as the day of action and proceeded to prepare for the coming struggle over the next two years. This included holding union meetings and distributing posters with revolutionary messages in order to persuade workers to participate in the movement. How much energy was devoted by the CGT to this campaign can be seen in the fact that during December 1905 alone ten famous syndicalist militants organized conferences in eighty cities.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-49.png|''Direct Reasons stem from immediate relations.'']]
-The French state unsurprisingly responded to the campaign with repression. On the eve of the strike, key delegates, including Griffuelhes, Pouget, Alphonse Merrheim (secretary of the Federation of Metalworkers), and Gaston Lévy (the CGT treasurer), were arrested and jailed for a few days, after the minister of the interior, Georges Clemenceau, claimed to have discovered a nonexistent plot by syndicalists, anarchists, monarchists, and right-wing Catholics to overthrow the Republic. Clemenceau, in addition to this, moved 60,000 soldiers into Paris. Despite this state violence, the strike went ahead and on May 1, 1906, the CGT publicly demanded that the French state reduce the legal working day to eight hours. The next day, the CGT launched a national general strike. The general strike was composed of 295 separate strikes at 12,585 businesses, which demanded a reduction to the workday. A total of roughly 200,000 workers participated in this direct action. Some of the strikes lasted over a hundred days. Only 10,177 workers out of 202,507 succeeded in forcing a capitalist to grant them any reduction to the workday. Despite this, the general strike was not a total defeat. On July 13, 1906, France’s political ruling class responded to the pressure from below by passing a law granting workers a mandatory day off work once per week. Although the CGT continued to campaign for the eight-hour day over the following years, it was not granted to the French working classes until April 1919—as part of the French government’s successful attempt to prevent anything like the ongoing Russian revolution from happening in France.[[#9RidleyRevolutionarySyndica|9]]
+'''Direct Reasons''' are Reasons which stem from immediate relations, with no intervening relations standing between the Reason and Result.
-The CGT was not unique in attempting to wrestle reforms from the ruling classes through direct action. In February 1919, the CNT’s Catalan Regional Confederation (CRT) organized a strike at the Barcelona offices of the Anglo-American electricity company Ebro Power and Irrigation. This action was launched by the CNT, in response to the company firing workers for attempting to form a union.[[#10Thefollowingaccountofthe|10]] When the company refused to give in to the workers’ demands for higher wages and the reinstatement of all the workers who had been fired, the CNT escalated the struggle and organized a strike at the company’s electricity generating plant. This resulted in Barcelona being plunged into darkness, and trams being stranded in the street unable to move. The strike soon grew to include most of the city’s gas, water, and electricity workers when, on February 26, they voted to strike in retaliation to the Spanish state sending in the military to restore the power supply. They were subsequently joined by solidarity strikes outside of Barcelona, in Sabadell, Vilafranca, and Badalona.
+For example, dropping a coffee cup causes an immediate relationship between the cup and the ground, and that relation leads directly to the Result of the coffee cup breaking to pieces.
-On March 8, the Spanish state responded to the growing strike movement by militarizing the gas, water, and electricity workers who were army reservists subject to military law. The workers were then given the choice between breaking the strike by returning to work or being confined to the barracks as punishment. This state violence did not dampen the strike, which expanded to include tram workers and carters who transported essential supplies such as coal. They, like the gas, water, and electricity workers before them, were soon militarized as well. Almost none of these militarized workers betrayed their class interests by returning to work and, in response, the Spanish state imprisoned 800 of them in the fortress of Montjuïc, in Barcelona. These workers were supported in their struggle by the printers’ union, which refused to publish any of the Spanish state’s proclamations calling up workers for military service or articles in the press opposed to the strike. This even included an announcement by the managers of Ebro Power and Irrigation that declared that workers who did not return to their job by March 6 would be fired. Workers who wanted to learn about the strike could instead read the CNT’s daily ''Solidaridad Obrera'', which published articles informing readers of the latest news.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-50.png|''Indirect Reasons have an intervening relationship between the Reason and the Result.'']]
-Throughout the strike, the CNT sought to win its demands by mobilizing large groups of workers in order to impose unbearable pressure on the company and the state via direct action. This included workers implementing syndicalist tactics by sabotaging the transformers and power cables used by the company to try and restore power to the city, and thereby break the strike. By early March, the CNT’s strike committee were, as a result of this working-class militancy, in a position where they could negotiate with the ruling classes. They successfully forced Ebro Power and Irrigation to increase wages, pay workers’ wages for the period they had been on strike, recognize the union, grant an eight-hour day, and reinstate workers who had lost their jobs due to participation in the strike. The CNT not only issued demands to the economic ruling class, but also demanded that the Spanish state release all prisoners who had been arrested for engaging in class struggle. If the state did not do so in seventy-two hours, the CNT threatened to relaunch the strike.
+'''Indirect Reasons''' are Reasons which have intervening relations between a Reason and a Result.
-In response to the general strike, the Spanish prime minster, Álvaro de Figueroa, attempted to soothe the working classes by decreeing the eight-hour day in the construction industry on March 11, which was later expanded to include all industries on April 3. The CNT had previously agreed to struggle for the eight-hour day at its founding 1910 congress. They achieved this goal in nine years through direct action alone.[[#11Itshouldbekeptinmindth|11]] Despite this great victory, the CNT decided to launch another general strike on March 24 (the resolution was passed by one vote) in response to the electricity, gas, and water companies not allowing all the strikers to return to work immediately, and the Spanish state refusing to free a number of workers imprisoned in Montjuïc—including the CNT’s general secretary Manuel Buenacasa. This time, the Spanish state was ready, and retaliated swiftly to the general strike by imposing martial law, closing all CNT union headquarters, arresting key anarchist militants, and censoring the press. Following this wave of state repression, the CNT was forced to call for a return to work on April 7, 1919.
+For example, the dropped coffee cup above may have smashed into pieces directly because it hit the ground, but it may also have indirect Reasons. The person holding the cup may have been frightened because she heard a loud noise, and the loud noise was caused by a car backfiring, and the car backfiring was caused by the driver not maintaining his car engine.
-Both the CGT’s campaign for the eight-hour day and the CNT’s strike against Ebro Power and Irrigation illustrate the general tendency for syndicalist trade unions to focus on struggling for reforms through organizing workers at the point of production. In response to this tendency, there were multiple attempts in both theory and practice to expand the scope of syndicalist action from the workplace to the wider community. The Spanish syndicalist anarchist Joan Peiró argued that the CNT had focused too much on strikes in workplaces, and should establish district committees that organized collective action around any issue facing the working classes, thereby fostering direct action on a mass scale.[[#12NickRiderThePracticeof|12]] This same conclusion was reached in a January 1931 article for the CNT’s ''Solidaridad Obrera''. It claimed that syndicalists had focused too much on mitigating “the exploitation of the producers,” and in so doing had “almost entirely forgotten to combat exploitation in the field of consumption,” such as landlords charging extortionate rent.[[#13QuotedinRiderTheBarcel|13]] Organizing against these other forms of exploitation was not only important in and of itself, but also provided an opportunity to radicalize people who might be indifferent to labor struggles, or even oppose union demands when they suffer the negative consequences of prolonged industrial action.
+In materialist dialectical terms, the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the car backfiring; the relationship between the car (which backfired) and the person holding the coffee cup would be the direct Reason for dropping the cup; and the cup’s relationship with the ground would be the direct reason for the cup smashing. At the same time, the driver’s relationship with his car would be an indirect Reason for the Result of the coffee cup smashing to pieces.
-Such community-based direct action was organized by the CNT itself during the Barcelona rent strike of July 1931.[[#14Thefollowingaccountisbas|14]] The strike grew out of previous rent strikes that had been independently organized by workers in October 1930. This movement then gained the support of the Economic Defense Commission, which had been created by the CNT’s Construction Workers’ Union on April 12, 1931, in order to study the living expenses of workers and examine ways they could be reduced. The Construction Union’s concern with these topics stemmed from the fact that 12,000 of its 30,000 membership were unemployed. On May 1, the commission presented its first demand to a large CNT meeting: a 40 percent reduction in rent. This demand, alongside proposals for combating unemployment and high food prices, was then announced to the wider public through a series of articles in ''Solidaridad Obrera'' that appeared over May 12, 13, and 15. At the end of June and the beginning of July, the commission held a series of meetings in working-class areas of Barcelona and nearby towns, where workers, a significant number of whom were women, were informed of the campaign and heard speeches attacking landlords as thieves.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-51.png|''Internal Reasons stem from internal relationships.'']]
-These meetings were followed by a mass rally on July 5, where the following three demands were agreed upon: (a) that the extra month’s rent demanded by landlords from new tenants as security should be taken as normal rent such that new tenants had to pay no more during the month of July; (b) that rent should be reduced by 40 percent; and (c) that unemployed people should not have to pay any rent. If landlords refused to reduce the rent, workers would respond by announcing that they were going on rent strike as part of a wider movement, and pay nothing.
+'''Internal Reasons''' are Reasons which stem from internal relations that occur between aspects and factors ''within'' a subject.
-The rent strike rapidly grew after its launch and expanded from 45,000 workers in July to over 100,000 in August. The ruling classes responded in late July by banning public meetings of the Economic Defense Commission and evicting workers with the assistance of the police. The tenants organized protests to prevent evictions, reoccupying houses after the eviction had taken place, moving evicted workers to the homes of other CNT members, and marching on the homes of landlords in order to warn them not to reevict tenants. One eviction in early October was prevented by a crowd of pregnant women and children, whom the police officer in charge decided not to attack. Other women protesting evictions were less fortunate, such as those who were charged by eighty police officers on October 21. The rent strike was eventually defeated between November and December, as a result of the state arresting any worker who resisted evictions or returned to their home after eviction. Despite this, it did succeed in bringing many workers into the anarchist movement, and thereby laid the foundation for future mobilizations. The rent strike even continued in some areas, such as in the La Torrassa neighborhood; rent strikers at the end of 1932 attacked the police, seized some of their weapons and attempted to burn down the local office of the chamber of urban property, which was the main landlord association in Barcelona, and had actively encouraged repression of the rent strike.
+For example, if a building collapses because the steel structure ''within'' the building rusts and fails, then that could be viewed as an ''internal Reason'' for the collapse.
-One of the main driving forces behind attempts to expand the scope of syndicalist action beyond the workplace were women within trade unions struggling simultaneously against both class and gender oppression. This can be seen in the FAUD’s Syndicalist Women’s Union (SFB), which was created by and for women in 1920. One of the cofounders of the group was the Ukrainian Jewish anarchist Milly Witkop-Rocker, whose romantic partner was Rudolf Rocker. In 1922 Witkop-Rocker argued in her pamphlet ''What Does the Syndicalist Women’s Union Want?'' that “the organization of women on the basis of anarcho-syndicalism is as necessary as the organization of male workers on the same basis. . . . Wherever there is a syndicalist organization, an attempt must be made to create one of women, so that the sections of the syndicalist women’s federation will cover the whole country like a net.”[[#15MillyWitkopRockerWhatD|15]] The main goal of the syndicalist women’s federation was to persuade women to participate in the union, especially those who were full-time housewives not employed as wage laborers, and to develop their consciousness such that they became anarchists. To this end Witkop-Rocker advocated the formation of women’s-only groups that organized a range of activities. This included mutual aid, artistic pursuits, cooking, and educational clubs equipped with libraries, “where the comrades can meet anytime to read or to speak on important issues, and where they can bring their children, if necessary.”[[#16MillyWitkopRockerWhatD|16]] This would have the consequence that women, who were often isolated from one another within their respective homes, would be brought closer together, establish bonds of solidarity with one another, and, through their participation in the union, develop a spirit of independence and personal initiative that they did not have before due to their patriarchal socialization. It was important to organize housewives not only to further the emancipation of women, but also because they could support strikes by boycotting a particular company.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-52.png|''External Reasons stem from external relations.'']]
-Witkop-Rocker realized that, in order for women to be able to participate effectively in the workers’ movement, they first had to be emancipated from the crushing toil of housework, giving birth to large numbers of children, and looking after said children. One of the main ways the FAUD and the SFB attempted to contribute toward this emancipation was by organizing around what would today be called reproductive justice. They not only demanded the abolition of laws that criminalized advocating contraception and prohibited abortion, but also held meetings on the “childbearing strike,” educated women about birth control, distributed contraceptives, and either performed illegal abortions or put women in contact with physicians who would. Syndicalist anarchists in Germany did this through participating in, and often becoming prominent members of, public organizations that were neither explicitly anarchist nor syndicalist. This included such organizations as the Reich Association of Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene and the Working Committee of the Free Sexual Reformers Association. A few syndicalist anarchists paid heavily for their actions. For example, the FAUD member Albrecht was sentenced to three years of imprisonment in 1930 because she performed more than a hundred abortions for the local chapter of the League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Hygiene.[[#17DieterNellesAnarchosyndi|17]]
+'''External Reasons''' are reasons which stem from external relations that occur between different things, phenomena, and ideas.
-Syndicalist anarchists were clearly committed in both theory and practice to achieving, enforcing, and protecting reforms through direct action within both the workplace and the wider community. In line with mass anarchist theory, they did not view the struggle for reforms as an end in and of itself. For Pouget, winning reforms, “far from constituting a goal, can only be considered as a means of stepping up demands and wresting further improvements from capitalism.”[[#18PougetWhatistheTradeU|18]] Goldman similarly believed that, although syndicalist anarchism struggles for “immediate gains” and “wrests from the enemy what it can force him to yield,” it ultimately “aims at, and concentrates its energies upon, the complete overthrow of the wage system.”[[#19EmmaGoldmanRedEmmaSpeak|19]]
+For example, if a building collapses because it is smashed by a wrecking ball, then that could be viewed as an ''external Reason'' for the collapse.
-Instead of viewing reform and revolution as inherently opposed to one another, syndicalist anarchists viewed struggling for reforms as an evolutionary moment within a process of social change that would eventually culminate in a revolutionary moment. This was because organizing to win immediate improvements under capitalism was the concrete means to generate a mass social movement that was capable of, and driven to, launch a social revolution. Pouget argued that, in order to create an anarchist society, “preparatory work must have drawn together within existing society those elements whose role it will be to make it happen” through “day to day struggles against the current master of production” that undermined the legitimacy and power of capitalists and gradually escalated and intensified to the point where the working classes had developed sufficient “strength and consciousness” to forcefully expropriate the capitalist class.[[#20PougetDirectAction6|20]] For Pouget, “whenever one analyzes the methods and value of trade union action, the fine distinction between ‘reformist’ and ‘revolutionary’ evaporates,” because, when syndicalist trade unions struggle for either, they use the same method: the direct action of the working classes.[[#21PougetWhatistheTradeU|21]] Reforms like wage increases are “a reduction in capitalist privileges” and a form of “partial expropriation.”[[#22PougetWhatistheTradeU|22]] They are, therefore, a step toward and component of the social transformation that the social revolution will fully bring about.
+All of these roles and positions can be viewed ''relatively''. From one viewpoint, a Reason may be seen as internal, but from another viewpoint, it might be viewed as external. For example, if a couple has a disagreement which leads to an argument, the disagreement may be seen as an external Reason from the perspective of each individual within the couple. But to a relationship counselor viewing the situation from the outside, the disagreement may be seen as an internal Reason which leads to ''the couple'' (a subject defined by the internal relationship between the husband and wife) arguing.
-'''The Dual Function of Syndicalist Anarchist Unions'''
+From one perspective, a government official ordering a building to be torn down may be seen as the direct Reason for the Result of the building being torn down. But from a different perspective, one can see many intervening relations: complaints from local residents may have led to the government official making the order, the order would be delivered to a demolition crew, the demolition crew would assign a crew member to operate a wrecking ball, the crew member would operate the wrecking ball, the wrecking ball would smash the building. All of these can be seen as intervening relations which constitute indirect reasons leading up to the direct Reason of the wrecking ball smashing the building. Choosing the right viewpoint during analysis is critical to make sure that Reason and Result relations are viewed properly and productively, and care must also be taken to ensure that the correct Reasons are attributed to Results (see ''Reason and Result'', p. 138).
-Syndicalist anarchists were, like anarchists in general, committed to the unity of means and ends. The application of this theory led them to conclude that, in order to successfully overthrow capitalism and the state, trade unions had to be structured in a manner that prefigured the kinds of large-scale organizations that would exist after the social revolution. As the Russian anarchist Gregori Maximoff wrote in 1927, trade unions “must be built on principles which will serve in the future, i.e. on liberty—the autonomy of individuals and organizations—and on equality.”[[#23GregoriPMaximoffProgram|23]] In order to instantiate these values, trade unions had to be organized through a system of federalism that practiced, to quote Rocker, “free combination from below upward, putting the right of self-determination of every member above everything else and recognizing only the organic agreement of all on the basis of like interests and common convictions.”[[#24RockerAnarchoSyndicalism1|24]]
+Likewise, a Reason can cause many Results, including primary and secondary Results.
-Syndicalist anarchists thought that, in constructing and expanding trade unions that prefigured the future anarchist society, they were literally, in the famous words of the preamble to the 1908 IWW constitution, “forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”[[#25IWWThePreambletotheCo|25]] They held that the trade union had, in addition to its double aim, a dual function. Under capitalism, it performed the function of bringing the working classes together in order to resist the power of the ruling classes through their own direct action. During the social revolution, the trade union would take on a new function by forcefully expropriating the means of production from the ruling classes and establishing federations of workers’ assemblies organized by trade and geographic region. This would be achieved by converting the federations and local sections of the trade union from organizations of economic resistance into organizations of economic administration that self-managed the emerging anarchist economy.[[#26Thereareimportantexceptio|26]]
+-----
-The idea that trade unions should perform the dual function of resisting dominant institutions in the present, and taking over and organizing the economy in the future, was not invented by syndicalist anarchists during the 1890s and 1900s. It was, as I showed in chapter 8, first advocated during debates within the First International. It continued to be advocated by anarchists years after the congresses of the First International. In 1887, Lucy Parsons, who would later attend the founding convention of the IWW in 1905, claimed that trade unions built under capitalism were the “embryonic groups of the ideal anarchistic society.”[[#27QuotedinAlbertParsonsAn|27]] In 1927, Maximoff wrote that “the revolutionary trade union, in the view of the Anarchists, are not only organs of the struggle against the contemporary structure; they are also the cells of the future society.”[[#28MaximoffProgramofAnarcho|28]]
+==== Annotation 138 ====
-Although syndicalist anarchists thought that trade unions should be the organization through which workers took control of and reorganized the economy, they were not generally committed to the view that trade unions should be the only organs of self-management during and after the social revolution. In 1909, in their fictional account of a successful syndicalist revolution Pouget and Émile Pataud claimed that, in addition to trade unions, village assemblies in the countryside, and community assemblies in urban areas at the level of street, district, and city would be formed. These community assemblies could be attended by anyone, regardless of their occupation, and so brought people together as “inhabitants, and not as producers.”[[#29EmilePataudandEmilePouge|29]] Meetings “concerned themselves with measures of hygiene and health . . . [and] took part in the administration of the City. They undertook the work of the moral administration of house property, now proclaimed collective property, and, as a matter of course, placed at the free disposition of all.”[[#30PataudandEmilePougetHow|30]] This view was shared by Besnard, who explained in his address to the IWMA in 1937, that “this notion does not at all imply that anarcho-syndicalism—which is, remember, against the State and federalist—means and aims to be ''everything'' and that ''nothing else ''should exist alongside it.”[[#31PierreBesnardAnarchoSyn|31]] It instead aims for self-management in every sphere of life, rather than just the workplace, and as a result, advocates a federation of regional, national, and international communes in parallel to the federation of trade unions.[[#32BesnardAnarchoSyndicalism|32]]
+'''Primary''' Results are Results which are more direct and predictable.
-The CNT also advocated communes alongside trade unions. The Spanish syndicalist anarchist Isaac Puente argued in his pamphlet ''Libertarian Communism'' in 1932 that “life in the future will be organized” through two currently existing institutions: “the free union,” which unites workers on the basis of their labor, and “the free municipality,” which “is the assembly of the workers in a very small locality, village or hamlet” united on the basis of their location.[[#33IsaacPuenteLibertarianCo|33]] These ideas went onto inspire the CNT’s 1936 Zaragoza Congress resolutions. They proposed that during the social revolution workers should establish both federations of producers’ associations, which would self-manage the workplace, and “libertarian communes” in each locality, which would organize such things as housing, education, and the “beautification of the settlement” and federate together to form the “Confederation of Autonomous Libertarian Communes.”[[#34QuotedinJosePeiratsThe|34]]
+'''Secondary''' Results are Results which are indirect and less predictable.
-It is also a mistake to view syndicalist trade unions themselves as being purely workplace organizations. The district committees of the CNT were located in union centers within working-class neighborhoods. They were social spaces that established bonds of mutual support between workers from different workplaces, migrants new to the area, and unemployed workers. In so doing, they spread anarchist theory and practice to workers in varied circumstances, on the basis of their shared belonging to a local community. The ability of the CNT to mobilize large groups of workers during waves of direct action was not based exclusively on union sections in specific workplaces or industries. It also stemmed from the influence that anarchist militants had in face-to-face conversations with their neighbors, friends, and family in homes, cafés, and the streets. Nor did workers in the CNT limit themselves to workplace organizing. They also organized tenants unions and, despite patriarchal opposition from within the union, women’s groups such as Mujeres Libres. This went alongside the construction of numerous forms of associational life, including affinity groups, schools, neighborhood educational and cultural centers called ateneos, theater clubs, hiking clubs, and more. In 1932, youth groups that had emerged from ateneos in Granada, Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia formed the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth. The CNT’s construction of prefigurative organizations therefore occurred both within the workplace and the community.[[#35MarthaAckelsbergFreeWome|35]]
+For example, an earthquake may have ''primary'' Results such as the ground shaking, buildings being destroyed, etc. ''Secondary'' Results from the earthquake might include flights being rerouted from local airports, shortages at grocery stores, etc.
-Syndicalist anarchists, like anarchists in general, advocated prefigurative organizations because it was only through participating in such organizations that the working classes would develop the radical capacities, drives, and consciousness necessary both for struggling effectively against existing dominant institutions and producing and reproducing the future anarchist society. It was thought that workers would learn how to self-manage the economy through their experience of self-managing a trade union, which, like the economy of the future, was structured in a horizontal and federalist manner, made decisions within general assemblies in which everyone had a vote, and coordinated action on a large scale through a system of delegates. Rocker thought that trade unions should function as both “the fighting organization of the workers against the employers” and “the school for the intellectual training of the workers to make them acquainted with the technical management of production and economic life in general so that when a revolutionary situation arises they will be capable of taking the socio-economic organism into their own hands and remaking it according to Socialist principles.”[[#36RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|36]]
+In the motion of the material world, there is no known “first Reason” or “final Result.”
-Syndicalist anarchists thought it was very important to provide such technical education to the working classes, because of their commitment to grounding their revolutionary strategy in an understanding of what the world was really like. In Baginski’s words,
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">the economic power to rule and lead production does not fall in the workers’ laps (in quiet submission to the fate of economic development) without their active engagement; no, they must gain it themselves by fighting with endurance and strength. Workers dream themselves too easily into the idea that one day the “social revolution” will descend to earth like a supernatural godhead in order to heal all wounds and dry all tears in one swoop. Oh no! The sun, which as it set today looked down on shackled slaves, will not as it rises tomorrow behold free people. Workers must educate themselves through their own strength to become thinking and acting people. They have to educate and prepare themselves for the great profession of administration and leadership in production.[[#37MaxBaginskiWhatDoesSynd|37]]</div>
+==== Annotation 139 ====
-Syndicalist anarchists faced two major problems when trying to implement this theory. First, in order for individual workers to be transformed through their participation within the trade union, they had to be members of the trade union for an extended period of time. A significant number of workers would often join trade unions due to their immediate economic interests, such as a strike, but would leave them once the situation ended. This was especially the case for temporary workers who lacked a permanent employer. As a result of this and other factors, such as workers deciding to join larger reformist trade unions, syndicalist trade unions had a high membership turnover. The SAC, for example, was founded in 1910 and by 1935 had 36,000 members. During this twenty-five year period, a total of 250,000 workers had at one time been registered members of the trade union.[[#38LennartKPerssonRevolut|38]] Even if workers did remain within the trade union over an extended period of time, it did not follow from this that they would actively participate within it and thereby be transformed. In the Spanish village of Casas Viejas, three hundred workers joined the local union of the CNT in 1932, but only a minority of them were committed anarchist militants. A significant number joined the trade union because it was necessary to find a job, and they did not subsequently absorb anarchist ideas.[[#39JeromeRMintzTheAnarchi|39]]
+With our current understanding of the universe, it is uncertain what might have caused the creation of all existence. Was it the Big Bang? If so, did the Big Bang have some underlying reason? There is also no way to know if there will ever be a “final Result.” Will the heat death of the universe occur, and if so, will that end all transpiring of relations which would end the cycle of development — of Reasons and Results?
-Second, syndicalist trade unions, like anarchists in general, experienced a huge amount of state repression. The CNT was founded in 1910, only to be made illegal and have its headquarters shut down in September 1911. This occurred as part of the Spanish state’s violent repression of a wave of strikes and antiwar protests, which anarchist workers had encouraged and participated in. The CNT began to reorganize itself from June 1912 onward, when all the militants who had been arrested the previous September were released. The CNT’s paper, ''Solidaridad Obrera'', reappeared in May 1913, and members of the CNT were able to elect the regional committee of the recently legalized CRT in July. By August, the CRT was once again made illegal after it attempted to organize a general strike in support of textile workers. The CRT re-emerged as a public organization from August 1914 onwards only to be briefly banned again in 1920.[[#40ASmithAnarchismRevolut|40]]
+As of now, we do not have solid answers to these questions. If and when answers arise, it is possible that the materialist dialectical framework will need to be updated to reflect new scientific knowledge, just as Marx, Engels, and Lenin have updated materialist dialectics in the past [see Annotation 72, p. 68]. What’s important to understand in the meantime is that within our realm of human experience and understanding, for all practical purposes, every Result which we live through and observe has some underlying Reason, and will itself lead to one or more Results.
-In 1924 the CNT was made illegal for a fourth time due to its resistance to the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, which had been established in September 1923. The new regime required that trade unions provide the state with a complete list of their activities and membership, including the positions members held in the trade union and their home addresses. The CNT refused, and different segments of the movement disagreed with one another over whether or not the organization should go underground or try to operate as publicly as possible. On May 28, the Spanish state forced the decision when it responded to the assassination of the executioner of Barcelona, Rogelio Pérez Vicario, by making the trade union illegal, banning ''Solidaridad Obrera'', and arresting leading militants. The CNT was only made legal again in 1930 with the collapse of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, but nonetheless continued to experience significant state repression both under the quasi-dictatorship of Berenguer and the Spanish Republic, which was inaugurated in April 1931.[[#41JasonGarnerGoalsandMean|41]]
+Engels said: “we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis [see Annotation 200, p. 192], positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed, and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate [are mixed together]. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.”<ref>''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Friedrich Engels, 1880.</ref>
-'''The General Strike'''
+-----
-One of the main tactics that syndicalist anarchists advocated and engaged in were general strikes in which a significant number of workers went on strike at once. Rocker viewed the general strike as “the most powerful weapon which the workers have at their command” because it “brings the whole economic system to a standstill and shakes it to its foundations.”[[#42RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|42]] He proposed that the working classes use the general strike in order to achieve both reforms, such as compelling capitalists to grant workers the eight-hour day, and the revolutionary goal of abolishing capitalism and the state in favor of an anarchist society.[[#43RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|43]] This same perspective can be seen in Delesalle’s 1906 distinction between four different kinds of general strike: (a) a general strike by individual unions; (b) a general strike across all industries on a specific day; (c) a general strike across all industries that places the working class in “a state of open war with capitalist society”; and (d) a general strike that is a revolution.[[#44QuotedinJamesJollTheAn|44]]
+==== Annotation 140 ====
-Syndicalist anarchists were neither the first nor the only group to advocate the general strike as a strategy through which the working classes could transform society in a positive direction.[[#45PhilHGoodsteinTheTheor|45]] In October 1833, an assembly of Glasgow workers associated with the Owenite movement passed a resolution that declared that rather than launching an insurrection to achieve social change, workers should simply fold their arms and abstain from work. This mass stoppage of work would, according to their optimistic prediction, have the consequence that “capital is destroyed, the revenue fails, the system of government falls into confusion, and every link in the chain which binds society together is broken in a moment by this inert conspiracy of the poor against the rich.”[[#46QuotedinGoodsteinGeneral|46]]
+In the above passage, Engels is simply explaining that since all things, phenomena, and ideas are relationally linked and inter-related [see ''Basic Principles of Materialist Dialectics'', p. 106], the mutual impacts and processes of change which lead to development (the reasons and results which transpire between all things, phenomena, and ideas) are also all linked and inter-related. What might be viewed as a Reason is also a Result of one or more prior Reasons, just as every Result is also a Reason for future Results.
-The idea of the general strike continued to be advocated during the First International. At the Brussels Congress of September 1868, a resolution was passed that stated that, if a war broke out, then workers would stop it through the “legal practical means” of ceasing all work.[[#47QuotedinJulianPWArcher|47]] Several months later Bakunin argued in “Organization and the General Strike,”'' ''which was published in ''Égalité'' on April 3, 1869, that the recent wave of strikes in Europe indicated that “the struggle of labor against capital is growing ever stronger . . . and that we are advancing at a great pace toward Social Revolution. . . . As strikes spread and as neighbors learn about them the general strike comes ever closer. These days, with the idea of liberation so current amongst the proletariat, a general strike can result only in a great cataclysm, giving society a new skin.”[[#48MichaelBakuninSelectedTe|48]]
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-The Belgian Federation of the Saint-Imier International, which included both anarchists and collectivists who were not anarchists, endorsed the general strike as a revolutionary strategy during their congress of August 1873 held in Antwerp. Guillaume responded to this in May, writing that “the general strike, if it was realizable, would certainly be the most powerful lever of a social revolution. Just imagine the effect of the immense labor machine being stopped on a fixed day in all countries at once. . . . In a word, the whole people descending into the street, and saying to their masters: ‘I will only start work again after having accomplished the transformation of property which must put the instruments of labor into the hands of the workers.’”[[#49QuotedinCahmKropotkin2|49]]
+Because the relationship between Reason and Result is objective and inevitable, we can’t ignore the relationship between Reason and Result in our perception and practice. In reality, there is no thing, phenomenon or idea that can exist without any underlying Reason or Reasons; and vice versa, there is no Reason that does not lead to any Result.
-He was nonetheless unsure if “the International Federation of trade unions . . . will ever be strong enough, solid enough, universal enough to be able to carry out a general strike.”[[#50QuotedinCahmKropotkin2|50]] The general strike continued to be discussed and debated during the September 1873 Geneva Congress of the Saint-Imier International. The Belgian delegates unsurprisingly argued that the general strike was “a means of bringing a movement onto the street and leading the workers to the barricades.”[[#51QuotedinCahmKropotkin2|51]] Guillaume similarly insisted that the general strike, as understood by the International, was the social revolution and that revolutionaries should focus on bringing it about. Although Guillaume had previously described a general strike as occurring on a fixed day, he now asked: “Should the ideal of the general strike . . . be that it has to break out everywhere at an appointed day and hour? Can the day and hour of the revolution be fixed in this way? No! . . . The revolution has to be contagious.”[[#52QuotedinCahmKropotkin2|52]]
+-----
-After the collapse of the Saint-Imier International in 1878, the idea of the general strike was frequently discussed by French trade unionists during the emergence of revolutionary syndicalism as a social movement. In 1887, at the Montluçon Congress of the National Federation of Trade Unions (FNS), two anarchist workers, Berger and Combomreil, responded to the French state socialist Jules Guesde’s proposal that capitalism should be abolished through the seizure of state power. They advocated the general strike as an alternative method for achieving social change. A year later, the FNS passed a resolution at its congress from October 28–November 4 in Le Bouscat which stated that “the general strike, i.e., the complete cessation of labor, or the revolution, may be used by the workers for their emancipation.”[[#53GoodsteinGeneralStrike5|53]]
+==== Annotation 141 ====
-During the 1880s and 1890s, many French trade unionists conceived of the general strike in a manner that differed significantly from how syndicalist anarchists would later theorize it in the early twentieth century. Aristide Briand cowrote a text with Pelloutier in 1892, while Pelloutier was still a member of the Marxist led French Workers’ Party and had yet to become an anarchist. It was not published in full, but, in it, they depict the general strike as a “peaceful and legal” affair in which workers saved up enough money and provisions to last fifteen days without work and, on an agreed date, stayed at home. It was imagined that, in the absence of the working classes’ labor, capitalism would quickly cease to function and be abolished “smoothly, without the spilling of blood, solely by the combination of rest.”[[#54QuotedinJenningsSyndical|54]]
+In political activity, it is important to remember that ''every'' interaction within every relationship will lead to mutual impacts which will cause change and development; in other words, everything we choose to do will be the Reason for one or more Results. We must be aware of unintended or unpredicted Results from our activities.
-Syndicalist anarchists, in comparison to many earlier advocates of the general strike, were not naive and understood that a society-wide strike that encompassed all branches of production was extremely unlikely to occur, especially at the beginning of the strike. Nacht, for example, wrote in 1905 (under the pen name Arnold Roller) that a general strike in which the entire international working classes simultaneously laid down their tools and overthrew capitalism was a beautiful idea that will nonetheless “always be a dream.”[[#55ArnoldRollerTheSocialGe|55]] Given this, syndicalist anarchists aimed to achieve the more feasible goal of organizing a general strike that began in key industries the economy could not function without, such as coal, gas, railway, and shipping. From this starting point, the general strike would, in theory, spread to the wider economy as workers in more and more industries either decided to join the strike in solidarity with its aims and as a response to state repression toward the strike, or were forced to cease work entirely due to the strike’s disruption of key infrastructure and raw materials not being transported to factories. This would in turn create a situation in which the large number of workers who were not organized within trade unions, or who were apolitical, were forced by the unfolding wave of events to take sides, participate in the general strike and thereby become radicalized.[[#56RollerSocialGeneralStrik|56]]
+Reason-Result relationships are very complicated and diverse. Therefore, we must accurately identify the types of Reasons [direct, indirect, internal, external, etc.] so that we can come up with proper solutions which are suitable for the specific situation in both perception and practice. A Reason can lead to many results and, likewise, a Result can be caused by many Reasons, which is why we must have a comprehensive viewpoint and a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] in our perception of reality so we can properly analyse, solve and apply Reason-Result relationships.
-Unlike the previously mentioned proponents of the general strike, syndicalist anarchists did not view it as a form of passive resistance in which the working classes simply ceased work, folded their arms, and waited for dominant structures to collapse. In the advent of a revolutionary situation, they proposed that workers should use the general strike as a platform from which to launch the forceful expropriation of the means of production, land, and the necessities of life from the ruling classes and establish federations of workplace and community assemblies. During her speech at the 1905 founding convention of the IWW, Lucy Parsons proposed that socialism could be achieved via a “general strike,” in which workers occupied their workplaces in order to “take possession of the necessary property of production.”[[#57LucyParsonsFreedomEqual|57]] That same year, Nacht wrote that a successful general strike “accomplishes expropriation and communalizes the means of production.”[[#58RollerSocialGeneralStrik|58]] Pouget and Pataud imagined in 1909 a fictional revolutionary general strike in which “the Unions in each industry, in each profession, took possession of the factories and workshops” and reorganized production on a communist basis by means of free agreement between federations.[[#59PataudandPougetHowWeSh|59]] Besnard argued in 1930 that a revolutionary general strike was distinguished from normal strikes on the grounds that workers would not only cease work, but also “''occupy'' the place of production, ''get rid'' of the boss, ''expropriate'' him, and ''get ready'' to get production moving again, but in the interests of the revolution.”[[#60QuotedinRichardsMalates|60]]
+-----
-Syndicalist anarchists tried to clearly differentiate their active militant conception of the general strike from previous passive conceptions. For Nacht, writing in 1905, the term “social general strike” should be used to refer to a general strike that involves the expropriation of the ruling classes and the establishment of an anarchist society, in order to clearly differentiate it from general strikes for reforms, such as higher wages or universal suffrage.[[#61RollerSocialGeneralStrik|61]] In 1907, the International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam passed a series of resolutions on syndicalism that varyingly referred to “the revolutionary General strike” and “the General Strike with Expropriation.”[[#62MaurizioAntonioliedThe|62]] Decades later, in 1930, Besnard referred to “the expropriatory general strike, with violence,” which would be “''insurrectional''.”[[#63QuotedinRichardsMalates|63]]
+==== Annotation 142 ====
-Some syndicalist anarchists equated the general strike with the social revolution, while others were careful to distinguish between the two. Nacht claimed that since a “social general strike” would involve the expropriation of the means of production and the establishment of an anarchist society, it followed that “the General Strike is not only the introduction of the revolution but is the social revolution itself.”[[#64RollerSocialGeneralStrik|64]] Malatesta, in comparison, held in 1907 that “the general strike has always struck me as an excellent means to set off the social revolution.”[[#65AntonioliedInternationa|65]] Malatesta’s conceptualization was shared by at least some syndicalist trade unions. At the founding 1910 congress of the CNT, a report on the general strike was approved and later read aloud again at the CNT’s 1911 congress. The report proposed that “the general strike, the withdrawal of labor by all the workers at any given moment, entails such a great disturbance in the ordinary course of today’s society of exploited and exploiters that it will unavoidably have to cause an explosion, a clash, between the antagonistic forces that are now fighting for survival.”[[#66CNTTheFirstCongressof|66]] The IWMA’s 1922 declaration of principles described “the social general strike . . . as the prelude to the social revolution.”[[#67IWADeclarationofthePri|67]]
+It is critical to understand that there may be many events or relationships which might be falsely ascribed as Reasons for a given Result (and vice-versa).
-Syndicalist anarchists did not think that all it took to initiate a revolutionary general strike was a trade union boldly proclaiming it on a fixed date whenever they fancied.[[#68RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|68]] They believed, instead, that it would develop out of smaller strikes for immediate improvements. In Pouget and Pataud’s 1909 novel ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'', they describe a period of escalating class conflict prior to the launching of the general strike: “strikes followed strikes; lockouts were replied to by boycotts; sabotage was employed with ruinous intensity.”[[#69PataudandPougetHowWeSh|69]] Under such conditions the antagonism between workers and capitalists developed to the point that workers came to consider themselves to be in a continuous war against the ruling classes. Through their experience of collective struggle within trade unions, they developed radical capacities, drives, and consciousness such that “the working class became more warlike. They took possession of the streets, and familiarized themselves with the tactics of resistance. They learned how to stand their ground before bodies of police, and how to deal with the troops marched against them.”[[#70PataudandPougetHowWeSh|70]]
+For example: in 1965, the United States of America officially declared war on North Vietnam after the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” in which Vietnamese forces supposedly fired on a United States Navy ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is often described as the “cause” or the “Reason” that the Vietnam War began.
-In this fictional account, the class conflict then exploded into a revolutionary situation, after a violent skirmish between striking construction workers and the police and army culminated in a massacre, during which the military shot at and launched a cavalry charge against the demonstrators. In response, syndicalist trade unions seized their opportunity and called for a general strike in solidarity with the victims of state violence, a strike they claimed would continue until the state had prosecuted the soldiers.[[#71PataudandPougetHowWeSh|71]] This general strike against a specific act of state violence morphed over time into a revolutionary movement against capitalism and the state due to a combination of: (a) syndicalist trade unions spreading anarchist ideas among participants of the general strike, publicly calling for the social revolution and preparing for the social revolution by seizing weapons and organizing workers’ militias; (b) the working classes being compelled to expropriate and distribute goods in order to meet people’s needs, especially for food; and (c) the working classes responding to increasingly extreme state violence against the general strike by overthrowing the ruling classes.[[#72PataudandPougetHowWeSh|72]]
+However, the real “Reason” why the USA declared war on North Vietnam had to do with the underlying contradiction between capitalist imperialism and communism in Vietnam. This contradiction had to be resolved one way or another. The United States of America willfully decided to try to negate this contradiction by instigating war, and this was the true reason the war began. In fact, the so-called “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” never even occurred as described — the attack on the USA’s ship never really occurred. A document released by the Pentagon in 2005 revealed that the incident was completely fabricated. So, saying that the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” was the Reason for the war is nonsensical, since it’s an event which never even occurred in reality.
-The manner in which syndicalist anarchists described the general strike can sometimes give the false impression that they thought a general strike could overthrow class society without the need for armed conflict and the violent destruction of the state. Such an interpretation ignores what the vast majority of syndicalist anarchists wrote. Pouget and Pataud’s fictional general strike included workers assaulting government buildings, such as police stations and parliament, in order to achieve “the dissolution of the bourgeois State” by “disorganizing . . . dismantling and thoroughly disabling it.”[[#73PataudandPougetHowWeSh|73]] The IWMA’s 1922 declaration of principles claimed that “the decisive struggle between the capitalism of today and free communism of tomorrow will not be without conflict,” and, as a result, they recognized the need for “violence as a means of defense against the violent methods of the ruling classes during the struggle for the possession of the factories and the fields by the revolutionary people.”[[#74IWADeclarationofthePri|74]] At the 1910 founding congress of the CNT, it was agreed that, given the violence of the state, “it would be impossible for a peaceful general strike to last very long”; workers would have to engage in “violent” protests against the forces of state repression and thereby defeat “the tyrants.”[[#75CNTTheFirstCongressof|75]] This position was expanded upon in resolutions of the CNT’s 1936 Zaragoza Congress that proposed that the defense of the revolution should be achieved by “the people armed.”[[#76QuotedinPeiratsCNTinth|76]]
+Understanding the true nature of Reason and Result is very important for making decisions and choosing a path forward in political action. Attributing the wrong Reason to a Result, or misunderstanding the Results which stem from a Reason, can lead to serious setbacks and failures. Therefore, it is vital for revolutionaries to properly identify and understand the ''actual'' Reasons and Results which drive development.
-Some syndicalist anarchists did argue that a revolutionary general strike would provide a more effective means of defeating the police and military than the previous strategy of launching insurrections that established barricades. Nacht claimed in 1905 that the widening of streets since the French Revolution of 1789 and the uprisings of 1848 meant that “the heroic times of the battle on the barricades have gone by.”[[#77RollerSocialGeneralStrik|77]] In the aftermath of World War I, Berkman wrote in 1929 that workers at a barricade would not be able to defeat a trained military supported by artillery, tanks, bombers, and poison gas. Such an idea of revolution was “obsolete,” and had to be replaced by one that focused on the true power of the working classes: their ability to withdraw labor.[[#78BerkmanAnarchism19697|78]] Rocker similarly wrote that the general strike was a replacement for “the barricades of the political uprising.”[[#79RockerAnarchoSyndicalism|79]]
+=== 3. Obviousness and Randomness ===
-Rocker, Nacht, Pouget, and Pataud all hoped that a general strike would occur over such a large area and involve so many workers that the military would be forced, by the sheer scale of the revolt, to scatter their troops into smaller units that could then be more easily defeated in combat or persuaded to join the workers in revolt.[[#80RockerAnarchoSyndicalism1|80]] The idea that a significant number of troops would mutiny and refuse to obey their orders to crush the general strike was not purely wishful thinking and had some basis in experience. In 1871, the Paris Commune was created after army soldiers, who had been sent to seize cannons from the national guard in the district of Montmartre, disobeyed multiple orders to fire on workers and guardsmen defending the cannons and, instead, fraternized with the people, a significant number of whom were women. Several years later, in 1907, a detachment of troops decided to mutiny on their way to suppress a CGT picket line.[[#81JohnMerrimanMassacreThe|81]] During Spain’s tragic week of 1909, a general strike against army reservists being called up to fight in Morocco mutated into an armed insurrection, in which, the working classes attacked the police specifically, while persuading some local soldiers to not fire on them. The insurrection was soon defeated when soldiers from outside Barcelona were called in and the barricades that workers had assembled were destroyed by artillery.[[#82BookchinSpanishAnarchists|82]]
+==== a. Categories of Obviousness and Randomness ====
-Even if Rocker, Nacht, Pouget, and Pataud were overly optimistic about the effectiveness of a general strike in diminishing the power of the military and police, they nonetheless did all advocate an armed uprising as part of the general strike, and thought that workers would have to defend themselves from the violence of the police and army. Pouget and Pataud’s account of how this would happen was, by far, the most eccentric. In their novel, they depicted the forces of reaction, including the invading armies of foreign states, being easily defeated by a variety of science-fiction weapons. This included electromagnetic waves that caused far away enemy ammunition to explode and aerial torpedoes dropped from remote-controlled planes.[[#83PataudandPougetHowWeSh|83]] These weapons were so ridiculous for the time that it is unclear if the authors seriously advocated them, or merely intended to entertain the reader. Kropotkin nonetheless asserted in his preface to the 1913 English edition of Pouget and Pataud’s book that the authors had significantly underestimated the violent resistance that the social revolution would face and have to overcome.[[#84KropotkinDirectStruggle|84]]
+-----
-Although syndicalist anarchists generally attempted to produce a realistic conception of the general strike, they consistently faced two key problems when trying to implement it. First, syndicalist trade unions in Europe and the United States were unable to organize or initiate genuine national general strikes across multiple key industries by themselves, due to them having either small memberships or large memberships concentrated in specific parts of a country or industries. Given this, in order to launch national general strikes they had to rely on support from reformist trade unions, which failed to materialize on a number of occasions. In Spain, the CNT, whose membership was largest in Catalonia, organized a short general strike in December 1916 with the General Union of Workers (UGT), which was affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). This was followed by a general strike in August 1917, for which the leadership of the PSOE-UGT seriously failed to prepare, and which was only launched after they were forced into action by the UGT’s largest union independently calling for a general strike. A few years later, the UGT refused to support a general strike in 1920. When Primo de Rivera established himself as dictator of Spain in September 1923, the CNT responded by calling for a general strike, while the UGT not only did not support the general strike but collaborated with the regime.[[#85BookchinSpanishAnarchists|85]]
+==== Annotation 143 ====
-Second, general strikes organized by anarchists were militarily crushed on numerous occasions. A long list of examples can be found in the history of Spanish anarchism. To give one, on February 16, 1902, a general strike in Barcelona—which spread to nearby industrial towns—was launched in solidarity with the striking Metalworkers’ Federation, who had been on strike for two months. The general strike only lasted a week and was defeated following the declaration of martial law, the deployment of the military, the closure of union headquarters, and the arrest of several hundred organizers.[[#86ASmithAnarchismRevolut|86]] Spanish syndicalist anarchists were themselves aware of this problem. The CNT’s report on the general strike, which was approved at the founding 1910 congress, claimed that “experience has taught us that” when the general strike is “localized at one point and the workers of the rest of the nation remain completely passive, the forces of public order, at the service of the bourgeoisie, will concentrate on that location, and it will be relatively easy for the government to crush the revolt.”[[#87CNTTheFirstCongressof|87]]
+In Vietnamese, the words for these categories are “tất nhiên” and “ngẫu nhiên,” which respectively translate to “obvious” and “random.” In socialist literature, various words have been used by different authors to convey the underlying meaning of these categories (Engels, for instance, used the terms “necessary” and “accidental” to mean “obvious” and “random,” respectively). We have chosen to use words which closely match the Vietnamese used in the original text, but the reader should be aware that these same concepts may be described using many different words in various English translations of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, etc.
-This is not to say that general strikes were always unsuccessful. Swiss anarchists participated in a 1907 general strike against local chocolate companies, including Nestlé, after a worker was unfairly fired. The general strike, which lasted from March 25 to 29, spread to Montreux, Lausanne, and Geneva in response to gendarmes firing on and wounding ten workers. It resulted in the rehiring of the worker, recognition of the trade union, and various material improvements.[[#88AntonioliedInternationa|88]] Even when general strikes were militarily crushed or failed to achieve their immediate objectives, they could still bring about social change. This includes the previously mentioned 1906 CGT general strike that won the weekend and the 1919 CNT general strike that won the eight-hour day. On other occasions general strikes were, even if defeated, important acts of working-class resistance against domination and exploitation by the ruling classes. It is, from an anarchist perspective, better to rebel against oppression and lose than to not rebel at all, especially since workers do not know going into a struggle whether or not they will emerge victorious.
+The ''Obviousness'' category refers to events that occur because of the essential [see ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156] internal aspects of the material structure of a subject. These essential internal characteristics become reasons for certain results under certain conditions: the Obvious ''has'' to happen in a certain way, it ''can’t'' happen any other way.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#19|1]]. Rudolf Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 56–57.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#29|2]]. Pouget, “What is the Trade Union?,” in ''No Gods'','' No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'','' ''ed. Daniel Guérin (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005),'' ''432–33.</div>
+==== Annotation 144 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#39|3]]. Pouget, “What is the Trade Union?,” 434.</div>
+''Obviousness'' can only apply to material subjects in the material world and results which are certain to happen based on the material laws of nature. Obviousness arises from the internal aspects, features, and relations of physical objects. Paper ''will'' burn under certain specific conditions, due its internal material structure. If those conditions (i.e., temperature, the presence of oxygen, etc.) exist, then paper ''will'' catch fire predictably. In other words, paper will ''obviously'' burn under certain circumstances due to its internal composition,.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#49|4]]. Émile Pouget, ''Direct Action ''(London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2003), 10–13.</div>
+The ''Randomness'' category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A Random outcome ''may'' occur or it ''may not'' occur; a Random outcome could happen ''this'' way or it could happen ''that'' way.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#59|5]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''51.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#69|6]]. Jeremy Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France: A Study of Ideas'' (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990),'' ''16–17. During the Saint-Imier International, Guillaume advocated the general strike while being wary of partial strikes for increased wages because he thought they were unlikely to succeed and could instead bring suffering to workers and sap their revolutionary spirit. See Caroline Cahm, ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism'','' 1872–1886'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),'' ''222–25.</div>
+==== Annotation 145 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#79|7]]. Paul Delesalle, “The Strike!,” Libcom website, December 9, 2013, https://libcom.org/library/strike-paul-delesalle. For other examples, see Paul Delesalle, “Anarchists and the Trade Unions,” Libcom website, December 9, 2013, https://libcom.org/article/anarchists-and-trade-unions-paul-delesalle; Alexander Berkman, ''What is Anarchism? ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003),'' ''78–79, 197–210.</div>
+As we discussed above, paper ''will'' burn if it reaches a certain temperature — that much is ''obvious''. If your friend holds paper over the flame of the lighter, the paper ''will'' burn — that’s ''obvious''. But you can’t be certain whether your friend will actually hold the paper to the flame or not. This demonstrates ''Randomness''. Whether your friend will ultimately hold the paper to the flame or not depends on an external relation which is not defined by the internal structure of the paper, and which can’t be predicted with the same predictability as obvious events which are rooted in internal material aspects.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#89|8]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 84. For the history of sabotage as a strategy see Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 44–46; F. F. Ridley, ''Revolutionary Syndicalism in France: The Direct Action of Its Time'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 120–23; Dominique Pinsolle, “Sabotage, the IWW, and Repression: How the American Reinterpretation of a French Concept Gave Rise to a New International Conception of Sabotage,” in ''Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW'', ed. Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 44–58.</div>
+==== b. Dialectical relationship between Obviousness and Randomness ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#99|9]]. Ridley, ''Revolutionary Syndicalism in France'', 132–33; Nicholas Papayanis, ''Alphonse Merrheim: The Emergence of Reformism in Revolutionary Syndicalism, 1871–1925 ''(Dordrecht, NL: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985), 20–30, 116–17, 121, 137. Nicholas Papayanis, “Alphones Merrheim and the Strike of Hennebont: The Struggle for the Eight-Hour Day in France,” ''International Review of Social History'' 16, no. 2 (1971): 159–83. Spanish trade unionists, including anarchists, also organized a general strike for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1906, after being inspired by the CGT’s campaign. See Angel Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State'','' 1989–1923'' (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 130–31.</div>
+Obviousness and Randomness both exist objectively and play an important role in the motion and development of things and phenomena. Obviousness plays the decisive role.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#109|10]]. The following account of the strike is based on Murray Bookchin, ''The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years, 1868–1936'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 1998),'' ''160–63; A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'','' ''292–99.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#119|11]]. It should be kept in mind that, even after this legislation was passed, workers went on strike to demand that the eight-hour day was implemented. See A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'','' ''302–3.</div>
+==== Annotation 146 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#129|12]]. Nick Rider, “The Practice of Direct Action: The Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931,” in ''For Anarchism: History'','' Theory and Practice'', ed. David Goodway (London: Routledge, 1989), 87.</div>
+Obviousness plays the decisive role simply because Obviousness is far more predictable and the laws which govern material phenomena are essentially fixed. We can’t change the laws of physics, the nature of chemical reactions, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#138|13]]. Quoted in Rider, “The Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931,” 88.</div>
+Obviousness and Randomness exist in dialectical unity; there is no pure Obviousness, nor pure Randomness. It is obvious that Randomness shall occur in our universe, however Obviousness clears a path through this Randomness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#148|14]]. The following account is based on Rider, “The Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931,” 88–98; Chris Ealham: ''Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona'','' 1898–1937 ''(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 105–7, 112–18, 120. There had been earlier attempts by Spanish anarchists to organize tenants in 1903–4 and 1917–18. See A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'','' ''162, 265–66.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#158|15]]. Milly Witkop-Rocker, “What Does the Syndicalist Women’s Union Want?,” trans. Jesse Cohn, Anarchist Library website, n.d., https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/milly-witkop-rocker-what-does-the-syndicalist-women-s-union-want.</div>
+==== Annotation 147 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#168|16]]. Milly Witkop-Rocker, “What Does the Syndicalist Women’s Union Want?”</div>
+Our universe is incredibly complex and there are many different potential external relations which could impact any given situation, such that some degree of Randomness is always present in any situation; in other words, the presence of Randomness can be seen as Obvious.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#178|17]]. Dieter Nelles, “Anarchosyndicalism and the Sexual Reform Movement in the Weimar Republic” (paper presented at the Free Love and Labour Movement workshop at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 2000).</div>
+In 1922, Ho Chi Minh identified objective internal characteristics of the working class of France and its colonies. He wrote: “The mutual ignorance of the two proletariats gives rise to prejudices. The French workers look upon the native as an inferior and negligible human being, incapable of understanding and still less of taking action. The natives regard all the French as wicked exploiters. Imperialism and capitalism do not fail to take advantage of this mutual suspicion and this artificial racial hierarchy to frustrate propaganda and divide forces which ought to unite.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#188|18]]. Pouget, “What is the Trade Union?,” 433.</div>
+In this example, Ho Chi Minh identifies prejudice as an obvious outcome of mutual ignorance. The prejudice arises as a matter of course from internal objective aspects of the two proletarian groups. As long as French and native workers remain ignorant of one another, prejudice will arise. The specific forms which this prejudice will take, however, and their resulting impacts and developments, will be more or less Random because there are many external factors (including the external impacts of the capitalist class, which seeks to take advantage of these prejudices) which can’t be predicted. Therefore, it is necessary for political revolutionaries to account for both random and obvious factors in confronting such prejudice. Ho Chi Minh’s suggestion for overcoming these difficulties was concise and to-the-point: “Intensify propaganda to overcome them.” Only by negating the internal aspects of mutual ignorance through education and propaganda could communists hope to negate the resulting prejudice.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#198|19]]. Emma Goldman, ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader'', ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 91.</div>
+As Engels said: “One knows that what is maintained to be necessary [''obvious''] is composed of sheer accidents, and that the so-called accidental [''random''] is the form behind which necessity hides itself — and so on.”<ref>''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', Friedrich Engels, 1886.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#208|20]]. Pouget, ''Direct Action'', 6.</div>
+Obviousness and Randomness are not static properties: Randomness and Obviousness continuously change and develop over time. Under specific conditions, Obviousness and Randomness can transform into each other: Obviousness can become Random and Randomness can become obvious.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#218|21]]. Pouget, “What is the Trade Union?,” 435.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#228|22]]. Pouget, “What is the Trade Union?,” 435.</div>
+==== Annotation 148 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#238|23]]. Gregori P. Maximoff, ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism ''(n.p., Guillotine Press, 2015), 50–51.</div>
+Randomness can be introduced to an obvious situation: it may be obvious that a mineshaft will collapse, until human beings come along and intervene by repairing the structural integrity of the mineshaft. It may seem Random whether a city’s economy will grow or shrink, until a volcano erupts and buries the city in lava and ash, making it obvious that the economy will not grow because the city no longer exists.
-[[#248|24]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 60.
+Most situations are in a flux, as Obviousness and Randomness dialectically develop and change over time, with outcomes becoming more or less obvious or Random over time. It is vital that we, as political revolutionaries, are able to distinguish between Obviousness and Randomness and to leverage this understanding to our advantage.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#258|25]]. IWW, “The Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World (1908),” in ''Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology'', ed Joyce L. Kornbluh (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011), 13.</div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#268|26]]. There are important exceptions to this generalization. The Argentinean FORA opposed the idea that the structure of the future society could be constructed within capitalism. Malatesta also argued in 1922 that trade unions were not establishing the framework of the future society due to the extent to which they were divided according to the capitalist division of labor. See Vadim Damier, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism in the Twentieth Century'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2009), 102–4, 107–8; Errico Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta'','' ''ed. Vernon Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 113–14.</div>
+Basically, in our perception and reality, we have to base our plans, strategies, and actions as much as possible on the Obvious, not the Random. However, we must not ignore Randomness, nor try to separate the Obvious from the Random. When faced with situations which seem very Random, we must find ways to develop Obviousness. When faced with what seems obvious, we must keep an eye out for Randomness. Obviousness and Randomness can mutually transform, so we need to create suitable conditions to hinder or promote such transformation to suit our purposes.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#278|27]]. Quoted in Albert Parsons, ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis'' (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2003), 110. The same point was made by Albert himself. See ibid., 173.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#288|28]]. Maximoff, ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 50. See also Pouget, “What is the Trade Union?,” 435; Ricardo Mella, ''Anarchist Socialism in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: A Ricardo Mella Anthology'','' ''ed. Stephen Luis Vilaseca (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 73–74.</div>
+==== Annotation 149 ====
-[[#298|29]]. Émile Pataud and Émile Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution: Syndicalism and the Cooperative Commonwealth'' (London: Pluto Press, 1990), 118.
+We must always remember that no situation is purely obvious, nor purely Random, and to take this into account in all of our planning and activity.
-[[#308|30]]. Pataud and Émile Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'', 118.
+A skyscraper made from heavy steel beams may seem quite sturdy and stable; it may appear obvious that the structure will remain stable and sound for decades. However, it is still important for engineers to periodically ''confirm'' that the steel is still sound through testing and observation. Engineers must also be prepared for Random events like lightning, earthquakes, storms, etc., which may affect the seemingly obvious structural integrity of the building.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#318|31]]. Pierre Besnard, “Anarcho-Syndicalism and Anarchism,”'' ''trans. Paul Sharkey, Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog, March 15, 2009, https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/alexander-schapiro-pierre-besnard-anarcho-syndicalism-and-anarchism.</div>
+Likewise, when faced with extremely complex situations which seem completely Random, we must seek out (or bring about) the obvious. Wildfires are extremely chaotic and difficult to predict. However, firefighters can rely on certain obvious patterns and natural laws which govern the spread of fire. By digging trenches, lighting counter-fires, spraying water, and other such actions, firefighters can bring wildfires under control. This illustrates how humans are able to make situations less Random by bringing about an increasing amount of Obviousness over time through practical activity.
-[[#328|32]]. Besnard, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism and Anarchism''.
+=== 4. Content and Form ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#338|33]]. Isaac Puente, ''Libertarian Communism'', (Johannesburg: Zabalaza Books, 2005), 5, 17.</div>
+==== a. Categories of Content and Form ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#348|34]]. Quoted in José Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1, ed. Chris Ealham (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011), 104–5.</div>
+The ''Content'' category refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from.
-[[#358|35]]. Martha Ackelsberg, ''Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005),'' ''21, 80–88, 120–37; Ealham, ''Anarchism and the City'', 34–48; Danny Evans, ''Revolution and the State: Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020), 23.
+The ''Form'' category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. ''Form'' thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas.
-[[#368|36]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 57.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#378|37]]. Max Baginski, ''What Does Syndicalism Want? Living'','' Not Dead Unions'' (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2015), 22.</div>
+==== Annotation 150 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#388|38]]. Lennart K. Persson, “Revolutionary Syndicalism in Sweden Before the Second World War” in ''Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective'', ed., Marcel van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe (Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1990), 87.</div>
+Content and Form can be difficult to comprehend at first because the ways in which Content and Form manifest and interact can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#398|39]]. Jerome R. Mintz, ''The Anarchists of Casas Viejas ''(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 157–65.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Content represents the component things, materials, attributes, features, etc., which, together, make up a thing, phenomenon, or idea. You can think of it as the “ingredients” from which a subject is made.
-[[#408|40]]. A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'', 203–5, 211, 316–17, 323; James Yeoman, ''Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890–1915'' (New York: Routledge, 2020), 223–25.
+Form refers to a stable system of internal relationships which compose a thing, phenomenon, or idea, as well as the mode of existence and development [see Annotation 60, p. 59] of those relations.
+</blockquote>
-[[#418|41]]. Jason Garner, ''Goals and Means: Anarchism'','' Syndicalism'','' and Internationalism in the Origins of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica'' (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 162–69, 234–35, 243; Bookchin, ''Spanish Anarchists'', 190–91. For repression under the Spanish republic, see Ealham, ''Anarchism and the City''.
+Remember that from a dialectical materialist perspective, everything in our universe is defined by internal and external relations. If a thing, phenomenon, or idea has internal relations which are ''relatively'' stable, then it has a Form.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#428|42]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 81, 82.</div>
+We would not call all of the assorted ingredients which are used to make a cake “a cake” unless they have been assembled together and baked into the stable form which we interpret as “a cake.” Once a portion is removed from the cake, the portion itself assumes a new stable form which we call “a slice of cake.” The slice of cake will maintain its relatively stable form until being eaten, discarded, or otherwise transitioning into some other form. It is only considered a “slice of cake” for as long as it maintains its own specific stable form.
-[[#438|43]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 80–82.
+Stability itself is also ''relative'': a “spray” of water may only last for a few seconds but we can still conceive of it as having Form. On the other hand, a mountain has a set of stable internal relations (a Form) which might last for millions of years.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#448|44]]. Quoted in James Joll, ''The Anarchists'' (London: Methuen, 1969), 202.</div>
+We can think of Form as having two aspects: inner Form and outer Form.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#458|45]]. Phil H. Goodstein, ''The Theory of the General Strike from the French Revolution to Poland ''(Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984), 15–25; Max Beer, ''A'' ''History of British Socialism'', vol. 2 (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1921), 81–90; William Benbow, “Grand National Holiday, and Congress of the Productive Classes,” Marxist Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/history/england/chartists/benbow-congress.htm.</div>
+''Inner form'' refers to the internal stable relations which we have already discussed.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#468|46]]. Quoted in Goodstein, ''General Strike'', 21.</div>
+''Outer form'' is how an object “appears” to human senses.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#478|47]]. Quoted in Julian P.W. Archer, ''The First International in France, 1864–1872: Its Origins, Theories, and Impact'' (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997), 129.</div>
+In this book, we are primarily concerned with the ''inner Form'' of subjects, however, in other contexts (such as art and design), the ''outer Form'' plays a more prominent role.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#488|48]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', ed. A. W. Zurbrugg (London: Merlin Books, 2016),'' ''41</div>
+Now, let’s identify some of the common viewpoints from which Content and Form might be considered.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#498|49]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 223.</div>
+'''Material vs. Ideal'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#508|50]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 223.</div>
+When discussing the ''material'' — i.e., ''objective'' systems and objects<ref>See Annotation 10, p. 10 and Annotation 108, p. 112.</ref> — discussion of Content and Form is more straightforward.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#518|51]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 223.</div>
+'''Material'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#528|52]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 224. For more information on this debate, see David Stafford, ''From Anarchism to Reformism: A Study of the Political Activities of Paul Brousse, 1870–90'' (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971),'' ''50–51.</div>
+With material things and phenomena, the ''Content'' is what the thing is made out of: the physical parts, aspects, attributes, and processes that compose the subject. For example, the Content of a wooden chair might be the wood, nails, paint, and other materials which are used to create the chair.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#538|53]]. Goodstein, ''General Strike'', 53–55.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-53.png|''A material object can be described in terms of content, inner form, and outer form.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#548|54]]. Quoted in Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'','' ''16. See also, 232n25; Goodstein, ''General Strike'', 57–58.</div>
+The ''inner Form'' of a material object refers to ''stable internal relations'' which compose the object. The stable relationship between the wood and the nails — the nails bind the wood together, the wood is cut in certain patterns, the paint adheres to the wood through physical and chemical bonds, etc. ''Stability'' is, again, relative — over time, the paint will chip and flake, the wood will rot, the nails will rust, etc. Dialectical processes of change will eventually reduce the chair into something other than a chair (i.e., through rotting, burning, disassembly, etc.), but as long as the internal relations maintain the Form of a chair we conceive of it as a chair.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#558|55]]. Arnold Roller, ''The Social General Strike'' (Chicago: The Debating Club No.1, 1905), 6.</div>
+The ''outer Form'' of a material object refers to the way it appears to human consciousness. Its shape, aesthetics, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#568|56]]. Roller, ''Social General Strike'', 7–9; Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 82; Goldman, ''Red Emma'', 95; Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'','' ''15, 27–28, 50–51, 91–93.</div>
+==== Ideal ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#578|57]]. Lucy Parsons, ''Freedom'','' Equality and Solidarity: Writings and Speeches'','' 1878–1937'','' ''ed. Gale Ahrens (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2004), 82–83.</div>
+With the ideal — i.e., ''abstract'' ideas and concepts — discussion of Content and Form becomes more complicated. As Vietnam’s ''Marxism-Leninism Textbook for Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism'' explains:
-[[#588|58]]. Roller, ''Social General Strike'','' ''32.
+<blockquote>
+Many times, human consciousness has difficulty in trying to clearly define the Content of a subject — especially when the subject is an abstract idea. We often mistake Content with inner Form. Usually, in this situation, there is a strong combination and intertwining between both Content and Form. In such a situation, the Form can be referred to as the “inner Form,” or the “Content-Form.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#598|59]]. Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'','' ''103–38. Quote in ibid.,'' ''121.</div>
+With physical things and phenomena, this type of Form usually belongs to a very specific Private, it doesn’t exist in any other Private, it is the Unique [see Annotation 129, p. 128].
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#608|60]]. Quoted in Richards, “Malatesta’s Relevance for Anarchists Today,” in Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''271.</div>
-[[#618|61]]. Roller, ''Social General Strike'', 5–6.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#628|62]]. Maurizio Antonioli, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam (1907)'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press 2009), 134–35.</div>
+The reason the inner Form of physical objects usually exists in ''Private'' as the ''Unique'' is because the stable internal relations of any given physical object are equivalent to the specific material components which distinguish one physical object from all other physical objects. In other words, if you have two chairs which are exact copies of each other, made from the same kind of wood, cut into the same shape, using the same type and configuration of fasteners, etc., they are still not the exact same object. The internal relations of one chair are what make it ''that'' chair and distinguish it from all other objects in the universe. The ''outer Form'' of these chairs may have many commonalities (they look similar, they have the same color, etc.), but the ''inner Form'' is what distinguishes one chair from the other.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#638|63]]. Quoted in Richards, “Malatesta’s Relevance for Anarchists Today,” 271.</div>
+<blockquote>
+However, within the realm of abstract ideas, there are also Forms which many abstract Privates share. In the context of abstract ideas, we call this kind of Form the “outer Form,” the “form-Form,” or the “common Form.”
-[[#648|64]]. Roller, ''Social General Strike'', 7, 8.
+When we try to define the Content of a subject which is an abstract idea, our consciousness usually tries to answer the question: “what is the subject?”
+</blockquote>
-[[#658|65]]. Antonioli, ed., ''International Anarchist Congress'','' ''124.
+This is usually a simple matter. Take, for example, the abstract idea of “freedom.” When we try to think of the Content of ''freedom'' we can answer it pretty easily. What is the subject of ''freedom''? It is the condition which allows humans to follow their own will, it is the absence of external coercion, etc., etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#668|66]]. CNT, “The First Congress of the National Confederation of Labor,” Libcom website, January 17, 2017, https://libcom.org/article/first-congress-national-confederation-labor-cnt-barcelona-september-8-10-1911.</div>
+<blockquote>
+But, when we try to define the Form of an abstract idea, our consciousness tries to answer the question: “how is the subject?” — this is when we have to define the mode of existence (the Form) of that subject.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#678|67]]. IWA, “Declaration of the Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism,” in ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas'','' ''vol. 1,'' From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'','' ''ed. Robert Graham (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005), 418.</div>
+This is where things get more complicated. The mode of existence of an abstract idea can usually be considered to be language, since our ideas are usually expressed through language, but it can take on other modes of existence as well, such as visual media (paintings, photographs), physical motions of the human body (body language, dance), etc. This is how the field of art studies is concerned with the philosophical categories of Content and Form.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#688|68]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 81; Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 477.</div>
+==== Content and Form in Art ====
-[[#698|69]]. Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'', 5.
+Many readers may already be familiar with the subject of Content and Form from studying art, design, communications, and related fields. At first glance, the definitions of Content and Form may seem different from what we’ve been discussing so far.
-[[#708|70]]. Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'', 8.
+This is because art concerns itself with ''abstract ideas'' expressed through various Forms of ''physical representations.''
-[[#718|71]]. Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'','' ''1–3, 9, 12.
+These physical representations may include physical objects (photographs, paintings, sculptures), performed and/or recorded physical activities (dance, music, theater, film), human language recorded in stable physical Forms of written language (novels, poems, stories) or spontaneously performed oral language (storytelling, impromptu spoken-word poetry).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#727|72]]. Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'','' ''41–42, 57–58, 64, 67–84, 94.</div>
+Because the study of art is primarily concerned with interpreting and understanding ideas expressed through these physical manifestations, art is concerned with the ''stable inner relations'' of the ''ideas'' which artists imbue within their works of art — much more than the stable inner relations of the physical components of the object.
-[[#737|73]]. Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'', 80, 82.
+According to the Vietnamese art textbook ''Curriculum of General Aesthetics'':
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#747|74]]. IWA, “Declaration of the Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism,” 418.</div>
+<blockquote>
+What is the Form of a work of art? Form is the way to express the Content of an artwork. Form and Content within a work of art have a strong unity with each other and they regulate each other. Form is the organization, the inner structure of the Content of an artwork. Therefore, Form is the way that the Content expresses itself, and that way is described by two features. We must ask:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#757|75]]. CNT, “The First Congress of the National Confederation of Labor” (1911).</div>
+First: what expresses the Content of a work of art?
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#767|76]]. Quoted in Peirats, ''CNT in the Spanish Revolution'','' ''vol. 1, 110.</div>
+Second: how is it expressed?
-[[#777|77]]. Roller, ''Social General Strike'', 8.
+Art exists when two conditions are met: first, there must be a subject with an outer Form. Second, an artist must convey aesthetic meaning, or humanization, of that subject. This aesthetic meaning is the Content.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#787|78]]. Berkman, ''Anarchism'', 196–97.</div>
+So, in studying works of art, we are less concerned with the ''physical content'' of the artwork (the canvas, paint, etc.) than we are with the ''abstract content'' of the artwork (the ideas which the artist imbues within the artwork).
-[[#797|79]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 83.
+As for Form, the ''inner Form'' of art represents the stable internal relations which compose the art (both ideal, i.e., the stable internal relations of the abstract ideas imbued within the art by the artist, as well as physical, i.e., the stable internal relations of the physical media of the art).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#807|80]]. Rocker, ''Anarcho-Syndicalism'', 83; Roller, ''Social General Strike'', 10–15; Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'', 48–49, 59–61, 67–77, 90–96.</div>
+The ''outer Form'' of art represents how our human senses perceive the art, such as composition techniques, the use of color, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#817|81]]. John Merriman, ''Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 39–44; Jennings, ''Syndicalism in France'', 138.</div>
+The chart below breaks down the differences in a general, non-artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes in materialist dialectical terms (i.e., the viewpoint an engineer might have), as compared with the artistic viewpoint of physical objects and processes (which an art critic might have). Some fields, such as designing products for human use, might draw from both viewpoints.
-[[#827|82]]. Bookchin, ''Spanish Anarchists'','' ''133–37; A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'', 173–77.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-54.png]]
-[[#837|83]]. Pataud and Pouget, ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution'','' ''164–65, 194–207.
+==== Content and Form in Specific Artistic Media ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#847|84]]. Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle'', 561.</div>
+Every medium of art will interpret Content and Form in its own way. For example:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#857|85]]. Bookchin, ''Spanish Anarchists'','' ''150–52, 174–76, 190–91; Garner, ''Goals and Means'', 75–78, 162–63; A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'','' ''264–65, 275–83, 335.</div>
+'''Literature''' is a specific art discipline which deals with recorded human language in the Form of writing. In written literature, the Content would be the ideas expressed in a piece of writing; what the words say. The inner Form would be the way the ideas relate to each other — i.e., story structure, pacing, character development, etc. The outer form would be the physical format of the writing — i.e., manuscript, magazine article, paperback book, ebook, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#867|86]]. A. Smith, ''Anarchism'','' Revolution and Reaction'','' ''92–94, 122–23. For other examples, see ibid., 281–83; Ealham, ''Anarchism and the City'','' ''117–18.</div>
+'''Painting''' is a specific art discipline in which pigments are applied to objects to create images which convey ideas and emotions. In painting, the Content would be the meaning which an artist embodies in a work of art. The inner Form would include the stable internal relations within the artwork (i.e., the bonds and mixtures between the pigments, the canvas, etc.), while the outer Form would be how the artwork appears to human senses (composition, aesthetics, etc.). Generally speaking, the creator of the art will have to make decisions about the inner Form (i.e., selection of oil vs. acrylic vs. watercolor, selection of shade, tint, and hue, physical brush strokes, etc.) so as to produce the desired outer Form (the way the finished artwork will appear to viewers).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#877|87]]. CNT, “The First Congress of the National Confederation of Labor” (1911).</div>
+'''Theater''' is a specific art discipline in which human beings perform physical actions and use their voices to convey ideas to an audience. In theater, the Content includes the ideas which are being presented, such as the script, the musical score, the story, the performance choices of actors, costumes, props, etc. The inner Form would include the stable relations between the members of the cast, the director, the physical stage, the lighting, etc., and the outer Form would be the way the play appears to the audience.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#887|88]]. Antonioli, ed., ''International Anarchist Congress'','' ''47–48.Chapter 10: Organizational Dualism</div>
+These are just some examples. Each medium of expression will have its own variations in how Content and Form are considered.
-== {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook13}} {{anchor|Chapter10OrganizationalDuali1}} {{anchor|Chapter10OrganizationalDuali}} Chapter 10: Organizational Dualism: From Bakunin to the Platform ==
+Engels described the manifestation of Content and Form in ''Dialectics of Nature:''
-A significant number of mass anarchists thought that federations of trade unions or community groups were insufficient to bring about the social revolution. They held that anarchists must, in addition to this, form specific anarchist organizations that would exist alongside mass organizations. These specific anarchist organizations were advocated as the means to unite committed revolutionaries in order to develop correct theory and strategy, coordinate their actions both among themselves and within broader mass organizations or movements, and push the revolutionary struggle forward through persuasion and engaging in actions that provided an example to others. This theory has come to be known as organizational dualism. In the past, specific anarchist organizations were often called an anarchist union. This language was not confusing to historical anarchists because they mostly spoke languages other than English and so distinguished between syndicates and the anarchist union, rather than trade unions and the anarchist union.
+<blockquote>
+The whole of organic nature is one continuous proof of the identity or inseparability of form and content. Morphological and physiological phenomena, form and function, mutually determine one another. The differentiation of form (the cell) determines differentiation of substance into muscle, skin, bone, epithelium, etc., and the differentiation of substance in turn determines difference of form.
+</blockquote>
-During the course of anarchism’s history, numerous specific anarchist organizations were founded. For example, in January 1891, Italian anarchists formed the Anarchist Socialist Revolutionary Party, at a congress in Capolago, Switzerland. In the following months, anarchist groups from across Italy formed regional federations committed to the Capolago program. This growth in formal organization was cut short by the combination of state repression following May Day demonstrations, and significant push back from antiorganizationalist anarchists. By the end of the year, the Anarchist Socialist Revolutionary Party had, for all intents and purposes, vanished.[[#1DavideTurcatoMakingSense|1]] Later attempts by Italian anarchists to form a national federation committed to a common program culminated in the establishment of the Italian Anarchist-Communist Union in 1919, which changed its name to the Italian Anarchist Union in 1920. The Italian Anarchist Union, which participated as a key force in the USI and the factory occupation movement of the Bienno Rosso, spread its ideas via the paper ''Umanità Nova''.'' ''At its peak in the early 1920s, the paper sold 50,000 copies a day, and was in some areas the most widely read paper among workers.[[#2CarlLevyGramsciandtheAn|2]]
+Content and Form are discussed frequently in analysis of human social systems and objective relations which occur within society. For example, Marx made many criticial insights into economics by analyzing and explaining the form of value [see Annotation 14, p. 16] under capitalism.
-Given the enormous scale of the history of organizational dualism, I shall focus on only three main aspects of its theoretical development. These are: (a) Bakunin’s advocacy of organizational dualism between 1868 and 1872; (b) various proposals made between the 1890s and 1930s on what the relationship between anarchism and syndicalism (or trade unions in general) should be; and (c) debates between proponents of platformist and synthesist specific anarchist organizations that occurred from 1926 onward.
+Indeed, the entire capitalist system can be viewed in terms of content and form. The current form of human civilization is capitalism. That is to say, capitalism is the stable set of relations and characteristis of the current political economy which dominates the planet. The content of capitalism includes all the components of the base and superstructure, including the various classes (capitalists, working class, etc.), the means of production, government institutions, corporate institutions, etc. All of these elements are configured together into the relatively stable form which we call “capitalism.”
-'''Bakunin and the Alliance'''
+==== Other Viewpoints of Content and Form ====
-The strategy of organizational dualism was first advocated by Bakunin. During the late 1860s and early 1870s, he argued that anarchists should simultaneously organize and participate within mass public organizations that had a broad program, such as trade unions, and also form small secret organizations committed to a narrow anarchist program. This theorizing occurred, in parallel, to Bakunin’s actual attempts to form secret revolutionary organizations. The history of these attempts is extremely complex, but a condensed version follows.
+Of course, there are many other viewpoints for discussing Content and Form of abstract ideas. Every philosophical field will have its own unique ways of utilizing Content and Form analysis. One example is the concept of Content and Form in legal philosophy. Vietnamese legal expert Dinh Thuy Dung writes:
-During his 1864–67 stay in Italy, Bakunin tried to transform the loose network of revolutionaries he knew into an organization that adhered to a specific program.[[#3WolfgangEckhardtTheFirst|3]] In late 1864, Bakunin, who had recently moved from London to Florence, founded his first proper revolutionary organization: the Brotherhood. Although the Brotherhood certainly existed, and had a membership of at least thirty individuals from largely republican circles, it did not last long and soon faded away after Bakunin moved to Sorrento, near Naples, at the end of May 1865. Bakunin, who was becoming increasingly socialist and shifting closer to his mature anarchist politics, then moved to Naples in October, and met a number of republican revolutionaries. Sometime between late 1865 and early 1866, Bakunin persuaded these individuals to join a new secret revolutionary socialist organization called the International Brotherhood, which was the spiritual successor to the previous Brotherhood based in Florence.[[#4EHCarrMichaelBakunin|4]]
+<blockquote>
+The law has internal and external forms:
-Bakunin subsequently cofounded two distinct but overlapping organizations: the public International Alliance and the secret Alliance in October 1868. The public International Alliance applied to join the First International and, after its application was rejected, converted itself into a Geneva section of the First International in July 1869. The Geneva public Alliance decided to disband in August 1871, in the aftermath of various splits and conflicts within the Romance Federation of the First International, and took this decision without consulting Bakunin. The original secret Alliance disbanded soon after its founding, due to personal conflicts between its members. It continued to exist only as an informal social network composed of a few individuals who were mainly from Spain, Italy, and Switzerland and members of Bakunin’s inner circle. At around the same time, a distinct secret organization called the Alianza de la Democracia Socialista was founded in Spain, to coordinate the activity of key militants and promote the growth of the Spanish section of the First International. The Alianza decided to dissolve itself in April 1872 and continued to adhere to this decision, despite Bakunin writing a letter attempting to persuade them to do otherwise. A few months later, Bakunin cofounded a new secret society, called the Alliance of Social Revolutionaries in September 1872, after Bakunin had been expelled from the First International by the Hague Congress.[[#5EckhardtFirstSocialistSch|5]]
+The inner Form is the internal structure of the law, the relationships and the connections between the elements constituting the law. The inner Form of the law is called the legal structure, which includes the constituent parts of the legal system such as the branch of law, legal institutions, and legal norms.
-An early example of Bakunin’s strategy of organizational dualism can be found in his 1866 ''Programme of the Brotherhood''. He proposed that “''the dedicated revolutionaries of every land''” should gather “''at once into both public and private association'' with the twofold object of broadening the revolutionary front and at the same time paving the way for simultaneous concerted action in all countries in which action proves initially possible, through secret agreement among the wisest revolutionaries of those countries.”[[#6MichaelBakuninSelectedWri|6]] The central task of these revolutionaries was to fuse, or in other words, organize, “the elements of social revolution” that “are already widespread in practically all countries of Europe” into “an effective force.”[[#7BakuninSelectedWritings9|7]] In the autumn of 1868, Bakunin wrote in the draft program of the secret Alliance that the organization had been founded in order to help “prepare, organize and hasten” the social revolution by pursuing the immediate “dual objective” of (a) spreading revolutionary consciousness through “journals, pamphlets and books” and “founding public associations” and (b) recruiting “intelligent, energetic, discreet men of good will who are sympathetic to our ideas, both in Europe and as far as possible in America, in order to form an invisible network of dedicated revolutionaries, strengthened by the fact of alliance.”[[#8BakuninSelectedWritings1|8]]
+The outer Form is the manifestation, or mode of existence, of the law. In other words, the outer Form of the law is how we view and understand the law [i.e., who enforces the law and what repercussions will occur if we violate the law]. Based on the outer Form of the law, one can know how it exists in reality, and where and to whom it applies. The external Form of the law is also approached in relation to its Content.
-The same idea was expressed by Bakunin in the March 27, 1872, letter he wrote to an Italian named Celso Ceretti, who admired the republican revolutionary Garibaldi. In it, Bakunin advocated a “secret alliance” composed of “nuclei intimately bound together with similar nuclei presently being organized, or that will be organized, in other regions of Italy and abroad.”[[#9QuotedinRavindranathanBak|9]] This organization had “a double mission: at first they will form the inspiring and vivifying soul . . . of the International Workingmen’s Association in Italy and elsewhere, and later they will occupy themselves with questions ''that will be impossible to discuss publicly''. They will form the necessary bridge between the propaganda of socialist theories and revolutionary practice.”[[#10QuotedinRavindranathanBa|10]]
+According to this understanding, the Content of the law includes all the elements that make up the law, while the Form of the law is understood as the elements which contain or express the Content.
-Bakunin did not propose the formation of a secret revolutionary organization because he had a hidden authoritarian agenda. He was motivated by the deeply practical view that a secret revolutionary organization was necessary in order to avoid state repression. In a April 1872 letter to members of the Spanish Alianza, he argued that the organization could not be public, because, if it were, it would be persecuted and crushed.[[#11MichaelBakuninTotheBro|11]] This concern with secrecy is especially understandable given that Bakunin himself had been imprisoned in 1849 by the state of Saxony for having fought in an insurrection launched by the people of Dresden. He was subsequently handed from one state to another, imprisoned by Saxony, then by Austria, which kept him chained to a cell wall for a year, and then finally Russia from May 1851 onward. Both Saxony and Austria sentenced Bakunin to death, only to alter his sentence at the last minute after a secret agreement was made to transfer him ultimately to Russia. He remained imprisoned in Russia’s Peter and Paul Fortress, where all his teeth fell out due to scurvy, until the Tsar permanently banished him to Siberia in 1857.[[#12CarrBakunin189224240|12]]
+If you understand that the Content of the law is the will of the state, then the legal Form is the way of expressing the will of the state.
+</blockquote>
-Bakunin thought that the mass public organization—the First International—and the small secret anarchist organization—the Alliance—had distinct but complementary roles in the revolutionary process. The role of the mass public organization was to unite as many workers as possible within an organization that prefigured the future society and to engage in large-scale direct action against the ruling classes. The role of the small, secret, specific anarchist organization was, in comparison, to enable dedicated revolutionaries to coordinate their activity effectively and participate in the collective struggles of the working classes. In so doing, anarchists would spread their ideas and help organize and coordinate the uprisings of the working classes into a force capable of abolishing capitalism and the state in favor of an anarchist society. Bakunin explained his views on this topic in a private letter he wrote to the Alianza member Charles Alerini between May 3 and 6, 1872. According to Bakunin,
+There are countless other ways in which Content and Form can be used to analyze and understand things, phenomena, and ideas. We hope that these examples have given you a better idea of the various ways in which Content and Form can be used to understand the world. In general, socialist texts deal with the ''inner Form'' of things, phenomena, and ideas. That is to say, the inner relations which compose the subject being considered. The outer form — how things appear to our senses — tends to be less relevant in analysis of human social systems, though it is often important in consideration of specialized fields of revolutionary activity such as aesthetics, propaganda, etc.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">The Alliance and the International, although they both seek the same final goals, follow, at one and the same time, different paths. One has a mission to bring together the labor masses—millions of workers—[reaching] across differences of trades or lands, across the frontier of every state into one single compact and immense body. The other, the Alliance, has a mission to give a really revolutionary direction to these masses. The programs of the one and the other, without in any way being opposed, are different, in keeping with the extent of the development of each. That of the International, if it is taken seriously, contains in germ—but only in germ—the whole program of the Alliance. The program of the Alliance is the elaboration of the program of the International.[[#13BakuninSelectedTexts210|13]]</div>
+==== b. Dialectical relationship between Content and Form ====
-Bakunin thought that the mass public organization and the specific anarchist organization should have distinct programs due to their different roles. The First International’s role was to unite workers from around the world into federations of trade unions that engaged in the struggle for immediate improvements via direct action, and thereby laid the foundation from which the social revolution could arise. Given this, it should have a broad program inclusive to as many workers as possible and be based on their shared class interests to achieve better living conditions, emancipation, and international solidarity in the class struggle.[[#14BakuninSelectedTexts210|14]] Were the First International to adopt a narrow program, it would fail in its mission, and merely create “a very small association, a sect, but not an armed camp for the proletariat of the entire world [set] against the exploiting and dominant classes.”[[#15BakuninSelectedTexts210|15]] The Alliance, in contrast, had to have an explicitly revolutionary program that advocated the simultaneous abolition of capitalism and the state. This included a commitment to atheism, which Bakunin held should not be part of the First International’s program, because that would exclude the millions of workers who believe in God.[[#16BakuninSelectedTexts211|16]]
+Content and Form have a strong dialectical relationship with one other. There is no Form that does not contain any Content. Simultaneously, there is no Content that does not exist in a specific Form. The same Content can manifest in many Forms and a Form can contain many Contents.
-This view was repeated almost word for word by Bakunin in his April 1872 letter to the members of the Spanish Alianza. This went alongside the clarification that Bakunin rejected the position that all socialist consciousness had to be brought to workers in the mass public organization by the secret organization of revolutionaries. Bakunin instead maintained that workers would develop their own radical ideas, due to both the influence of revolutionaries and their own experiences of class struggle. He thought that in an International with a broad program “it will happen that, more and more educated by the struggle and by the free propaganda of different ideas, directed by their own instinct and increasingly raised to revolutionary consciousness by practice itself and the inevitable consequences of the universal solidarity of the struggle of labor against capital, the masses will elaborate, slowly, it is true, but infallibly, their own thoughts, theories that will emerge from bottom to top.”[[#17BakuninTotheBrothersof|17]]
+The relationship between Content and Form is a dialectical relationship in which Content decides Form and Form can impact Content.
-Although Bakunin thought that a small secret society of dedicated revolutionaries would play an important role in the process of workers becoming organized and adopting socialist ideas, he remained committed to the self-emancipation of the working classes. In his resignation letter to the Jura Federation in 1873, he reminded them that the “organization of the forces of the proletariat . . . should be the work of the proletariat itself.”[[#18BakuninSelectedTexts249|18]] A number of modern authors have argued against such an interpretation of Bakunin on the grounds that these public declarations are contradicted by his private programs and letters in which, they allege, he argued for a fundamentally authoritarian and un-anarchist strategy. According to these critics, Bakunin preached anarchism in public while privately advocating the organization of a hierarchical secret society that would seize power and establish an unaccountable top-down dictatorship that ruled society from the shadows. The two main sources cited to support this interpretation are Bakunin’s April 1, 1870, letter to Albert Richard and his June 2, 1870, letter to Sergei Nechaev.[[#19ForexampleHalDraperKar|19]] These interpretations misrepresent what Bakunin proposed within his letters and take certain quotes out of context.
+-----
-His letter to Richard did advocate ideas that can sound authoritarian and incompatible with anarchist strategy, such as his endorsement of a “collective, invisible dictatorship.”[[#20BakuninSelectedWritings|20]] In order to refute ominous authoritarian readings of Bakunin, it is necessary to establish in detail exactly what Bakunin meant by an “invisible dictatorship” by placing this phrase within the full context of the letter. First, Bakunin repeated both the standard anarchist critique of state socialism and the standard anarchist conception of a social revolution. He rejected centralization, minority rule, and a revolutionary state modeled on the French Revolution, in which decisions for an entire country are made by a single committee, on the grounds that they were a means that would never lead to a free socialist society. The revolution, he said, should instead be achieved through the formation of a federation of workers’ associations that would expropriate the means of production, liquidate the state, establish workers militias, and coordinate production and distribution through a system of delegates.[[#21BakuninSelectedWritings|21]] Bakunin’s letter is, in this respect, entirely consistent with his statements elsewhere.
+==== Annotation 151 ====
-Second, the reason Bakunin referred to an “invisible dictatorship” is that he is attempting to persuade Richard to abandon state socialist strategies. Richard was a French member of the Alliance who never fully endorsed its anarchist program, and would go on to write a pamphlet arguing for the reinstatement of Napoleon III as Emperor. Bakunin wrote, “you remain more than ever a supporter of centralization and the revolutionary State. Whereas I am more opposed to it than ever, and see no salvation except in revolutionary anarchy, guided on all issues by an invisible collective power—the only dictatorship I accept.”[[#22BakuninSelectedWritings1|22]] As a result the only occasions when Bakunin uses the phrase in the letter is when he is contrasting the “invisible dictatorship” he supports with the “overt dictatorship” that Richard wrongly advocates.[[#23BakuninSelectedWritings1|23]] Bakunin’s use of language for rhetorical purposes is similar to how Marx used the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat,” instead of “rule of the proletariat,” when he was in dialogue with followers of Blanqui due to their support for revolutionary dictatorships.[[#24ForanoverviewofMarxsus|24]]
+For example, if you want to make a table, and all you have available are wood and nails, then that Content (the wood and the nails) will determine the Form the table ends up taking. You are going to end up with a wooden table, and it will therefore have to have certain characteristics of Form.
-Third, at no point does Bakunin claim that the “invisible dictatorship” will make decisions and impose them on the working classes. He instead held that it would only act to influence or guide the working classes. He declared that, during a revolution,
+When Content changes, the Form must change accordingly. If, instead of wood, you have iron, then the table you end up building will have a much different Form. Form can also ''influence'' the Content, but not nearly as much as Content ''determines'' Form. For instance, if you have wood and nails, but you develop a technique for building a table that doesn’t need any nails, then the result (a wooden table without any nails) would be an example of a development in Form reflecting as a change in Content.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">supporters of overt dictatorship, advocate the muting of passions, and speak for order, trust and submission to the established revolutionary powers—in this way they reconstitute the state. We, on the other hand, must foment, awaken and unleash all the passions, we must produce anarchy and, like invisible pilots in the thick of the popular tempest, we must steer it not by any open power but by the collective dictatorship of all the allies—a dictatorship without insignia, titles or official rights, and all the stronger for having none of the paraphernalia of power.[[#25BakuninSelectedWritings|25]] </div>
+The main tendency of Content is change. On the other hand, Form is relatively stable in every thing and phenomenon. As Content changes, Form must change accordingly. However, Content and Form are not always perfectly aligned.
-This view is repeated later in the letter when Bakunin wrote that only the “invisible collective force . . . can preserve and guide the revolution.”[[#26BakuninSelectedWritings|26]] In advocating an “invisible collective force,” Bakunin was not endorsing a clandestine organization that guides workers by violently forcing them to behave in a particular manner. Bakunin is instead repeating language from Proudhon, who defined ''collective force'' as when the combined and organized action of individuals results in a group that possesses collective capacities to change the world that are greater than the sum of the capacities of each individual member.[[#27PierreJosephProudhonProp|27]]
+-----
-Bakunin made similar points in his later letter to Nechaev, who was a Russian acquaintance of Bakunin committed to the formation of an authoritarian top-down secret society that engaged in any means, including assassinating members of the ruling classes and launching coups, to trigger a revolution. As in the previous letter, sections of it can be quoted out of context in order to give the false impression that Bakunin was a hidden authoritarian, such as his advocacy of “''the collective dictatorship'' of a secret organization.”[[#28BakuninSelectedWritings|28]] Such an interpretation should be rejected once again. Bakunin argued, in line with anarchist theory, that any revolution based on the seizure of state power by a ruling minority would result in new forms of oppression and exploitation, rather than emancipation. He thought that any attempt to abolish class society that “is at all artificial, and deals in secret plots, sudden assaults, surprises and blows, is bound to wreck itself against the State, which can only be conquered and broken by a spontaneous popular socialist revolution. And therefore the sole object of a secret society must be not to create an artificial force outside the people, but to arouse, unite and organize spontaneous popular forces; in this way the only possible, the only effective army of the revolution is not outside the people, but consists of the people themselves.”[[#29BakuninSelectedWritings|29]]
+==== Annotation 152 ====
-During this period, the word “spontaneous” was generally used by anarchists to refer to when workers acted voluntarily of their own volition, rather than being forced to do something. Such spontaneous action was compatible with workers being influenced to act in a particular manner by the words and deeds of those around them. The role of the secret organization of committed revolutionaries was, therefore, to encourage and support a process of working-class self-emancipation. Bakunin wrote that if the working classes are the “revolutionary army,” then the secret organization would be the “general headquarters of this army, and the organizer not of its own, but of the people’s forces, as a link between the people’s instincts and revolutionary thought.”[[#30BakuninSelectedWritings1|30]]
+Since all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly changing, it stands to reason that the internal components (things, phenomena, and ideas, and their relations) which compose the Content of a subject will constantly be undergoing processes of change and development. Thus, we say that the tendency of Content is change. Since the Form is based on the ''internal relations'' of the components of Content, it stands to reason that a change in Content will lead to change in Form. These kinds of changes in Content and Form also occur through the dialectical process: changes in quantity lead to changes in quality [see Annotation 117, p. 119].
-This would be achieved by forming a series of secret small groups that were dispersed throughout a country and united under a common program. During a revolutionary situation, they would formulate a set of ideas that were “the very essence of popular instincts, desires and demands,” spread them “among a crowd of people who would be struggling without any purpose or plan,” and thereby “create round themselves a circle of people who are more or less devoted to the same idea, and who are naturally subject to their influence.”[[#31BakuninSelectedWritings1|31]] They would then collectively participate within ongoing popular movements in order to “lead the people toward the most complete realization of the social-economic ideal and the organization of the fullest popular freedom. This is what I call ''the collective dictatorship'' of a secret organization.”[[#32BakuninSelectedWritings|32]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-55.png|''Quantity changes in Content lead to quality shifts in Form.'']]
-Just as in his letter to Richard, Bakunin introduced this phrase in order to contrast the methods by which anarchists will “influence the people” with the “publicly declared dictatorship” that he opposed.[[#33BakuninSelectedWritings|33]] Bakunin’s so-called dictatorship would not give orders to workers who were subject to their authority and forced to obey by the threat of corporal punishment or court-martial. He explicitly wrote that,
+As soon as a wooden chair is finished being built, the paint is already beginning to degrade. The wood is already beginning to rot. The iron nails are already beginning to rust. These changes may be imperceptibly slow — they may even take centuries to occur, if the chair is kept in a hospitable environment — but the changes are occurring, quantitatively, over time, none-the-less.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">It does not impose any new resolutions, regulations or ways of living on the people, and only unleashes their will and gives a wider opportunity for their self-determination and their social-economic organizations, which should be created by them alone from the bottom upwards, and not from the top downwards. The organization must be sincerely impregnated with the idea that it is the servant and helper of the people, and by no means their ruler, and also not in any circumstances, not even on the pretext of the people’s welfare, should it ever be their master.[[#34BakuninSelectedWritings|34]]</div>
+Eventually, changes in quantity will lead to changes in quality. At some point, the chair might weaken and begin to wobble whenever it’s sat in. Human beings might recognize this quality and begin to think of it as a “wobbly chair.” The chair might degrade to the point where it can’t be safely used at all, in which case it will have quality shifted into a “broken chair.” If the chair is repaired, that would represent another quality shift. If it is used for firewood, that would be another quality shift.
-The secret organization instead “influences the people exclusively through the natural, personal influence of its members, who have not the slightest power, are scattered in an unseen web throughout the regions, districts and communes, and, in agreement with each other, try, in whatever place they may be, to direct the spontaneous revolutionary movement of the people toward the plan that has been discussed beforehand and firmly determined.”[[#35BakuninSelectedWritings|35]] Its only methods to direct and influence mass social movements were persuasion and acting as organizers. It would, Bakunin believed, “carry out a broadly based popular propaganda, a propaganda that would ''really'' penetrate to the people, and by the power of this propaganda and also by ''organization among the people themselves'' join together separate popular forces into a mighty strength capable of demolishing the State.”[[#36BakuninSelectedWritings|36]]
+Keep in mind that changes in Form do not directly cause changes in Content. If you disassemble a wooden chair into the constituent wood and nails, the wood and nails remain more or less unchanged. But if you burn a wooden chair, it’s the ''change in Content'' which leads to the change in Form from “chair” to “pile of ash.”
-Critics of Bakunin have not only misrepresented what Bakunin meant by an invisible or collective dictatorship but also failed to mention that, in several other sources, he makes exactly the same proposals as in his letters to Richard and Nechaev without using any dictatorial language. This is extremely important, because the only two instances in which Bakunin advocates a dictatorship as an anarchist are in two letters he wrote as attempts to persuade authoritarian revolutionaries to adopt anarchist strategy. Outside this context, Bakunin does not use this language, and so it appears most likely that he only adopted the language as a rhetorical device, and not as an expression of his hidden authoritarian agenda.
+Form simply represents the stable relationships between the component parts of the subject’s Content. The only way to change Form is to change those inner relations, or to change the components which are relating. There is no way to change Form without changing the Content, and changing the Content changes the Form by definition.
-In the 1868 program of the International Brotherhood, Bakunin wrote that a social revolution must be created by workers themselves through their own organs of self-management. Within such a revolution, “''the unity of revolutionary thought and action must find an agent'' in the thick of the popular anarchy which will constitute the very life and all the energy of the revolution. That agent must be ''the secret universal association of international brothers''” which is “a kind of revolutionary general staff” that spreads ideas and organizes workers in order to act as the “intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and popular instinct.”[[#37BakuninSelectedWritings|37]] This text is almost identical to passages from Bakunin’s letters to Albert and Nechaev but, at no point, does he refer to any invisible dictatorship. Indeed, he explicitly writes that “this organization rules out any idea of dictatorship and custodial control” since “supreme control must always belong to the people.”[[#38BakuninSelectedWritings|38]]
+Content determines Form, but Form is not ''fully'' decided by Content, and Form can impact back on Content. If a Form is suitable with its Content, it can improve the development of its Content. If a Form is not suitable with its Content, it can constrain the development of its Content.
-The same opposition to dictatorship appears elsewhere. In September 1869 ''La Liberté ''published Bakunin’s article, “A Few Words to My Young Brothers in Russia.” In the article, he insisted that formally educated young people in Russia should “go among the people” and “learn amid these masses whose hands are hardened by labor how you should serve the people’s cause. And remember well, brothers, that the cultured youth should be neither master nor protector nor benefactor nor dictator to the people, only the midwife of their spontaneous emancipation, the uniter and organizer of their efforts and their strength.”[[#39MichaelBakuninTheBasicB|39]]
+-----
-Two years later, he wrote in “The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State”'' ''that during a social revolution,
+==== Annotation 153 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">All that individuals can do is elaborate, clarify and propagate the ideas that correspond to the popular feeling and, beyond this, to contribute by their ceaseless efforts to the revolutionary organization of the natural power of the masses, but nothing beyond that. And everything else should not and could not take place except by the action of the people themselves. Otherwise one would end with political dictatorship, that is to say, the reconstruction of the State . . . and one would arrive by a devious but logical path at the re-establishment of the political, social and economic slavery of the popular masses.[[#40BakuninSelectedWritings|40]]</div>
+The dialectical relationship between Content and Form is somewhat similar to the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideal (see ''Matter and Consciousness'',
-Bakunin described the Alliance in his April 1872 letter to members of the Spanish Alianza as
+p. 88). Just as the material world ''determines'' consciousness while consciousness ''impacts'' the material world, the Content of a subject ''determines'' the Form while the Form ''impacts'' the Content.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Fundamentally a militant organization whose purpose is the organization of the power of the masses for the destruction of all states and all of the religious, political, judicial, social, and economic institutions currently existing, for the absolute emancipation of the subjugated and exploited laborers of the whole world. The purpose of our organization is to push the masses to make a clean sweep, so that agricultural and industrial populations can reorganize and federate themselves according to the principles of justice, equality, freedom and solidarity, from the bottom up, spontaneously, freely, apart from any official tutelage, whether of the reactionary or even the so-called revolutionary kind.[[#41QuotedinEckhardtFirstSo|41]]</div>
+''Suitability'' describes the applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. Whether or not something is “suitable” or not can be highly subjective (i.e., which music would be “suitable” to play at a party), or it can be more objective (i.e., what kind of batteries to use with an electronic device).
-The evidence clearly shows that Bakunin was not a hidden authoritarian who preached anarchism in public, and top-down minority rule by a secret society in private. His public and private statements were entirely consistent with one another, and with his anarchist commitment to the self-emancipation of the working classes. Bakunin held, in short, that the success of a social revolution required a specific anarchist organization of dedicated militants who organized secretly to avoid state repression and were united under a common theoretical and strategic program. The main goal of this organization was to participate in popular social movements in order to spread anarchist ideas, and help organize and coordinate the uprisings of the working classes into a force capable of abolishing capitalism and the state and building an anarchist society.
+We might say that hardwood is “suitable” Content for the Form of a chair because it is durable, strong, relatively inexpensive, and long-lasting. It might be “unsuitable” to have a chair made of hardwood if it is to be used as an office chair, because the hard surfaces might cause strain and discomfort. However, we can utilize conscious activity to adjust and develop suitability between Content and Form. Changing the Content by adding cushioning or padding might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other. Similarly, changing the Form by designing contours and adding adjustability to the chair might make the Content and Form more suitable with each other for their intended application as an office chair.
-In two letters, Bakunin referred to this as an invisible or collective dictatorship, but in so doing all he actually meant was that a specific anarchist organization would influence the wider working classes through persuasion and acting as key organizers and militants within the ongoing class struggle. In his mind, this would occur in parallel with, and as a complement to, workers transforming themselves through their own experiences of revolutionary practice within mass public organizations that were committed to broad programs. During an evolutionary period, this included such organizations as trade unions. Once a revolution had been launched, increasingly large numbers of workers would continue this process of self-transformation and self-organization within federations of producers’ and consumers’ associations, and federations of workers’ militias. The role of the specific anarchist organization was to prevent the emergence of any new system of minority rule and to promote forms of organization and decision-making that enabled worker self-management.
+If a Form is not suitable with the Content, it restrains the development of the Content. Just think of a shovel (Form) made of wood (Content), which will degrade very rapidly over time, vs. a shovel (Form) made of steel (Content) which will last much longer. This works in both directions. Consider the Content of drinking cups: a porcelain cup might last for a long time and even develop positively over time (by acquiring a desirable patina), while a cup made out of mild steel would not be desirable, as it would be highly prone to rust from extended use containing liquids.
-Bakunin attempted to implement this theory by participating in the broad public First International via a secret informal social network known as the Alliance. This secret network was never in a position where it could influence the working classes during a social revolution, and failed to live up to the great role that Bakunin had given it. Despite these limitations, its importance should not be underestimated. It was arguably the first specific anarchist organization in history, and its members played a key role in formulating the theory and practice of the anarchist movement. From the intellectual and practical foundation that Bakunin and the Alliance built, the future history of specific anarchist organizations would emerge.
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-'''Syndicalism and Specific Anarchist Organizations'''
+Content and Form always have a dialectical relationship with each other. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must not try to separate Content and Form, nor should we solely focus on one and ignore the other.
-After the collapse of the Saint-Imier International in 1878, mass anarchists continued to advocate the strategy of simultaneously forming mass organizations and small specific anarchist organizations. In the buildup to the 1881 International Social Revolutionary Congress in London, Kropotkin proposed in letters to Malatesta, Cafiero, Schwitzguébel and an unnamed Belgian comrade, that anarchists should form “two organizations; one open, vast, and functioning openly; the other secret intended for action.”[[#42QuotedinCarolineCahmKro|42]] The secret organization was to be composed of dedicated anarchist militants who were experienced and action oriented. The public organization was, in comparison, to be a trade union that grouped workers “under the flag of the Strikers’ International.”[[#43QuotedinCahmKropotkin1|43]] The trade union was advocated both because it was the sole means through which “the forces of labor, the masses, can be successfully grouped together” and because it would “provide forces, money and a place for secret groups” to operate.[[#44QuotedinCahmKropotkin1|44]] This secret organization would be a direct continuation of the Intimité Internationale, a secret association of anarchists within the Saint-Imier International that he had joined in 1877 and that, when he was writing, still existed.[[#45CahmKropotkin1061453|45]]
+Because Content determines Form, whenever we are considering a thing, phenomenon, or idea, we must base our consideration first on its Content. If we want to change a thing or phenomenon, we have to change its Content first.
-In the years after 1881, Kropotkin remained an advocate of organizational dualism. Nettlau described him as advocating “''the penetration of the masses and their stimulation by libertarian militants, in much the same way as the Alliance acted within the International''.”[[#46MaxNettlauAShortHistory|46]] To support this view, Nettlau cited a 1914 letter where Kropotkin argued that “the syndicate is absolutely necessary. It is the only form of workers’ association which allows the direct struggle against capital to be carried on without a plunge into parliamentarism. But, evidently, it does not achieve this goal automatically, since in Germany, in France and in England, we have the examples of syndicates linked to the parliamentary struggle . . . There is need of the other element which Malatesta speaks of ''and which Bakunin always professed'',” namely a specific anarchist organization.[[#47QuotedinNettlauShortHis|47]]
+In reality, we must promote the positive impact of Form on Content by making the Form fit the Content. Likewise, we must also change the Form that is no longer suitable with its Content and therefore constrains the development of its Content.
-What element Malatesta spoke of can be established by examining the articles he wrote during the 1890s. In 1894, Malatesta argued that anarchists “should organize among ourselves, among folk who are perfectly persuaded and perfectly in agreement; and, around us, in broad, open associations, we should organize as many of the workers as we can, accepting them for what they are and striving to nudge them into whatever progress we can.”[[#48MalatestaTheMethodofFre|48]] This view was repeated in 1897, when he wrote that anarchists should “set up as many groups of convinced and agreeable comrades as possible,” and also “join the labor movement with fervor, helping already existing workers’ organizations and striving to promote new ones.”[[#49ErricoMalatestaALongand|49]] In 1899, he continued to argue for the “organization of us anarchists and the anarchist organization of the masses.”[[#50MalatestaErricoMalatesta|50]]
+-----
-Malatesta held, in line with Bakunin, that the mass organization should not have a distinctly anarchist program. In June 1897, he argued that “the workers’ organizations . . . gather the exploited for the economic struggle against the masters” on the basis of “the interests shared by all workers . . . regardless of persuasion” and so must “be separate and distinct from the organizations of the various parties,” including specific anarchist organizations.[[#51MalatestaPatientWork174|51]] Several months later in November, he distinguished between “the workers’ movement—which should be whatever it can be and vary with the varying degree of development attained by the proletarians . . . and the anarchist party, which should be made up of men subscribing to the same ideas and bound by common purposes.”[[#52MalatestaPatientWork364|52]] Malatesta came to adopt this position in response to the lessons of the International in Italy. The Italian section “was never anything other than the anarchist socialist party,” and so “was weak as an organization for economic resistance” because “it was unable to make headway among the masses who were frightened by its overly advanced program . . . and it was weak as an anarchist party because many of its members were workers who had little grasp of anarchy and socialism and, having been drawn by the hope of immediate revolution, melted away every time an insurrectional attempt, or the hope of it, failed.”[[#53MalatestaPatientWork364|53]]
+==== Annotation 154 ====
-After the birth of revolutionary syndicalism as a doctrine between the late 1890s and the early 1900s, Malatesta’s advocacy of organizational dualism was articulated in response to the ideas of the CGT and other revolutionary syndicalist trade unions. Malatesta’s critique of the theory of revolutionary syndicalism is sometimes misrepresented as a rejection of revolutionary trade unionism in and of itself. Such a perspective ignores the fact that during his debate with the revolutionary syndicalist and CGT member Monatte at the 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam, Malatesta argued that he was a supporter of the labor movement and advocated anarchists entering trade unions to spread anarchist ideas among workers. As a result, he described himself as “a syndicalist, in the sense of being a supporter of the syndicates,” who advocated “syndicates that are open to all workers without distinction of opinions, absolutely neutral syndicates,” rather than “anarchist syndicates.”[[#54MaurizioAntonioliedThe|54]] What Malatesta rejected was revolutionary syndicalism as “a doctrine” in the sense of the position that trade unionism is “''sufficient unto itself''” and “a necessary and sufficient means for social revolution.”[[#55AntonioliedInternationa|55]]
+In any analysis, it is very important that we carefully consider whether or not Content and Form are suitable with each other in our own projects and activities. We can learn a lot about suitability from observation and practice (see ''Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism'', p. 204) and improve suitability through conscious activity.
-Over the following decades, Malatesta repeatedly argued that revolutionary syndicalism was wrong, because trade unions are a necessary but insufficient means to revolution. In 1927, he insisted that,
+Marx believed that it is vital to consider Content and Form when analyzing human society and political economy. One of his core critiques of political economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo was a failure to consider Content and Form when it comes to value, commodities, and money. He discusses this extensively in ''Capital Volume 1'', as in this excerpt:
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">Today the major force for social transformation is the labor movement (union movement). . . . The anarchists must recognize the usefulness and importance of the union movement; they must support its development and make it one of the levers in their action, doing all they can to ensure that, by cooperation with other forces for progress, it will open the way to a social revolution. . . . But it would be a great and fatal mistake to believe, as many do, that the labor movement can and should, of its own volition, and by its very nature, lead to such a revolution.[[#56MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|56]]</div>
+<blockquote>
+The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both.
+</blockquote>
-Malatesta thought that trade unionism was insufficient to achieve a social revolution, because he believed that trade union activity was constituted by forms of practice that, over time, had a tendency to transform them into reformist institutions concerned with reproducing themselves within capitalism, rather than abolishing class society. As he explained in 1907, “Labor movements, which always commence as movements of protest and revolt, and are animated at the beginning by a broad spirit of progress and human fraternity, tend very soon to degenerate; and in proportion as they acquire strength, they become egoistic, conservative, occupied exclusively with interests immediate and restricted, and develop within themselves a bureaucracy which, as in all such cases, has no other object than to strengthen and aggrandize itself.”[[#57MalatestaMethodofFreedom|57]]
+Marx, here, is saying that studying the economy is more difficult than studying the human body because it can’t be physically observed and dissected. Rather, we have to rely on abstraction, which leaves us prone to making many more mistakes in analyzing Content and Form.
-Trade unions must, if they are to fulfill their purpose, be open to any worker who wants to win immediate improvements from the economic ruling classes. The consequence of this is that trade unions will be forced by circumstances to “moderate their aspirations, first so that they should not frighten away those they wish to have with them, and next because, in proportion as numbers increase, those with ideas who have initiated the movement remain buried in a majority that is only occupied with the petty interests of the moment.”[[#58MalatestaMethodofFreedom|58]] In addition, given their function of winning immediate improvements for their membership, trade unions will have to operate not too far outside the law, interact with the political and economic ruling classes, and concern themselves primarily with the interests of workers who belong to the trade union, rather than workers who their membership competes with in the labor market. These factors would, in turn, lead trade unions that gain a large membership to “assure, in accord with rather than against the masters, a privileged situation for themselves, and so create difficulties of entrance for new members, and for the admission of apprentices in the factories; a tendency to amass large funds that afterwards they are afraid of compromising; to seek the favor of public powers; to be absorbed, above all, in co-operation and mutual benefit schemes; and to become at last conservative elements in society.”[[#59MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|59]]
+<blockquote>
+But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour – or value-form of the commodity – is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.
+</blockquote>
-For Malatesta, this tendency of trade unions to develop into reformist institutions that balanced the interests of capital and labor was confirmed by such examples as the American Federation of Labor in the United States. It “does not carry on a struggle against the bosses except in the sense that two businessmen struggle when they are discussing the details of a contract. The real struggle is conducted against the newcomers, the foreigners, or natives who seek to be allowed to work in any industrial job” such that “skilled workers look down on manual workers; whites despise and oppress blacks; the ‘real Americans’ consider Chinese, Italians, and other foreign workers as inferiors. If a revolution were to come in the United States, the strong and wealthy Unions would inevitably be against the Movement, because they would be worried about their investments and the privileged position they have assured for themselves.”[[#60ErricoMalatestaLifeandI|60]] Kropotkin shared Malatesta’s concerns. In 1919, he complained that in England, after the collapse of the First International, “the daily struggle of local unions against the exploiters took the place of more distant ends . . . the majority of the active members of the workers’ unions, occupied day after day with the organization of these unions and their strikes, lost sight of the final end of the workers’ organization—social revolution.”[[#61PeterKropotkinDirectStru|61]]
+Marx’s analysis of capitalism relies to great extent upon recognizing the commodity-form of the product (Content) of labor. Labor existed long before capitalism. Labor has existed for as long as humans have worked to change our own material conditions. But under capitalism, labor specifically takes on the Form of a ''commodity'' which is bought by capitalists. This becomes the basis for Marx’s entire critique of capitalism.
-The history of the CGT can itself be used to illustrate Malatesta’s argument against revolutionary syndicalism. In 1919, a major and potentially revolutionary strike wave spread across France. It mobilized 1,150,718 workers in 2,026 strikes. One of the major strikes in this wave of revolt began on June 2, when 170,750 metalworkers in Paris and its suburbs, who belonged to thirteen local unions, went on strike for a forty-four-hour workweek and higher wages. This strike was independently organized by the rank and file as a reaction to the secretaries of the CGT’s Federation of Metalworkers signing an agreement with capitalists that granted a forty-eight-hour workweek. In so doing, the Federation had undercut ongoing negotiations between the capitalists and the Parisian local unions concerning a forty-four-hour workweek.
+Obviously, there is much more to Marx’s use of Content and Form in analyzing capitalism and human society, but this should hopefully give you some idea of the importance of Content and Form in analysis of human society and revolutionary activity.
-A significant number of workers who took part in the strike, which expanded to include other regions of France, attempted to transform it into a revolutionary movement against capitalism itself and to achieve political objectives, such as an end to French military intervention against the Russian revolution and amnesty for political and military prisoners. They called for a general strike and the establishment of a new Paris Commune. The strike ended on June 28, before any of this could occur, because the union secretaries decided to achieve a purely economic settlement with the capitalists and government, which won increased wages and reaffirmed the previous agreement of a forty-eight-hour workweek. Despite thinking of themselves as genuine radicals committed to the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism, the secretaries decided to not support political or revolutionary demands or enlist the wider support of the CGT as a whole. Given their social position as trade union bureaucrats, they acted to balance the interests of capital and labor and focused exclusively on reformist rather than revolutionary goals.[[#62NicholasPapayanisAlphonse|62]]
+-----
-Anarcho-syndicalists argued that revolutionaries should respond to the problem of trade unions becoming increasingly reformist over time by explicitly committing them to achieving an anarchist society through anarchist means. In 1925, Malatesta rejected this position and argued against those who aspired to merge the labor and anarchist movements by giving unions an explicitly anarchist program. He noted that the purpose of a trade union is to unite as many workers as possible in order to win immediate reforms, such as higher wages and improved working conditions, and thereby act as “a means of education and a field for propaganda” until workers “are in a position to make the social revolution.”[[#63MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|63]] Yet, since the majority of workers are not anarchists, any trade union that allowed only committed anarchists to join it would “be the very same thing as an anarchist group and would remain unable either to obtain better conditions or to bring about the revolution.”[[#64MalatestaMethodofFreedom|64]] His claim that anarcho-syndicalist trade unions would end up being specific anarchist organizations that called themselves trade unions was certainly applicable to some groups. The French CGTSR, for example, had only six thousand members in 1936, hardly the size necessary to be an organ of genuinely large-scale class struggle.[[#65DavidBerryAHistoryofth|65]]
+=== 5. Essence and Phenomenon ===
-On the other hand, if an anarcho-syndicalist trade union allowed any worker into it and thereby performed its function as an organ of large-scale class struggle then, as it grew in size, it would come to be an organization in which the majority of members were not anarchists and its anarchist program would exist only on paper as “an empty formula to which nobody pays any more attention.”[[#66MalatestaMethodofFreedom|66]] Malatesta concluded that any “fusion” of anarchism and the trade union movement would result “either in rendering the union powerless to attain its specific aim, or in attenuating, falsifying and extinguishing the spirit of Anarchism.”[[#67MalatestaMethodofFreedom|67]]
+==== a. Categories of Essence and Phenomenon ====
-Given this, Malatesta rejected the strategy of committing existing trade unions to an anarchist program or splitting off from large, moderate trade unions to form much smaller anarchist ones. He instead argued that anarchists should participate within the largest trade unions as a militant minority in order to be able to influence the largest number of workers and counteract the tendency of trade unions to become reformist. In Malatesta’s specific context during 1920s Italy, this was the syndicalist USI and the General Confederation of Labor, which had close ties with the Italian Socialist Party. His position, though, could apply just as well to less radical trade unions.[[#68MalatestaAnarchistRevolut|68]]
+The ''Essence'' category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas.
-According to Malatesta, the “revolutionary spirit must be introduced, developed, and maintained by the constant actions of revolutionaries who work from within their ranks as well as from outside, but it cannot be the normal, natural definition of the Trade Unions’ function.”[[#69MalatestaLifeandIdeas1|69]] Anarchists who participate in the trade union movement should, “strive to make them as much as possible instruments of combat in view of the Social Revolution. They should work to develop in the Syndicates all that which can augment its educative influence and its combativeness—the propaganda of ideas, the forcible strike, the spirit of proselytism, the distrust and hatred of the authorities and of the politicians, the practice of solidarity toward individuals and groups in conflict with the masters. They should combat all that which tends to render them egotistic, pacific, conservative,” which included amassing large amounts of money and “the appointment of bureaucratic officials, paid and permanent.”[[#70MalatestaMethodofFreedom|70]]
+The ''Phenomenon'' category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions.
-Although Malatesta advocated anarchist participation within the trade union movement, he insisted that anarchism should not subsume itself into it, but instead maintain an independent existence within specific anarchist organizations. He argued that anarchists should work within the trade union movement for “anarchistic purposes as individuals, groups and federations of groups” and “always keep in contact with the Anarchists and remember that the labor organizations do not constitute the end but only one of the various means, no matter how important it may be, of preparing the advent of anarchy.”[[#71MalatestaMethodofFreedom|71]] There is, he said, “an impelling need for a specifically anarchist organization which, both from within and outside the unions, struggle for the achievement of anarchism and seek to sterilize all the germs of degeneration and reaction.”[[#72MalatestaMethodofFreedom1|72]] In other words, Malatesta advocated syndicalism (in the broad sense of revolutionary trade unionism) plus a specific anarchist organization.
+-----
-He was not alone. In 1888, Spanish anarchists formed the Anarchist Organization of the Spanish Region in order to provide the Federation of Resistance Against Capital, a federation of politically neutral trade unions, with a revolutionary orientation.[[#73GeorgeRichardEsenweinAna|73]] Decades later in 1907, an anonymous member of the anarchist movement in Bohemia reported: “We are syndicalists. But syndicalism for us is only a means of action and not an end. We view it as a means of anarchist propaganda. It is thanks to syndicalism that we have been able to put down firm roots among the textile workers and miners in northern Bohemia, whose trade unions are under our direct influence. Most of these unions are flanked by an anarchist group made up of the best educated and most conscious workers. Our revolutionary miners are preparing the struggle for an eight-hour day.”[[#74AntonioliedInternationa|74]]
+==== Annotation 155 ====
-Some, but not all, anarcho-syndicalists advocated the formation of both mass syndicalist trade unions committed to an anarchist program, which were open to all workers, and smaller specific anarchist organizations, which were composed exclusively of dedicated militants. Focusing on Spain, the former general secretary of the CNT’s Catalan Regional Federation, Salvador Seguí, gave a speech on anarchism and syndicalism in 1920. He claimed that although anarchists should participate in trade unions in order to “watch over their development and to provide them with direction” such that they “become more libertarian,” this “does not by any means imply that the existing anarchist groups must be dissolved. Not at all. The more influence they exercise, the more Anarchism and anarchists there will be.”[[#75SalvadorSeguiAnarchisma|75]] Ultimately, as Seguí pointed out, it was the influence of anarchist groups that led to the CNT adopting anarchist communism as its goal in 1919.
+Understanding Essence and Phenomena can be challenging at first, but it is very important for materialist dialectical analysis.
-Several years later in 1927, the FAI was founded during the CNT’s period of illegality—between 1924 and 1930—under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. Its founding was initiated by the Portuguese Anarchist Union, the Federation of Spanish-Speaking Anarchist Groups in France, and the Federation of Anarchist Groups in Spain.[[#76JuanGomezCasasAnarchist|76]] The strategic motivations for a new specific anarchist organization can be seen in the manifesto issued by the Anarchist Liaison Committee of Catalonia, which had been set up to organize the founding of the FAI. They described themselves as workers who were active CNT militants and supporters of the doctrine of the IWMA. It was asserted that “it is not enough to be active inside the union. . . . Outside of the unions, absolutely independently, we disseminate our theories, form our groups, organize rallies, publish anarchist reading material, and sow the seed of anarchism in every direction.”[[#77QuotedinChristieWethe|77]] This activity in anarchist groups was essential in order to ensure that anarchists both instigated and inspired the coming social revolution such that it was not defeated, as had recently happened in Russia, by the establishment of a new minority political ruling class. Anarchists had to “organize ourselves in anarchist groupings in order to impregnate the anarchist revolution” and “propel it as far forward as we may.”[[#78QuotedinChristieWethe|78]]
+Essence should not be confused with ''Form''. Form represents the stable internal relations of the component content of a subject, whereas Essence represents the ''synthesis'' of all internal aspects as well as all obvious and stable attributes which ''define the existence, motion, and development'' of a subject.
-This commitment to an anarcho-syndicalist version of organizational dualism was repeated at the founding meeting of the FAI in July 1927. The minutes claim that the labor organization itself should struggle not only for day-to-day improvements, but also, for universal human emancipation and anarchism. At the same time, an “anarchist organization of groups should be established alongside it, with the two organizations working together for the anarchist movement.”[[#79QuotedinCasasHistoryof|79]] It was proposed that the CNT and the FAI should “hold joint plenums and local, district, and regional meetings” and “form general federations of the full anarchist movement” with “general councils composed of representatives of the unions and the groups. The general councils will name Commissions of Education, Propaganda, Agitation, and other areas of equal concern for both organizations.”[[#80QuotedinCasasHistoryof|80]] By organizing joint councils, the FAI and CNT would establish a ''trabazón'' with one another, which can be translated into English as an “organic link.” This trabazón was subsequently implemented at the CNT’s national conference in January 1928, where delegates from the FAI and CNT agreed to form a National Committee of Revolutionary Action and a National Prisoners’ Aid Committee composed of members of both organizations.[[#81JasonGarnerGoalsandMean|81]]
+Phenomena are simply external manifestations of a subject which occur ''in specific conditions''.
-The strategy of anarcho-syndicalism plus a specific anarchist organization was also advocated by anarchists outside of Spain. The French anarcho-syndicalist Besnard argued during his speech at the IWMA congress of 1937 that “anarcho-communist groups,” which were distinct from the trade union, should “go ''prospecting'' among the laboring masses,” “seek out recruits and temper militants” and “carry out active propaganda and intensive pioneering work with an eye to winning the greatest possible number of workers hitherto deceived and gulled by all the political parties, without exception, over to their side and thus to the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions.”[[#82PierreBesnardAnarchoSyn|82]]
+The Essence of a subject is not dependent on conditions, whereas in different conditions, the same subject will exhibit different Phenomena. For example, COVID-19 is, ''essentially'', a specific virus strain. That is to say, all of the internal aspects and stable relations that define the existence, motion, and development of COVID-19 are synthesized as a virus which we call COVID-19.
-The relationship between mass organizations and specific anarchist organizations was not the only topic that anarchists debated. They also argued with one another about how specific anarchist organizations should be structured and what role they should play in the class struggle.
+The ''Phenomena'' of COVID-19 which we can observe in patients would include symptoms such as fever, coughing, trouble breathing, etc.
-'''Platformism and Synthesism'''
+The Essence of a cloud is water vapor in the atmosphere: that is the synthesis, the coming-together, of all the internal stable relations and aspects which will determine how a cloud exists, moves, and develops over time.
-In 1918, the Confederation of Anarchist Organizations (Nabat) was founded in Ukraine. It was viewed by Voline, who was one of its members, as a specific anarchist organization that would embrace anarchist communists, anarcho-syndicalists, and individualist anarchists and thereby achieve what he termed a “united anarchism.”[[#83PaulAvrichTheRussianAna|83]] The Nabat’s first congress on November 18 described its primary duty as “organizing all of the life forces of anarchism; uniting the various strands of anarchism; bringing together through a common endeavor all anarchists seriously desirous of playing an active part in the social revolution.”[[#84NabatProceedingsofNabat|84]] This aspiration never became a reality due to the anarcho-syndicalists deciding not to join. In response, the Nabat choose not to send a delegate to the third All-Russian Conference of Anarcho-Syndicalists.[[#85AvrichRussianAnarchists|85]]
+The Phenomena of clouds are all the things we can sense: the appearance of big fluffy white things in the air, shadows on the ground, and, sometimes, rain.
-In November 1920, the militants of the Nabat, including Voline, were arrested by the Bolshevik secret police and imprisoned in Moscow. After an extensive campaign for the release of anarchist prisoners, which included imprisoned anarchists going on hunger strike, the Bolshevik government released a number of anarchists on the condition that they leave the country immediately. Among them was Voline, who left for Berlin in January 1922. That year, the anarchists who had fled to Berlin in order to escape Bolshevik state repression formed the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad. Between June 1923 and May 1924, this group published the anarchist journal ''Anarkhichesky Vestnik ''(Anarchist Herald) as part of a collaboration with the New York Union of Russian Toilers. The journal, edited by Voline and Peter Arshinov, published articles advocating the formation of specific anarchist organizations that united anarchists from different tendencies in order to combine the best ideas from anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism, and individualist anarchism.[[#86AvrichRussianAnarchists|86]]
+Essence defines Phenomenon: the internal attributes and stable relations will produce the Phenomena which we can observe. A cloud is not ''essentially defined'' as a fluffy white thing in the air; that is just the appearance a cloud has to our human senses in certain specific conditions.
-This position came to be known as the ''anarchist synthesis'' and was expounded not only by Voline but also by the French anarchist Sébastien Faure. In his 1928 article ''The Anarchist Synthesis'','' ''Faure utilized an analogy with chemistry to argue that anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism, and individualist anarchism were “three elements” that should be mixed together and synthesized through a process of ongoing experimentation. This would reveal which “dosage” of each element was most appropriate for a given context such that the “formula” would vary “locally, regionally, nationally or internationally.”[[#87SebastienFaureTheAnarch|87]] The organizational basis for this synthesis in France was the recently formed Association of Anarchist Federalists (AFA), which was described by Faure as “an entirely new regrouping of anarchist forces” that would unite all committed anarchists “without distinction of tendency” in order to “give more cohesion, influence and effectiveness to our dear propaganda” and enable anarchists “to work together rather than against one another, to live in peace rather than make war.”[[#88FaureTheAnarchistSynthe|88]]
+==== b. Dialectical relationship between Essence and Phenomenon ====
-In Faure’s ''Anarchist Encyclopedia'', published in 1934,'' ''Voline repeated this view when he defined the anarchist synthesis as “a tendency currently emerging within the libertarian movement seeking to reconcile and then ‘synthesize’ the different currents of thought that divide this movement into several more or less hostile fractions.”[[#89VolineSynthesisanarchis|89]] Voline, in other words, sought not only to unite different anarchists in the same organization but also to combine the different ideas of anarchist tendencies together. This was motivated by two main positions. First, although anarchism’s fragmentation into distinct subtypes had initially led to beneficial developments in anarchist theory and practice, it had in the long run ceased to be useful and resulted in unnecessary conflict between anarchists who each viewed their “parcel” as “the sole truth and bitterly fought against the partisans of the other currents.”[[#90VolineSynthesisAnarchis|90]] In so doing, they ignored the important ideas that other anarchist tendencies had to offer and the fact that anarchism could be improved by fusing each separate element together into an organic whole. Second, any specific anarchist organization composed of different kinds of anarchist that did not establish a synthesis of their different ideas would only be “a ‘mechanical’ assemblage” in which “each holds on to his intransigent position,” resulting in “not a synthesis, but chaos.”[[#91VolineSynthesisAnarchis|91]]
+Essence and Phenomenon both exist objectively as two unified but opposing sides.
-In parallel with the emergence of Voline and Faure’s anarchist synthesis, a distinct and opposed tendency developed that came to be known as ''platformism''. In June 1926, members of the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, which had relocated to Paris in 1925, issued ''The'' ''Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft)'' through their new journal ''Dielo Truda'' (The Cause of Labor). The ''Platform ''emerged out of discussions within the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, whose members included Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov, and Ida Mett, about how a specific anarchist organization should be structured and operate in order to overcome the perceived disorganization and ineffectiveness that the anarchist movement had fallen into. In so doing, they hoped to ensure that the anarchist movement would not be defeated, as it had been in Russia, during the next revolution.[[#92AlexandreSkirdaFacingthe|92]]
+''The unity between Essence and Phenomenon:'' Essence always manifests through Phenomena, and every Phenomenon is always the manifestation of a specific Essence. There is no pure Essence that exists separately from Phenomena and there is no Phenomenon that does not manifest from any kind of Essence.
-The Dielo Truda group, in line with organizational dualism in general, advocated the formation of mass organizations that brought the working classes together on the basis of production and consumption, such as trade unions, workers’ councils, or cooperatives, and a specific anarchist organization that united the most revolutionary and militant workers under an anarchist-communist program.[[#93TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|93]] The function of such a specific anarchist organization, which they called ''the general union of anarchists'', was to prepare the working classes for a social revolution, awaken and nurture class consciousness, spread anarchist ideas, coordinate action, and participate effectively in collective struggles. In so doing, it would ensure that anarchism became “the guiding light,” “spearhead,” or “driving force” of the social revolution when it occurred, such that there was an “''anarchist theoretical direction of events''.”[[#94TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|94]]
+When Essence changes, Phenomena also change accordingly. When Essence appears, Phenomena also appear, and when Essence disappears, Phenomena also disappear. Therefore, Lenin said: “The Essence appears. The appearance is essential.”<ref>''Philosophical Notebooks'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.</ref>
-By this, the Dielo Truda group did not mean that the general union of anarchists should seize power, establish themselves as a political ruling class, and impose their ideas from the top down in the name of the working classes whom they claimed to represent. Rather, they sought only “to assist the masses to choose the genuine path of social revolution and socialist construction” and establish the “genuine self-governance of the masses,” which would be “the practical first step along the road to the realization of libertarian communism.”[[#95TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|95]] This goal was to be achieved by participating within mass movements, such as trade unions, in order to spread anarchist ideas within them and steer the movement in an anarchist direction.
+''The Opposition of Essence and Phenomenon'': Essence is that which defines a thing, Phenomenon, or idea, while Phenomena are diversified and conditional. Essence is internal, while Phenomena are external. Essence is relatively stable, while Phenomena continuously change.
-The'' Platform'' differed from other forms of organizational dualism in its conception of how the specific anarchist organization should be structured. The Dielo Truda group held that specific anarchist organizations should, in order to effectively influence the working classes, adhere to a narrow ideological and tactical program that would act as a guide for achieving their shared goals via an agreed-upon route. This position emerged from their experiences of the Russian revolution. Arshinov argued in his 1925 article “Our Organizational Problem” that the anarchist movement in Russia had been outmaneuvered by other revolutionary tendencies because it had adopted “positions that were, yes, correct, but too general, acting all at once in a diffuse way, in multiple tiny groups, often at odds on many points of tactics.”[[#96QuotedinSkirdaFacingthe|96]] In order to prevent this from happening again, specific anarchist organizations should be committed to ideological and tactical unity such that every member agrees on a specific route to achieve concrete objectives. Doing so ensures that the organization’s limited resources are deployed in the same direction and prevents different segments of the organization from engaging in tactics that do not complement and support one another, such as one group advocating participation in trade unions while another tried to persuade workers not to join them.[[#97TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|97]]
+-----
-The Dielo Truda group therefore rejected Voline and Faure’s theory of the anarchist synthesis. They thought it made little sense to advocate the synthesis of anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism, and individualist anarchism. It was already the case that anarcho-syndicalists advocated communism as a goal and most anarchist communists advocated participation in trade unions. Nor was there any need to incorporate the insights of individualist anarchism. Individualists rejected the need for collectively organized class struggle, and anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist communism were already based on a commitment to the freedom of the individual. In addition, it was impractical to attempt to synthesize the different anarchist tendencies into a single organization, because its members would continue to have fundamentally incompatible views on theory and practice. The organization would inevitably disintegrate when these disagreements arose to prominence during collective struggles.[[#98TheGroupofRussianAnarchi|98]]
+==== Annotation 156 ====
-The authors of the'' Platform'' believed that the common ideological and tactical program of the specific anarchist organization should be implemented through each individual member engaging in revolutionary self-discipline, and enacting the decisions that had been collectively agreed upon.[[#99MakhnoStruggle6768|99]] They wrote that “the federalist type of anarchist organization, while acknowledging every member of the organization’s right to independence, to freedom of opinion, initiative and individual liberty, charges each member with specific organizational duties, insisting that these be rigorously performed, and that decisions jointly made be put into effect.”[[#100TheGroupofRussianAnarch|100]] This included a commitment to seeing decisions made by majority vote at congresses as binding on every group within the organization. The authors of the'' Platform'', in parallel with this, rejected the “unaccountable individualism” of some anarchist groups in favor of a system of “''collective responsibility''” whereby the general union of anarchists “will be answerable for the revolutionary and political activity of each of its members” and “each member will be answerable for the revolutionary and political activity of the Union as a whole.”[[#101TheGroupofRussianAnarch|101]]
+Essence and Phenomenon are simultaneously unified and opposite because neither can exist without the other, yet they have completely opposite features from one another.
-Most controversially of all, the Dielo Truda group proposed the formation of an executive committee that would achieve coordination and coherence between different sections of the general union of anarchists. They advocated an “''Executive Committee''” tasked with the “implementation of decisions made by the Union, which the latter have entrusted to it; theoretical and organizational oversight of the activity of isolated organizations, in keeping with the Union’s theoretical options and overall tactical line; scrutiny of the general state of the movement; maintenance of working and organizational ties between all of the organizations of the Union, as well as with outside organizations.”[[#102TheGroupofRussianAnarch|102]] The authors of the Platform were aware that the executive committee could potentially take on a life of its own and subordinate or oppress the membership. In order to prevent this from happening, they proposed that “the rights, responsibilities and practical tasks of the Executive Committee will be prescribed by the Congress of the General Union.”[[#103TheGroupofRussianAnarch|103]]
+Discussing the Essence and Phenomena of physical objects is relatively straight-forward. The Essence will typically encompass the physical object or system itself. For example, a car engine is ''essentially'' a machine; that is to say, the synthesis of all the internal aspects (the engine parts) as well as the obvious and stable relations (the relations between the parts of the engine; how they are assembled and work together in the engine system) that define the existence, motion and development of the engine (the way it works) are what ''essentially make it'' a car engine. All of these essential characteristics are internal, relatively stable, and remain the same regardless of the condition of the engine (i.e., they continue to exist whether the engine is turned on, turned off, inoperable, etc.).
-The'' Platform'' aroused a great deal of debate within the European anarchist movement. These responses tended to be based on misunderstanding or misrepresenting its ideas due, in part, to a poor French translation produced by Voline, and the ambiguous language within the ''Platform'' itself, such as references to collective responsibility, an executive committee, and anarchists providing theoretical direction.[[#104SkirdaFacingtheEnemy1|104]] In 1927, a different group of Russian anarchists, which included Mollie Steimer, Senya Fleshin, and Voline, released a critique of the'' Platform''. They interpreted the'' Platform'' as advocating the formation of a centralized party ruled from the top-down, by an executive committee that was merely a central committee under a different name. This centralized party would, in turn, act as leader and director of both the anarchist movement and working-class movements in general, rather than offering only ideological assistance to other workers as equals in the class struggle. As a result, they concluded that the Dielo Truda group had abandoned anarchist principles in favor of authoritarian Bolshevik ones.[[#105MollieSteimerSimonFlesh|105]] This negative evaluation of the ''Platform'' was shared by Berkman and Goldman.[[#106AvrichRussianAnarchists|106]]
+The Phenomena of the car engine are all the things that we can sense from it, but this can vary a great deal depending on conditions. When the car engine is turned off, it will be silent. It may be cool to the touch. It will be at rest. If the engine is turned on, the parts will move, it will become hot, it will make noise. In some situations it might smoke or even catch on fire. All of these Phenomena are conditional, unstable, and external to the engine itself.
-A more politely written response was issued by Malatesta in October 1927. Malatesta, like Steimer, Fleshin, and Voline, viewed the'' Platform'' as rejecting the anarchist commitment to free initiative and free agreement in favor of a Bolshevik-inspired authoritarian system of organization. The'' Platform’s'' advocacy of collective responsibility, binding congress resolutions made by majority vote, and an executive committee was interpreted by Malatesta as being a proposal for an organization in which decisions are made by elected representatives. If these representatives make binding decisions through simple majority voting then, when there are more than two factions at a meeting, the decision will be made by a numerical minority of representatives elected by a minority of the organization.[[#107MalatestaMethodofFreedo1|107]] He argued that,
+With ''ideas'' and abstract thought, Essence and Phenomenon becomes more difficult to determine and analyze. Lenin discussed this in his ''Philosophical Notebooks'', beginning with a quote from Hegel:
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">if the Union is responsible for what each member does, how can it leave to its individual members and to the various groups the freedom to apply the common program in the way they think best? How can one be responsible for an action if one does not have the means to prevent it? Therefore, the Union and in its name the Executive Committee, would need to monitor the action of the individual members and order them what to do and what not to do; and since disapproval after the event cannot put right a previously accepted responsibility, no-one would be able to do anything at all before having obtained the go-ahead, the permission of the committee.[[#108MalatestaMethodofFreedo1|108]]</div>
+<blockquote>
+Dialectics in general is “the pure movement of thought in Notions“ (i.e., putting it without the mysticism of idealism: human concepts are not fixed but are eternally in movement, they pass into one another, they flow into one another, otherwise they do not reflect living life.
+</blockquote>
-As a result, Malatesta concluded that the Dielo Truda group had proposed means that would, “far from helping to bring about the victory of anarchist communism . . . only falsify the anarchist spirit and lead to consequences that go against their intentions.”[[#109MalatestaMethodofFreedo1|109]]
+Knowing that Hegel was an idealist, Lenin wanted to strip all idealism from his conception of dialectics, and thus made it clear that “the pure movement of thought” simply refers to the fact that human thoughts are constantly changing, always in motion, within the living human mind, writing:
-In response to these critiques the authors of the'' Platform'' issued a number of texts clarifying their position. First, they were not in favor of subordinating the working class to the top-down rule of an anarchist organization. They explicitly wrote that “the action of steering revolutionary elements and the revolutionary movement of the masses in terms of ideas should not be and cannot ever be considered as an aspiration on the part of anarchists that they should take the construction of the new society into their own hands. That construction cannot be carried out except by the whole of laboring society, for that task devolves upon it alone, and any attempt to strip it of that right must be deemed anti-anarchist.”[[#110TheGroupofRussianAnarch|110]]
+<blockquote>
+The analysis of concepts, the study of them, the “art of operating with them” (Engels) always demands study of the movement of concepts, of their interconnection, of their mutual transitions).
+</blockquote>
-Given this, anarchists “will never agree to wield power, even for a single instant, nor impose their decisions on the masses by force. In this connection their methods are: propaganda, force of argument, and spoken and written persuasion.”[[#111TheGroupofRussianAnarch|111]] The'' Platform’s'' references to anarchists providing direction to the working classes only meant that they would influence other workers and persuade them to adopt anarchist ideas in just the same manner that famous anarchist theorists such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, and Malatesta had already done. The'' Platform'' merely held that in order for this ideological direction to become a “permanent factor” it was necessary to form “an organization possessed of a common ideology . . . whose membership engage in ideologically coordinated activity, without being side-tracked or dispersed as has been the case hitherto.”[[#112TheGroupofRussianAnarch|112]] This organization would then participate in, for example, the trade union movement “as ''the carriers of a certain theory, a prescribed work plan''” in order to “''disseminate'' within the unions its ideas regarding the revolutionary tactics of the working class and on various events.”[[#113TheGroupofRussianAnarch|113]]
+This is a description of materialist dialectical analysis of human thought. We must understand that human thoughts are always in motion, always developing, and always mutually impacting other thoughts.
-In summary, although the revolution can only be made by the working classes themselves, it is also the case that “the revolutionary mass is forever nurturing in its bosom a minority of initiators, who precipitate and direct events” and “in a true social revolution the supporters of worker anarchism alone will account for that minority.”[[#114TheGroupofRussianAnarch|114]] Once the working classes “have defeated capitalist society, a new era in their history will be ushered in, an era when all social and political functions are transferred to the hands of workers and peasants who will set about the creation of the new life. At that point the anarchist organizations and, with them, the General Union, will lose all their significance and they should, in our view, gradually melt away into the productive organizations of the workers and peasants,” rather than subjecting workers to their rule.[[#115TheGroupofRussianAnarch|115]]
+<blockquote>
+In particular, dialectics is the study of the opposition of the Thing-in-itself, of the essence, substratum, substance — from the appearance, from “Being-for-Others.” (Here, too, we see a transition, a flow from the one to the other: the essence appears. The appearance is essential.) Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on without end.
+</blockquote>
-Second, in advocating an executive committee within the specific anarchist organization they were not proposing the formation of “a Party Central Committee . . . that issues orders, makes laws and commands.”[[#116TheGroupofRussianAnarch|116]] The authors of the'' Platform'' not only thought that an executive committee was consistent with anarchism, but that “such an organ exists in many anarchist and anarchist-syndicalist organizations.”[[#117TheGroupofRussianAnarch|117]] What the'' Platform'' called an “Executive Committee” had no coercive powers. It was merely “a body ''performing functions of a general nature in the Union''” that would not restrict the activity of groups within the organization and instead only “steer their activity” by providing “ideological or organizational assistance,” such as advising a group on the current “tactical or organizational line adopted by the Union on a variety of matters.”[[#118TheGroupofRussianAnarch|118]]
+This is where Lenin introduces the concept of Essence and Phenomenon (or “appearance,” as Lenin puts it) as simultaneously oppositional and in unity. Essence refers to the qualities and nature of the “thing-in-itself” (its internal components, relations, etc.) while Phenomena represents “being-for-others” (that which external observers can sense or witness of a subject). However, as Lenin notes, Essence and Phenomena have a dialectical relationship with each other — a “flow from the one to the other.” The Essence “appears” by exuding Phenomena which we can sense.
-If a group within the specific anarchist organization decided to adopt its own tactical approach then one of three outcomes would occur: the minority would agree to follow the majority position within the organization because it is not an issue of supreme importance; the minority and majority position would coexist if feasible; or, the minority would leave the organization to form their own group. Crucially, which of these outcomes transpired “will be resolved, not by the Executive Committee which, let us repeat, is to be merely an executive organ of the Union, but by the entire Union as a body: by a Union Conference or Congress.”[[#119TheGroupofRussianAnarch|119]]
+Conscious thoughts also have Essence and Phenomena of their own. With thought, the development from Essence to Phenomena is constant and inevitable. The Essence of each thought leads to thought-Phenomena which develop in turn into the Essence of new thoughts in a constant flow.
-Third, the idea of collective responsibility did not entail the view that the members of the organization would have to follow the orders of an executive committee. Arshinov explained in his response to Malatesta that the members of the organization would be united under a common program that they all supported and which, in so far as they were members, was binding upon them. Given this,
+In this sense, Essence and Phenomenon of abstract thought is somewhat different from Essence and Phenomenon of physical objects, but physical objects can have this same dialectical pattern of development. For example, the emissions from the engine of a car can be considered Phenomena of the engine, but as these Phenomena build up in the air (along with the emissions from many other cars), they can develop into a physical subject with a new Essence of its own, which we call “air pollution.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">the practical activity of a member of the organization is naturally in complete harmony with the overall activity, and conversely the activity of the organization as a whole could not be at odds with the conscience and activity of each member, assuming he has accepted the program fundamental to this organization. It is this which characterizes the principle of collective responsibility: the Union as a body is answerable for the activity of each member, in the knowledge that he could only carry out his political and revolutionary work in the political spirit of the Union. Likewise, each member is fully answerable for the Union as a whole, since its activity could not be at odds with what has been determined by the whole membership.[[#120ArshinovTheOldandNew|120]]</div>
+We can also think of the light which comes from the sun. The light itself can be thought of as Phenomena of the sun, but the light energy can be captured by a solar panel and converted into energy, creating a new subject with its own Essence which we would describe as “solar energy.” In this sense, it is possible for Phenomena to have Phenomena. If you witness light waves in the desert which cause an optical illusion, then the illusion is a Phenomenon of the light waves (the light waves being the Essence which exuded the Phenomenon of illusion), and the light waves are the Phenomena of the sun (the essential subject which exudes the Phenomena of the light waves).
-From Arshinov’s response, it is clear that Malatesta’s critique was based on a misunderstanding of what the authors of the'' Platform'' meant by collective responsibility. Malatesta himself realized that this was potentially the case. He wrote in a December 1929 letter to Makhno that,
+Essence and Phenomena can also be contextual. In some contexts, physical objects which have their own Essence (and Phenomena) may be the Phenomena of some other entity. For example, archaeologists can’t observe prehistoric civilizations directly. They can only study the things which are left behind. In this sense, we can think of an archaeological artifact, like a stone tool, as a Phenomenon of a prehistoric civilization. The tool has its own Essence and Phenomena, but it is also itself a Phenomenon. A single stone tool can’t tell archaeologists much about an ancient civilization, however, archaeologists can gather many Phenomena (tools, structural ruins, nearby animal bones and seeds, human remains, etc.) to look for patterns which reveal more insights about the Essence of the prehistoric civilization which exuded those Phenomena.
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">I accept and support the view that anyone who associates and cooperates with others for a common purpose must feel the need to coordinate his actions with those of his fellow members and do nothing that harms the work of others and, thus, the common cause; and respect the agreements that have been made—except when wishing sincerely to leave the association. . . . I maintain that those who do not feel and do not practice that duty should be thrown out of the association. Perhaps, speaking of collective responsibility, you mean precisely that accord and solidarity that must exist among the members of an association. And if that is so, your expression amounts, in my view, to an incorrect use of language, but basically it would only be an unimportant question of wording and agreement would soon be reached.[[#121MalatestaAnarchistRevolu1|121]]</div>
+<blockquote>
+Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects: not only are appearances transitory, mobile, fluid, demarcated only by conventional boundaries, but the essence of things is so as well.
+</blockquote>
-Malatesta further clarified his views on the topic in a July 1930 letter he wrote to a platformist group, based in the Montmartre district of Paris. Although he continued to reject the phrase “collective responsibility” in favor of “moral responsibility,” he wrote “I find myself more or less in agreement with their way of conceiving the anarchist organization (being very far from the authoritarian spirit which the ‘Platform’ seemed to reveal) and I confirm my belief that behind the linguistic differences really lie identical positions.”[[#122ErricoMalatestaOnColle|122]] Malatesta was, nonetheless, not a platformist since he thought that specific anarchist organizations should have a slightly broader program, and rejected the position that congress resolutions passed by majority vote should be binding on every group within a specific anarchist organization, rather than only those groups who voted in favor of them.
+Lenin, here, points out that proper analysis hinges on understanding the ''Essence'' of a subject, since the Phenomena are fleeting and subject to change. Most notably, we should look for ''contradictions'' within the subject (see ''Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction'', p. 175), because contradictions are what drive dialectical development of a subject over time.
-<u>The immediate practical effect of the Platform appears to have been somewhat limited. The </u>Dielo Truda group organized a number of discussion meetings on the'' Platform'' that were attended by militants from around the world, including France, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Poland, and China. This culminated in an attempt to form an Anarchist International at a meeting held in a Parisian cinema on March 20, 1927.[[#123SkirdaFacingtheEnemy1|123]] During the meeting, Makhno proposed a five-point program to be discussed: “(1) recognition of the class struggle as the most important factor of the anarchist system; (2) recognition of anarcho-communism as the basis of the movement; (3) recognition of syndicalism as one of the principal methods of anarcho-communist struggle; (4) the necessity of a ‘General Union of Anarchists’ based on ideological and tactical unity and collective responsibility; (5) the necessity of a positive program to realize the social revolution.”[[#124QuotedinGarnerGoalsand|124]]
+-----
-These five points were then pedantically rephrased by the attending delegates in a manner that changed their language but not their ultimate meaning. The wording agreed upon was: # <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">recognition of the struggle of all oppressed and exploited against state and capitalist authority as the most important factor of the anarchist system; </div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">recognition of anarcho-communism as the basis of the movement; </div>
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">recognition of the labor and union struggle as one of the most important means of anarchist revolutionary action; </div>
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">necessity in each country of as general as possible a Union of Anarchists who have the same goals and tactics, as well as collective responsibility; </div>
-# <div style="margin-left:2.032cm;margin-right:0.355cm;">necessity of a positive program of action for the anarchists in the social revolution.[[#125QuotedinGarnerGoalsand|125]] </div>
+If we want to be accurately aware of things, phenomena, and ideas, we must not just stop at studying their Phenomena, we have to study their Essence. Only through examining many Phenomena of a subject can we fully and correctly understand the Essence of said subject.
+-----
-Before the delegates could move on to discuss these points, the French police broke into the meeting and arrested everybody in attendance. The commission elected to form the Anarchist International, whose members were Makhno (Ukrainian), Ranko (Polish), and Chen (Chinese), issued a letter on April 1 that declared the existence of an International Libertarian Communist Federation and, for reasons that are unclear, expressed the original five-point program for discussion that had been formulated by Makhno, rather than the version that delegates had revised. This contributed toward delegates from other anarchist groups, including the Italian anarchists who were members of the Italian Anarchist Union, deciding to disassociate from the project.[[#126SkirdaFacingtheEnemy1|126]] Fabbri, Camillo Berneri, and Ugo Fedeli explained in their letter that the members of the Pensiero e Volontà group had decided not to join because,
+==== Annotation 157 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.457cm;margin-right:0.457cm;">there exists among you a spirit which is quite distant from that which underlies our way of conceiving an international anarchist organization, that is one which is open to the greatest number of individuals, groups and federations who agree with the principles of struggle organized in an anarchist way against capitalism and the State, on a permanent national and international basis, but all this without any ideological or tactical exclusivism and without any formalism that could impede the autonomy or freedom of the individuals in the groups or of the groups themselves in the various national and international unions.[[#127LuigiFabbriCamilloBerne|127]]</div>
+With physical objects, we must study the Phenomena to know anything about a subject, since Phenomena is, by definition, that which we can observe. Only through systematic, repeated observations can we come to understand the Essence of the object which exudes the Phenomena. Because Phenomena can change based on conditions, we must observe Phenomena under various conditions in a systematic way. This is the basis of all scientific inquiry.
-The first specific, anarchist organization to express support for platformism was the Federation of Anarcho-Communist Groups of the United States and Canada, which was composed of workers from the Russian empire and financially supported the publication of ''Dielo Truda''.[[#128LipotkinRussianAnarchist|128]] The federation declared in January 1927 that “the Conference agrees with the Organizational Platform” and views its ideas as “timely and desirable.”[[#129QuotedinLipotkinRussian|129]] Other Russian anarchists living in North America rejected the ideas of the Platform, and formed the Federation of Russian Workers’ Organizations of the United States and Canada in 1927. After several years of dialogue and negotiations, the two rival federations united into a single federation in July 1939.[[#130LipotkinRussianAnarchist|130]]
+This is also true for analyzing aspects of human society. To understand a social system, we must observe its Phenomena systematically over time and look for patterns which form under various conditions. We must also keep in mind that social systems develop and change over time, and so the Essence might develop with or without changes in certain Phenomena. For example, the phenomena of the United States of America have changed significantly over the years. The national flag, military uniforms, seals, and other iconography have changed throughout the history of the USA. Similarly, there have been many presidents, and the government and constitution have also been through many changes. That said, the essential nature of the USA’s political economy has not changed significantly since its foundation; the USA has been a capitalist bourgeois democracy since the beginning and remains so to this day. Regardless of which bourgeois-dominated political party holds power in the white house and congress — Whig, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise — the essential nature of the USA as a capitalist bourgeois democracy has remained the same.
-The second specific anarchist organization to adopt platformism was the French Anarchist Communist Union. At its autumn 1927 congress in Paris, a majority of delegates voted to rename the organization the Revolutionary Anarchist Communist Union. This was accompanied by a number of dramatic changes to how the organization functioned. The results of majority votes were now binding on all individual members; positions adopted at annual congresses could not be subject to criticisms within the pages of the Union’s official paper, ''Le Libertaire'', except during a three-month period immediately prior to the next congress; membership was only possible via a group, meaning isolated individuals could no longer join; and being a member involved paying a subscription fee and receiving a membership card. The 1927 congress resulted in a split within the organization. Proponents of synthesist anarchism left to form the previously mentioned AFA. These changes to the Anarchist Union did not last long. The platformist position was soon defeated at the 1930 Paris Congress where, despite a speech by Makhno, the synthesist delegates won the vote by fourteen to seven, regained control of the organization, and abandoned the above policies. In response, the platformists left and formed the Libertarian Communist Federation in 1934, only to rejoin the Anarchist Union two years later in 1936.[[#131BerryFrenchAnarchistMov|131]]
+According to Lenin: “Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on, ''without end.''”<ref>''Philosophical Notebooks'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914–16.</ref> On the other hand, Essence is what defines a thing, phenomenon, or idea. Therefore, in our perception and practice, we must recognize a thing, phenomenon, or idea based on its Essence, not its Phenomena, to evaluate it correctly, and after that, we can make fundamental improvements.
-Despite the various negative interpretations of the Platform, its commitments were not a break with anarchism. They were instead one of many ways in which anarchists sought to build upon and update the kind of specific anarchist organization that Bakunin had advocated, decades previously. This remains true even though other anarchists thought their proposals were misguided. Although proponents of organizational dualism disagreed about how specific anarchist organizations should be structured and make decisions, they nonetheless agreed on the need to unite committed revolutionaries under a common program in order to develop correct theory and strategy, coordinate their actions both among themselves and within broader mass organizations or movements, and to push the revolutionary struggle forward through persuasion and engagement in actions that provided an example to others.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#110|1]]. Davide Turcato, ''Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution'','' 1889–1900 ''(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 80–81; Nunzio Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'','' 1864–1892'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),'' ''254–58, 272.</div>
+==== Annotation 158 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#210|2]]. Carl Levy, ''Gramsci and the Anarchists ''(Oxford: Berg, 1999), 119–25; Fausto Buttà, ''Living Like Nomads: The Milanese Anarchist Movement Before Fascism ''(Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 186–87, 196.</div>
+For example: Thousands of years ago, people observed that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west everyday. Based on these Phenomena, many human civilizations developed the belief that the Essence of our solar system was that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun rotated around it. Today, thanks to scientific observation and practice, we have proven that the sun is the center of the solar system and that the earth is rotating around it, which is totally opposite to what many believed hundreds of years ago. In this case, the initially observed Phenomena were misleading, and it was only by getting a better grasp of the essential nature of the solar system that we could better comprehend its functioning.
-[[#310|3]]. Wolfgang Eckhardt, ''The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association'' (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016),'' ''2,'' ''156–57.
+It is usually easy to observe Phenomena (since they are defined by being observable) but it’s also easy to misunderstand relationships between Essence and Phenomena. Sometimes people get a false perception of Essence from real Phenomena, such as believing the Sun revolves around the Earth. Sometimes people attribute the wrong Phenomena to Essences as well, such as believing that all poor people are lazy.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#410|4]]. E. H. Carr, ''Michael Bakunin'' (London: The Macmillan Press, 1975), 308–18; T.R. Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'' (Kingston and Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 29–34, 38–40, 48–56; Pernicone, ''Italian Anarchism'', 16–22; Arthur Lehning, “Bakunin’s Conceptions of Revolutionary Organizations and Their Role: A Study of His ‘Secret Societies,’” in ''Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr'', ed. Chimen Abramsky (London: The Macmillan Press, 1974), 57, 61–63. Bakunin had previously attempted to establish a secret society of revolutionaries in 1848, which was two decades before he became an anarchist, but this attempt was unsuccessful and never went past the planning stages. See Carr, ''Bakunin'','' ''181–86.</div>
+Phenomena can easily be mistaken for essence. For example, bourgeois liberal political parties often portray themselves as being pro-worker and therefore exhibit phenomena such as rhetoric, slogans, propaganda, and even platform positions which appeal to workers. These phenomena may confuse many into believing that they are workers’ parties when, in reality, they are essentially dominated by the capitalist class. The reverse can also occur. For example, workers may be fooled into believing that a ruthless capitalist politician or celebrity is “working class at heart,” falsely believing that the capitalist’s class position is merely a phenomenon when in fact it is essential.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#510|5]]. Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''2–12,'' ''47–65, 71–78, 153–58, 243–62, 318–19, 350–51, 354–55; Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'','' ''183.</div>
+Understanding true Essence based on real Phenomena is one of the most important aspects of analysis. It is the primary realm of science. In politics, misunderstanding or mischaracterizing Essence and Phenomena can reinforce false beliefs about the way society works which can lead to promulgation of dangerous and reactionary ideologies like neoliberalism and fascism amidst the working class. For this reason, we must avoid examining Phenomena alone. We have to dive deep to discover and understand the essential nature of things, phenomena, and ideas in our analysis.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#610|6]]. Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', ed. Arthur Lehning (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 92.</div>
+=== 6. Possibility and Reality ===
-[[#710|7]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''92.
+==== a. Categories of Possibility and Reality ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#810|8]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''173–74. For the evidence that this program was a draft, see Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''285, 317–19.</div>
+The ''Possibility'' category refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#910|9]]. Quoted in Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'','' ''160.</div>
+The ''Reality'' category refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1010|10]]. Quoted in Ravindranathan, ''Bakunin and the Italians'','' ''160.</div>
+==== b. Dialectical Relationship Between Possibility and Reality ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1110|11]]. Michael Bakunin, “To the Brothers of the Alliance in Spain,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth website, March 17, 2014, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/bakunin-library/bakunin-to-the-brothers-of-the-alliance-in-spain-1872. Bakunin’s ''Œuvres complètes'' incorrectly dates the letter to June. For the correct date of writing, see Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'', 244, 422. For other examples of Bakunin making this argument, see Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''93; Michael Bakunin, ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875'', ed. A. W. Zurbrugg (London: Merlin Books, 2016),'' ''215.</div>
+Possibility and Reality have a unified and inseparable relationship: Possibility can transform into Reality and Reality contains new Possibility; any given Possibility, under specific conditions, can transform into Reality.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1210|12]]. Carr, ''Bakunin'', 189–224, 240.</div>
+Given specific conditions, there could be one or many possibilities for the development of any given thing, phenomenon, or idea: practical Possibility, random Possibility, obvious Possibility, abstract Possibility, near Possibility, far Possibility, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#139|13]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'','' ''210. This letter to Alerini has been misattributed within Bakunin’s ''Œuvres complètes'' as being part of Bakunin’s May 21, 1872, draft letter to Tomás González Morago. This error is repeated in Zurbrugg’s edition of Bakunin. See Eckhardt, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''259–61,'' ''281, 512–13n55.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#149|14]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 210, 213.</div>
+==== Annotation 159 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#159|15]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 210.</div>
+'''Excerpt From Marxism-Leninism Textbook of Students Who Specialize in Marxism-Leninism'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#169|16]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'','' ''211–15. For the programs of the Alliance, see Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''173–75.</div>
+''Editor’s notes in [brackets]''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#179|17]]. Bakunin, “To the Brothers of the Alliance in Spain.”</div>
+Reality has many aspects. It also has many tendencies of development. These aspects and tendencies of Reality have different roles and positions in the development process of Reality. For example, manifesting any given Possibility into Reality requires us to change a specific subject from one status to a different status. Some subjects are easier to transform and others are more difficult to transform. Some require us to change quality, others only require quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#189|18]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Texts'', 249.</div>
+Because Reality has many aspects and tendencies of development, it is useful to classify Possibility. There are at least four types of Possibility, in two separate categories.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#199|19]]. For example, Hal Draper, ''Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution'','' ''vol. 3,'' The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”'' (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), 55–57, 93–96; Hal Draper, ''Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution'','' ''vol. 4,'' Critique of Other Socialisms'' (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 130, 144–47; Paul Avrich, ''Anarchist Portraits'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 13, 46, 67; Peter Marshall, ''Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism'' (London: Harper Perennial, 2008),'' ''263,'' ''271–72, 276–77, 282, 286–87, 306–7; James Joll, ''The Anarchists'' (London: Methuen, 1969), 87</div>
+[The categorization below draws a distinction between the ''obvious'' and the ''practical.''
-[[#209|20]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''180.
+The ''obvious'' is that which will ''certainly'' occur. If you drop an object, it will ''obviously'' fall. The ''practical'' is that which we ''certainly could make occur'' through human will. If you are holding an object, you could ''practically'' drop it.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#219|21]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''178–81.</div>
+'''Obvious Possibility and Random Possibility''' [see: Obviousness and Randomness, p. 144].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#229|22]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'', 178. For information on Richard, see Julian P.W. Archer, ''The First International in France, 1864–1872: Its Origins, Theories, and Impact'' (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997), 159–61, 217–8; Carr, ''Bakunin'','' ''343–44, 349, 363, 414–15; Eckart, ''First Socialist Schism'','' ''205.</div>
+''Obvious Possibility'' refers to Possibility that ''will'' happen, because conditions to make it happen are set in place so that the Possibility developing into Reality is unavoidable.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#239|23]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''180. For the two other occasions Bakunin uses the phrase in the letter, see ibid., 178, 181.</div>
+[If the conditions arise for a hurricane to form, it eventually becomes ''obvious'' that a hurricane will form.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#249|24]]. For an overview of Marx’s usage of the term, see Draper, ''The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” from Marx to Lenin ''(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987), 11–35; Richard N. Hunt, ''The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels'','' ''vol. 1,'' Marxism and Totalitarian Democracy, 1818–1850 ''(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974), 284–336.</div>
+''Random Possibility'' is Possibility which may or may not happen depending on how external factors develop, our actions, the actions of others, etc. [Whether or not a hurricane may develop on any given day is, from our human perspective, random, since we do not have any technology to cause or prevent the development of hurricanes. Other events may be more or less random. We can, for instance, ''prepare'' for an incoming hurricane to minimize the risk of harm to human communities.]
-[[#259|25]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''180.
+Second, based on the practical relationships between subjects, we have:
-[[#269|26]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''182.
+'''Practical Possibility vs. Abstract Possibility:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#279|27]]. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, ''Property Is Theft: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology'', ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2011), 554, 654–55.</div>
+''Practical Possibility'' means that conditions in Reality which ''could'' make something happen are already in place. [If you have all the ingredients, knowledge, and equipment needed to make a pie, you ''could'' make a pie. The material conditions are in place.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#289|28]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''193. For Nechaev’s views and actions, see Ronald Seth, ''The Russian Terrorists: The Story of the Narodniki'' (London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1966), 31–36; Philip Pomper, “Nechaev and Tsaricide: The Conspiracy within the Conspiracy,” ''The Russian Review ''33. no. 2'' ''(1974): 123–38.</div>
+''Abstract Possibility'' is Possibility which may become Reality in the future but the conditions which would make this Possibility become Reality have not yet developed.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#299|29]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''182–83.</div>
+[It is an abstract Possibility that you ''could'' make a pie, even if you don’t have the tools, ingredients, or knowledge. It is possible, in the abstract, that you could buy the ingredients and equipment and learn the necessary skills to make a pie. ''Near Possibility'' simply refers to Possibility which may become Reality in the shorter term, ''far Possibility'' refers to things which may happen in a more distant future, relative to the subject being discussed.]
-[[#309|30]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''190.
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#319|31]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''192–93.</div>
+In social life, in order to transform a Possibility into Reality, there must be objective conditions and subjective factors. Subjective factors include the ability of humans to change Possibility into Reality. Objective conditions refer to the situations needed to make such a change occur. [In other words, humans are able to ''subjectively'' change possibility into reality, but only when the ''objective'' circumstances exist in the external world.]
-[[#329|32]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''193.
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#339|33]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''191–92.</div>
+We must base our perception and practice on Reality.
-[[#349|34]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''191.
+Lenin said: “Marxism takes its stand on the facts, and not on possibilities. A Marxist must, as the foundation of his policy, put [forth] ''only'' precisely and unquestionably demonstrated ''facts''.”<ref>''To N. D. Kiknadze'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, written after November 5, 1916.</ref>
-[[#359|35]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''193.
+However, in our perception and practice, we also need to comprehensively recognize possibilities which could arise from Reality. This will allow us to develop methods of practical operation which are suitable to changes and developments which might occur. We must actively make use of subjective factors in perception and practice to turn Possibility into Reality whenever it would serve our purposes.
-[[#369|36]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''194.
+-----
-[[#379|37]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''172.
+==== Annotation 160 ====
-[[#389|38]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''172.
+This idea is perhaps best exemplified in the traditional Vietnamese proverb: “you can’t just open your mouth and wait for fruit to drop into your mouth.” We have to actively apply our will, through practice and labor, to develop the best possibilities into manifested Reality. See more about subjective factors in Annotation 207, p. 202.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#399|39]]. Michael Bakunin, ''The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869–1871'', ed. and trans. Robert M. Cutler (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), 164. See also, 27.</div>
+== IV. Basic Laws of Materialist Dialectics ==
-[[#409|40]]. Bakunin, ''Selected Writings'','' ''203.
+''Laws'' are the regular, common, obvious, natural, and objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#419|41]]. Quoted in Eckhardt,'' First Socialist Schism'', 244.</div>
+There are many types of laws in this world and they all have different prevalence, reach, characteristics, and roles in regard to the motion and development processes of things and phenomena in nature, society, and human thought. So, it is necessary to classify different laws for humans to understand and apply them effectively into practical activities. Classifying laws based on prevalence, we have: private laws, common laws, and universal laws [see: ''Private and Common'', p. 128].
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#429|42]]. Quoted in Caroline Cahm, ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism'','' 1872–1886'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),'' ''145.</div>
+''Private laws'' are laws that only apply to a specific range of things and phenomena. For example: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#439|43]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 146.</div>
+''Common laws'' are laws that apply to a broader range of subjects than ''private laws,'' and they impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#449|44]]. Quoted in Cahm, ''Kropotkin'', 146, 147. See also Martin A. Miller, ''Kropotkin'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 146–47.</div>
+''Universal laws'' are laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws.
-[[#459|45]]. Cahm, ''Kropotkin'','' ''106, 145, 317–18n77; David Stafford, ''From Anarchism to Reformism: A Study of the Political Activities of Paul Brousse, 1870–90'' (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971),'' ''54–55.
+If we classify laws based on the ''reach of impact'', we will have three main groups: laws of nature, laws of society, and laws of human thought.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#469|46]]. Max Nettlau, ''A Short History of Anarchism'', ed. Heiner M. Becker (London: Freedom Press, 1996),'' ''277.</div>
+''Laws of nature'' are laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body. They are not products of human conscious activities.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#479|47]]. Quoted in Nettlau, ''Short History'', 280–81.</div>
+''Laws of society'' are the laws of human activity in social relations; these laws only apply to the conscious activities of humans, yet they are still objective.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#489|48]]. Malatesta, ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader'', ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press 2014),'' ''173.</div>
+-----
-[[#499|49]]. Errico Malatesta, ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 112.
+==== Annotation 161 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#509|50]]. Malatesta, Errico Malatesta, ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900'', ed. Davide Turcato (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019),'' ''79.</div>
+We have already discussed how relations between human beings are objective [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. By extension, the human relations which compose human societies are objective, and thus, any laws which govern objective human relations must also be objective.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#519|51]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''174–75.</div>
+Marx’s assertion that human social relations are objective is critical to understanding his work. Marx pointed out that social relations may not be “physical,” in the sense that they can’t be observed directly with human senses, but that they still have an ''objective character'' — they exist externally to a given subject, and they have objective impacts on reality. For instance, the class relations between the capitalist class and the working class result in objective manifestations in reality, such as wealth accumulation, modes of circulation, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#529|52]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''364.</div>
+''Laws of human thought'' are laws of the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#539|53]]. Malatesta, ''Patient Work'','' ''364.</div>
+As the science of common relations and development, materialist dialectics studies the ''universal laws'' that influence the entire natural world, human society, and human thought, all together as a whole.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#549|54]]. Maurizio Antonioli, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam (1907)'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press 2009), 122.</div>
+These universal laws are:
-[[#559|55]]. Antonioli, ed., ''International Anarchist Congress'', 121.
+* The law of transformation between quantity and quality.
+* The law of unification and contradiction between opposites.
+* The law of negation of negation.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#569|56]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''483.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#579|57]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''338.</div>
+==== Annotation 162 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#589|58]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''341. See also Malatesta, ''The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles, 1924–1931'', ed. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1995), 29.</div>
+Each of these laws is considered ''universal'' because they apply to all things, phenomena, and ideas, and all the internal and external relations thereof, in human perception and practice. All things, phenomena, and ideas change and develop as a result of mutual impacts and relationships in accordance with these universal laws. On a fundamental level, materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws and their utility.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#599|59]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 341.</div>
+=== 1. Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality ===
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#609|60]]. Errico Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta'','' ''ed. Vernon Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 112–13.</div>
+The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#619|61]]. Peter Kropotkin, ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology'','' ''ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 585.</div>
+-----
-[[#629|62]]. Nicholas Papayanis, ''Alphonse Merrheim: The Emergence of Reformism in Revolutionary Syndicalism, 1871–1925 ''(Dordrecht, NL: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985), 121–36.
+==== Annotation 163 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#639|63]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 465. For Malatesta’s later clarifications of this article, see Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'','' ''27–34.</div>
+Remember that mode refers to ''how'' something exists, functions, and develops [see Annotation 60, p. 59]. The universal mode of motion and development processes thus refers to ''how'' all things, ideas, and phenomena move, change, and develop.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#649|64]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 465.</div>
+Friedrich Engels defined the law of transformation between quantity and quality in ''Dialectics of Nature'':
-[[#659|65]]. David Berry, ''A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917 to 1945'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009),'' ''151, 255.
+<blockquote>
+The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy).
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#669|66]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''466.</div>
+In other words, ''quantitative'' changes of things, phenomena, and ideas lead to ''quality'' shifts.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#679|67]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''465.</div>
+-----
-[[#689|68]]. Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'','' ''32–33; ''Method of Freedom'', 397–98; ''Life and Ideas'','' ''109.
+The universal mode of motion and development processes follows the law of transformation between quantity and quality, which states:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#699|69]]. Malatesta, ''Life and Ideas'','' ''110.</div>
+Qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas; and, vice versa: quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#709|70]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''341–42.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#719|71]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 466–67.</div>
+==== Annotation 164 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#728|72]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 483.</div>
+Put simply: quantity changes develop into quality changes, and quality changes lead to quantity changes [see Annotation 117, p. 119]. We say that these changes to quantity and quality occur on the “inevitable basis” of one another because quality changes always, invariably, arise from quantity changes, and, likewise, quantity changes always, invariably, arise from quality changes.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#738|73]]. George Richard Esenwein,'' Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain'','' 1868–1898 ''(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 118–22.</div>
+Just as quantity shifts lead to quality shifts, it is also true that quality shifts lead to quantity shifts. For example, if you have 11 donuts, then add 1 donut, you now have ''1 dozen'' donuts. If you add 12 more donuts, you would then have ''2 dozen''.
-[[#748|74]]. Antonioli, ed., ''International Anarchist Congress'', 43.
+Another example of quality shift leading to quantity shift would be a pond filling with rain water. Once enough drops of water collect and the pond is considered full — that is to say, once it is considered to be “a pond” of water — we will no longer think of the pond in terms of “drops.” We would think of the pond as “filled,” “overfilled,” “underfilled,” etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#758|75]]. Salvador Seguí, “Anarchism and Syndicalism,” trans. Paul Sharkey, Libcom website, https://libcom.org/library/anarchism-syndicalism-salvador-seguí.</div>
+Note that both of these examples are related to our human perceptions and understanding of the material world. The material world does not change based on our perceptions, nor how we classify the quantity or quality of a given subject. There are also objective aspects related to quality shifts leading to quantity shifts. For example, if we adjust the quantity of the temperature of a sheet of paper to the point of burning, and the paper burns, then the quantity of paper would be reduced from one sheet to zero sheets. In other words, the quality shift arising from temperature quantity increase (i.e., the paper burning into ash) results in a quantity shift in how many pieces of paper exist (from one sheet to zero sheets). However, even this is ultimately a subjective assessment rooted in human consciousness, since we subjectively think in terms of “sheets of paper,” and the concept of a “sheet of paper” is essentially a classification rooted in human consciousness. It is merely an abstract way of perceiving and considering the quantity and quality of the material subject which we think of as “paper.”
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#768|76]]. Juan Gómez Casas, ''Anarchist Organization: The History of the F.A.I'' (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1986), 76–77, 92–97, 107–16; Stuart Christie, ''We'','' the Anarchists! A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927–1937'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2008),'' ''32–43.</div>
+The law of transformation between quantity and quality is an inevitable, objective, and universal relationship that repeats in every motion and development process of all things, phenomena, and ideas in nature, human society, and human thought.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#778|77]]. Quoted in Christie, ''We'','' the Anarchists'', 37.</div>
+==== a. Definitions of Quality and Quantity ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#788|78]]. Quoted in Christie, ''We'','' the Anarchists'', 37, 38.</div>
+''- Definition of Quality''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#798|79]]. Quoted in Casas, ''History of the F.A.I'','' ''110.</div>
+''Quality'' refers to the organic unity which exists amongst the component parts of a thing, phenomenon, or idea that distinguishes it from other things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#808|80]]. Quoted in Casas, ''History of the F.A.I'','' ''110.</div>
+-----
-[[#818|81]]. Jason Garner, ''Goals and Means: Anarchism'','' Syndicalism'','' and Internationalism in the Origins of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica'' (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 214, 222–26.
+==== Annotation 165 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#828|82]]. Pierre Besnard, “Anarcho-Syndicalism and Anarchism,”'' ''trans. Paul Sharkey, Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog, March 15, 2009, https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/alexander-schapiro-pierre-besnard-anarcho-syndicalism-and-anarchism. For another example, see Gregori P. Maximoff, ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism ''(n.p., Guillotine Press, 2015),'' ''50–52.</div>
+Note: we have already given basic definitions of quantity and quality in Annotation 117, p. 119. What follows are more comprehensive philosophical definitions of quality and quantity. Our world exists as one continuity of matter. All things and phenomena in our universe exist essentially as one unified system — namely, the entity which we call “the universe.” This unified nature of existence is extremely difficult for human beings to comprehend. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel pointed out that, in this sense, the unity of “pure being” is indistinguishable from “nothingness.” In ''Science of Logic'', Hegel noted that if we try to comprehend pure material existence, as a whole, without distinguishing any component thing or phenomenon from any other, then all is incomprehensible. Human consciousness needs to delineate and distinguish the component parts of this unified system from each other in order to make sense of it all.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#838|83]]. Paul Avrich, ''The Russian Anarchists'' (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 205.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Pure light and pure darkness are two voids which are the same thing. Something can be distinguished only in determinate light or darkness... [F]or this reason, it is only darkened light and illuminated darkness which have within themselves the moment of difference and are, therefore, determinate being.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#848|84]]. Nabat, “Proceedings of Nabat,” in ''No Gods'','' No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'','' ''ed. Daniel Guérin (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005),'' ''487.</div>
+The human mind has evolved to perceive various things, phenomena, and ideas as ''differentiated''. Quality is the basis on which we perceive subjects as distinct from one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea is composed of internal components and relations. The unity of these internal components and relations is what we refer to as ''quality''. For example, a human being’s ''quality'' refers to the unity of all the internal components and relationships of which the human being is composed (i.e., the cells, organs, blood, etc., as well as the thoughts, memories, etc., which make the human) ''in unity''. Quality is also a subjective phenomenon: a ''reflection'' of the material world in human consciousness [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. Therefore we may conceive of various qualities for the same subject. We can think of 12 donuts as “a box of donuts,” “a dozen donuts,” or as 12 individual donuts. We could consider a building as “one apartment building” or “forty apartments,” depending on the viewpoint of analysis.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#858|85]]. Avrich, ''Russian Anarchists'', 207–8.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#868|86]]. Avrich, ''Russian Anarchists'', 222, 232–33, 238–39, 241; Lazar Lipotkin, ''The Russian Anarchist Movement in North America'' (Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2019), 119–21, 123. For a text advocating united anarchism, see ibid., 283–86.</div>
+So, objective and inherent attributes form the quality of things, phenomena, and ideas, but we must not confuse quality and attribute with one another. Every thing, phenomenon, and idea has both fundamental and non-fundamental attributes. Only fundamental attributes constitute the quality of things, phenomena and ideas. When the fundamental attributes change, the quality also changes. The distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes of things, phenomena, and ideas must depend on the purpose of the analysis; the same attribute may be fundamental when analyzing with one purpose but non-fundamental when analyzing with another purpose.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#878|87]]. Sébastien Faure, “The Anarchist Synthesis: The Three Great Anarchist Currents,” trans. Shawn P. Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth website, August 3, 2017, https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/sebastien-faure-the-anarchist-synthesis-1828.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#888|88]]. Faure, “The Anarchist Synthesis.”</div>
+==== Annotation 166 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#897|89]]. Voline, “Synthesis (anarchist),” in ''The Anarchist Encyclopedia Abridged'', ed. Mitchell Abidor (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019), 197.</div>
+Whether or not an attribute is considered “fundamental” depends entirely on conscious perspective. For example, one baker may consider chocolate chips to be “fundamental” for baking cookies while another baker may not. This subjective characteristic of what might be considered “fundamental” or not is reflected in how we consider quality. If you are trying to determine how much water you need to fill a swimming pool, you may think of a pool in terms of size (i.e., “this is an Olympic sized pool”), but if you just want to go for a swim, you are likely to just think in terms of the water level (i.e., “the pool is empty, we can’t swim”).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#907|90]]. Voline, “Synthesis (Anarchist),” 199–200.</div>
+If you are planning the construction of a school and want to know how many classrooms it will need, you might think in terms of “classrooms of students.” But if you are considering funding for a school year, you might consider the ''total number of students''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#917|91]]. Voline, “Synthesis (Anarchist),” 203.</div>
+The quality of a thing, phenomenon, or idea is determined by the qualities of its component parts.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#927|92]]. Alexandre Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968 ''(Oakland CA: AK Press, 2002), 121–25; The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” in Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 192.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#937|93]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 200–201.</div>
+==== Annotation 167 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#947|94]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 201. See also, 213; Nestor Makhno, ''The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays'','' ''ed. Alexandre Skirda (San Francisco: AK Press, 1996), 64–65.</div>
+Qualities are composed of qualities, combined, in unity. “A swimming pool” may consist of a certain amount of concrete in a specific configuration combined with 5,000 gallons of water. A car may be composed of a body, an engine, four tires, etc. Each individual component exists as a quality — a unity of component attributes — in and of itself.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#957|95]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 201, 207.</div>
+Quality is also determined by the structures and connections between component parts which manifest in specific relations. Therefore, distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes is also relative.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#967|96]]. Quoted in Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'','' ''122.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#977|97]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 193, 211. See also Makhno, ''Struggle'','' ''62–63.</div>
+==== Annotation 168 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#987|98]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “The Problem of Organization and the Notion of Synthesis (March 1926),” in Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 188–91; The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 193.</div>
+It’s not just the component parts of a subject which define its quality, but also the relations of those component parts. For instance, a quantity of wood and nails configured in one set of structural relations may have the quality of a chair, whereas the same component parts arranged with different structures and relations may have the quality of a table. In this sense, quality can be thought of as a synthesis of the Content and Form [see ''Content and Form'', p. 147] of a thing, phenomenon, or idea from a certain perspective.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#997|99]]. Makhno, ''Struggle'', 67–68.</div>
+For example, if we see two shoes, we may think of each shoe as an individual qualitative object (two shoes). On the other hand, we may think of the shoes, together, as a single qualitative “object” in terms of its utility and in terms of synthesis of content and form (“a pair of shoes”), so much so that if one shoe is lost then the remaining shoe is considered useless and discarded as trash.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1007|100]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 212.</div>
+Because there are countless ways in which quality — the configuration and relations and composition of constituent parts of any given subject — can manifest, we must recognize that quality itself, based on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental attributes, is a relative and subjective phenomenon of human consciousness.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1017|101]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 212. See also Peter Arshinov, “The Old and New in Anarchism: Reply to Comrade Malatesta (May 1928),” in Alexandre Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 240–41.</div>
+Any given subject will have multiple qualities, depending on the relations which exist between and within that subject and other subjects.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1027|102]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 213.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1036|103]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Organizational Platform,” 213.</div>
+==== Annotation 169 ====
-[[#1046|104]]. Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'','' ''131.
+Any thing, phenomenon, or idea may be perceived from various different perspectives which would cause us to consider it as having different qualities. A single shoe may be considered as: a shoe, 3 pounds of leather, half of a pair, etc., depending on its internal and external relations and the perspective of the person considering the shoe.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1056|105]]. Mollie Steimer, Simon Fleshin, Voline, Sobol, Schwartz, Lia, Roman, Ervantian, “Concerning the Platform for an Organization of Anarchists,” in ''Fighters for Anarchism: Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin'', ed. Abe Bluestein'' ''(Minneapolis, MN: Libertarian Publications Group, 1983), 52–53, 58, 61–62.</div>
+We can’t consider things, phenomena, and ideas apart from quality. Quality exhibits a subject’s relative stability.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1066|106]]. Avrich, ''Russian Anarchists'', 242–43.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1076|107]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'','' ''486–91.</div>
+==== Annotation 170 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1086|108]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 486–87.</div>
+Remember that ''quality'' is the way in which the human mind conceives of the world as a collection of distinct things, phenomena, and ideas. These perceptions of quality are purely relative, but they are important, because they are what allow us to develop an understanding of the complicated system of things, phenomena, and ideas which make up our universe. In our perception, quality represents the relative stability of a thing, phenomenon, or idea which makes it a subject that we can consider and analyze in and of itself. Understanding how we distinguish between different subjects is crucial in developing a scientific understanding of the world which is rooted in observation and practice.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1096|109]]. Malatesta, ''Method of Freedom'', 486.</div>
+''- Definition of Quantity''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1105|110]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Supplement to the Organizational Platform (November, 1926),” in Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'','' ''219.</div>
+''Quantity'' refers to the amount or extent of specific attributes of a thing, phenomenon, or idea, including but not limited to:
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1115|111]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Supplement to the Organizational Platform,” 222.</div>
+* The amount of component parts.
+* Scale or size.
+* Speed or rhythm of motion.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1125|112]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Reply to Anarchism’s Confusionists (August 1927),” in Skirda ''Facing the Enemy'', 229–30.</div>
+A thing, phenomenon, or idea can have many quantities, with each quantity determined by different criteria. [i.e., a car may be measured by many criteria of quantity, such as: length in meters, weight in kilograms, speed in kilometers per hour, etc.]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1135|113]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Supplement to the Organizational Platform,” 219–20.</div>
+Quality and quantity embody two different aspects of the same subject. Both quality and quantity exist objectively [see Annotation 108, p. 112]. However, the distinction between “quality” and “quantity” in the process of perceiving things, phenomena, and ideas has only relative significance: an attribute may be considered “quantity” from one perspective but “quality” from another perspective.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1145|114]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Reply to Anarchism’s Confusionists,” 230.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1155|115]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Reply to Anarchism’s Confusionists,” 235.</div>
+==== Annotation 171 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1165|116]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Reply to Anarchism’s Confusionists,” 234.</div>
+If you are filling a box with a dozen donuts, then once you add the 12<sup>th</sup> donut, one “dozen” may represent the ''quality'' which you seek. From the perspective of a customer buying donuts for a party, “dozen” may represent the “quantity.” In other words, you need to make an ''order'' (quality) of ''three dozen donuts'' (quantity). And the manager of the store, at the end of the day, may tally ''twenty'' ''orders'' (quantity) as the day’s ''sales goal'' (quality). Quantity and quality, therefore, are both considered ''relatively'', based on perspective and the purpose of analysis at hand.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1175|117]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Reply to Anarchism’s Confusionists,” 234.</div>
+==== b. Dialectical Relationship Between Quantity and Quality ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1185|118]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Supplement to the Organizational Platform,” 217.</div>
+Every thing, phenomenon, and idea exists as a unity of two aspects: quality and quantity. Quantity and quality do not exist separate from one another. Quantity and quality dialectically and mutually impact one other. Changes in quantity lead to changes in quality. However, not every change in quantity will cause a change in quality.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1195|119]]. The Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, “Supplement to the Organizational Platform,” 218.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1205|120]]. Arshinov, “The Old and New in Anarchism,” 240.</div>
+==== Annotation 172 ====
-[[#1215|121]]. Malatesta, ''Anarchist Revolution'','' ''107–8.
+In order for quantity change to lead to quality change, a certain amount must be met.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1225|122]]. Errico Malatesta, “On Collective Responsibility,” Institute for Anarchist Theory and History website, n.d., https://ithanarquista.wordpress.com/nestor-makhno-archive/nestor-makhno-archive-english/platform-english/on-collective-responsibility-errico-malatesta.</div>
+This amount is called the ''threshold'', which is explained further below in this section. A threshold may be exact and known (i.e., it takes exactly 12 donuts to make a dozen donuts) or it may be relative and unknown (i.e., a certain quantity of air inflated into a balloon may cause it to burst, but the exact, specific quantity of air may be relative to other factors such as air temperature and may be unknown to the observer until the balloon actually bursts).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1235|123]]. Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'','' ''124–28, 134–35.</div>
+With any given subject, there will be a range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality. This range is called the ''quantity range''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1245|124]]. Quoted in Garner, ''Goals and Means'','' ''205–6.</div>
+''Quantity range'' is defined as a relationship between quantity and quality: the range of intervals in which the change in quantity does not substantially change the quality of a given subject. Within the limits of a quantity range, the subject retains the same quality.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1255|125]]. Quoted in Garner, ''Goals and Means'', 206.</div>
+-----
-[[#1264|126]]. Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'','' ''135; Garner, ''Goals and Means'','' ''206.
+==== Annotation 173 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1274|127]]. Luigi <u>Fabbri, Camillo Berneri, and Ugo Fedeli, </u>“Reply by the Pensiero e Volontà Group to an Invitation to Join the International Anarchist Communist Federation,” Institute for Anarchist Theory and History website, n.d., https://ithanarquista.wordpress.com/nestor-makhno-archive/nestor-makhno-archive-english/reply-by-the-pensiero-e-volonta-group-to-an-invitation-to-join-the-international-anarchist-communist-federation.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-56.png|''The quantity range is a range of quantities between quality shifts.'']]
-[[#1284|128]]. Lipotkin, ''Russian Anarchist Movement in North America'', 127–29, 180, 191.
+Quantity range can be thought of as the range of quantities which exists between thresholds. For instance, between the qualities of “''one donut''” and “''one dozen donuts'',” there is a quantity range of 10 donuts (2 donuts through 11 donuts) which can be added before the quality shifts to “''one dozen donuts''.” You can keep adding additional donuts, up to the quantity of 11 donuts, without reaching the threshold of quality shift to “one dozen donuts.” This is the ''quantity range'' between the qualities of ''donut'' and ''one dozen donuts''. Again, the quantity range is relative to the perspective and the nature of analysis. One person may only be concerned with “dozens of donuts,” while another may consider the quality of “half dozens,” which would consider a quality shift to “one half-dozen donuts” to occur once the sixth donut (quantity) is added.
-[[#1294|129]]. Quoted in Lipotkin, ''Russian Anarchist Movement in North America'', 138.
+Motion and change usually begins with a change in quantity. When changes in quantity reach a certain amount, quality will also change. The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs is called the ''threshold.''
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#1304|130]]. Lipotkin, ''Russian Anarchist Movement in North America'', 129–31, 145–49, 180, 191–92. It is sometimes claimed that anarchists in Bulgaria were the first to adopt the ''Platform''. I have been unable to verify this due to how little information about the Bulgarian anarchist movement is available in English.</div>
+-----
-[[#1314|131]]. Berry, ''French Anarchist Movement'','' ''173–76; Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'','' ''135–36, 143.
+==== Annotation 174 ====
-== {{anchor|Chapter11ConclusionBetwee1}} {{anchor|Chapter11ConclusionBetwee}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook14}} Chapter 11: Conclusion ==
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-57.png]]
-Between 1868 and 1939, anarchists living in Europe and the United States developed a political theory that guided their attempts to bring about fundamental social change. This theory can be summarized as follows. Anarchists were antistate socialists who advocated the achievement of freedom, equality, and solidarity. For anarchists, these values were interdependent, such that the realization of one of them can only occur through the realization of all three at once. Although all anarchists advocated freedom, they disagreed with one another about how to define it. Some anarchists defined freedom as nondomination such that a person is free if and only if they are not subordinate to someone who wields the arbitrary power to impose their will on them. Other anarchists defined freedom as the real possibility to do and/or be a broad range of things such that a person becomes more free as their opportunities expand. One of the main reasons why anarchists valued freedom is that it is a prerequisite for people fully developing themselves and realizing their human potential. Irrespective of how they defined freedom, anarchists agreed that humans can, given the kind of animals we are, only be free in and through society.
+Note that the threshold is an approximate range. At a certain quantity, a glass may be considered “half full” and at another certain quantity, after passing the threshold, the glass will be considered “full,” though there may be a wide range of quantities at which the glass would be considered to have the quality of being “full,” depending on perspective and purpose of analysis.
-In order for this to occur, society has to be structured in an egalitarian manner. There must be no hierarchical divisions between rulers who issue commands and make decisions and subordinates who obey and lack decision-making power. Organizations should instead be structured horizontally, such that each member is neither a master nor a subject. They are instead an associate who has an equal say in collective decisions, and so, codetermine the voluntary organization with every other member. Such equality of self-determination must go alongside equality of opportunity. Each individual should have access to the external conditions that are necessary for self-development, and having the real possibility to do and/or be a broad range of things, such as food, health care, and education. The reproduction of such a society requires solidarity, in the sense of individuals and groups cooperating with one another in pursuit of common goals and people, in their personal lives, forming reciprocal caring relationships, such as by being a loving parent, good friend, or supportive teacher.
+When quantity change meets a threshold, within necessary and specific conditions, quality will change. This change in quality, which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, is called a ''quality shift''.
-Anarchists argued that capitalism and the state, alongside all structures of domination and exploitation,[[#1Thisincludedbutwasnotli|1]] should be abolished in favor of a stateless classless society without authority, in which everyone is free, equal, and bonded together through relations of solidarity. They called this society ''anarchy''. The abolition of capitalism and the state was primarily justified on the grounds that they are violent hierarchical pyramids in which decision-making flows from the top to the bottom. The majority of the population are workers who lack real decision-making power over the nature of their life, workplace, community, or society as a whole. They are instead subject to the power of an economic ruling class—capitalists, landowners, bankers, etc.—and a political ruling class—monarchs, politicians, heads of the police, generals, etc. The economic ruling class derive their power from the private ownership of land, raw materials, and the means of production. Workers own personal possessions but not private property and so, in order to survive, must sell their labor to capitalists and landowners in exchange for a wage. The political ruling class sit at the top of the centralized, hierarchical state and possess the authority to make laws and issue commands at a societal level that others must obey, due to the threat or exercise of institutionalized force, such as the police, prisons, and courts. All states, regardless of whether they are a monarchy, dictatorship, or parliamentary democracy, exercise institutionalized violence in order to enforce and maintain the domination and exploitation of workers, and thereby perpetuate the power and privilege of both the economic and political ruling classes.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-58.png|''A quality shift occurs when a quantity changes beyond a threshold, leading to a change in quality.'']]
-The creation of anarchy requires the abolition of capitalism and the state but the ruling classes will never give up their power voluntarily and instead violently defend it. They must be overthrown. The majority of anarchist theory was concerned with how to do this. Anarchists argued that the goal of universal human emancipation could only be achieved through the formation of working-class social movements that engage in class struggle against the political and economic ruling classes and, ultimately, launch a social revolution.
+''Quality shifts'' inevitably occur as transformations in the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas. Qualitative changes can be expressed or manifested through many forms of quality shifts which are determined by the contradictions, characteristics and conditions of a given subject, including such characteristics as: fast or slow, big or small, partial or entire, spontaneous or intentional.
-Anarchists envisioned the social revolution as a lengthy process of simultaneous destruction and construction. Workers would destroy the old world by launching an armed insurrection that violently smashed the state and forcefully expropriated the ruling classes. This victory would be achieved by workers’ militias, who would also defend the social revolution from counterattack. Workers would build the new world by creating an anarchist society, which is the totality of social structures from which anarchy could later emerge. During and immediately after the social revolution, anarchists aimed to establish: (a) the collective ownership of land, raw materials, and the means of production; (b) the self-management of social life, including production and distribution, through workplace and community assemblies in which collective decisions are made via either unanimous agreement, majority vote, or a combination of the two; (c) the abolition of money and markets in favor of a system of decentralized planning; and (d) the reorganization of production, such that people engage in a combination of mental and physical labor, unsatisfying labor is either removed, automated, or shared among producers, and the length of the working day is significantly reduced.
+-----
-In order to achieve this goal, anarchists had to overcome the fact that capitalism and the state are self-reproducing. Society is constituted by a process of human beings with particular consciousness engaging in practice: deploying their capacities to satisfy a psychological drive. In so doing, they simultaneously change both the world and themselves. The interplay between practice producing social relations and practice being performed through social relations results in the formation of relatively stable and enduring social structures. These social structures simultaneously enable and constrain practice, such that individuals engage in practices that develop historically specific capacities, drives, and consciousness. The consequence of this is that as people engage in practice, they also create and re-create themselves as the kinds of people who reproduce the social structure itself.
+==== Annotation 175 ====
-Abolishing capitalism and the state, creating an anarchist society, and the day-to-day reproduction of an anarchist society requires the bulk of the population to have developed a vast array of different capacities, drives, and consciousness, such as the capacity to make decisions through general assemblies, the drive to not oppress others, and the consciousness that capitalism and the state make people unfree. The dominant structures of class society are constituted by forms of practice that develop people fit mainly for reproducing capitalism and the state, rather than abolishing them. Class society systematically fails to produce the kinds of people that both an anarchist revolution and an anarchist society need. Such individuals, of course, would be produced by a properly functioning anarchist society, but this fact does not help anarchists presently living under class society. Anarchists therefore face a paradox: in order to transform society they need transformed people. In order to have transformed people, they need a new society.
+Quality shifts are ''inevitable'' because there is no thing, phenomenon, nor idea which can exist statically, forever, without ever undergoing change. Eventually, any given subject will undergo quality shifts, even if such transformation may take millions of years to occur.
-The anarchist solution to this problem was revolutionary practice. Humans are not solely the product of their circumstances. They can also chose to engage in actions that simultaneously develop new capacities, drives, and consciousness; modify existing social structures; and construct whole new social structures. This is not to say that any form of revolutionary practice could lead to an anarchist society. Anarchists argued that working-class social movements should only use means that were in conformity with the ends of creating anarchy. They, in short, advocated the unity of means and ends: the means that revolutionaries propose for achieving social change have to be constituted by forms of practice that develop people into the kinds of individuals who are capable of, and are driven to: (a) overthrow capitalism and the state, and, (b) construct and reproduce the end goal of an anarchist society. If social movements select means that fail to do this then they would, regardless of people’s good intentions, never achieve the ends of anarchism.
+Quality shifts can take various forms, depending on the nature of internal and external relationships, contradictions, and mutual impacts. For instance, a river may dry up or it may flood depending on internal and external relations and characteristics, but it will not simply flow at the same level forever without ever undergoing any quality shifts.
-The anarchist commitment to the unity of means and ends shaped both what strategies they advocated and which ones they rejected. Anarchists thought that the social revolution would emerge out of an extended evolutionary period, during which change was slow, gradual, and partial. In order for this evolutionary period to culminate in a revolution, working-class social movements have to spread their ideas and form social networks through print media, talks, and recreational activities; construct organizations that prefigure the future anarchist society; and engage in class struggle via direct action. Anarchists advocated these means not only because they were effective and won results, but also because of the forms of practice that constituted them. Through engaging in direct action with prefigurative organizations, workers simultaneously change the world and themselves. A group of workers might form a tenant union, organize a rent strike against their landlord, and make collective decisions about the rent strike within a general assembly. In so doing, they change social relations—rent decreases and workers gain more power over their landlord—and change people—workers develop the capacity to organize a rent strike and make decisions within a general assembly, acquire an increased sense of solidarity with one another, and realize that housing should be free.
+The rate and degree of quality shifts can vary considerably based on such internal and external factors, and may be “spontaneous,” that is to say, without human intervention, or may be the result of the intentional, conscious action of human beings.
-During the course of the strike, these workers not only change social relations and themselves, but also construct a new social structure that did not exist before—a tenant union. Long-term participation in this tenant union would, in turn, cause workers to develop their capacities, drives, and consciousness further. This makes the organization of new actions possible, such as a larger rent strike that mobilizes workers in an entire city. These kinds of actions could continue and multiply over time, as increasingly large numbers of workers engage in the process of simultaneously transforming social relations and themselves. This would eventually culminate in a shift from workers only modifying the dominant structures of class society, to workers abolishing them and replacing them with new ones. Through the struggle against capitalism and the state, workers could develop into people ready to emancipate themselves and achieve anarchist goals.
+''Quality shifts'' mark the end of one motion period and the start of a new motion period.
-Anarchism emerged in parallel with, and in opposition to, various forms of state socialism that aimed to achieve a stateless classless society through the conquest of state power. Anarchists replied that the means of conquering state power could never achieve the ends of universal human emancipation. Socialist parties that engaged in parliamentarism within the existing bourgeois state would, over time, abandon their revolutionary program and become mere reform movements that defended the status quo and only aimed at the improvement of conditions within the cage of capitalism and the state. If a socialist party succeeded in conquering state power, whether by elections or force, the result would not be a society in which workers themselves self-managed social life. They would instead create a new form of minority class rule, in which the working classes were dominated and exploited by the party leadership that actually wielded state power. The minority of rulers would be transformed by the exercise of state power and become tyrants who were primarily concerned with expanding and reproducing their power and furthering their specific interests in opposition to, and in conflict with, the interests of the working classes whose name they ruled in. They would never give up their power voluntarily, and would violently repress any working-class social movements who resisted them. The state would never wither away. It had to be intentionally and violently destroyed.
+-----
-Although anarchists in general shared these basic strategic commitments, the movement was divided between two main strategic schools of thought: insurrectionist anarchism and mass anarchism. Insurrectionist anarchists opposed formal organization and advocated the formation of small affinity groups, that were linked together via informal social networks and periodicals. They rejected the struggle for immediate reforms, and argued that anarchists should immediately engage in an escalating series of assassinations, bombings, and armed insurrections against the ruling classes and their institutions. The goal of these attacks was to spread anarchist ideas and inspire other workers to rise up. This would result in a chain reaction of revolt, as an increasingly large number of workers launched insurrections, formed a mass movement, and initiated the social revolution.
+==== Annotation 176 ====
-Mass anarchists, in contrast, advocated the formation of both affinity groups and large-scale formal federations of autonomous groups, which coordinated large-scale action through regular congresses attended by instantly recallable mandated delegates. They argued that anarchists could generate a mass movement that was driven to, and capable of, launching an armed insurrection that abolished class society through the struggle for immediate reforms in the present. In order for this struggle to build toward revolution, rather than collapse into reformism, it had to be achieved by engaging in direct action within prefigurative organizations. Anarchists would facilitate this process by acting as a militant minority within social movements in order to influence other workers to adopt anarchist ideas and implement anarchist strategy.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-59.png|''The Quantity Range (A) refers to the range of quantities between two qualities in the process of development. The Quality Shift (B) refers to the point at which quantity accumulates to the point of changing the Quality of the developing subject. The Period of Motion (C) includes both the quantity range and the quality shifts themselves.'']]
-The main form of mass anarchism was syndicalist anarchism, which argued that trade unions were the primary social movement under capitalism that could fulfill anarchist goals. This was because trade unions could pursue the double aim of struggling for immediate reforms and attempting to launch a social revolution via an insurrectionary general strike. In so doing, they would perform a dual function. They could act as organs of resistance that struggle against dominant institutions in the present and then, during the social revolution, take over the organization of the economy (in part or whole) and transform into organs of self-management. Syndicalist anarchists disagreed about whether or not trade unions should be politically neutral, or formally committed to achieving an anarchist society through anarchist means.
+''Period of motion'' refers to the development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves.
-A significant number of mass anarchists thought that trade unions were a necessary but insufficient means to achieve revolution. These proponents of organizational dualism argued that anarchists should simultaneously form mass organizations open to all workers and, in addition, smaller specific anarchist organizations composed exclusively of anarchist militants. These specific anarchist organizations were the means to unite committed revolutionaries in order to develop correct theory and strategy, coordinate their actions both among themselves and within larger and broader mass organizations or movements, and push the revolutionary struggle forward through persuasion and engaging in actions that provided an example to other workers. Proponents of organizational dualism nonetheless disagreed about how to do this, and argued with one another about a variety of topics, including how broad or narrow a specific anarchist organization’s program should be, and whether or not congress resolutions should be binding on every section of an organization, or only those who voted in favor of them. These disagreements led to the formation of distinct tendencies, such as <u>synthesists </u>and platformists.
+''Period of motion'' differs from ''quantity range'' because quantity range only includes the range of quantity change which can occur ''between'' quality shifts, without including the quality shifts themselves.
-Numerous anarchist women, and some men who supported them, realized that the achievement of anarchy required the organization of women-only groups in order to struggle against class and gender oppression simultaneously. These groups aimed to combat sexism and promote women’s liberation within both the anarchist movement, and wider society. In so doing, they would enable women to unlearn their patriarchal socialization and fully participate in the class struggle as equals to male workers. These women-only groups were either mass organizations that were open to all women workers, informal anarchist affinity groups, or formal organizations of dedicated anarchist militants. Some organizations were women’s sections of syndicalist trade unions, while others were independent.
+For example, a ''period of motion'' for a cup filling with water from a half cup would include all of the change which occurs from the cup being half full to the cup becoming entirely full. The ''quantity range'' of this same process would only include the quantities of water that stand between half-full and full, where the cup is neither considered to be “half full” or “full” but somewhere in between, i.e., between quality shifts.
-This book has been concerned with what historical anarchists thought. It was not written as a mere exercise in digging up curious individuals from the past or compiling historical facts for their own sake. I want to help modern workers develop their own ideas about how to change the world, and I thought I could do this by summarizing the theory and actions of the main antiauthoritarian wing of the historical workers’ movement. This project is only partially complete since, for the purposes of this book, I narrowly focused on anarchists living in Europe and the United States. To properly understand the history of anarchism one must also examine the ideas and actions of anarchists who lived in Latin America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa.
+Quality shift represents ''discontinuity'' within the continuous development process of things and phenomena. In the material world, all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing continuous sequences of quantitative changes leading to quality shifts, creating an endless line of nodes, showing how all things, phenomena, and ideas move and develop to increasingly advanced degrees [see illustration on p. 121 for a visualization of this “endless line of nodes”].
-Modern anarchists should read not only Bakunin, Malatesta, Kropotkin, and Goldman but also authors like Ricardo Flores Magón, M. P. T. Acharya, He-Yin Zhen, Liu Shipei, Itō Noe, Kōtoku Shūsui, and Hatta Shūzō. These anarchists should not be treated as tokens, who are only referenced when responding to false accusations that anarchism was historically an exclusively white or European social movement. Their ideas must instead be treated as being of equal importance, such that their views are fully incorporated into our understanding of what anarchism is. Nor should they be viewed as separate from the anarchist movement in Europe and the United States. All these authors read and were influenced by European anarchists. Several of them, such as Magón, Acharya, and Kōtoku, lived in Europe or the United States for parts of their life. The different anarchist movements around the world were so interconnected with one another, through transnational networks and migration flows, that the complete history of anarchism can only be written as a global history.
+As Friedrich Engels summarised: “merely quantitative changes beyond a certain point pass into qualitative differences.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-Modern anarchists should not merely repeat the ideas of dead anarchists. The fact that a dead anarchist wrote it does not make it true. We must make arguments grounded in evidence for why anarchist positions are correct, rather than merely quoting dead anarchists as if their words were scripture. We must learn not only from their successes, but also from their failures, inadequacies, and inconsistencies. Most importantly of all, we have to develop our own ideas in response to our specific situations and problems, such as climate breakdown and ecological collapse; the resurgence of fascism; modern border systems; the gig economy; and transphobia. This is itself in line with what historical anarchist authors themselves wrote. They consistently reiterated the point that anarchist theory and practice had to develop in response to specific concrete situations and that people in the future would, and should, develop ideas that they were not in a position to even conceive. In order to do so, we need to draw upon not only distinctly anarchist theory, but also the best ideas that have been developed by various social movements of the oppressed and exploited over the past 150 years. This includes, but is not limited to, feminism, queer theory, the disability rights movement, Marxism, the Black radical tradition, Indigenous critiques of settler-colonialism, and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
+==== Annotation 177 ====
-This work has already begun. During the 1970s, participants in the woman’s liberation and Black power movements came into contact with anarchist ideas and, independently of one another, developed anarcha-feminism and Black anarchism as distinct tendencies. Anarcha-feminists argue that the personal is political and analyze the manner in which women are oppressed by men in daily life, such as women being expected to do the majority of chores, men talking over women at meetings, or women being subject to emotional and physical abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. In response to patriarchy within the anarchist movement, anarcha-feminists have advocated the formation of women’s only groups and insisted that prefiguration requires transforming interpersonal dynamics and interactions, rather than only organizational structures and methods of collective decision-making. This has included arguing that anarchists must develop effective responses to intimate partner violence within social movements.[[#2DarkStaredQuietRumours|2]]
+Processes of change and development in our universe are continuously ongoing. Whenever a quality shift occurs, it represents a brief ''discontinuity'' in the sense that we perceive a definite and ''distinct'' transformation from one thing, phenomenon, or idea into another; in other words, we can ''distinguish'' between the mode of existence of the thing, phenomenon, or idea before and after the quality shift.
-Proponents of Black anarchism argue that Black people have been excluded from the benefits of citizenship and subject to specific forms of white supremacist state violence. This has resulted in numerous examples of Black people self-organizing independently of the state in order to survive. Emancipation cannot be achieved through the incorporation of Black people into white supremacist states, or the creation of new Black states. They reject authoritarian modes of organization and suggest that the centralization and hierarchy of the Black Panther Party played an important role in its demise and failure to achieve fundamental social change. Black liberation can only be achieved through the formation of horizontal social movements that bring all workers of color together in order to engage in direct action and self-direct their struggle, rather than be subordinate to the leadership of white radicals.[[#3DanaMWilliamsBlackPant|3]]
+Take, for example, the “lifespan” of a house. A human being could easily distinguish between the empty land which exists before the house is built, the construction site which exists as it’s being built, and the house itself once construction is completed. In reality, this process of change is continuous, but to our human perception, each quality shift represents a definite and distinct period of change and discontinuity in terms of our perception of the “thing” which is the house.
-Both anarcha-feminism and Black anarchism are part of a more general tendency within modern anarchism that draws upon Black feminism to emphasize the manner in which all structures of oppression form an interlocking web in which each component is defined in terms of its relationship to every other component. Different structures of oppression interact with, shape, and support one another to such an extent that they mutually constitute one another. The relations between structures of oppression are part of what each structure is. A Black working-class lesbian, for example, does not experience patriarchal + racist + homophobic + economic + state oppression, whereby each form of oppression is separate and independent. She instead experiences the product of these five structures interacting with one another to create life experiences that cannot be reduced to a single primary oppressive structure or the sum total of multiple oppressive structures. Society is not a Venn diagram where Black men experience racism, women experience sexism, and Black women experience both. Black women experience not only racism and sexism but also forms of oppression that are unique to them as Black women and are not shared by Black men or white women. This is because the interconnections between structures of oppression, such as racism and patriarchy, create outcomes that are greater than the sum of their parts.[[#4DericShannonandJRogue|4]]
+This is related to the ''historic perspective'' of things, phenomena, and ideas, in which we recognize the continuity of existence between different stages of development of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 201, p. 195].
-The abolition of capitalism and the state will not, by itself, lead to the abolition of patriarchy, racism, queerphobia, ableism, and so on. Even if we accept the premise that these structures of oppression arose, or at least massively expanded, due to the development of class society in general or capitalism in particular, it is still the case that these social structures have become self-reproducing and will not automatically disappear due to the establishment of socialism. They will instead continue to exist, but be mediated through new economic and political relations. The creation of stateless socialism would, for example, end elements of patriarchy that require the existence of capitalism and the state, such as sexist corporate advertising and anti-abortion laws, but other aspects of patriarchy would continue to exist, like people of all genders being socialized into patriarchal gender roles, or men sexually harassing women in public. This would result in the fusion of patriarchal and socialist relations, such as, possibly, collective decisions being made in general assemblies where men treat women as their intellectual inferiors. We cannot focus exclusively on class and wait until after the revolution—which may never come or be defeated—to address other issues. We must instead struggle against all forms of oppression simultaneously. The self-emancipation of the working classes can only be achieved through intersectional class struggle.
+When a quality shift occurs, there is an impact on the quantity. Quality impacts quantity in a number of ways, including [but not limited to]:
-Although historical anarchist theory needs to be updated, it should not be abandoned or discarded. It contains numerous insights that can guide us in the modern world. The oppression we witness on a daily basis is not an inevitable nor an unchangeable aspect of human life. It is instead the product of hierarchical social structures that divide humanity into masters and subjects. These social structures are made by human beings and so can be unmade and replaced with new and better ways of living together. Authoritarians imagine that emancipation can be achieved if good people with the correct ideas take control of the reins of power. Anarchists realize that this has never happened, and will never happen. Regardless of people’s good intentions, or the stories they tell themselves, they will be corrupted by their position at a top of a hierarchy and become primarily concerned with exercising and expanding their power over others in order to serve their own interests. If human beings are not inherently good, then no person is good enough to be a ruler.
+* Changing the structure, scale, or level of the subject.
+* Changing the rhythm or speed of the motion and development of the subject.
-Cold war propaganda taught us that our only choice is between really existing capitalism or really existing state socialism. We are asked to pick between rule by a minority of elected politicians who serve the interests of capital, or rule by a one-party dictatorship led by a supreme leader; the impersonal domination of market forces, or the top-down bureaucracy of state central planning; the prison industrial complex, or the gulag; surveillance and repression by the FBI, or the NKVD. The history of socialism reveals that a large segment of the workers’ movement developed a third way: anarchist socialism and the establishment of federations of workplace and community assemblies that enable people to self-manage their own lives. This is not to say that creating anarchist socialism will be easy. The history of the workers’ movement shows how hard it is to change the world. Any struggle for emancipation will face the overwhelming violence of the ruling classes, and we must prepare ourselves for this. The modern state is better armed and has developed superior forms of surveillance, crowd-control, and counterinsurgency than its historical predecessors.
+''In summary,'' dialectical unity between quantity and quality exists in every thing, phenomenon, and idea. A gradual quantitative change [through the ''quantity range''] will eventually meet the ''threshold'', which will inevitably lead to a qualitative change through ''quality shift''. Simultaneously, the new quality will mutually impact the quantity, causing new quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. This process takes place continuously, forming the fundamental and universal mode of movement and development processes of all things, phenomena, and ideas.
-When reading about the history of social movements it is easy to focus on large-scale acts of revolt that can appear to have come out of nowhere. This book has itself mentioned numerous strikes, riots, insurrections, and revolutions. Learning about these events is an important part of labor history, but to focus exclusively on them leads to a distorted view of the past and how social change happens. Members of historical socialist movements did not spend the majority of their time participating in huge actions that rapidly transformed society and the future course of history. The bulk of their lives as revolutionaries were spent doing much more mundane activities. They produced, distributed, and read radical literature; organized and attended picnics; performed in a theater club; watched a public debate; discussed politics with friends, family, and colleagues; attended an endless series of meetings for their affinity group or trade union; wrote and received a vast amount of letters; and so on.
+==== Annotation 178 ====
-These small, mundane activities can appear to be of little importance when viewed in isolation. Yet when they were repeated day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year by groups of people, they took on greater significance. These small activities produced and reproduced the social relations, capacities, drives, and consciousness that were the foundation of social movements. Without these seemingly insignificant acts, repeated over and over again, the large exciting moments of rebellion and revolution never would have occurred in most instances or would have occurred on a much smaller scale.
+Transformation between quantity and quality is the mode of movement and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, because it reflects the way in which human consciousness perceives movement and development.
-Unfortunately, time is not on our side. Capitalism’s insatiable drive for profit and economic growth is destroying the environment. The climate crisis is not merely coming, it has already begun. Things are only going to get worse. Billionaires and politicians are not going to save us. We have to save ourselves. The actions we take now determine the future we and future generations face. Our only choice is collective struggle. We have to generate a social force that can dismantle the fossil fuels industry and, in so doing, achieve survival pending revolution. In response to these dire circumstances, a large number of people have put their hopes in the election of socialist politicians into parliaments and congresses. Historical anarchist theory informs us why this strategy is mistaken: even if socialists manage to win an election, which frequently does not happen, they will be compelled by the threat of capital flight and their institutionalized role as managers of the capitalist economy to implement policies that serve the interests of the very corporations driving climate change forward. Socialist politicians will not transform the state. The state will transform them. We have to instead develop the power of workers to engage in direct action outside of and against the state, disrupt the smooth functioning of the economy, and, in so doing, impose external pressure onto the ruling classes to give into our demands.
+So, it is important to understand that there is no ''material manifestation'' of quantity and quality. They are simply mental constructs which reflect the ways in which we observe and understand change, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Transformation processes in the material world are fully fluid and continuous, but our consciousness perceives change in ''stages of development''. Quality simply reflects how we distinguish one subject from another subject, as well as how we recognize the transformation process (and stages of development) of a single subject over time.
-Even if the specifics of historical insurrectionist anarchism, mass anarchism, syndicalist anarchism, and organizational dualism are deemed to be no longer appropriate strategies within modern society, the core insight of historical anarchist strategy would remain—anarchist ends can only be achieved through anarchist means. Our task remains that of anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: to develop forms of practice that can simultaneously resist, and ultimately overthrow, the ruling classes and render us fit to establish a society with neither masters nor subjects. Tomorrow can only grow out of today and the march toward anarchy begins now.
+There is no specific point, metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#111|1]]. This included, but was not limited to, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, hierarchically organized religion, authoritarian modes of education, and the oppression of nonhuman animals. It should nonetheless be kept in mind that a significant number of anarchists failed to put the theoretical opposition to racism, sexism, and homophobia into practice or, on occasion, even support it in theory.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-60.png|''Quality refers to the differences which are distinguished in human consciousness between one subject and another, or changes in a subject’s form over time.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#211|2]]. Dark Star, ed. ''Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader'', 3rd Edition (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012); Ruth Kinna, “Anarchism and Feminism,” in ''Brill’s Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy'', ed. Nathan Jun (Brill, 2017), 253–84; Lucy Nicholas, “Gender and Sexuality,” in ''The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism'', ed. Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 603–21; Institute for Anarchist Studies, ''Perspectives on Anarchist Theory'', no. 29,'' Anarcha-Feminisms ''(Portland, OR: Eberhardt Press, 2016).</div>
+There is no metaphysically distinct point at which a “puppy” becomes an “adult dog,” but human beings will distinguish between a puppy and an adult dog, or recognize at a certain point that a puppy has “become” an adult dog, based on observation of quality. We create categories which reflect quality to organize and systematically understand the world around us, and to distinguish between different subjects, and to distinguish between different stages of development of a given subject.
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#311|3]]. Dana M. Williams, “Black Panther Radical Factionalization and the Development of Black Anarchism,” ''Journal of Black Studies'' 46, no. 7 (2015): 678–703; Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin, ''Anarchism and the Black Revolution ''(London: Pluto Press, 2021); William C. Anderson, ''The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition ''(Chico, CA: AK Press, 2021).</div>
+We can also distinguish differences of quality between different subjects: we can distinguish a cat from a dog, and we can distinguish one dog from another dog. These distinguishing attributes constitute differences in quality. Note that this conception of differentiation of things, phenomena, and ideas into qualities which constantly change and develop over time is fundamentally distinct from ''metaphysical'' categorization, which seeks to divide all things, phenomena, and ideas into static, perpetually unchanging categories (see Annotation 8, p. 8).
-<div style="color:#000000;">[[#411|4]]. Deric Shannon and J. Rogue, “Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality,” Anarkismo website, https://www.anarkismo.net/article/14923; J. Rogue and Abbey Volcano, “Insurrection at the Intersections: Feminism, Intersectionality, and Anarchism,” in ''Quiet Rumours'', 43–46. For an overview of intersectionality from a nonanarchist perspective, see Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, ''Intersectionality'','' ''2nd edition'' ''(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020).</div>
+Distinction within the human mind is reflected in the concept of quantity and quality. If we do not observe quality differences between subjects, then we would not be able to distinguish between different subjects at all. If we could not recognize the quality shifts of any given subject, then we would not be aware of change or motion at all.
-== {{anchor|BibliographyPrimarySources}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook15}} {{anchor|BibliographyPrimarySources1}} Bibliography ==
+-----
-<div style="text-align:center;">'''Primary Sources'''</div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Abidor, Mitchell, ed. ''Death to Bourgeois Society: The Propagandists of the Deed''.'' ''Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015.</div>
+Every thing, phenomenon and idea has characteristics of quality and quantity which mutually impact and transform one another. Therefore, in perception and practice, we need to understand and take into account the law of transformation between quantity and quality in order to have a comprehensive viewpoint of things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 114, p. 116].
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Anderson, William C. ''The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition''.'' ''Chico, CA: AK Press, 2021.</div>
+Quantitative changes of things, phenomena and ideas inevitably lead to qualitative changes in all things, phenomena, and ideas. Therefore, in our perception and practice, as we plan and enact change in our world and in human society, it is necessary to gradually accumulate changes in quantity in order to make changes in quality. At the same time, we must recognize and make use of the fact that quality shifts also lead to changes in quantity.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Antonioli, Maurizio, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam (1907)''. Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2009.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Ardouin, J., Degalvès, J., Ferrière, J., Girard, A., Grave, Jean, Janvion, E., Kropotkin, Peter, et al. “Liberty Through Education: The Libertarian School.” Translated by Shawn P. Wilbur. Libertarian Labyrinth website, April 9, 2020. https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-translations/liberty-through-education-1898.</div>
+==== Annotation 179 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Arshinov, Peter. “The Old and New in Anarchism: Reply to Comrade Malatesta (May 1928).” In Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 237–42. </div>
+We have to understand and utilize the law of transformation between quantity and quality in our activities. For instance, if a group of activists hopes to address hunger in their community, they have to realize that they can’t immediately enact a quality shift which solves the entire problem of hunger across the city instantaneously. Instead, the activists must recognize that quantity shifts lead to quality shifts through stages of development. In planning and acting, they may need to set certain development targets, predict thresholds at which quality shifts will occur, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Ba Jin. “Anarchism and the Question of Practice.” In ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Idea''s, Vol. 1, ''From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', edited by Robert Graham, 362–66. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005.</div>
+For instance, the first goal for these activists may be to provide free lunches to houseless people in a particular park every weekend. If they can accomplish this, then they will not have completely eliminated hunger in the city, but they will have reached a threshold — a quality shift — in that nobody in that specific park will be hungry at lunch time on weekends. From there, they can continue to build quality shifts through accumulation of changes in quantity, one stage of development at a time.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Baginski, Max. “Aim and Tactics of the Trade-Union Movement.” In ''Anarchy: An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth'', edited by Peter Glassgold, 297–306. New York: Counterpoint, 2000.</div>
+Quality shifts leading to quantity shifts must also be recognized and utilized in our planning and activities. For example, once an effective strategy is developed for eliminating hunger in one park through quantity changes leading to quality shifts, this strategy can then be implemented in other parks. Thus the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in one park” can lead to a quantity shift: “eliminating hunger in two parks, three parks, etc.,” until the quantity shift of “eliminating hunger in parks” leads to the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in all the parks in the city.” This entire process of enacting quantity changes to lead to quality shifts, and accumulating quality shifts to change quantity, are all focused toward the ultimate goal of achieving the quality shift of “eliminating hunger in the entire city.”
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Stirner: ‘The Ego and His Own.’” ''Mother Earth'' 2, no. 3 (1907): 142–51.</div>
+In short, it’s vital for us to understand the ways in which quantity and quality mutually impact each other so that we can formulate plans and activities which will lead to motion and development which accomplish our goals, step by step, through one stage of development at a time.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''What Does Syndicalism Want? Living, Not Dead Unions''. London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2015.</div>
+Changes in quantity can only lead to changes in quality provided the quantity accumulates to a certain threshold. Therefore, in practice, we need to overcome impatient, left-sided thought. Left-sided thinking refers to thinking which is overly subjective, idealistic, ignorant of the laws which govern material reality. Left-sided thinking neglects to acknowledge the necessity of quantity accumulation which precedes shifts in quality, focusing instead on attempting to perform continuous shifts in quality.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Bakunin, Michael. ''Bakunin on Anarchism''. Edited by Sam Dolgoff. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1980.</div>
+On the other hand, we must also recognize that once change in quantity has reached a threshold, it is ''inevitable'' that a quality shift will take place. Therefore, we need to overcome conservative and right-sided thought in practical work. Right-sided thinking is the expression of conservative, stagnant thought that resists or refuses to recognize quality shifts even as changes in quantity come to meet the threshold of quality shift.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Basic Bakunin: Writings, 1869–1871''. Edited and Translated by Robert M. Cutler. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism''. Edited by G. P. Maximoff. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964.</div>
+==== Annotation 180 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Selected Texts, 1868–1875''. Edited by A. W. Zurbrugg. London: Anarres Editions, 2016.</div>
+“Right-sided thinking” and “left-sided thinking” are Vietnamese political concepts which are rooted in the ideas of Lenin’s book: ''Leftwing Communism: an Infantile Disorder''. In Vietnamese political philosophy, “left-sided thinking” is a form of dogmatic idealism which upholds unrealistic conceptions of change and development. Left-sided thinkers don’t have the patience for quantity accumulation which are prerequisite to quality shifts, or expect to skip entire stages of development which are necessary to precipitate change in the real world. An example of left-sided thinking would be believing that a capitalist society can ''instantly'' transition into a stateless, classless, communist society, skipping over the transitions in quantity and quality which are required to bring such a massive transformation in human society to fruition.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Selected Writings''. Edited by Arthur Lehning. London: Jonathan Cape, 1973.</div>
+“Right-sided thinking,” on the other hand, is conservate resistance to change. Right-sided thinkers resist quality changes to human society; they either want to preserve society as it exists right now, or reverse development to some previous (real or imagined) stage of development. Right-sided thinkers also refuse to acknowledge quality shifts once they’ve occurred, idealistically pretending that changes in material conditions have not occurred. For example, right-sided thinkers may refuse to recognize advances which have been made in the liberation of women, or even attempt to reverse those advances in hopes of returning to previous stages of development when women had fewer freedoms. Here is a practical example of these concepts in use, from the ''Vietnam Encyclopedia'', published by the Ministry of Culture and Information of Vietnam:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Statism and Anarchy''. Edited by Marshall Shatz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Opportunism is a system of political views that do not follow a clear direction nor a clear line, do not have a definite stance, and are inclined toward the immediate personal gain of the opportunist. In the proletarian revolutionary movement, opportunism is a politics of compromise, reform, and unprincipled collaboration with the enemy which run contrary to the basic interests of the working class and the working people. In practice, opportunism has two main trends, stemming from right-sided thinking and from left-sided thinking, respectively:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “To the Brothers of the Alliance in Spain.” Translated by Shawn P. Wilbur. Libertarian Labyrinth website, March 17, 2014. https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/bakunin-library/bakunin-to-the-brothers-of-the-alliance-in-spain-1872.</div>
+Right-wing opportunism is reformist, favors undue compromise, and aims to peacefully “convert” capitalism into socialism while abandoning the struggle for meaningful victory of the working class. Right-wing opportunism, typified by Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, has its origins in the Workers’ Parties of the Second International era and exists to this day.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Bellegarrigue, Anselme. “Anarchy, A Journal of Order.” Translated by Paul Sharkey. Anarchist Library website, February 21, 2019. http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anselme-bellegarrigue-the-world-s-first-anarchist-manifesto.</div>
+Left-wing opportunism is a mixture of extremism and adventurism, dogmatism, arrogance, subjectivity, cults of violence, and disregard for the objective situation.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Benbow, William. “Grand National Holiday, and Congress of the Productive Classes.” Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/history/england/chartists/benbow-congress.htm.</div>
+Both “right” and “left” opportunism push the workers’ movement to futile sacrifice and failure.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Berkman, Alexander. “A Decade of Bolshevism.” In ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', edited by Friends of Aron Baron, 119–23. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Blast''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''What Is Anarchism?'' Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2003.</div>
+Quality shifts are diverse and plentiful, so we need to promote and apply quality shifts creatively and flexibly to suit the specific material conditions we face in a given situation. This is especially true in changing human society, as social development processes depend not only on objective conditions but also on subjective human factors. Therefore, we need to be active and take the initiative to promote the process of converting between quantity and quality in the most effective way.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Bernstein, Edward. ''Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation''. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1909.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Besnard, Pierre. “Anarcho-Syndicalism and Anarchism.” Translated by Paul Sharkey. Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog, March 15, 2009. https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/alexander-schapiro-pierre-besnard-anarcho-syndicalism-and-anarchism.</div>
+==== Annotation 181 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Bevington, Louisa Sarah. ''An Anarchist Manifesto''. London: Metropolitan Printing Works, 1895. </div>
+Put simply, we have to use our human will and labor to actively promote quantity changes which lead to quality changes, and quality changes which lead to quantity changes, which move us towards our goal of ending all forms of oppression in human society. This will involve not just objective factors<ref>See Annotation 108, p. 112.</ref> (i.e., material conditions which are necessary to accomplish something), but subjective factors<ref>See Annotation 207, p. 202.</ref> as well (factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting directly).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Brousse, Paul. “Propaganda of the Deed.” In ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Idea''s, Vol. 1, ''From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', edited by Robert Graham, 150–51. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005. </div>
+=== 2. Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites ===
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Cafiero, Carlo. “Action (1880).” In ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Idea''s, Vol. 1, ''From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', edited by Robert Graham, 152–53. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005.</div>
+The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the ''Essence'' of dialectics [see: ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156]. According to Lenin: “In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the Essence of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development.”<ref>''Summary of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref> According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Compendium of Capital''. Translated by Paul M. Perrone. London: The Anarchist Communist Group, 2020.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Organisation of Armed Struggle.” Translated by Paul Sharkey. ''The Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review'' 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1977): 101. </div>
+==== Annotation 182 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Revolution''. Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2012.</div>
+In other words, ''contradiction'' (defined further in the next section) is the force which serves as the fundamental, originating, and universal force which drives all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">CNT, “The First Congress of the National Confederation of Labor.” Libcom website, January 17, 2017. https://libcom.org/article/first-congress-national-confederation-labor-cnt-barcelona-september-8-10-1911.</div>
+Contradiction is a ''fundamental driving force'' because it is the most basic driving force which all other forms of motion and development are based upon.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Dark Star, ed. ''Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader''. 3rd ed. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012.</div>
+Contradiction is the ''originating driving force'' because all motion and development arises from contradiction.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">De Cleyre, Voltairine. “A Suggestion and Explanation.” ''Free Society'' 6, no. 29 (1900): 1. </div>
+Contradiction is the ''universal driving force'' because ''all'' things, phenomena, and ideas — without exception — are driven to motion and development by contradiction.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre—Feminist, Anarchist, Genius''. Edited by Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.</div>
+==== a. Definition of Contradiction and Common Characteristics of Contradiction ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader''. Edited by A.J. Brigati. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004.</div>
+''- Definition of Contradiction''
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">De Ligt, Bart. ''The Conquest of Violence: An Essay on War and Revolution''. London: Pluto Press, 1989.</div>
+In dialectics, the concept of contradiction is used to refer to the relationship, opposition, and transformation between opposites which takes place ''within'' all things, phenomena, and ideas, as well as ''between'' all things, phenomena, and ideas. This dialectical concept of contradiction is fundamentally different from the metaphysical concept of contradiction. The metaphysical concept of contradiction is an illogical conception of opposition without unity and without dialectical transformation between opposites.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">De Paepe, César. “The Present Institutions of the International in Relation to the Future.” Translated by Shawn P. Wilbur. Libertarian Labyrinth website, March 20, 2018. https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-translations/the-present-institutions-of-the-international-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-future-1869.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Strikes, Unions, and the Affiliation of Unions with the International.” In ''Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later'', edited by Marcello Musto, 126–29. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.</div>
+==== Annotation 183 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Déjacque, Joseph. ''Down with the Bosses and Other Writings, 1859–1861''. Gresham, OR: Corvus Editions, 2013.</div>
+A contradiction is, fundamentally, just a type of relationship. In a contradictory relationship, two things, phenomena, and/or ideas mutually impact one another, resulting in the eventual ''negation'' of one subject and the ''synthesis'' of the negator and the negated into some new form.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “On the Human Being, Male and Female.” Translated by Jonathan Mayo Crane. Libertarian Labyrinth website, April 4, 2011. https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/from-the-archives/joseph-dejacque-the-human-being-i.</div>
+The metaphysical concept of contradiction is considered illogical because it establishes no connection between that which is negated and the resulting synthesis.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Revolutionary Question.” Translated by Shawn P. Wilbur. Libertarian Labyrinth website, May 13, 2012. https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/working-translations/joseph-dejacque-the-revolutionary-question.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-61.png|''In the metaphysical conception of contradiction, the negated “disappears” and is not represented in the resulting synthesis.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Delesalle, Paul. “Anarchists and the Trade Unions.” Libcom website, December 9, 2013. https://libcom.org/article/anarchists-and-trade-unions-paul-delesalle.</div>
+Metaphysical contradiction presents contradicting subjects as isolated from one another and completely distinct, when in reality the relationship between the negated and the negator essentially defines the contradiction. The negated subject is seen as completely negated; that is to say, it is conceived of as essentially “disappearing” into the synthesized result of the contradiction. In this sense, this metaphysical conception of negation is inaccurate in that it is represented as a complete, terminating process.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Strike!” Libcom website, December 9, 2013. <u>https://libcom.org/library/strike-paul-delesalle</u>.</div>
+In the above example, once the fox eats the rabbit, the rabbit is considered “gone” after a terminal negation process (see Annotation 196, p. 188) ends the contradiction.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Ervin, Lorenzo Kom’Boa. ''Anarchism and the Black Revolution''.'' ''London: Pluto Press, 2021.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-62.png|''The materialist dialectical conception of contradiction recognizes that contradicting subjects are defined by their relationship and that the synthesis of the contradiction carries forward attributes and characteristics from both the negator and the negated.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Fabbri, Luigi. “About a Project of Anarchist Organization.” Institute for Anarchist Theory and History website, n.d. https://ithanarquista.wordpress.com/about-a-project-for-anarchist-organization-luigi-fabbri.</div>
+Materialist dialectical contradiction recognizes that every contradiction is defined by the relationship between the negated and the negator. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that attributes and characteristics of the negated subject are carried forward into the synthesized subject [see Annotation 203, p. 198]. Materialist dialectics also recognizes that contradiction continues indefinitely, as the negated becomes negated again, and so on, continuously, forever [see ''Negation of Negation'', p. 185].
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism.” In ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', edited by Friends of Aron Baron, 13–45. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.</div>
+In the example on the previous page, the fox consuming the rabbit constitutes a negation process in which the fox takes on characteristics from the rabbit (i.e., nutritional and energy content, any diseases which may be carried forward to the fox, etc.).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism''. Translated by Chaz Bufe. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2001.</div>
+Contradiction arises from opposition which exists within or between things, phenomena, and ideas. The concept of opposing “sides” refers to such aspects, properties, and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. Examples include:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Revolution and Dictatorship: On One Anarchist Who Has Forgotten His Principles.” Translated by Paul Sharkey. Kate Sharpley Library, n.d. https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8932r8.</div>
+* Negative charge and positive charge within atoms.
+* Anabolism and catabolism within living organisms [anabolism refers to the growth and building up of molecules within an organism, while catabolism refers to the digestion and breaking down of molecules within an organism].
+* Production and consumption as socioeconomic activities.
+* Trial and error which leads to cognitive development.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Fabbri, Luigi, Camillo Berneri, and Ugo Fedeli. “Reply by the Pensiero e Volontà Group to an Invitation to Join the International Anarchist Communist Federation.” Institute for Anarchist Theory and History website, n.d. https://ithanarquista.wordpress.com/nestor-makhno-archive/nestor-makhno-archive-english/reply-by-the-pensiero-e-volonta-group-to-an-invitation-to-join-the-international-anarchist-communist-federation.</div>
+==== Annotation 184 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Faure, Sébastien. “The Anarchist Synthesis: The Three Great Anarchist Currents.” Translated by Shawn P. Wilbur. Libertarian Labyrinth website, August 3, 2017. https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/sebastien-faure-the-anarchist-synthesis-1828.</div>
+All of the above forms of contradiction ''drive motion and development''. These processes exist in ''unity and opposition''. For example, in political economics, production is driven by consumption and consumption is facilitated by production. Even though these are fundamentally opposite forces (production adds to the total quantity of products, while consumption reduces the total quantity of products), they can’t exist without one another, and they drive each other forward. This is the dialectical nature of contradiction as the driving force of all motion and development as defined in materialist dialectics.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Ferrer, Francisco. ''Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader''. Edited by Mark Bray and Robert H. Haworth. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2019.</div>
+''- The General Properties of Contradictions''
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Galleani, Luigi. ''The End of Anarchism?'' London: Elephant Editions, 2012.</div>
+Contradiction is objective and universal. According to Friedrich Engels: “If simple mechanical change of position contains a contradiction, this is even more true of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of organic life and its development. We saw above that life consists precisely and primarily in this — that a being is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in. We likewise saw that also, in the sphere of thought, we could not escape contradictions, and that, for example, the contradiction between man’s inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its actual presence only in men who are externally limited and possess limited cognition finds its solution in what is — at least practically, for us — an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1877.</ref>
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Goldman, Emma. ''Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation, 1896–1926''. Edited by Shawn P. Wilbur. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016.</div>
+==== Annotation 185 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Living My Life''. Vol. 1. New York: Dover Publications, 1970.</div>
+Here, Engels is explaining how contradiction is the driving force in both material and conscious processes of motion and development. The process of life is a process of contradiction — all organic life forms must consume organic matter so that they can produce growth and offspring, must produce certain molecules and metabolic processes so that they can consume nutrients, and so on. Once these contradictory processes stop, as Engels says, “death steps in” (though even death is a transition forward).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Living My Life''. Vol. 2. New York: Dover Publications, 1970.</div>
+Conscious motion and development are also rooted in contradictory forces. Engels points out the contradiction between humanity’s seemingly infinite capacity for learning with the seemingly infinite amount of knowledge which can be obtained in the world. This great contradiction drives a seemingly endless process of expanding human knowledge, collectively, over countless generations.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader''. Edited by Alix Kates Shulman. 3rd ed. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996.</div>
+Contradictions are not only objective and universal, but also diverse and plentiful. The diverse nature of contradictions is evident in the fact that every subject can include many different contradictions and that contradictions manifest differently depending upon specific conditions. Contradictions can hold different positions and roles in the existence, motion, and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. These positions and roles include [but are not limited to]:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Golos Truda. “Declaration of the Petrograd Union of Anarcho-Syndicalist Propaganda.” In ''The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution'', edited by Paul Avrich, 68–72. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973.</div>
+* Internal and external contradictions
+* Fundamental and non-fundamental contradictions
+* Primary and secondary contradictions
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, The. “The Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (June 1926).” In Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 192–213. </div>
+==== Annotation 186 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Problem of Organization and the Notion of Synthesis (March 1926).” In Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 188–91. </div>
+''Internal'' contradictions are contradictions which exist in the ''internal relations'' of a subject, while ''external'' contradictions exist ''between'' two or more subjects as external relations.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Reply to Anarchism’s Confusionists (August 1927).” In Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 224–36. </div>
+For example: a sports team might have ''internal contradictions'' between players, between the players and the coach, between the coach and management, etc. External contradictions might exist between the team and other teams, between the team and league officials, between the team and the landlords who own the team’s practice space, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Supplement to the Organizational Platform (November 1926).” In Skirda, ''Facing the Enemy'', 214–23. </div>
+A ''fundamental'' contradiction is a contradiction which defines the Essence of a relationship [see ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156]. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A ''non-fundamental'' contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction can ''impact'' a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. Whether or not a contradiction is fundamental is relative to the point of view.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Guillaume, James. “Ideas on Social Organization.” In ''No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'', edited by Daniel Guérin, 247–67. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.</div>
+For example: the ''fundamental contradiction'' of one nation engaged in war against one another might be the war itself. There will exist many other contradictions; one nation at war might have a trade dispute with a third nation which is not participating in the war. From the “war perspective,” this contradiction is ''non-fundamental'', as it does not define the essential characteristic of the nation at war (though from the perspective of a diplomat charged with ending the trade dispute, the war may be seen as a non-fundamental contradiction while the dispute would be seen as fundamental).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Michael Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch.” In ''Bakunin on Anarchism'', edited by Sam Dolgoff, 22–52. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1980.</div>
+In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the ''primary'' contradiction. ''Secondary'' contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative: it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “On the Abolition of the State.” In ''Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later'', edited by Marcello Musto, 192–93. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.</div>
+For example: when restoring an old car that doesn’t run any more, a mechanic may consider the ''primary contradiction'' to be the non-functioning engine. There may be many ''secondary contradictions'' which contribute to the problems with the car’s engine problems. The battery may be dead, the spark plugs may need to be bad, the tires may need replacement, the timing belt may be loose, etc. Those are all ''secondary contradictions'' which do not define the stage of development which is “repairing the engine.” Some of these secondary contradictions may need to be resolved (such as replacing the spark plugs) before the primary contradiction can be fully addressed; others, such as a cracked windshield, may not need to be addressed before the primary contradiction can be dealt with.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Hins, Eugène. “Resistance Societies as the Organization of the Future.” In ''Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later'', edited by Marcello Musto, 135. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.</div>
+On the other hand, a secondary contradiction may become the primary contradiction: if a mechanic resolves every problem with the engine ''except'' for one bad spark plug, then the bad spark plug will shift from being a secondary contradiction to being the primary contradiction: the bad spark plug is now the primary reason the car won’t start and this stage of development can’t be completed.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">“International Anarchist Manifesto Against War.” In ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Idea''s, Vol. 1, ''From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', edited by Robert Graham, 289–91. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005.</div>
+Within all the various fields of inquiry, there exist contradictions which have a diverse range of different properties and characteristics.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">IWA. “Declaration of the Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism.” In ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Idea''s, Vol. 1, ''From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', edited by Robert Graham, 416–18. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005.</div>
+==== Annotation 187 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">IWW, “The Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World (1908).” In ''Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology'', edited by Joyce L. Kornbluh, 12–13. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011.</div>
+Different fields of study will focus on different forms of contradictions, and any given thing, phenomenon, or idea may contain countless contradictions which can be analyzed and considered for different purposes. For example, consider a large city, which might contain far too many contradictions to count. Civil engineers may focus primarily on contradictions in traffic patterns, the structural integrity of bridges and roads, ensuring that buildings are safe and healthy for inhabitants, etc. Utilities departments will focus on contradictions related to sewage, electrical, and sanitation systems. The education system will focus on contradictions which prevent students from achieving success in schools.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Jura Federation, The. “Minutes of the Jura Federation Congress (1880).” In ''No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'', edited by Daniel Guérin, 281–86. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.</div>
+All of these various methods of analysis may focus on specific forms of contradictions, though there will also be overlap. For instance, designing a school bus system will require the education system and civil engineers to discover and grapple with contradictions which might be hindrances for transporting students safely to school.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Sonvilier Circular.” In ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Idea''s, Vol. 1, ''From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', edited by Robert Graham, 96–98. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005. </div>
+==== b. Motion Process of Contradictions ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Road to Power''. Chicago: Samuel A. Bloch, 1909. </div>
+In every contradiction, the opposing sides are united with each other and opposed to each other at the same time. The concept of “unity between opposites” refers to the fact that a contradiction is a binding, inseparable, and mutually impacting relationship which exists between opposites.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Kautsky, Karl. ''The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program)''. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1910.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Kropotkin, Peter. ''Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology''. Edited by Iain McKay. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014.</div>
+==== Annotation 188 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Conquest of Bread''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007.</div>
+Contradictions are ''binding'' and ''inseparable'' because they hold a relationship together. If two opposing things, phenomena, or ideas simply ''separate'', then contradiction, by definition, no longer exists. For example, an economy is bound together by the contradiction of production and consumption; if production exists without consumption (or vice-versa), it can’t be considered to be an economy.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Ethics: Origin and Development''. London: George G. Harrap & Co, 1924.</div>
+Contradictions are said to be ''mutually impacting'' because any time a contradiction exists between two opposing sides, both sides are mutually impacted for as long as the contradiction exists and develops. Of course, it is possible for two opposing sides to separate from one another; for example, a factory which produced buggy whips may have failed to find consumers after the invention of the car. Thus, there would exist a situation in which production exists without consumption. In this situation, the termination of the contradiction between production and consumption leads to a new contradiction: the factory will now be in the midst of a crisis which will require it to either provide a different product or go out of business.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Fugitive Writings''. Edited by George Woodcock. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1993.</div>
+Thus we see that production and consumption can’t be separated from one another without leading to a change in the essential nature of the relationship and the opposing subjects, and we see that the opposing sides mutually impact one another (a change in consumption will affect production, and vice-versa).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Great French Revolution''. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989.</div>
+In any given contradictory relationship, each oppositional side is the premise for the other’s existence. Unity among opposites also defines the identity of each opposing side. Lenin wrote: “The identity of opposites (it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their ‘unity,’—although the difference between the terms identity and unity is not particularly important here. In a certain sense, both are correct) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society).”<ref>''On the Questions of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Memoirs of a Revolutionist''. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1989.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Modern Science and Anarchy''. Edited by Iain McKay. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018.</div>
+==== Annotation 189 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution''. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006.</div>
+Here, Lenin is explaining that ''identity'' and ''unity'' are (more or less) the same concept when it comes to understanding the nature of contradiction between opposites. In material processes of nature, social processes, and processes of consciousness, we perceive and define oppositional forces by recognizing mutually exclusive and contradictory tendencies within and between things, phenomena, and ideas. In other words, whenever we think of an oppositional relationship, we ''define it'' in terms of the opposition.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Proposed Communist Settlement: A New Colony for Tyneside or Wearside.” ''The Newcastle Daily Chronicle'', February 20, 1895. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-proposed-communist-settlement-a-new-colony-for-tyneside-or-wearside.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-63.png|''War, disease, and economy are all examples of unity in contradiction.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Words of A Rebel''. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1992.</div>
+When we think of a war, we think of the contradictions which exist ''between'' the opposing nations. When we think of a disease, we define it by the oppositional forces ''between'' the ailment and the human body. When we think of an economy, we think of the oppositional forces of production and consumption ''within'' the economy.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Lenin, Vladimir. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 10. Edited by Andrew Rothstein. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978.</div>
+In other words, the identity of contradictory relationships is ''defined'' by the ''unity'' of the opposing sides with one another.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Selected Works''. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977.</div>
+The concept ''struggle of opposites'' refers to the tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. There exist many diverse forms of struggle between opposites. Struggle can manifest in various forms based on:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Liu, Lydia H., Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko, eds. ''The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory''. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.</div>
+* The nature of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea.
+* Relationships within a thing, phenomenon, or idea (or between things, phenomena, and ideas).
+* Specific material conditions [see Annotation 10, p. 10].
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">“The London Declaration (1913).” In Appendix to Thorpe,'' “The Workers Themselves'', 320. </div>
+The process of unity and struggle of opposites inevitably leads to a ''transformation between them''. The transformation between opposites takes place with rich diversity, and such transformations can vary depending on the properties of the opposite sides as well as specific material conditions.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Lum, Dyer D. “On Anarchy.” In Parsons, ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, ''149–58.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Philosophy of Trade Unions''. New York: American Federation of Labor, 1892.</div>
+==== Annotation 190 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Why I Am a Social Revolutionist.” ''Twentieth Century ''5, no. 18 (October 1890): 5–6. </div>
+Opposing sides, by definition, ''oppose'' one another. If forces or characteristics which exist within or between things, phenomena, or ideas do ''not'' oppose one another, then they are not, by definition, ''opposites''. Thus, it can be understood that opposing sides have a tendency to ''struggle against'' one another. It is this very struggle which defines two sides as opposites, and as contradictory.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Luxemburg, Rosa. ''The Essential Rosa Luxemburg: Reform or Revolution and The Mass Strike''. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008.</div>
+Lenin explained that some contradicting opposite sides can exist in what he described as ''equilibrium'', but that this is only ever a temporary state of affairs, as exemplified in his article ''An Equilibrium of Forces.''
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Mackay, John Henry. ''The Anarchists: A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century''. Boston: Benj. R. Tucker, Publisher, 1891. </div>
+[See Annotation 64, p. 62 for relevant text and more info on equilibrium.]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Makhno, Nestor. ''The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays''. Edited by Alexandre Skirda. San Francisco: AK Press, 1996.</div>
+Clearly, Lenin sees that this equilibrium of contradictory forces is not permanently sustainable. Indeed, ''no'' equilibrium of contradictory forces can be permanent. Eventually, one opposing side will overtake the other, and eventually, any given contradiction will result in one opposing side overcoming the other.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Malatesta, Errico. ''A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L’Agitazione, 1897–1898''. Vol. 3 of ''The Complete Works of Malatesta'', edited by Davide Turcato. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016.</div>
+According to the law of unification and contradiction between opposites, the struggle between two opposing sides is absolute, while the unity between them is relative, conditional, and temporary; in unity there is a struggle: a struggle in unity. According to Lenin: “The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”<ref>''On the Questions of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles, 1924–1931''. Edited by Vernon Richards. London: Freedom Press, 1995.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''At the Café: Conversations on Anarchism''. London: Freedom Press, 2005.</div>
+==== Annotation 191 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Between Peasants: A Dialogue on Anarchy''. Johannesburg: Zabalaza Books, n.d.</div>
+“Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence. That which is ''absolute'' exists independently and with permanence. That which is ''relative'' is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta''. Edited by Vernon Richards. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015.</div>
+So Lenin’s point is that ''unity'' exists temporarily in any given pair of opposing sides, as the unity only exists as long as the opposing sides are opposing one another. As soon as one side eliminates or negates the other, the unity subsides. However, ''opposition'' is considered absolute, because it is opposition which drives motion and change in all things, phenomena, and ideas through contradictory processes of opposing sides.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader''. Edited by Davide Turcato. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014.</div>
+In the same text quoted in the passage above, ''On the Questions of Dialectics,'' Lenin notes:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “On Collective Responsibility.” Institute for Anarchist Theory and History website, n.d. https://ithanarquista.wordpress.com/nestor-makhno-archive/nestor-makhno-archive-english/platform-english/on-collective-responsibility-errico-malatesta.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The distinction between subjectivism (skepticism, sophistry, etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective) dialectics the difference between the relative and the absolute is itself relative. For objective dialectics there is an absolute within the relative. For subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute...
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Towards Anarchy: Malatesta in America, 1899–1900''. Vol. 3 of ''The Complete Works of Malatesta'', edited by Davide Turcato. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019.</div>
+Such must also be the method of exposition (i.e., study) of dialectics in general... To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., with any proposition: the leaves of a tree are green; John is a man: Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics (as Hegel’s genius recognised): the individual is the universal.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Marx, Karl. ''Capital, A Critique of Political Economy'', Vol. 1. London: Penguin Books, 1990.</div>
+The individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes) etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Selected Writings''. Edited by David McLellan. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.</div>
+In other words, we must understand that in materialist dialectics, the absolute and the relative exist within one another; in other words, the absolute and the relative have a ''dialectical relationship'' with one another in all things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 5. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976.</div>
+''Relative unity'' refers to the nature of ''unity'' between contradictory subjects. Contradictory subjects are ''unified'' in the sense that any given contradiction is essentially defined by the contradiction between two subjects. Thus, the two subjects are ''unified'' in contradiction. However, this unity is ''relative'' in the sense that this unification is temporary (the unity will end upon negation and synthesis) and relative (i.e., defined by the relationship between the two contradicting subjects).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 20. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985.</div>
+''Absolute struggle'' refers to the fact that contradiction, negation, and synthesis will go on forever; in this sense, contradictory processes are ''absolute'' because such struggle exists ''permanently;'' struggle has no set beginning or end point, and exists independently of any specific thing, phenomenon, or idea.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 22. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-64.png|''Relative Unity refers to the temporary and relative nature of specific relationships which define and unify specific contradictions; Absolute Struggle refers to the permanent, constant nature of development through contradiction.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 23. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-65.png|''The relationship between relative unity and absolute struggle defines and drives change, motion, and development through contradiction.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 24. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989.</div>
+This applies to contradictions. The ''relative unity'' and the ''absolute struggle'' between opposing sides have a dialectical relationship with one another. The permanent absoluteness of struggle — the fact that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing processes of change through contradictory forces — can only manifest in the relative unity of opposing sides, which can only exist through the temporary existence of conditional relations between opposing sides.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 26. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 43. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988.</div>
+The interaction that leads to the transformation between opposites is a process. At the beginning, contradictions manifest as differences and then develop into two opposing sides. When the two contradictions are fiercely matched and when the conditions are ripe, they will transform each other, and finally, the conflict will be resolved. As old contradictions disappear, new contradictions are formed and the process of mutual impact and transformation between opposites continues, which drives the motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. The relationship, impact and transformation between opposites are the source and driving force of all movement and development in the world. Lenin affirmed: “Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites.”<ref>''On the Questions of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Collected Works'', Vol. 44. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In ''Marx, Later Political Writings'', edited by Terrell Carver, 1–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.</div>
+==== Annotation 192 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Maximoff, Gregori P. ''Program of Anarcho-Syndicalism''. N.p: Guillotine Press, 2015.</div>
+Any given process of development — that is to say, of transformation or motion — can be seen as a struggle between opposites. Various forms of struggle can exist simultaneously for any given subject, and the way we interpret struggle can depend on our point of view.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Mazzini, Giuseppe. ''A Cosmopolitanism of Nations: Giuseppe Mazzini’s Writings on Democracy, Nation Building, and International Relations''. Edited by Stefano Recchia and Nadia Urbinati. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.</div>
+For an engineer, a car moving along a road might be seen as a struggle between the power generated by the engine against the mass of the car itself and the friction of the tires on the ground. The driver of the car might see the process in terms of the struggle between the driver and the environment as they navigate across town avoiding accidents and following traffic laws.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Mella, Ricardo. ''Anarchist Socialism in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: A Ricardo Mella Anthology''. Edited by Stephen Luis Vilaseca. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.</div>
+An organism’s life can be seen as a struggle between the organism’s life processes and its environment, or it might be seen as a struggle of contradictory forces within the organism itself (i.e., forces of consumption of nutrition vs. forces of expending energy to survive, forces of disease vs. forces of the organism’s immune system, etc.).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Evolution and Revolution.” Biblioteca Anarquista website, April 6, 2013. https://es.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ricardo-mella-evolucion-y-revolucion</div>
+Materialist dialectics requires us to identify, examine, and understand the opposing forces which drive all development in our universe. Only through understanding such contradictions can we intercede and affect changes in the world which suit our purposes.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Meltzer, Albert. ''The Anarchists in London, 1935–1955''. London: Cienfuegos Press, 1976.</div>
+For example, in order to fight against capitalism and other forms of oppression, we must first understand the contradictory forces which exist within and between those oppressive social structures. Only then can we determine how we might best apply our will, through labor processes, to dismantle such oppressive structures. We might do this by exacerbating existing contradictions within oppressive structures, by introducing new contradictions, by negating contradictions which inhibit our own progress, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Nabat. “Proceedings of Nabat.” In ''No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'', edited by Daniel Guérin, 487–89. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.</div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Nettlau, Max. “Anarchism: Communist or Individualist? Both.” In ''Anarchy: An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth'', edited by Peter Glassgold, 79–83. New York: Counterpoint, 2000.</div>
+Given that contradictions are objective and universal, and that they are the source and driving force of movement and development, it is therefore necessary to detect, recognize, and understand contradictions, to fully analyze opposing sides, and to grasp the nature, origin and tendencies of motion and development in our awareness and practice.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Nietzsche, Friedrich. ''On the Genealogy of Morality''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.</div>
+Lenin said: “The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts… is the ''essence…'' of dialectics.”<ref>''On the Questions of Dialectics'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1915.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Novomirsky, Daniil. ''Anarchism’s Trade Union Programme''. Translated by Paul Sharkey. Kate Sharpley Library website, n.d. https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/3bk4c0.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Parsons, Albert. ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis''. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2003.</div>
+==== Annotation 193 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Parsons, Lucy. ''Freedom, Equality and Solidarity: Writings and Speeches, 1878–1937''. Edited by Gale Ahrens. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2004.</div>
+In other words, materialist dialectics is simply a system of understanding the world around us by viewing all things, phenomena, and ideas as collections of relationships and contradictions which exist within and between all things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Pataud, Émile, and Émile Pouget. ''How We Shall Bring About the Revolution: Syndicalism and the Cooperative Commonwealth''. London: Pluto Press, 1990.</div>
+Since contradictions exist with such rich diversity, it is necessary to have a historical point of view [see Annotation 114, p. 116] — that is, to know how to analyze each specific type of contradiction and have appropriate methods for resolving them. In our perception and practice, it is necessary to properly distinguish the roles and positions of different types of contradictions in each situation and condition; we must also distinguish between different characteristics which contradictions might have in order to find the best method of resolving them.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pindy, Jean-Louis. “Resolution on Resistance Funds.” In ''Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later'', edited by Marcello Musto, 132–34. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pisacane, Carlo. “Political Testament.” Translated by Davide Turcato. Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog, September 22, 2011. https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/carlo-pisacane-propaganda-by-the-deed-1857.</div>
+==== Annotation 194 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Plechanoff, George. ''Anarchism and Socialism''. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1912.</div>
+The historical viewpoint is vital because in order to fully understand any given contradiction, we must understand the process of development which led to its formation.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Postgate, Raymond W., ed. “Debates and Resolutions of the First International on The Control of Industry.” In ''Revolution from 1789 to 1906'', 392–94. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921.</div>
+For example, before a car engine can be repaired, we must first find out what caused the engine to stop working to begin with. If the car is out of fuel, we must determine what caused it to run out of fuel. Did the driver simply drive until the fuel tank was empty, or is there a hole or leak in a fuel line, in the tank, etc.?
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pouget, Émile. “The Basis of Trade Unionism.” Libcom website, November 19, 2010. https://libcom.org/article/basis-trade-unionism-emile-pouget</div>
+It is vital to know the history of development of a given pair of opposing sides, as well as the characteristics and other properties of both opposing sides, to fully understand the contradiction. Since all conscious activity (like all processes of motion and change) ultimately derives from the driving force of contradiction, it is vital for us to develop a historical and comprehensive perspective of any contradictions we hope to affect through our conscious activities.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Direct Action''. London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2003.</div>
+=== 3. Law of Negation of Negation ===
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Party of Labour.” Libcom website, November 19, 2010. https://libcom.org/article/party-labour-emile-pouget.</div>
+The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through ''dialectical negation'', forming a cyclical form of development through what is termed “''negation of negation''.”
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “What Is the Trade Union?” In ''No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism'', edited by Daniel Guérin, 427–35. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.</div>
+==== a. Definition of Negation and Dialectical Negation ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. ''Property Is Theft: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology''. Edited by Iain McKay. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2011.</div>
+The world continuously and endlessly changes and develops. Things, phenomena, and ideas that arise, exist, develop and perish, are replaced by other things, phenomena, and ideas; one form of existence is replaced with another form of existence, again and again, continuously, through this development process. This procedure is called ''negation''.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''What Is Property?'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.</div>
+All processes of movement and development take place through negation. From certain perspectives, negations can be seen as end points to the development (and thus, existence) of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea [which we can think of as “terminal negations;” see Annotation below]. But from other perspectives, negations can also create the conditions and premises for new developments. Such negations, which create such conditions and premises for the development of things and phenomena, are called ''dialectical negation''.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Puente, Isaac. ''Libertarian Communism''. Johannesburg: Zabalaza Books, 2005.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Raevsky, Maxim. ''Anarcho-Syndicalism and the IWW''. Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2019.</div>
+==== Annotation 195 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Reclus, Élisée. “An Anarchist on Anarchy.” In Parsons, ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, ''136–49. </div>
+''Negation'' refers to any act of motion or transformation which arises from contradiction. Specifically, negation is what occurs when one opposing side completely overcomes the other. Nothing in our universe can transform or move all by itself, without any contradiction. Thus, negation drives all development and motion of all things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 119, p. 123]. There are various forms of negation, and the same negation process may be seen to take different forms depending on viewpoint of analysis [see Annotation 11, p. 12, and Annotation 114, p. 116], as depicted in the diagram below.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Élisée Reclus''. Edited by John Clark and Camille Martin. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-66.png|''An overview of various forms of negation as they relate to dialectical development.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Development of Liberty in the World.” Translated by Shawn P. Wilbur. Libertarian Labyrinth website, September 2, 2016. https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/elisee-reclus-the-development-of-liberty-in-the-world-c-1850.</div>
+''Dialectical negation'' occurs when the end of development leads directly to some new development process. Dialectical negation occurs through quality shifts [see Annotation 117, p. 119], which, themselves, occur through negation of opposite sides.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">“Resolutions of the Congresses of Verviers, 5 to 8 September 1877, and Ghent, 9 to 14 September 1877.” In Appendix to Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 188–91.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-67.png|''Replacement negation refers to the replacement of one thing, phenomenon, or idea with another through dialectical negation.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">“Resolutions of the Saint-Imier Congress of the International Workers’ Association, 15–16 September 1872.” In Appendix to Berthier, ''Social Democracy and Anarchism'', 179–83. </div>
+'''Translation Note:''' ''The terms “terminal negation” and “replacement negation” do not appear in the original Vietnamese text. We chose to assign terms to these concepts for clarity.''
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Rocker, Rudolf. ''Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism''. London: Freedom Press, 1988.</div>
+''Replacement negation'' occurs when one thing, phenomenon, or idea takes the place of another. Replacement negation is always a dialectical process, where one subject is replaced gradually by another. Replacement may be relatively fast or slow, but it is never instantaneous — nothing can pop in and out of existence instantaneously. For example: swords were gradually replaced by firearms as the primary weapons of war over the course of many centuries. Today, swords have been completely replaced by firearms on the battlefield. This was a process of ''replacement negation'' — weapons are still used in war, but the type of weapon used has been completely replaced. Development continues, even though development of swords as battle weapons has essentially ended.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-68.png|''Terminal negation refers to the end of a specific cycle of development.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Declaration of the Principles of Syndicalism,''” ''1919. Translated by Cord-Christian Casper. Academia.edu website, n.d. https://www.academia.edu/39134774/Rudolf_Rocker_Syndicalist_Declaration_of_Principles.</div>
+''Terminal negation'' is what happens when development completely ends for a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. For example, from one viewpoint, the development of swords as weapons of war can be seen as having ended — having been ''terminally negated'' — due to the innovation of firearms. In essence, swords are no longer developed, nor implemented, in modern warfare.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The London Years''. Nottingham, UK: Five Leaves, 2005.</div>
+Replacement negation and terminal negation must be considered in relative terms. From one viewpoint, we can see the rise of firearms as the underlying reason for the ''terminal negation'' of military use of swords. Today, no army on Earth uses swords as primary battlefield weapons and militaries no longer develop sword technology for battlefield use. However, from another viewpoint, the development of battlefield weapons has continued on long after the end of the primacy of swords, and it could be said that firearms have ''replaced'' swords as the primary battlefield weapon.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Marx and Anarchism.” Anarchist Library website, April 26, 2009. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rudolf-rocker-marx-and-anarchism.</div>
+Consider the death of a human being. From one perspective, death is a ''terminal negation'' — the person’s consciousness has ended, and no further development of consciousness will occur for that individual. From other perspectives, development continues. The individual may have had children who will continue their familial lineage, they may have contributed ideas which will continue to impact other people for centuries to come, and so on. In that sense, replacement negation may be viewed as dialectical negation. For example, someone studying modes of transportation in the history of the USA may see the process of steam locomotives replacing horses, and then cars replacing steam locomotives, as processes of dialectical negation from the overarching perspective of the transportation system.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Nationalism and Culture''. Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1937.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Soviet System or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” In ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', edited by Friends of Aron Baron, 47–56. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.</div>
+Materialist dialectics is concerned with all forms of negation, but focuses primarily on dialectical negation. Therefore, materialist dialectics is not just a theory of transformation in general, but fundamentally a theory of development
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Rogdaev, N. “On the Anarchist Movement in Russia.” In Antonioli, ed. ''The International Anarchist Congress Amsterdam'', 176–95. </div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Rogue, J., and Abbey Volcano. “Insurrection at the Intersections: Feminism, Intersectionality, and Anarchism.” In Dark Star, ''Quiet Rumours'','' ''43–46.</div>
+==== Annotation 196 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Roller, Arnold. ''The Social General Strike''. Chicago: The Debating Club No. 1, 1905.</div>
+All transformation is driven by negation. Development is a process, specifically, of ''dialectical'' negation, which is a specific form of transformation in which an end of development creates the conditions for new development, either through internal quality shifts or through replacement by some external subject.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Santillán, Diego Abad de. ''After the Revolution: Economic Reconstruction in Spain''. Translated by Louis Frank. New York: Greenberg, 1937.</div>
+Materialist dialectics is primarily concerned with dialectical negation (which drives development) because it is ''development'' which brings forth continuous change in our world. Terminal negations and other forms of transformation which do not drive further development are of limited utility, and can only represent certain limited viewpoints [i.e., the viewpoint of that which is terminated].
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Schapiro, Alexander. “Introduction to Anarcho-Syndicalism and Anarchism.” Translated by Paul Sharkey. Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog, March 15, 2009. https://robertgraham.wordpress.com/alexander-schapiro-pierre-besnard-anarcho-syndicalism-and-anarchism.</div>
+From a broader perspective, nearly all “terminations” are replaced in some way or another by some other form of development. For instance, even when a person dies, although the consciousness of that person may terminate, there will be continuous impacts which will be carried forward from the deceased person’s lifetime of consciousness, as well as from the developments which arise from the death itself.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Schwitzguébel, Adhémar. “On Resistance Funds.” In ''Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later'', edited by Marcello Musto, 138–40. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.</div>
+This dialectical definition of negation differs greatly from metaphysical conceptions of development [see Annotation 201, p. 195], which are essentially viewed as terminal. From the metaphysical perspective, all things, phenomena, and ideas are viewed as separate from one another; therefore negations are viewed as terminal processes which bring development processes to their ends.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Seguí, Salvador. “Anarchism and Syndicalism.” Translated by Paul Sharkey. Libcom website, August 2, 2015. https://libcom.org/library/anarchism-syndicalism-salvador-seguí.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-69.png|''The metaphysical perspective of terminal negation views negation as an essentially terminal process representing the end point of the existence of a static and isolated thing, phenomenon, or idea.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Shannon, Deric, and J. Rogue. “Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality.” Anarkismo website, November 11, 2009, https://www.anarkismo.net/article/14923.</div>
+In the above example, the metaphysical framework would present smashing a vase with a hammer as a terminal negation from the perspective of the observer. Once the vase is smashed, the vase is considered to no longer exist, and the broken shards are not considered to be “a vase” any more. Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, view “the shards” as merely a developed form of the vase; a transition to a new stage of development; the negation was only terminal from the perspective of the vase itself.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Stalin, Joseph. ''Works'','' ''Vol. 1,'' 1901–1907''. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954.</div>
+'''''Excerpt From'' Vietnam’s High School Freshman Civic Education textbook:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Steimer, Mollie, Simon Fleshin, Voline, Sobol, Schwartz, Lia, Roman, and Ervantian. “Concerning the Platform for an Organization of Anarchists.” In ''Fighters for Anarchism: Mollie Steimer and Senya Fleshin'', edited by Abe Bluestein, 50–62. Libertarian Publications Group, 1983.</div>
+Metaphysical and dialectical negation share one commonality: they both see development as the replacement of an old subject with a new subject. However, metaphysical negation happens when outside forces impact on a subject, deleting completely the existence of the old subject. According to this metaphysical perspective, the old subject and the new subject which replaces it do not have any connection.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Taber, Mike, ed. ''Under the Socialist Banner: Resolutions of the Second International, 1889–1912''. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021.</div>
+Dialectical negation fundamentally differs from metaphysical negation because it views development as a process of internal development. Dialectical negation does not view complete erasure or deletion of any former subject; instead, dialectical development sees the older subject, which is replaced (negated), as the premise or basis of existence for the new subject.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Tucker, Benjamin. ''Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One: A Fragmentary Exposition of Philosophical Anarchism''. 2nd ed. New York: Benj. R. Tucker, Publisher, 1897.</div>
+'''Comparison Examples:'''
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Varlin, Eugène. “Workers Societies.” Translated by Iain McKay. Anarchist Writers website, October 6, 2018. https://anarchism.pageabode.com/precursors-of-syndicalism.</div>
+{|
+| | '''Metaphysical Negation'''
+| '''Dialectical Negation'''
+|
+|-
+| | The earthquake destroyed the house.
+| The house was impacted by the external force of an earthquake, which caused it to collapse, due to internal characteristics of the house itself (which could not withstand the forces of the earthquake). The debris from the collapsed house will be cleared away, and will continue to develop. The space where the house stood will also continue to develop in some way, with the earthquake and the resulting collapse serving as the basis for this further development.
+|
+|-
+| | Water eroded the mountain.
+| The external force of water caused erosion by transferring material away from the mountain, due to the internal characteristics of the mountain’s composite material. The water, the material which was washed away, and the mountain will all continue to develop. The erosion process will be the basis for this further development.
+|
+|-
+| | The car has a new tire because it ran over a nail.
+| The external force of the nail caused the tire to permanently deflate, due to the internal characteristics of the tire, which could not withstand running over a nail. This served as the basis for further development: the old tire was removed and will be disposed of, which will serve as the basis for further development (i.e., the tire may be recycled or sent to a landfill); the removal of the tire serves as the basis for the further development of a new tire being installed.
+|
+|-
+| | When you add water, sunlight, and nutrition to a seed, it will grow into a plant.
+| The seed went through a process of negation as a sprout grew, through various stages of development, into a plant, facilitated by outside forces (such as water, nutrition, sunlight, etc. — the seed would not grow in isolation) as well as the internal characteristics of the seed itself; the seed served as the basis of the sprout’s development. The sprout then served as the basis for the growth of a seedling, and the seedling served as the basis for the growth of a fully grown plant. All of this development was driven by negation processes as quantity shifts gradually led to quality shifts through those various stages of development.
+|
+|}
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Voline. “Synthesis (Anarchist).” In ''The Anarchist Encyclopedia Abridged'', edited by Mitchell Abidor, 197–205. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019.</div>
+As you can see from the examples above, the metaphysical perspective focuses on external forces affecting a given subject and views every development process as terminal, with a beginning, middle, and end. The metaphysical perspective thus views negation as a termination of the subject (and, by extension, of development).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Unknown Revolution 1917–1921''.'' ''Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2019.</div>
+Materialist dialectics, on the other hand, views development as a continuous and never-ending process of mutual impact, negation, and further negation of each negation. A comprehensive and historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116] must thus be sought to fully comprehend development and negation processeses.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Warren, Josiah. ''The Practical Anarchist: Writings of Josiah Warren''. Edited by Crispin Sartwell. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.</div>
+Dialectical negation has two basic characteristics: ''objectivity'' and ''inheritance''.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Wilson, Charlotte. ''Anarchist Essays''. Edited by Nicolas Walter. London: Freedom Press, 2000.</div>
+Dialectical negation is ''objective'' because negation arises from contradictions which exist between two opposite sides. These opposing sides may exist within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, but the opposing sides are still, by definition, externally opposed to one another from the perspective of either side.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Winstanley, Gerrard. “''The Law of Freedom” and Other Writings''. Edited by Christopher Hill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Witkop-Rocker, Milly. “What Does the Syndicalist Women’s Union Want?” Translated by Jesse Cohn. Anarchist Library website, n.d. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/milly-witkop-rocker-what-does-the-syndicalist-women-s-union-want.</div>
+==== Annotation 197 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Yuzuru, Kubo. “On Class Struggle and the Daily Struggle (1928).” In ''Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Idea''s, Vol. 1, ''From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)'', edited by Robert Graham, 379–81. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005.</div>
+Though any given negation may be viewed as terminal from a certain perspective, materialist dialectics is most concerned with processes of development wherein the end of one stage of development creates the conditions for further development [see Annotation 117, p. 119].
-<div style="text-align:center;">'''Secondary Sources'''</div>
+Therefore, every development is simultaneously an ''internal'' and an ''external process,'' depending on perspective. Development processes may, from certain perspectives, be seen to take place ''within'' a subject or ''between'' two subjects, but they are always ''external'' (and, therefore, objective — see Annotation 108, p. 112) from the perspective of either opposing side while simultaneously ''internal'' to the relationship.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Ackelsberg, Martha. ''Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.</div>
+For example: The relationship between a husband and wife may be seen as an ''internal process of development'' of “the marriage” from the perspective of a marriage counselor. However, from their own perspectives, each “opposing side” (i.e., the husband and the wife) see one another as external to each other.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Adams, Matthew S. ''Kropotkin, Read, and the Intellectual History of British Anarchism: Between Reason and Romanticism''. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.</div>
+Therefore, the development of a marriage may be seen as an internal process, but the mutual impacts and negations which occur within the relationship are objective and external forces from the perspective of either opposing side.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Adams, Matthew S., and Ruth Kinna, eds. ''Anarchism, 1914–18: Internationalism, Anti-Militarism and War''. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.</div>
+This is important because it means that all development and all negation are essentially objective processes; therefore no entity has complete, omniscient control over any development process. We must, therefore, understand the nature of development and negation in order to be able to properly plan and affect change in our world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Anderson, Benedict. ''The Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anti-Colonial Imagination''. London: Verso, 2013.</div>
+Dialectical negation is, therefore, the result of the process of resolving inevitable contradictions within a subject [i.e., a relationship] itself. Dialectical negation allows for the old to be replaced by the new, thereby creating trends of development. Therefore, dialectical negation is also self-negation.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Archer, Julian P. W. ''The First International in France, 1864–1872: Its Origins, Theories, and Impact''. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Arshinov, Peter. ''History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918–1921''. London: Freedom Press, 2005.</div>
+==== Annotation 198 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Avrich, Paul. ''An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre''. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2018.</div>
+To reiterate: from the perspective of either opposing side, development is an ''external, objective'' process. From the perspective of the contradictory ''relationship'', processes of development are ''internal'' processes of ''self-negation''. Thus, dialectical negation is both an objective process which no entity can completely control, while, simultaneously, an internal process of self-negation and self-development.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Anarchist Portraits''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.</div>
+If two nations go to war, either nation may view the war as an objective, external development process, but from a wider perspective, the war is an internal development process of the diplomatic relationship between the two warring nations. This is drastically different from the metaphysical perspective, which views any negation process as a purely external process of development wherein one subject is permanently deleted from existence, then replaced by another subject [see Annotation 196, p. 188]. From the metaphysical perspective, a war is simply a conflict between two distinct and separate nations, and the conclusion of the war is a terminal negation which ends development of the war. From the materialist dialectical perspective, on the other hand, the end of the war would be seen as the basis of future development of the relationship between the two formerly warring nations.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Haymarket Tragedy''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.</div>
+Dialectical negation also has an ''inheritance'' characteristic: when one opposing side negates another, the remaining side inherits factors from the negated side which are suitable with present conditions.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.</div>
+==== Annotation 199 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Russian Anarchists''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005.</div>
+Every negation process arises from contradictions between two opposing sides. Within any such negation process, we can think of one side as the “negator” and the other side as the “negated.” Negation, like all relational processes, leads to mutual impact between both sides [see Annotation 136, p. 138]. Therefore, the negated will impact the negator; in other words, the negated side will be somehow ''reflected'' in the negator [see Annotation 68, p. 65]. This means that the negator will inherit and carry forward certain attributes, factors, and characteristics which it receives from the negated side.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Avrich, Paul, and Karen Avrich. ''Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.</div>
+Again, consider a war between two nations. Even if one nation completely conquers and subjugates the other in total victory, the victorious nation will still inherit certain factors from the defeated nation. Which factors are inherited will depend on the conditions. The victorious nation may pick up some cultural aspects from the defeated nation, such as cuisine, fashion, etc., they may incorporate tactics and strategies which they observed the defeated enemy using on the battlefield, and so on. The point is that the victorious nation will be impacted in some way by the defeated nation.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Baker, Zoe. “Anarchism and Democracy.” Anarchopac.com, April 15, 2022. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-baker-anarchism-and-democracy. </div>
+The factors which are adopted will be ''suitable with the present conditions''. Take, for example, a car breaking down due to engine failure. This can be seen as an opposing relationship between the car itself and the car’s owner. If the present conditions are suitable [i.e., the owner has the funds and resources available, and the desire to repair the car], then the car may be repaired and continue operating for years to come. If, on the other hand, conditions aren’t suitable [i.e., the owner does not have the funds or resources or the owner no longer wants the car], then the car may be sent to the scrapyard.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Bakunin was a Racist.” Anarchopac.com, October 31, 2021. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-baker-bakunin-was-a-racist. </div>
+As another example, if a fox eats a rabbit, it will inherit certain characteristics from the rabbit. It will inherit nutrition from the rabbit’s body. It may also inherit other characteristics, such as a disease the rabbit was carrying, if the conditions of the fox’s biological composition are suitable [i.e., if the disease can be transferred from the rabbit to the fox].
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Bantman, Constance. “From Trade Unionism to Syndicalisme Révolutionnaire to Syndicalism: The British Origins of French Syndicalism.” In Berry and Bantman, eds., ''New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism'', 127–40.</div>
+Dialectical negation is not a complete negation [i.e., deletion] of the old. Rather, dialectical negation is a continuity of growth in which the old develops into the new. In processes of dialectical negation, “the new” forms and develops on its own [see Annotation 62, p. 59], through the process of filtering out unsuitable factors, while retaining suitable content. Vladimir Lenin described dialectical negation as:
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The French Anarchists in London, 1880–1914: Exile and Transnationalism in the First Globalisation''. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013.</div>
+“Not empty negation, not futile negation, not skeptical negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and essential in dialectics — which undoubtedly contains the element of negation and indeed as its most important element — no, but negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development, retaining the positive, i.e., without any vacillations, without any eclecticism.”<ref>''Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Militant Go-between: Émile Pouget’s Transnational Propaganda (1880–1914).” ''Labour History Review'' 74, no. 3 (2009): 274–87.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Bantman, Constance, and Bert Altena, eds. ''Reassessing the Transnational Turn: Scales of Analysis in Anarchist and Syndicalist Studies''. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017.</div>
+==== Annotation 200 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Barton, Mary S. “The Global War on Anarchism: The United States and International Anarchist Terrorism, 1898–1904.” ''Diplomatic History'' 39, no. 2 (2015): 303–30.</div>
+The passage from Lenin above comes from Clemence Dutt’s popular English translation of one of Lenin’s notebooks. Below is our translation from the Vietnamese version of this text from the original text of this book, which we hope might be somewhat easier to understand:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Beaney, Michael. “Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy: The Development of the Idea of Rational Reconstruction.” In ''The Historical Turn in Analytic Philosophy'', edited by Erich H. Reck, 231–60. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Dialectical negation is not empty negation, it’s not negation without any thoughts, it’s not skeptical negation, it’s not hesitation. Skepticism is not a feature of the essence of the dialectic — of course, dialectics include the negative, it even plays as one of the important factors of a given subject — no, it is negation as the moment of development. Dialectical negation retains the positive, meaning there is no hesitation, there is no eclecticism.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Beer, Max. ''A History of British Socialism'', Vol. 2. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1921.</div>
+In order to understand what Lenin is saying here, we should first understand what Lenin is responding to. The above notes are referring to the chapter titled “The Absolute Ideal” within Hegel’s ''Science of Logic [see note at the end of this Annotation]''. In this chapter, Hegel recounts various critiques of dialectics and counters them.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Bernecker, Walther L. “The Strategies of ‘Direct Action’ and Violence in Spanish Anarchism.” In ''Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe'', edited by Wolfgang J Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld, 88–111. London: The Macmillan Press, 1982.</div>
+''Skepticism'', here, refers to the tendency to address all human knowledge with doubt.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Berry, Christopher J. ''The Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment''. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997.</div>
+Philosophical skepticism never moves past two questions: 1. “Is this knowledge true?” 2. “Will human beings ever obtain true knowledge?” Skeptics of this nature engage in a sort of metaphysical inquisition in which every thesis that is ever encountered is immediately and utterly refuted and thus “negated” in the metaphysical sense of termination [see Annotation 196, p. 188].
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Berry, David. ''A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917 to 1945''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009.</div>
+''Eclecticism'' refers to philosophical and ideological conceptions which draw from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas in an unsystematic manner. Lenin contends that dialectical negation is non-eclecticist because it rises above mere rhetorical combativeness and “total negation.” [This concept is explained more below within this annotation.]
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Berry, David, and Constance Bantman, eds. ''New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National and the Transnational''. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010.</div>
+With all this in mind, we see that Lenin is refuting the notion that dialectics are and can only be ''negative'' in nature. The metaphysical-skeptic conception of dialectics holds that negation takes the form of rhetorical arguing and refutation, in which one idea is presented, and a second idea is offered to counter the first idea, which completely and totally negates the first idea. According to this argument, dialectics is, therefore, a ''totally negative process''.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Berthier, René. ''Social Democracy and Anarchism in the International Workers’ Association, 1864–1877''. London: Anarres Editions, 2015.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-71.png|''A common misperception of dialectical development is that it is “fully negative,” insomuch as the initial thesis (initial subject) is completely negated by the antithesis (impacting subject). In fact, characteristics from both the thesis and antithesis are carried forward into the synthesis.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Boehm, Christopher. ''Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.</div>
+In the chapter from ''Science of Logic'' which Lenin is responding to in the referenced text, Hegel is arguing that the conception of dialectics as ''only negative'' — i.e., a system of thinking in which counter-arguments are presented to completely negate initial arguments — is inaccurate. Hegel explains that when one opposing side negates another, it thereafter “contains in general the determination of the first [opposing side] within itself.” In other words, after one opposing side negates another, it retains features and aspects from the opposing side which was negated. Lenin found this particular point to be so important that he wrote “this is very important for understanding dialectics” in the margin of his notebook.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Boggs, Carl. “Marxism, Prefigurative Communism and the Problem of Workers’ Control.” ''Radical America'' 11 (1977): 99–122.</div>
+The reason both Hegel and Lenin found this idea, that the “negator” contains elements of the “negated” after negation [see Annotation 231, p. 227], is that this counters the accusation that dialectics are “only negative.” This is why Lenin’s notes highlight the importance of the negator “retaining the positive” after negation. Lenin is pointing out the importance of the retention of features of the negated in the negator because it is this retention which prevents dialectical development from becoming a purely negative process.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Bookchin, Murray. ''The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years, 1868–1936''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 1998.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-72.png|''In materialist dialectics, it is understood that negation is a process of retention: characteristics from both the thesis (initial subject) and antithesis (impacting subject) are retained in the resulting synthesis'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Breines, Wini. “Community and Organization: The New Left and Michels’ ‘Iron Law.’” ''Social Problems'' 27, no. 4 (1980): 419–29.</div>
+We must also understand what Lenin means when he refers to “skepticism” in his notes. Lenin, here, is referring to the philosophical view that we can never know whether or not our beliefs are true. This belief was popularly known as Machism, or Empirio-Criticism, in Lenin’s time (see Annotation 32, p. 27).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Brinton, Maurice. “The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control, 1917–1921: The State and Counter-Revolution.” In ''For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton'', edited by David Goodway, 293–378. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004.</div>
+A common critique of dialectics is that it is an inherently skeptical system of thought, since dialectics is seen as a process of presenting counter-arguments to suppositional arguments. Lenin, in his notes, presents the idea that such skepticism is “not a feature of dialectics” precisely because nothing is ever completely, totally, and entirely negated. In other words, the accusation that dialectical analysis is essentially skeptical is rooted in the mistaken notion that one opposing side (i.e., a counter-argument) ''completely negates'' the original supposition. In fact, according to materialist dialectics, the negator ''always'' retains features and aspects from the negated side, which counters this critique. Thus, dialectical development, which occurs through dialectical negation, is a process of forward motion — not a process of “vacillating” back and forth from one position to another — and there is no skeptical “hesitation” preventing forward progress.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Buttà, Fausto. ''Living Like Nomads: The Milanese Anarchist Movement Before Fascism''. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.</div>
+This same idea (that the negator retains features from the negated) also counters another common critique of materialist dialectics: that dialectical analysis is simply a system of rhetorical sophistry [see Annotation 36, p. 33] and eclecticism.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Cahm, Caroline. ''Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, 1872–1886''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.</div>
+''Eclecticism'' is a conceptual approach that is completely unsystematic, drawing from a variety of theories, styles, and ideas without any cohesive and all-encompassing philosophical framework.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Campbell, Al, and Mehmet Ufuk Tutan. “Human Development and Socialist Institutional Transformation: Continual Incremental Changes and Radical Breaks.” ''Studies in Political Economy'' 82, no. 1 (2008): 153–70.</div>
+Some critics claim that dialectics must be eclecticist and sophistic in nature. These critics claim that dialectics is simply rhetorical disputation in which any given supposition is counter-argued, and that this counter-argument is negation. But materialist dialectics defines negation as one contradicting side overtaking the other while retaining traces and characteristics from the negated side — it is in no way simply an act of rhetorical dispute or refutation.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Cappelletti, Ángel J. ''Anarchism in Latin America''. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.</div>
+In summary, materialist dialectics upholds that nothing is ever completely and utterly deleted or erased from existence through negation. Instead, any time one opposing side negates another, aspects of the negated side are ''inherited'' by the negating side.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Carlson, Andrew R. ''Anarchism in Germany'', Vol. 1, ''The Early Movement''. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1972.</div>
+''Note:'' For reference, here is Hegel’s passage which Lenin is referring to from ''Science and Logic'' in the cited notes above:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Carr, E. H. ''Michael Bakunin''. London: The Macmillan Press, 1975.</div>
+<blockquote>
+...a universal first, considered in and for itself, shows itself to be the other of itself. Taken quite generally, this determination can be taken to mean that what is at first immediate now appears as mediated, related to an other, or that the universal appears as a particular. Hence the second term that has thereby come into being is the negative of the first, and if we anticipate the subsequent progress, the first negative. The immediate, from this negative side, has been extinguished in the other, but the other is essentially not the empty negative, the nothing, that is taken to be the usual result of dialectic; rather is it the other of the first, the negative of the immediate; it is therefore determined as the mediated — contains in general the determination of the first within itself. Consequently the first is essentially preserved and retained even in the other. To hold fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition; also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the absolute truth and necessity of this requirement, while with regard to the examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Casas, Juan Gómez. ''Anarchist Organisation: The History of the F.A.I''. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1986.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Castleton, Edward. “The Many Revolutions of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.” In ''The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought'', edited by Douglas Moggach and Gareth Stedman Jones, 39–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The Origins of ‘Collectivism’: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s Contested Legacy and the Debate About Property in the International Workingmen’s Association and the League of Peace and Freedom.” ''Global Intellectual History'' 2, no. 2 (2017): 169–95.</div>
+Therefore, dialectical negation is the inevitable tendency of progression of the inner relationship between the old and the new. It is the self-driving assertive force of all motion and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Christie, Stuart. ''We, the Anarchists! A Study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927–1937''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2008.</div>
+==== b. Negation of Negation ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Clark, Martin. ''The Italian Risorgimento''. 2nd ed. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2009.</div>
+In the perpetual movement of the material world, dialectical negation is an inexhaustible process. It creates a development tendency of things from lower level to higher level, taking place in a cyclical manner in the form of a “spiral.”
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Clastres, Pierre. ''Archeology of Violence''. New York: Semiotext(e), 1994.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology''. New York: Zone Books, 1989.</div>
+==== Annotation 201 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Clutterbuck, Lindsay. “The Progenitors of Terrorism: Russian Revolutionaries or Extreme Irish Republicans?” ''Terrorism and Political Violence'' 16, no. 1 (2004): 154–81.</div>
+The concept of the “spiral” form of development in dialectical materialist philosophy stands in contrast to the metaphysical conception of “linear” development.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Cole, G. D. H. ''A History of Socialist Thought'', Vol. 2, ''Marxism and Anarchism, 1850–1890''. London: Macmillan, 1974.</div>
+==== Metaphysical Conception of Linear Development ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Cole, Peter, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer, eds. ''Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW''. London: Pluto Press, 2017.</div>
+The metaphysical viewpoint holds that development is more or less a straight line: as one subject is negated, it is replaced by another. This subject will then be negated by another, and so on, in what is essentially conceived of as a straight line of development [see Annotation 196, p. 188].
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Colins, Patricia, and Sirma Bilge. ''Intersectionality''.'' ''2nd edition.'' ''Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-73.png|''The metaphysical “line development” model sees an initial form as being “replaced” or entirely negated into a completely distinct entity.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Cornell, Andrew. ''Unruly Equality: US Anarchism in the 20th Century''. Oakland, CA: California University Press, 2016.</div>
+In the above example, metaphysical line development simply sees raw aluminum as being negated and “replaced” in the real world. Once the aluminum can is created, the “raw aluminum” as a metaphysical entity is considered no longer to exist. Likewise, when the soda can is transformed into recycled aluminum, the can is considered “replaced,” and is no longer considered to have a metaphysical existence.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Cox, Laurence, and Alf Gunvald Nilsen. ''We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism''. London: Pluto Press, 2014.</div>
+This conception of metaphysical line development directly contradicts the materialist dialectical concept of ''historical viewpoint'' [see Annotation 114, p. 116].
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Damier, Vadim. ''Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20th Century''. Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2009.</div>
+==== Dialectical Materialist Conception of Development ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Darlington, Ralph. ''Radical Unionism: The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Syndicalism''. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013.</div>
+The dialectical materialist conception of cyclical development stems from essential attributes of dialectical negation processes:
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Di Paola, Pietro. ''The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora, 1880–1917''. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.</div>
+. In every dialectical negation, the negating side inherits features and characteristics from the negated side.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Dobres, Marcia-Anne. “Digging up Gender in the Earliest Human Societies.” In ''A Companion to Gender History'', edited by Teresa A. Meade and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, 211–26. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.</div>
+. When the negating side is, itself, negated (i.e., ''negation of the negation''), the new negating side will retain features and aspects of the old negator.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Draper, Hal. ''The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” from Marx to Lenin''. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987.</div>
+. This development process will continue indefinitely, so that negation is not simply a straight line of complete negation, but rather takes the shape of a “spiral” of negations of negations which always inherit features from previous forms.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution'', Vol. 3, ''The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”'' New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986.</div>
+Note that this conception of development as a spiral is simply an abstraction to help understand the essential characteristics of dialectical development and to distinguish this form of development from metaphysical conceptions of “linear development.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution'', Vol. 4, ''Critique of Other Socialisms''. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990.</div>
+In the example below, we see a depiction of the spiral development of aluminum through various stages of development. After raw aluminum is mined from the Earth, it begins a repeating spiral development process of being refined into usable goods, then recycled into raw material.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Ealham, Chris. ''Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-74.png|''The “Spiral Development” model of materialist dialectics sees every stage of development as a higher form of the previous stage which carries forward characteristics from previous stages.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Living Anarchism: José Peirats and the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015.</div>
+The illustrated example on the previous page plots the spiral development of aluminum as it cycles between stages defined as raw materials and refined products. Another perspective might depict development differently. For example, if we are examining development in terms of external relations between aluminum other elements, the development pattern would look different. In reality, all subjects have countless internal and external relations and development processes which can be examined.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Eckhardt, Wolfgang. ''The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Working Men’s Association''. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016.</div>
+The “raw aluminum” stage of development pictured in the illustration is not truly the beginning of this development process; there were millions of years of development which occurred before it was first discovered by humans. Similarly, the landfill will not be the end of this development process; there will be continued development forever for as long as motion in the universe continues.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Enckell, Marianne. “Bakunin and the Jura Federation.” In ''Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth: The First International in Global Perspective'', edited by Fabrice Bensimon, Quentin Deluermoz, and Jeanne Moisand, 355–65. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2018.</div>
+This is a simplified and abstract model of development of aluminum. A more accurate representation might show any number of interim steps between each step depicted in the graphic above. For example: it must also be recognized that in reality the molecules of aluminum which the development process began with will be scattered and mixed with other subjects throughout the development process, and various other complexities exist in terms of the mutual impacts of internal and external relationships.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Esenwein, George Richard. ''Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868–1898''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.</div>
+Determining the amount of detail to include or exclude in materialist dialectical analysis is crucial: too much detail and analysis might become unwieldy; too little detail and analysis might become too abstract and idealized to be useful in the real world. So, the idea of development as a spiral should not be taken literally; it is simply a way of conceptualizing the differences between dialectical negation and development as opposed to “straight-line” development upheld by metaphysical conceptions of negation and development, always carrying forward traces of previous stages of development.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Evans, Danny. ''Revolution and the State: Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939''. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020.</div>
+In the chain of negations that make up the development processes of things, phenomena, and ideas, each dialectical negation creates the conditions and premises for subsequent developments. Through many iterations of negation, i.e., “negations of negations,” dialectical negation will inevitably lead to a ''forward tendency of motion''.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Fernández, Frank. ''Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement''. Tucson, AZ: See Sharp Press, 2001.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Ferretti, Federico. ''Anarchy and Geography: Reclus and Kropotkin in the UK''. London: Routledge, 2019.</div>
+==== Annotation 202 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Fleming, Marie. ''The Anarchist Way to Socialism: Élisée Reclus and Nineteenth-Century European Anarchism''. London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1979.</div>
+The ''forward tendency of motion'' describes the tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Frost, Ginger. “Love is Always Free: Anarchism, Free Unions and Utopianism in Edwardian England.” ''Anarchist Studies'' 17, no. 1 (2009): 73–94.</div>
+As a reminder, “lower level” and “higher level,” i.e., “less advanced” and “more advanced,” should not be taken to have any connotations of “good” and “bad,” nor of “desirable” and “undesirable,” nor even of “less complex” and “more complex.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Garner, Jason. ''Goals and Means: Anarchism, Syndicalism, and Internationalism in the Origins of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica''. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016.</div>
+Development from “lower levels” to “higher levels” is simply a shorthand for understanding the fact that development processes always move “forward,” that is to say, development can never happen in reverse, just as time itself can never be reversed. For example, society in Italy will never go back to the civilization of the Roman empire. It is conceivable that Italian society could develop to be ''more similar'' to Ancient Rome, but it would be impossible for Roman society to ever take on the ''exact characteristics'' of the Roman Empire ever again.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Geuss, Raymond. ''History and Illusion in Politics''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.</div>
+Cyclicality of development processes usually takes place in the form of a spiral, which is another result of “negation of negation.” Negations of negations lead to a development cycle in which things, phenomena, and ideas often undergo two fundamental negations carried through three basic forms. Through this negation pattern, basic features of the initial form are ultimately inherited by the “third form,” but at a higher level of development.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Morality, Culture and History: Essays on German Philosophy''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Gindin, Sam. “Socialism ‘With Sober Senses’: Developing Workers’ Capacities.” ''The Socialist Register'' 34 (1998): 75–99.</div>
+==== Annotation 203 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Goodstein, Phil H. ''The Theory of the General Strike from the French Revolution to Poland''. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984.</div>
+Dialectical development tends to take place through a cyclical pattern in which development is carried through a triad of forms which develop through a pair of dialectical negation processes:
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Goyens, Tom. ''Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880–1914''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-75.png|''The cyclical pattern of development is an abstract pattern of dialectical change over time.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Johann Most and the German Anarchists.” In ''Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab’s Saloon to Occupy Wall Street'', edited by Tom Goyens, 12–32. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017.</div>
+The graphic above illustrates this cyclical pattern, in which:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. ''The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity''. London: Allen Lane, 2021.</div>
+. The initial form (the Assertion) begins the pattern. Contradiction within the initial subject or between it and another subject leads to the first negation.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Graham, Robert. ''We Do Not Fear Anarchy, We Invoke It: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015.</div>
+. The first negation leads to a second form (the Negation). This second form inherits some features or characteristics from the initial form.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Guglielmo, Jennifer. ''Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880–1945''. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010.</div>
+. The second form then encounters opposition, which leads to a second negation.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Guillamón, Agustín. ''Ready for Revolution: The CNT Defense Committees in Barcelona, 1933–1938''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014.</div>
+. The second negation leads to a third form (Unity), which retains the features or characteristics of the second form, but now more closely resembles the first, initial form, only at a higher level of development.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Gurney, John. ''Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger’s Life and Legacy''. London: Pluto Press, 2013.</div>
+Imagine a new car (initial form) crashes into another car (contradicting subject). The new car is dialectically developed (negated) into a second form: a wrecked car. This second form is now contradicted by a new subject — a recycling center — and negated into a third form: new steel. The third form possesses characteristics of the first form, but in a more developed form: after being recycled, the resulting steel it is newly made, in good condition for sale, etc., similarly to the first form of the new car.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Hart, John M. ''Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860–1931''. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-76.png|''In this example, a new car goes through a cyclical pattern of development in which the third form (new steel) possesses characteristics of the first form (a new car).'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Hatab, Lawrence J. ''Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’: An Introduction''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.</div>
+Keep in mind that this is relative to one’s perspective. If you consider the wrecked car to be the first form, then the steel would be the second form. The new steel will then need to be developed in some way (melted, hammered, cut, etc.) in order to be processed into some new product. From this perspective, the third form (i.e., molten steel) will have characteristics of the first form (i.e.: “unrefined”).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Haupt, Georges. ''Aspects of International Socialism, 1871–1914''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.</div>
+According to Marx and Engels, the development of capitalism from feudalism assumed this cyclical pattern:
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Hirsch, Steven, and Lucien van der Walt, eds. ''Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution''. Leiden, NL: Brill, 2010.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-77.png|''The development of class structure is a dialectical process in which different classes synthesize to form the next era of class society. For example, the capitalist class emerged primarily as a synthesis of the feudal lords and peasants of the medieval era.'']]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Hobsbawm, Eric. ''Revolutionaries''. London: Phoenix, 1994.</div>
+Note that this is only an abstract description of a tendency of dialectical development; exceptions can and do occur. Presumably, the development of communism as a stateless, classless society would constitute the negation of the “Class Society” form of human civilization. The Post-Class stage of development which follows would, itself, be a higher form — a unity — of pre-class human civilization, carrying forward traces from the Class Society stage of development.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Hoyt, Andrew Douglas. “And They Called Them ‘Galleanisti’: The Rise of the ''Cronca Sovversiva'' and the Formation of America’s Most Infamous Anarchist Faction (1895–1912).” PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2018.</div>
+Also note that determining which form is the “first” or “initial” pattern is entirely relative. Using the example of the development of class society: from one perspective, the Patricians may be seen as the initial form, but from another perspective the Plebeians might be considered the initial form. This depends entirely on the viewpoint and purpose of analysis. These conceptions of “spirals of development” and the pattern of “three forms through two negations” are, in essence, models which describe general tendencies and patterns of development and which help us understand the basic characteristics of dialectical negation and development.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Hunt, Richard N. ''The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels'', Vol. 1, ''Marxism and Totalitarian Democracy, 1818–1850''. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974.</div>
+Lenin describes this cycle of dialectical development as going “[f]rom assertion to negation — from negation to ‘unity’ with the asserted — without this, dialectics becomes empty negation, a game, skepsis [examination, observation, consideration].”<ref>''Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels'', Vol. 2, ''Classical Marxism, 1850–1895''. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Institute for Anarchist Studies, ''Perspectives on Anarchist Theory,'' no. 29,'' Anarcha-Feminisms'' (2016).</div>
+==== Annotation 204 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Jennings, Jeremy. ''Syndicalism in France: A Study of Ideas''. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1990.</div>
+Here, “assertion” simply refers to the initial form of a dialectical development cycle. The negation is the second form, and the “unity” is the third form, which resembles the first form (the assertion) at a higher stage of development. So, in this quotation, Lenin is simply recounting the “three steps” of a typical dialectical development cycle, and indicating that it is necessary to recognize this process, which is rooted in the inheritance of properties of prior forms through development into ever-higher forms, to prevent dialectics from becoming “empty negation,” or otherwise falling prey to the critiques that dialectics are purely negative, skeptical, and eclectic in nature [see Annotation 200, p. 192 and Annotation 36, p. 33].
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Jensen, Richard Bach. ''The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878–1934''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.</div>
+The law of negation of negation generalizes the pervasive nature of development: dialectical development does not take the form of a straight path, but rather in the form of a spiral path. Lenin summarised that this path is “[a] development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis (‘the negation of the negation’), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line…”<ref>''Karl Marx'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref> The tendency to develop in a spiral curve demonstrates the dialectical nature of development; i.e., the cycle of inheritance, repetition, and progression. Each new round of the spiral appears to be repeating, but at a higher level. The continuation of the loops in a spiral reflects an endless progression from lower levels to higher levels of things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">John, Kenneth. “Anti-Parliamentary Passage: South Wales and the Internationalism of Sam Mainwaring (1841–1907).” PhD diss., University of Greenwich, 2001.</div>
+In short, the law of negation of negation in materialist dialectics reflects the dialectical relationship between the negative and the assertion [i.e., the second and first forms of a dialectical development cycle; see Annotation 203, p. 198] in the development process of things, phenomena and ideas. Dialectical development is driven by dialectical negation; in the development of all things, phenomena, and ideas, the new is the result of inheriting characteristics from prior forms. This process of inheritance, repetition, and progression through negation leads to cyclical development. Engels wrote: “what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general — and for this reason extremely far-reaching and important — law of development of nature, history, and thought.”<ref>''Anti-Dühring'', Friedrich Engels, 1878.</ref>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Joll, James. ''The Anarchists''. London: Methuen & Co, 1969.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Kaplan, Temma. ''Anarchists of Andalusia, 1868–1903''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.</div>
+==== Annotation 205 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Kelly, Robert L. ''The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum''. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.</div>
+In the same text quoted above, Engels elaborates that dialectical development is composed of “processes which in their nature are antagonistic, contain a contradiction; transformation of one extreme into its opposite; and finally, as the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the negation.”
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham. ''The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.</div>
+==== c. Meaning of the Methodology ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Kinna, Ruth. “Anarchism and Feminism” In ''Brill’s Companion to Anarchist Philosophy'', edited by Nathan Jun, 253–84. Leiden, NL: Brill Academic Publishers, 2017.</div>
+The law of negation of negation is the basis for correct perception of the tendency of motion and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Development and motion processes do not take place in a straight line; rather, it is a winding, complex road, consisting of many stages, and each process can be broken down into many different sub-processes. However, it must be understood that this complexity of development is only the manifestation of the general tendency to move forward [see Annotation 118, p. 122]. It is important to understand the nature of motion and development so that we can systematically change the world according to our revolutionary viewpoint. In order to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, we need to know their characteristics, nature, and relationships so that we can influence their motion and development in the direction that suits our purposes. We must comprehend and leverage the tendency of forward movement — in accordance with a scientific and revolutionary worldview — in order to effectively and systematically change the world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition''. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Kinna, Ruth, and Alex Prichard. “Anarchism and Non-Domination.” ''Journal of Political Ideologies'' 24, no. 3 (2019): 221–40.</div>
+==== Annotation 206 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Kissack, Terence. ''Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895–1917''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2008.</div>
+Understanding the forward tendency of motion is vital for cultivating a worldview which is both ''scientific'' and ''revolutionary.'' Such a worldview is ''scientific'' because it recognizes the material reality that all things, phenomena, and ideas are constantly undergoing change and development. Nothing in our universe is static, and all things are connected and defined by internal and external relationships (which are also constantly developing). Furthermore, this development progresses with a ''forward tendency'', meaning that no process can be completely “reversed.” For example, you can clean rust from a car [which would be forward progress], but you can’t reverse the temporal process of rust.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Kissin, S. F. ''War and the Marxists: Socialist Theory and Practice in Capitalist Wars'','' ''Vol. 1,'' 1848–1918''. London: Routledge, 2019.</div>
+Once we understand that all things, phenomena, and ideas in our universe are constantly developing and moving forward, we can then begin to find ways to ''impact'' motion and development systematically to consciously change the world around us. This is the foundation of a ''revolutionary'' worldview, since revolutionary change requires us to leverage and influence development processes to suit our needs and revolutionary ambitions. Thus, materialist dialectics are an applied system of observation and practice through which we seek to understand development processes and consciously impact them to suit our needs.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Kuper, Adam. ''The Reinvention of Primitive Society: Transformations of a Myth''. London: Routledge, 2005.</div>
+According to the rule of negation of negation, in the objective world, the new must inevitably come to replace the old. In nature, the new develops according to objective laws. In social life, new things arise from the purposeful, self-conscious, and creative actions of human beings. Therefore, it is necessary to leverage ''subjective factors'' as we seek to consciously impact the development of things, phenomena, and ideas.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Laursen, Ole Birk. “‘Anarchism, Pure and Simple’: M. P. T. Acharya, Anti-Colonialism and the International Anarchist Movement.” ''Postcolonial Studies'' 23, no. 2 (2020): 241–55.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Lehning, Arthur. “Bakunin’s Conception of Revolutionary Organisations and Their Role: A Study of His ‘Secret Societies.’” In ''Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr'', edited by Chimen Abramsky, 57–81. London: The Macmillan Press, 1974.</div>
+==== Annotation 207 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''From Buonarroti to Bakunin: Studies in International Socialism''. Leiden, NL: E. J. Brill, 1970.</div>
+Subjective factors are factors which we, as a subject, are capable of impacting. This may seem confusing, since we have previously established that all external things, phenomena, and ideas have ''objective'' relationships with all other things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112], meaning that any given subject is ''external'' to every other subject, and thus no subject can directly and completely control the motion and development of any other subject.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Leier, Mark. ''Bakunin: The Creative Passion—A Biography''. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009.</div>
+However, from the perspective of any given individual, there are certain things, phenomena, and ideas [as well as processes of motion and development] which we can ''impact''. For example, if I see an apple on a table, the apple is ''objective'' to me. I can’t simply will the apple to move with my consciousness alone. However, I can ''impact'' the apple through conscious activity — I can consciously will my hand to pick up the apple and move it to another location.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Leopold, David. “A Solitary Life.” In ''Max Stirner'', edited by Saul Newman, 21–41. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.</div>
+Thus, factors which an individual can consciously impact are ''subjective factors''. As revolutionists, we must focus on subjective factors. In other words, we must concentrate on ''that which we are capable of changing'', since our purpose is to change the world. Focusing on factors which we can’t impact is a waste of time; we must simply determine what ''can be changed'' and then determine the most efficient and effective ways of impacting development processes and changing the world.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Levy, Carl. ''Gramsci and the Anarchists''. Oxford: Berg, 1999.</div>
+As revolutionists, we must have faith that we can introduce the “new,” faith in the success of the “new,” we must support the “new,” and fight for the victory of the “new.” Therefore, it is necessary to overcome conservative, stagnant, and dogmatic thoughts which restrain the development of the “new” and resist the law of negation of negation.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Linse, Ulrich. “‘Propaganda by Deed’ and ‘Direct Action’: Two Concepts of Anarchist Violence.” In ''Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe'', edited by Wolfgang J Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld, 201–29. London: The Macmillan Press, 1982.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Lipotkin, Lazar. ''The Russian Anarchist Movement in North America''. Edmonton, AB: Black Cat Press, 2019.</div>
+==== Annotation 208 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Marshall, Peter. ''Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism''. London: Harper Perennial, 2008.</div>
+Change is inevitable. All things, phenomena, and ideas undergo processes of motion and development. Any philosophy, ideology, or strategy which attempts to restrain motion and development is doomed to failure because change can neither be halted nor restrained. Thus, our strategies and actions must align with the material reality that change is inevitable, and we must seek to change the world by ''impacting'' processes of development and motion rather than attempting to reverse, restrain, or halt such processes.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Martin, James J. ''Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908''. Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1970.</div>
+Ideologies which erroneously strive to restrict change and development include ''rigidity'' (see Annotation 222, p. 218) and ''conservativism'' (see Annotation 236, p. 233).
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">McDermott, Kevin, and Jeremy Agnew ''The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to ''Stalin. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1996.</div>
+In the process of negating the old we must leverage the principle of inheritance with discretion: we must encourage the inheritance of factors that are beneficial to our goals as we simultaneously attempt to filter out, overcome, and reform factors which would negatively impact our goals.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">McKay, Iain. “Communism and Syndicalism.” Anarchist Writers website, May 25, 2012. http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/communism-syndicalism.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “The State and Revolution: Theory and Practice.” In ''Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution'', edited by Friends of Aron Baron, 61–117. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.</div>
+==== Annotation 209 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Meek, Ronald L. ''Smith, Marx, and After: Ten Essays in the Development of Economic Thought''. Dordrecht, NL: Springer, 1977.</div>
+If we understand the principle of inheritance, we can impact inheritance processes which derive from negation. For example, when repairing a car, we can seek out parts of the car which do not function properly or which do not suit the use-case of the car and add or replace parts which are more suitable.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Merriman, John. ''The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.</div>
+In the same way, we can impact inheritence processes in our revolutionary political activities. We can seek to inherit characteristics from previous stages of development of our political organizations, social institutions, culture, etc., while simultaneously seeking to prevent the inheritence of traits and characteristics which are unsuitable for our revolutionary purposes. Over time, we can attempt to impact the inheritance of traits and aspects which are more conducive to our purposes while limiting and filtering out traits and aspects which are hindrances.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.</div>
+In an article titled “New Life” written in 1947, Ho Chi Minh wrote about the dialectical relationship between the new and the old in building a new society, writing:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Messer-Kruse, Timothy. ''The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.</div>
+<blockquote>
+Not everything old must be abandoned. We do not have to reinvent everything. What is old but bad must be abandoned. What is old but troublesome must be corrected appropriately. What is old but good must be further developed. What is new but good must be done.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Miller, David. ''Anarchism''. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1984.</div>
+... Growing up in the old society, we all carry within us more-or-less bad traces of the old society in terms of our ideas and habits... Habits are hard to change. That which is good and new is likely to be considered bad by the people because it is strange to them. On the contrary, that which is evil yet familiar is easily mistaken as normal and acceptable.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Miller, Martin A. ''Kropotkin''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.</div>
+Ho Chi Minh understood the principles of development very well, as well as the difficulties we will face as revolutionaries as we try to change ourselves and our society. We must strive to develop a similar understanding as we move forward and attempt to affect the development of our world through practice and struggle.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Mintz, Frank. ''Anarchism and Workers’ Self-Management in Revolutionary Spain''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2013.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Mintz, Jerome R. ''The Anarchists of Casas Viejas''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.</div>
+= Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism =
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Moss, Bernard H. ''The Origins of the French Labor Movement, 1930–1914: The Socialism of Skilled Workers''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.</div>
+In Marxism, epistemological reasoning (or epistemology) is the foundation of dialectics. Dialectical materialist epistemology is a theory of applying human cognitive ability to the objective world through practical activities. It explains the nature, path and general laws of the human process of perceiving truth and objective reality to serve human practical activities.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Nelles, Dieter. “Anarchosyndicalism and the Sexual Reform Movement in the Weimar Republic.” Paper Presented at the Free Love and Labour Movement Workshop at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 2000. https://www.academia.edu/23692251/Anarchosyndicalism_and_the_Sexual_Reform_Movement_in_the_Weimar_Republic.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Nettlau, Max. ''A Short History of Anarchism''. Edited by Heiner M. Becker. London: Freedom Press, 1996.</div>
+==== Annotation 210 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Neville, Robert G. “The Courrières Colliery Disaster, 1906.” ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 13, no. 1 (1978): 33–52.</div>
+Epistemology is the theoretical study of knowledge. It also deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what is true?”
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Nicholas, Lucy. “Gender and Sexuality.” In ''The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism'', edited by Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams, 603–2. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.</div>
+Throughout history, philosophers have tried to determine the nature of truth and knowledge. In the era of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, there was an ongoing dispute between the materialists, who believed that truth could only be sought through sense experience of the material world, and the idealists, who believed that truth could only be sought through reasoning within the human mind.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Nightingale, John. “The Concept of Solidarity in Anarchist Thought.” PhD diss., Loughborough University, 2015.</div>
+Marx and Engels developed the philosophical system of dialectical materialism to resolve this dispute. Dialectical materialism upholds that the material and the ideal have a dialectical relationship with one another: the material ''determines'' the ideal, while the ideal ''impacts'' the material [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88].
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Papayanis, Nicholas. “Alphones Merrheim and the Strike of Hennebont: The Struggle for the Eight-Hour Day in France.” International Review of Social History 16, no. 2 (1971): 159–83.</div>
+However, it’s important to understand that Marx and Engels didn’t develop the system of dialectical materialism simply to understand the world. As Marx wrote in ''Theses on Feuerbach:''
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Alphonse Merrheim: The Emergence of Reformism in Revolutionary Syndicalism, 1871–1925''. Dordrecht, NL: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Paz, Abel. ''Durruti in the Spanish Revolution''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006.</div>
+So, Marxist dialectical materialist epistemology is developed specifically to enable human beings to not only perceive truth and objective reality, but to then be able to apply our conscious thought, through practical activity, in order to bring about change in the world.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Peirats, José. ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'', Vol. 1. Edited by Chris Ealham. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''What Is the C.N.T?'' London: Simian, 1974.</div>
+== 1. Praxis, Consciousness, and the Role of Praxis in Consciousness ==
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pelling, Henry. ''A History of British Trade Unionism''. 5th ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992.</div>
+=== a. Praxis and Basic Forms of Praxis ===
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pernicone, Nunzio. ''Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.</div>
+''Praxis'' includes all human material activities which have purpose and historical-social characteristics and which transform nature and society. Unlike other activities, praxis is activity in which humans attempt to materially impact the world to suit our purposes. Praxis activities define the nature of human beings and distinguish human beings from other animals. Praxis is objective activity, and praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pernicone, Nunzio, and Fraser M. Ottanelli. ''Assassins against the Old Order: Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.</div>
+<br />
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Persson, Lennart K. “Revolutionary Syndicalism in Sweden Before the Second World War.” In van der Linden and Thorpe, ''Revolutionary Syndicalism'', 81–99.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pinfari, Marco. “Exploring the Terrorist Nature of Political Assassinations: A Reinterpretation of the Orsini Attentat.” ''Terrorism and Political Violence'' 21, no. 4 (2009): 580–94.</div>
+==== Annotation 211 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pinsolle, Dominique. “Sabotage, the IWW, and Repression: How the American Reinterpretation of a French Concept Gave Rise to a New International Conception of Sabotage.” In Cole, Struthers, and Zimmer, ''Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW'', 44–58.</div>
+In English, the words “practice” and “praxis” are often distinguished from one another. “Practice” is often used to refer to human activity which provides more information about the world around us and improves our knowledge and understanding, whereas “praxis” often refers to conscious human activity which is intended to change the world in some manner. In their original German, Marx and Engels used the same German word — ''Praxis'' — to refer to both concepts. Similarly, in the original Vietnamese text of this book, the same word — ''thực tiễn'' — is used for both “practice” and “praxis.”
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pinta, Saku. “Towards a Libertarian Communism: A Conceptual History of the Intersections Between Anarchisms and Marxisms.” PhD diss., Loughborough University, 2013.</div>
+One reason that these concepts are so closely related is that all conscious activity serves both rolls by simultaneously telling us more about reality ''and'' consciously changing reality in some way. For example, by pushing a heavy stone, you may be able to move the stone a small amount — constituting praxis — while simultaneously learning how heavy the stone is and how difficult it is to move — constituting practice. The main point of distinction, therefore, is ''intention''. Virtually all conscious activity is practice, but only activity which has ''purpose'' and ''historical-social characteristics'' might be considered praxis:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Pomper, Philip. “Nechaev and Tsaricide: The Conspiracy within the Conspiracy.” ''The Russian Review'' 33, no. 2 (1974): 123–38.</div>
+''Purpose'' simply describes a goal or desired outcome; specifically: a desired change in nature or human society. Activities with ''historical-social characteristics'' are activities which contribute in some way to the development of human society.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Quail, John. ''The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of British Anarchists''. London: Granada Publishing Limited, 1978.</div>
+In this translation, we use “practice” and “praxis” interchangably to mean “conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics.” You are likely to find these words used differently (as described above, or in other ways) in other texts. Engels explains the importance of practice/praxis in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Raekstad, Paul. ''Karl Marx’s Realist Critique of Capitalism: Freedom, Alienation, and Socialism''. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we [use] these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Raekstad, Paul, and Sofa Saio Gradin. ''Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today''. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020.</div>
+Marx wrote in ''Theses on Feuerbach'' that “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice [German: ''revolutionäre Praxis''].” Engels further expounds upon this concept in ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'', writing:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Rapoport, David C. “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism.” In ''Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy'', edited by Audrey Cronin and James Ludes, 46–73. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004.</div>
+<blockquote>
+The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical fancies is practice [original German: Praxis], viz., experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian incomprehensible or ungraspable.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Rapp, John A. ''Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomy in Ancient and Modern China''. London: Continuum Books, 2012.</div>
+Praxis defines the nature of human beings because human beings are (to our present knowledge) the only beings which undertake actions with conscious awareness of our desired outcomes and comprehension of the historical development of our own society, which distinguishes human beings from all other animals. Praxis is ''objective'' activity, meaning that all praxis activities are performed in relation to external things, phenomena, and ideas [see Annotation 108, p. 112].
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Ravindranathan, T.R. ''Bakunin and the Italians''. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988.</div>
+Praxis has been constantly developed by humans through the ages, meaning that as we learn more about the nature of reality, of human society, and the laws of nature, we are able to develop our praxis to become more efficient and effective.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Rider, Nick. “The Practice of Direct Action: The Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931.” In ''For Anarchism: History, Theory and Practice'', edited by David Goodway, 79–105. London: Routledge, 1989.</div>
+Praxis activities are very diverse, manifesting with ever-increasing variety, but there are only three basic forms: material production activities, socio-political activities, and scientific experimental activities.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Ridley, F. F. ''Revolutionary Syndicalism in France: The Direct Action of Its Time''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.</div>
+''Material production activity'' is the first and most basic form of praxis. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Rocker, Rudolf. ''Pioneers of American Freedom: Origin of Liberal and Radical Thought in America''. Los Angeles: Rocker Publication Committee, 1949.</div>
+''Socio-political activity'' includes praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Ryley, Peter. ''Making Another World Possible: Anarchism, Anti-Capitalism and Ecology in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain''. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.</div>
+''Scientific experimental activity'' is a special form of praxis activity. This includes human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Schmidt, Michael, and Lucien van der Walt. ''Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Scott, James C. ''The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.</div>
+==== Annotation 212 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Senta, Antonio. ''Luigi Galleani: The Most Dangerous Anarchist in America''. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019.</div>
+The three basic forms of praxis activities listed above obviously do not include all forms of human activity, as praxis only includes activities which have ''purpose'' and ''historical-social characteristics''.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Seth, Ronald. ''The Russian Terrorists: The Story of the Narodniki''. London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1966.</div>
+''Material production activity'' has a very clear purpose: to improve the material conditions of an individual human being or a group of human beings. Material production activity has historical-social characteristics because developing material conditions for human beings leads directly to the development of human society. For example, as food production increases in terms of yield and efficiency, society can support a larger number of human beings and a wider range of human activities, which leads to the development of human society.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Short, K. R. M. ''The Dynamite War: Irish-American Bombs in Victorian Britain''. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1979.</div>
+''Socio-political activity'' has the purpose of promoting social development, which is obviously inherently historical-social in nature. An example of socio-political activity would include any sort of political campaign, liberation struggle, political revolutionary activity, etc.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Shpayer-Makov. Haia. “Anarchism in British Public Opinion, 1880–1914.” ''Victorian Studies'' 31, no. 4 (1988): 487–516.</div>
+''Scientific experimental activity'' has the purpose of expanding our understanding of nature and human society, which leads directly to historical-social development in a variety of ways. For example, improving our scientific understanding of medicine through scientific experimental activity leads to longer lives and improved quality of life. Improving our scientific understanding of chemistry through scientific experimental activity leads to all sorts of materials which improve the quality of life and enable human beings to solve a variety of social problems.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Skinner, Quentin. ''The Foundations of Modern Political Thought'', Vol. 1, ''The Renaissance''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.</div>
+In order to qualify as praxis activity, a given human activity must have a purpose and it must have historical-social characteristics. For instance, drawing is not always praxis in the sense of the word used in this text, but it would be praxis if it would qualify as material production activity (i.e., making art in order to sell, so as to make a living) or if the art is made with the intention of invoking social change.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Interpretation and the Understanding of Speech Acts.” In ''Visions of Politics'', Vol. 1,'' Regarding Method'', 103–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.</div>
+Every basic praxis activity form has an important function, and these functions are not interchangeable with each other. However, they have close relationships with each other and different praxis activity forms often interact with each other. In these relationships, material production is the most important form of praxis activity, playing a decisive role in determining other praxis activities because material production is the most primitive activity and exists most commonly in human life. Material production creates the most essential, decisive material conditions for human survival and development. Without material production there cannot be other praxis activities. After all, all other praxis activities arise from material production praxis and all praxis activities ultimately aim to serve material production praxis.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.” In ''Visions of Politics'', Vol. 1,'' Regarding Method'', 57–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Skirda, Alexandre. ''Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2002.</div>
+==== Annotation 213 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Smith, Angel. ''Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction: Catalan Labour and the Crisis of the Spanish State, 1989–1923''. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007.</div>
+Without material production activity, human beings would not be able to live at all.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Smith, Denis Mack. ''Mazzini''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.</div>
+Thus, material production activities make all other forms of human activities possible. In addition, the primary reason we participate in socio-political activity is to ensure material security (food, water, shelter, etc.) for members of society, which ultimately relies on material production activity. Therefore, the primary reason we engage in scientific experimental activity is to improve material production activities in terms of efficiency, yield, effectiveness, etc
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Spitzer, Alan B. ''The Revolutionary Theories of Louis Auguste Blanqui''. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957.</div>
+Of course, we engage in scientific experimental activity and material production activity for other reasons (art, entertainment, recreation, etc.), but these activities require that material security be secured first for those participating in the production and consumption of such products. In other words, material production activity is a prerequisite for all other forms of activity, since without some measure of material security humans cannot survive.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Stafford, David. ''From Anarchism to Reformism: A Study of the Political Activities of Paul Brousse, 1870–90''. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-78.png|''Material production activity has a dialectical relationship with all other praxis activity, with material production activity determining, while being impacted by, all other forms of praxis activity.'']]
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Steenson, Gary P. ''After Marx, Before Lenin: Marxism and Socialist Working-Class Parties in Europe, 1884–1914''. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.</div>
+Thus, material production activity has a dialectical relationship with other forms of praxis activities, in which material production activity determines both socio-political and scientific experimental activity while socio-political and scientific experimental activity impact material production activity.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Stepelevitch, Laurence S. “The Revival of Max Stirner.” ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 35, no. 2 (1974): 323–28.</div>
+-----
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Suriano, Juan. ''Paradoxes of Utopia: Anarchist Culture and Politics in Buenos Aires, 1890–1910''. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010.</div>
+=== b. Consciousness and Levels of Consciousness ===
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Thomas, Paul. ''Karl Marx and the Anarchists''. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.</div>
+The dialectical materialist perspective sees consciousness as a process of reflecting the objective world within the human brain on a practical basis to create knowledge about the objective world. Consciousness is a self-aware process that is productive and creative.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Thorpe, Wayne. “The IWW and the Dilemmas of Internationalism.” In Cole, Struthers, and Zimmer, ''Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW'', 105–23. </div>
+This view stems from the following basic principles:
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''“The Workers Themselves”: Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labour, 1913–1923''. Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.</div>
+* The dialectical materialist worldview acknowledges that the material world exists objectively and independently of human consciousness.
+* The dialectical materialist worldview recognizes the following human abilities:
+** To perceive the objective world.
+** To reflect the objective world into the human mind, which enables human subjects to learn about external objects. [see Annotation 66, p. 64]
+** To admit that there are no material things nor phenomena which are unrecognizable, but only material things and phenomena that humans have not yet recognised. [see ''The Opposition of Materialism and Idealism in Solving Basic Philosophical Issues,'' p. 48]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Uneasy Family: Revolutionary Syndicalism in Europe From the Charte d’Amiens to World War One.” In Berry and Bantman, eds., ''New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism'', 16–42.</div>
+The dialectical materialist worldview affirms that conscious reflection [see Annotation 67, p. 64] of the objective world is a dialectical, productive, self-aware, and creative process. This reflection process develops from the unknown to the known, from knowing less to knowing more, from knowing less profoundly and less comprehensively to knowing more profoundly and more comprehensively.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Tilly, Charles. ''European Revolutions, 1492–1992''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Turcato, Davide. “Anarchist Communism.” In ''The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism'', edited by Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams, 237–47. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.</div>
+==== Annotation 214 ====
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments With Revolution, 1889–1900''. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.</div>
+The above principle (that human knowledge develops from less, and less comprehensive, to more, and more comprehensive states) stands in contrast to various other philosophical systems of belief, including:
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Van der Linden, Marcel, and Wayne Thorpe, eds. ''Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective''. Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1990.</div>
+Hegel’s ''Absolute Idealism'' upholds a belief in an “absolute ideal” which constitutes an ultimate limit or “end point” of knowledge which humanity is moving towards. Dialectical materialism upholds that there is no such absolute ideal and thus no such terminal end point of human understanding. [See Annotation 234, p. 230] As Engels wrote in ''Anti-Dühring'':
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Van der Walt, Lucien. “Anarchism and Marxism.” In ''Brill’s Companion to Anarchist Philosophy'', edited by Nathan Jun, 505–58. Leiden, NL: Brill Academic Publishers, 2017.</div>
+<blockquote>
+If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.
+</blockquote>
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Syndicalism.” In ''The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism'', edited by Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams, 249–63. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.</div>
+''Fideism'', which is the belief that knowledge is received from some higher power [i.e., God]. Fideism upholds that all knowledge is pre-existing, and that humanity simply receives it from on high. Dialectical materialism, on the other hand, argues that knowledge is developed over time through dialectical processes of consciousness and human activity.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Verhoeven, Claudia. ''The Odd Man Karakozov: Imperial Russia, Modernity, and the Birth of Terrorism''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.</div>
+''Positivism, or empiricist materialism'', which holds that there are hard limits to human knowledge, or that human knowledge — which can only be obtained from sense data — can’t be trusted. Dialectical materialism upholds that all things and phenomena can be known and understood, and that sense data can be trusted as an objective reflection of reality. For more information about skepticism about human sense data as well as positive and empiricist materialism, see Annotation 10, p. 10, and Annotation 58, p. 56].
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Vincent, Steven K. ''Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Whitham, William. “César De Paepe and the Ideas of the First International.” ''Modern Intellectual History'' 16, no. 3 (2019): 897–925.</div>
+The dialectical materialist worldview considers praxis as the primary and most direct basis of consciousness, and as the motive and the purpose of consciousness, and as the criterion for testing truth. [See: ''The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness'', p. 216]
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Wilbur, Shawn P. “Joseph Déjacque and the First Emergence of Anarchism.” In ''Contr’un 5: Our Lost Continent'', 2016.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Mutualism.” In ''The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism'', edited by Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams, 213–24. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.</div>
+==== Annotation 215 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. “Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: Self-Government and the Citizen-State.” Libertarian Labyrinth website, June 5, 2013. https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/contrun/pierre-joseph-proudhon-self-government-and-the-citizen-state-2.</div>
+Given the above principles — that human consciousness exists independently from the material world yet is capable of accurately perceiving and reflecting the material world, and that knowledge develops over time through a synthesis of consciousness and practical activity — we can conclude that consciousness is a self-aware process which is productive and creative.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Williams, Dana M. “Black Panther Radical Factionalization and the Development of Black Anarchism.” ''Journal of Black Studies'' 46, no. 7 (2015): 678–703. </div>
+Consciousness is productive and creative in the sense that conscious processes, in conjunction with practical experience and activity in the material world, leads to the development of knowledge and practical experience which allows humans to develop our understanding of the world as well as our own material conditions through the application of knowledge to our own labor activities.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Wolf, Jeremy. “Iron Law of Wages.” In ''The Encyclopedia of Political Thought'', edited by Michael Gibbons. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0541.</div>
+Next, we will examine different ways of categorizing conscious activities as they pertain to developing knowledge and practical understanding of our world.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Wood, Ellen Meiksins. ''Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages''. London: Verso, 2011.</div>
+From the dialectical materialist point of view, consciousness is a process of development. Consciousness develops from ''empirical consciousness'' to ''theoretical consciousness''; and from ''ordinary consciousness'' to ''scientific consciousness''.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Woodcock, George. ''Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideals and Movements''. 2nd ed. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1986.</div>
+-----
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography''. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1987.</div>
+==== Annotation 216 ====
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Woodcock, George, and Ivan Avakumović. ''Peter Kropotkin: From Prince to Rebel''. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1990.</div>
+In dialectical materialist philosophy, all systems of relation exist as processes of development in motion [see Annotation 120, p. 124]. Thus, consciousness can be defined as a system of relations between human brain activity and two forms of data input:
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Yeoman, James. ''Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890–1915''. New York: Routledge, 2020.</div>
+''•'' ''Sense experience'': observations of the external world detected by our senses.
-<div style="color:#000000;margin-left:0.355cm;">Zimmer, Kenyon. “Archiving the American Anarchist Press: Reflections on Format, Accessibility and Language.” ''American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism'' 29, no. 1 (2019): 9–11.</div>
+''•'' ''Knowledge'': information which exists in the human mind as memories and ideas.
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">———. ''Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.</div>
+Consciousness is thus a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor).
-<div style="margin-left:0.355cm;">Zurbrugg, A.W. ''Anarchist Perspectives in Peace and War, 1900–1918''. London: Anarres Editions, 2018.</div>
+In the section below, we will explore different forms of consciousness, the development of consciousness, and the relationship between consciousness and knowledge. Note that these are ''abstractions'' of consciousness and knowledge, meant to help us understand how knowledge and consciousness develop over time. Thought processes are extremely complex, so we seek to develop a fundamental understanding of how consciousness develops and how knowledge develops because these processes are fundamental to the development of human beings and human societies.
-== {{anchor|CopyrightMeansandEndsThe1}} {{anchor|TopofMeansandEndsINTebook16}} {{anchor|CopyrightMeansandEndsThe}} Copyright ==
+Just as consciousness is a process of developing knowledge through brain activity, consciousness itself also develops over time. The development of consciousness can be considered based on the criteria of ''concrete/abstract'' and of ''passive/active''.
-''Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States''
+Consciousness develops from a state of direct and immediate observation of the world which results in concrete knowledge to a higher stage which constitutes a more abstract and general understanding of the world. We call consciousness which is focused on direct, immediate, concrete, empirical observation of the world ''empirical consciousness'', and we call consciousness which is focused on forming abstract generalizations about the world ''theoretical consciousness''.
-<div style="color:#000000;">© 2023 Zoe Baker</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-79.png]]
-<div style="color:#000000;">This edition © 2023 AK Press (Chico / Edinburgh)</div>
+Empirical consciousness is a process of collecting data about the world, which we call knowledge. We can gather two forms of knowledge through empirical consciousness: ordinary knowledge, and scientific knowledge.
-<div style="color:#000000;">ISBN 978-1-84935-498-1</div>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-80.png]]
-<div style="color:#000000;">E-ISBN 978-1-84935-499-8</div>
+Ordinary knowledge is the knowledge we accumulate through our everyday experiences in the world. Scientific knowledge is gathered through more systematic scientific observations and experiments. Scientific knowledge usually develops from ordinary knowledge, as we begin to seek a more formal and systematic understanding of the things we witness in our daily lives.
-<div style="color:#000000;">Library of Congress Control Number: 2022948753</div>
+According to ''Themes in Soviet Marxist Philosophy,'' edited by T. J. Blakely:
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+<blockquote>
+Ordinary knowledge notes what lies on the very surface, what happens during a certain event. Scientific knowledge wants to know why it happens in just this way. The essence of scientific knowledge lies in the confirmed generalization of facts, where it becomes necessary rather than contingent, universal instead of particular, law-bound, and can serve as a basis for predicting various phenomena, events and objects...
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+The whole progress of scientific knowledge is bound up with growth in the force and volume of scientific prediction. Prediction makes it possible to control processes and to direct them. Scientific knowledge opens up the possibility not only of predicting the future but also of consciously forming it. The vital meaning of every science can be expressed as follows: to know in order to predict and to predict in order to act.
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+An essential characteristic of scientific knowledge is that it is systematic, i.e., it is a set of information which is ordered according to certain theoretical principles. A collection of unsystematized knowledge is not yet science. Certain basic premises are fundamental to scientific knowledge, i.e., the laws which make it possible to systematize the knowledge. Knowledge becomes scientific when the collection of facts and their descriptions reach the level where they are included in a theory.
+</blockquote>
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+Theoretical consciousness arises from conscious reflection on accumulated knowledge, as human beings seek to develop general and abstract understanding of the underlying principles of processes we experience in the world. Once general principles of natural and social law are established, human beings then test those general conclusions against empirical reality through further observation (i.e., through empirical consciousness).
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+Thus, there is a dialectical relationship between empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness, as one form leads to another, back and forth, again and again, continuously.
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+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-81.png|''Empirical and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship in which empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness lead to and mutually develop one another.'']]
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+Consciousness also develops from passive and surface-level observation and understanding of the world (i.e., simply considering what, where, and when things happen) to more active pursuit of the underlying meaning of the world (i.e., trying to understand how and why things happen).
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+Consciousness which passively observes the world, directly, in daily life is referred to as ''ordinary consciousness''. Ordinary consciousness often develops into more active consciousness. This active pursuit of understanding through systematic observation and indirect experiences (i.e., experiences that do not occur in daily activity — such as scientific experimentation) is referred to as ''scientific consciousness''.
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+These concepts will be discussed in further detail below.
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+-----
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+''Empirical consciousness'' is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical consciousness results in ''empirical knowledge''.
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+''Empirical knowledge'' has two types: ''ordinary empirical knowledge'' (knowledge obtained through direct observation and in productive labor) and ''scientific empirical knowledge'' (knowledge obtained by conducting scientific experiments). These two types of knowledge can be complementary, and can enrich one other.
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+''Theoretical consciousness'' is the indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted.
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+Empirical consciousness and Theoretical consciousness are two different cognitive stages but they have a dialectical relationship with each other. In this dialectical relationship, empirical consciousness is the basis of theoretical consciousness; it provides theoretical consciousness with specific, rich material [i.e., knowledge]. Empirical consciousness is linked closely to practical activities [since practical activity in the material world is the chief method of gathering knowledge through empirical consciousness], and forms the basis for checking, correcting, and supplementing existing theories and summarizing, and generalizing them into new theories. However, empirical consciousness is still limited in that empirical consciousness stops at the description and classification of data obtained from direct observation and experimentation. Therefore, empirical consciousness only brings understanding about the separate, superficial, discrete aspects of observed subjects, without yet reflecting the essence of those subjects nor the underlying principles or laws which regulate those subjects.
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+Therefore, empirical consciousness, alone, is not sufficient for determining the scientific laws of nature and society. To determine such laws and abstractions, theoretical consciousness must be applied. So, theoretical consciousness does not form spontaneously, nor directly from experience, although it is formed from the summation of experiences.
+-----
+==== Annotation 217 ====
+The knowledge we gain from our daily activity often inspires scientific inquiry and more systematic observation, which can yield scientific knowledge which will enrich and improve our daily practice and allow us to experience daily life with a deeper understanding of what we’re experiencing. Thus, the ordinary knowledge we gain through daily practice can enrich and yield scientific knowledge (and vice versa).
+Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with each other in which empirical consciousness provides the basis for theoretical consciousness. Theoretical consciousness attempts to derive general abstractions and governing principles from empirical knowledge which is gained through empirical consciousness. Once theoretical principles, generalities, and abstractions are determined, they are then tested against reality through empirical consciousness (i.e., practical observation and systematic experimentation) to determine if the theory is sound.
+''Empirical consciousness and theoretical consciousness have a dialectical relationship with one another. Our observations of the material world lead to conscious activity which we then test in reality through conscious activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of dialectical development.''
+For example, a farmer may notice that plants grow better in locations where manure has been discarded — an act of empirical consciousness. The farmer might then form the theory that adding manure to the soil will help plants grow — an act of theoretical consciousness. This theory could then be tested against reality by mixing manure into the soil and observing the results, which would be another act of empirical consciousness. The farmer may then theorize that ''more'' manure will help plants grow ''even more'' — another act of theoretical consciousness — continuing the cycle of testing and observing.
+This dialectical relationship between ordinary and theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to develop and improve knowledge through practical experience, observation, and theoretical abstraction and generalization of knowledge.
+Theoretical consciousness is relatively independent from empirical consciousness. Therefore, theories can precede expectations and guide the formation of valuable empirical knowledge. Theoretical consciousness is what allows human beings to sort and filter knowledge so as to best serve practical activities and contribute to the transformation of human life. Through this process, knowledge is organized and therefore enhanced, and develops from the level of specific, individual, and solitary knowledge to a higher form of generalized and abstract knowledge [what we might call ''theoretical knowledge''].
+-----
+==== Annotation 218 ====
+Knowledge which comes from empirical observations (empirical consciousness) is ''empirical knowledge.'' ''Theoretical knowledge'' is a product of theoretical consciousness. Over time, as repeated and varied observations are made through theoretical consciousness activities, knowledge becomes more generalized and abstract; this general and abstract knowledge is what we call ''theoretical knowledge''.
+Note that empirical and theoretical knowledge can be ''ordinary'' or ''scientific'' in nature; if the knowledge arises passively from daily life activities, it will be ordinary knowledge, regardless of whether or not it is empirical or theoretical in nature. If, on the other hand, the knowledge arises from methodological measurement and/or systematic observation, then it is scientific knowledge.vSo far, we have discussed ways of understanding consciousness based on the criteria of directness vs. abstractness. Next, we will discuss another way of looking at consciousness, based on the criteria of passiveness vs. activeness.
+''Ordinary consciousness'' refers to perception that is formed ''passively'' and ''directly'' from the daily activities of humans. Ordinary consciousness is a reflection of things, phenomena, and ideas, with all their observed characteristics, specific details, and nuances. Therefore, ordinary consciousness is rich, multifaceted, and associated with daily life. Therefore, ordinary consciousness has a regular and pervasive role in governing the activities of each person in society.
+''Scientific consciousness'' refers to perception formed ''actively'' and ''indirectly'' from the reflection of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. This reflection takes place in the form of logical abstraction. These logical abstractions include scientific concepts, categories, and laws. Scientific consciousness is objective, abstract, general, and systematic, and must be grounded in evidence.
+Scientific consciousness utilizes systematic methodologies to profoundly describe the nature of studied subjects as well as the principles which govern them. Therefore, scientific consciousness plays an increasingly important role in practical activities, especially in the modern age of science and technology.
+-----
+==== Annotation 219 ====
+Logical abstraction refers to an understanding of the underlying rules which govern things, phenomena, and ideas which underly objective processes, relationships, and characteristics. Logical abstraction is the result of scientific inquiry. Over time, our understanding of the rules which govern the things, phenomena, and ideas in our lives become more reliable and applicable in practical activities. This attainment of understanding and practical ability through scientific practice is ''scientific consciousness''.
+Ordinary and scientific consciousness are two different qualitative steps of cognitive processes which, together, allow humans to discover truth about our world. Ordinary and scientific consciousness have a strong dialectical relationship with each other. In this relationship, ordinary consciousness precedes scientific consciousness, as ordinary consciousness is a source of material for the development of scientific consciousness.
+Although it contains the seeds of scientific knowledge, ordinary consciousness mainly stops at the reflection of superficial details, seemingly random events, and non-essential phenomena [see ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156]. Ordinary consciousness, therefore, cannot transform effortlessly into scientific consciousness. To develop ordinary consciousness into scientific consciousness, we must go through the process of accurate summarizing, abstracting, and generalization using scientific methods. Likewise, once scientific consciousness has been developed, it impacts and pervades ordinary consciousness, and therefore develops ordinary consciousness. Scientific consciousness therefore enhances our everyday passive perception of the world.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-83.png|''Ordinary consciousness refers to the passive observation of reality which takes place in our daily lives. Scientific consciousness refers to the systematic application of consciousness to solve specific problems in a methodological manner.'']]
+-----
+==== Annotation 220 ====
+For example, before developing scientific consciousness of farming, a farmer might go through daily life having no idea what makes plants grow to be larger and more healthy and might have no idea how to avoid common problems such as pests. After developing scientific consciousness of farming through scientific experimentation and other systematic methodologies, the farmer will look at things differently in daily life activities. They may see signs of pest infestation and immediately recognize it for what it is, and they may see other indications that plants are unhealthy and know exactly what to do to remedy the situation.
+In this way, scientific consciousness enhances ordinary consciousness. Meanwhile, ordinary consciousness — passive observation of the world during daily activities — will lead to scientific consciousness by inspiring us to actively seek understanding of the world through scientific consciousness.
+=== c. The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness ===
+Praxis serves as the ''basis, driving force,'' and ''purpose'' of consciousness. Praxis serves as the criterion of truth by testing the truthfulness of our thoughts. [See Annotation 230, p. 226]
+Praxis is able to serve these roles because reality is the direct starting point of consciousness; it sets out the requirements, tasks, and modes of consciousness, as well as the movement and development tendencies of consciousness. Humans have an objective and inherent need to explain the world and to transform it.
+-----
+==== Annotation 221 ====
+Remember that the material world defines consciousness while consciousness allows us to impact the material world through conscious activity [see ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88]. Consciousness itself arose from the physical needs of the material world [see ''The Source of Consciousness'', p. 64], and these physical needs continue to serve as the basis and driving force for all conscious activities, as we must act consciously to survive.
+Our inherent need to explain the world and to transform it arises from our material needs to eat, seek shelter, cure and prevent disease, and so on. These physical needs, which stem from the material world, drive conscious activity and lead to the development of consciousness and knowledge.
+Therefore, humans must necessarily impact things in the material world through our practical activities in order to survive. The impacts of our practical activities on the world cause things and phenomena to reveal their different properties, including their internal and external relationships [for example, hitting a rock will tell you properties about the rock; attempting to build something out of wood will provide data about the wood, etc.]. In this manner, praxis produces data for consciousness to process, and also helps consciousness to comprehend nature and the laws of movement and development which govern the world.
+Scientific theories are formed on the basis of the dialectical relationship between practical activity and consciousness. For example: mathematics developed to allow us to count and measure things for practical activities such as agriculture, navigation, and building structures. Marxism also arose in the 1840’s from the practical activities of the struggles of the working class against the capitalist class at that time. Even recent scientific achievements arise from practical needs and activities. For example, the discovery and decoding of the human genome map was born from practical activities and needs, such as the need to develop treatments for incurable diseases. In the end, there is no field of knowledge that is not derived from reality. Ultimately, all knowledge arises from and serves practice. Therefore, if we were to break from reality or stop relying on reality, consciousness would break from the basis of reality that nurtures our growth, existence and development. Also, the cognitive subject cannot have true and profound knowledge about the world if it does not follow reality.
+Practice also serves as the basis, driving force, and purpose of consciousness because, thanks to practical activities, our human ability to measure and observe reality improves increasingly over time; our logical thinking ability is constantly strengthened and developed; cognitive means become increasingly developed. All of these developments “extend” the human senses in perceiving the world [for example, by developing new tools to measure, perceive, and sense the world such as telescopes, radar, microscopes, etc.].
+Reality is not only the basis, the driving force, and the purpose of discovering truth but also serves as the ''standard of truth.'' Reality also serves as the basis for ''examining the truthfulness of the cognitive process'' [i.e., we can test whether our thoughts match material reality through experimentation and practice in the real world]. This means that practice is the measure of the value of the knowledge we gain through perception. At the same time, practice is constantly supplementing, adjusting, correcting, developing, and improving human consciousness. Marx said: “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.”<ref>''Theses On Feuerbach'', Karl Marx, 1845.</ref>
+Thus, practice is not only the starting point of consciousness and a decisive factor for the formation and development of consciousness, it is also a target where consciousness must always aim to test the truth. To emphasize this role which practice plays, Lenin said: “The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge.”<ref>''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.</ref>
+The role of practice in consciousness requires that we always grasp the practical point of view. This point of view requires that we derive our ideas from practice, our ideas must be based on practice, and our ideas must deeply explore practice. In our conscious activities, we must attach a lot of importance to the summarization of practice [i.e., developing theoretical knowledge through theoretical consciousness which reflects practical experience]. Theoretical research must be related to practice, and learning must go hand in hand with practicing. If we diverge from practice, it will lead to mistakes of subjectivism, idealism, dogmatism, rigidity, and bureaucracy.
+-----
+==== Annotation 222 ====
+''Subjectivism'' occurs when one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world. Related to subjectivism is ''solipsism'', a form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in ''Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World'': “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”
+''Idealism'' has a strong connection with a failure to incorporate practical activity into theoretical consciousness, since idealism holds that conscious activity is the sole basis of discovering truth.
+''Dogmatism'' occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice [see Annotation 239, p. 235]. Dogmatists ignore practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth. This results in a breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness.
+''Rigidity'' is an unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.
+''Bureaucracy'' arises when theory becomes overly codified and formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. Bureaucracy can be avoided by incorporating practical experience and observations continuously into the development of practical systems and methodologies so that theory and practice become increasingly aligned over time to continuously improve efficiency and effectiveness of practical activities in the material world.
+On the contrary, if the role of practice is absolutized [to the exclusion of conscious activity], it will fall into pragmatism and empiricism.
+-----
+==== Annotation 223 ====
+In this context, ''pragmatism'' refers to a form of subjectivism [see Annotation 222, above] in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. For example, workers may place their own immediate needs and desires above the concerns of their fellow workers as a whole. This may offer some temporary gains, but in the long run their lack of solidarity and class consciousness will be detrimental as workers collectively suffer from division, making all workers more vulnerable to exploitation and ill treatment by the capitalist class.
+''Empiricism'' is a faulty form of materialism in which ''only'' sense experience and practical experience are considered sources of truth. This is opposed to the dialectical materialist position that the material ''determines'' consciousness, while consciousness ''impacts'' the material world through conscious labor activity. [See ''The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness'', p. 88]
+Thus, the principle of the ''unification'' of practice and theory must be the basic principle in practical and theoretical activities. Theory without practice as its basis and criterion for determining its truthfulness is useless. Vice versa, practice without scientific and revolutionary theory will inevitably turn into blind practice. [As Ho Chi Minh once said: “Study and practice must always go together. Study without practice is useless. Practice without study leads to folly.”]
+== 2. Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth ==
+=== a. Opinions of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin about the Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth ===
+==== Annotation 224 ====
+The section below outlines and explains ''the Universal Law of Consciousness'', which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels.
+In his ''Philosophical Notebook'', Lenin generalized the dialectical path towards the realization of truth as development from vivid visualization to abstract thinking, and then from abstraction back to practice. This process, according to Lenin, is the dialectical path towards the realization of truth, and the realization of objective reality.
+According to this generalization, the dialectical path towards the realization of truth (“truth,” here, referring to a correct and accurate reflection of objective reality) is a process. It is a process that starts from “vivid visualization” (emotional consciousness) to “abstract thinking” (rational consciousness).
+-----
+==== Annotation 225 ====
+Given that consciousness has a material basis, and that practical activities are the driving force of consciousness [see Annotation 230, p. 226], it follows that we must strive to align our conscious thoughts and ideas with the material world. The more accurately we can reflect reality in our consciousness, the more effectively and efficiently our practical activities can become.
+For example, through learning more about the mechanical, material, and physical processes which take place inside of an automobile engine, the more we can improve engines to make them more efficient and effective for practical applications.
+Lenin explained that consciousness develops from “emotional consciousness” to “rational consciousness.” Thought about a subject begins at a base level of consciousness that is rooted in emotional and sense-oriented conscious activity, i.e, “vivid visualization,” which then leads to rational, abstract reflection.
+By “vivid visualization,” Lenin is referring to the active, real-time experience of seeing (and hearing, smelling, and otherwise sensing) things and phenomena in the world.
+When a person experiences something through practical activity, the first conscious activity will tend to occur at the emotional and sensory level — in other words, the conscious activities which occur simultaneously along with practical activities. Only after this initial period of emotional consciousness will one be able to reflect on the experience on a more rational and abstract level.
+For example, if a zoologist in the field sees a species of bird they have never encountered before, their first conscious activity will be at the sensory-emotional level: they will observe the shape, coloration, and motion of the bird. They may feel excitement, happiness, and other emotions. This is emotional conscious activity.
+This emotional conscious activity will then develop into rational conscious activity, as the zoologist may begin to consider things more abstractly, attempting to interpret and understand this experience through reason and rational reflection, asking such questions as: “Where does this bird nest? What does it feed on? Is this a new discovery?” and so on.
+Such abstractions are not the end point of a cognitive cycle, because consciousness must then continue to develop through practice. It is through practice that perception tests and proves its own correctness so that it can then continue on to repeat the cycle.
+This is also the general rule of the human perception of objective reality.
+-----
+==== Annotation 226 ====
+Thus there is a dialectical relationship between emotional consciousness (linked to practical activity) and rational consciousness (linked to purely conscious activity).
+This dialectical relationship is a cycle, in which one engages in practical activity, which leads to emotional consciousness, which leads to rational consciousness, which then leads back to practical activity to test the correctness of the conclusions of rational conscious activity.
+We call this cycle of development of consciousness the cognitive process.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-84.png|''The cognitive process is a continuous cycle which describes the dialectical development of consciousness and practical activity.'']]
+The cognitive process is explained in more detail below.
+-----
+'''- Development From Emotional Consciousness to Rational Consciousness'''
+''Emotional consciousness is the lower stage of the cognitive process.'' In this stage of cognitive development, humans use — through practical activity — use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. During this period, consciousness only reflects the phenomena [i.e, ''phenomena'', as opposed to ''essence'' — see ''Essence and Phenomenon'', p. 156] — the external manifestations — of the perceived subject. At this stage, consciousness has not yet reflected the ''essence'' — the nature, and/or the regulating principles — of the subject. Therefore, this is the lowest stage of development of the cognitive process. In this stage, consciousness is carried out through three basic phases: ''sensation'', ''conception'', and ''symbolization''.
+Human ''sensation'' of an objective thing or phenomenon is the simplest, most primitive phase of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive processes, but without it there would not be any perception of objective things or phenomena. Every human sensation of objective things and phenomena contains objective content [see Content and Form, p. 147], even though it arises as subjective human conscious reflection. Sensation is the subjective imagining of the objective world. It is the basis from which the next phase of emotional consciousness — ''conception'' — is formed.
+''Conception'' is a relatively complete reflection within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. Conception is formed on the basis of linking and synthesizing sensational experiences of things and phenomena [i.e., ''sensation'']. Compared with sensation, conception is a higher, fuller, richer form of consciousness, but it is still a reflection of the outward manifestations of objects. Conception does not yet reflect the essence, nature, and regulating principles of the perceived subject.
+''Symbolization'' is the representation of an objective thing or phenomenon that has been reflected by sensation and conception. It is the most advanced and most complex phase of the stage of emotional consciousness. At the same time, it also serves as the transitional step between emotional consciousness and rational consciousness. The defining characteristic of symbolism is the ability to reproduce symbolic ideas of objective things and phenomena within human consciousness. Symbolization describes the act of recreating the outward appearances of material things and phenomena within human consciousness, which is the first step of abstraction, and thus the first step towards rational consciousness.
+-----
+==== Annotation 227 ====
+Here is an example of the three phases of the emotional consciousness stage of the cognitive process:
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-85.png]]
+''1.'' ''Sensation'': Jessica ''senses'' a cake in the window of a bakery. She ''sees'' the frosting, the shape of the cake, and the decorations which adorn the cake. She ''smells'' the cake. During this phase, objective data about the cake is received into her consciousness, developing into an immediate and subjective sense perception of the cake. The beginnings of this cognitive activity will be purely sensory in nature; she may have been thinking of other things as she walked by the bakery, but the sight and smell of the cake, upon registering in her mind, will lead to the beginning of a new cognitive process cycle.
+''2.'' ''Conception'': Jessica begins to ''conceive'' of the cake in her mind more fully. She will associate the immediate sense experiences of seeing and smelling the cake with other experiences she has had with cake, and a complete mental image and concept of the cake will form in her mind.
+''3.'' ''Symbolization'': The word “cake” may now form in her mind, and she may begin thinking of the cake more abstractly, as “food,” as a “temptation,” and in other ways. This is the beginning of abstraction in Jessica’s mind, which will then lead to rational conscious activities.
+Note that all of these phases of emotional consciousness activity may take place very quickly, perhaps in a fraction of a second, and may coincide with other conscious activity (i.e., Jessica may simultaneously be thinking of a meeting she’s running late to and any number of other things). At this point, Jessica will transition to the ''rational consciousness'' stage of the cognitive process'','' which is explained in more detail below.
+-----
+By the end of the emotional stage of the cognitive process, consciousness has not yet reflected the essence — the nature, regulating principles, etc. — of the perceived subject. Therefore, at the emotional stage, consciousness is not yet able to properly ''interpret'' the reflected subject. That is to say, emotional conscious activity does not meet the cognitive requirements to serve practical activities, including the need to creatively transform the objective world. To meet these requirements, emotional consciousness must develop into ''rational consciousness''.
+''Rational consciousness is the higher stage of the cognitive process.'' It includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the ''essence'' of the perceived subject. Rational consciousness is implemented through three basic phases: ''definition'', ''judgment'', and ''reasoning''.
+''Definition'' is the first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. The formation of definition is the result of the summarization and synthesis of all the different characteristics and properties of the subject, and how the subject fits into the organized structure of knowledge which exists in the mind. Definition is the basis for forming judgments in the cognitive process.
+''Judgment'' is the next phase of rational consciousness, which arises from the definition of the subject — the linking of concepts and properties together — which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject.
+According to the level of development of consciousness, judgment may take one of three forms: unique judgment, general judgment, and universal judgment [see Annotation 105, p. 107]. Universal judgment is the form of judgement that expresses the broadest conception of objective reality.
+''Reasoning'' is the final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. Before reasoning can take place, judgments must be transformed into knowledge. A judgment can be transformed into knowledge through one of two logical mechanisms: deductive inference (which extrapolates the general from the specific), and inductive inference (which extrapolates the specific from the general).
+-----
+==== Annotation 228 ====
+Here is an example of the three phases of the rational consciousness stage of the cognitive process, continuing from our previous example of the emotional consciousness stage [see Annotation 227, p. 222].
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-86.png]]
+''1.'' ''Definition'': Jessica’s conception of the cake will transition into the rational conscious activity of ''definition''. Jessica will begin to define the concept of the cake more wholly and concretely, summarizing and synthesizing all of the features and characteristics of the cake into a cohesive mental reflection of the cake. The word “cake” may become more pronounced and defined in Jessica’s consciousness, prompting her to think of the object which she defines as a “cake” more fully and rationally.
+''2.'' ''Judgment'': Jessica will begin to form basic judgments about the cake. “That cake looks good,” “that cake smells good,” and so on. Next, these judgments will begin to transform into knowledge through inductive or deductive inferences. An inductive inference might be: “I generally enjoy eating cakes, therefore, I might enjoy eating this cake!” An example of a deductive inference might be: “This cake looks very delicious, therefore, there might be other delicious things in this bakery!”
+''3.'' ''Reasoning'': Processes of inductive and/or deductive inference will begin to transform Jessica’s judgments into the form of knowledge. For instance, she may now possess such knowledge as: “This bakery has delicious looking cakes, this is a cake I would like to eat,” and so on. With this newly acquired knowledge, Jessica can begin reasoning; that is to say, she can begin making rational conclusions and decisions. She might conclude: “I will go into this bakery and buy that cake.”
+Note that this is not the “end” of the cognitive process, because the final phase of the reasoning stage of the cognitive process (reasoning) will lead directly into a new cycle of the cognitive process. In this example, Jessica might engage in the practical activity of checking her watch to see the time, which will begin a new cycle of cognitive process, beginning with the ''sensation'' phase of the emotional stage as the visual sense data of her watch and carrying through to the final ''reasoning'' phase of the rational stage, and so on.
+It should also be noted that this is merely an abstraction of the cognitive process; in reality, the human mind is incredibly complex, capable of carrying out a variety of cognitive processes simultaneously. At any given moment, a person might be considering various different subjects, and each different subject might be at a different stage of the cognitive process. This abstract model of the cognitive process is presented to help us comprehend the component functions of consciousness more easily in the wider context of dialectical materialist philosophy.
+Specifically, this model of the cognitive process is intended to help us understand how human consciousness leads to “truth.” And “truth,” here, refers to the alignment of human consciousness with the material world, so that our perceptions and understanding of the world is accurate and representative of actual reality.
+''- The Relationship Between Emotional Consciousness, Rational Consciousness, and Reality''
+Emotional consciousness and rational consciousness are stages that make up the cognitive cycle. In reality, they are often intertwined within the cognitive process, but they have different functions. If ''emotional consciousness'' is associated with reality, and with the impact of sense data received from observing the material world, and is the basis for cognitive reason, then ''rational consciousness'', based on higher cognitive understanding and abstraction, allows us to understand the essence, nature, regulating principles, and development processes of things and phenomena. Rational consciousness helps direct emotional consciousness in a more efficient and effective direction and leads to more profound and accurate emotional consciousness.
+-----
+==== Annotation 229 ====
+In other words, considering a subject at the level of rational consciousness allows us to then view the same subject, at an emotional consciousness level, with more depth and awareness.
+For example, the more time we have spent rationally considering something like a bicycle, the more quickly and accurately we can examine a bicycle at the level of emotional consciousness. If someone is looking at a bicycle for the first time, they might not be able to distinguish its component parts or functions. On the other hand, if someone has spent more time considering bicycles at the level of rational consciousness, they may be able to immediately and rapidly understand and process a bicycle at the emotional conscious level, so that they can perceive and comprehend the different parts of a bicycle, as well as their functions, immediately and at the emotional-sensory level.
+However, if we stop at rational consciousness, we will only have knowledge about the subjects we perceive, but we still won’t really know if that knowledge is truly accurate or not. In order to be useful in practical activity, we must consciously determine whether knowledge is ''truth'' [i.e., whether the knowledge accurately reflects reality]. In order to determine the truth of knowledge, consciousness must necessarily return to reality. Consciousness must use reality as a criterion — a measurement — of the authenticity of knowledge gained through purely cognitive processes. In other words, all consciousness is ultimately derived from practical needs, and must also return to serve practical activities.
+-----
+==== Annotation 230 ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-87.png|''The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activities means that conscious activities develop practical activities, and vice versa, in a continuous feedback loop.'']]
+One of the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism is that the material determines the ideal, and the ideal impacts the material [see The Relationship Between Matter and Consciousness]. The fact that the material determines consciousness is reflected in the fact that material needs led to the development of consciousness, and conscious activity stems from material needs [see Social Sources of Consciousness].
+The fact that the ideal impacts the material is reflected in the fact that consciousness must always return to the service of practical activities; as our consciousness develops (along with knowledge), our ability to impact and transform the material world becomes more efficient and effective.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-88.png|''The dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is what drives the development of humanity. We imagine better ways of doing things, then test those ideas against reality through practical activity.'']]
+This dialectical relationship between consciousness and practical activity is thus cyclical. Conscious activity arises from practical activity, and returns to practical activity, in an endless process of developing both conscious ability as well as practical ability.
+-----
+Therefore, it can be seen that the general, cyclical nature of the process of movement and development of consciousness develops from practice to consciousness — from consciousness to practice — from practical activity to the continued process of cognitive development, and so on. This process is repeated continuously, without end. The development level of consciousness and practice in the next cycle are often higher than in the previous cycle, and the cognitive process gradually develops more and more accuracy, as well as fuller and deeper knowledge about objective reality.
+The universal law of consciousness [see Annotation 224, p. 219] is also a concrete and vivid manifestation of the universal laws of materialist dialectics, including: the law of negation of negation, the law of transformation between quantity and quality and the law of unity and contradiction between opposites. The process of cognitive motion and development, governed by these general laws, is the process of human progress towards absolute truth [see Annotation 232, p. 228].
+-----
+==== Annotation 231 ====
+The universal law of consciousness is governed by the three universal laws of materialist dialectics:
+''The Law of Negation of Negation'' dictates that the new will arise from the old, but will carry forward characteristics from the old. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in that conscious activity arises from practical activity. This conscious activity then develops into improved practical activity, and so on, in a never-ending cycle of development. Throughout this development process, characteristics of previous cycles of cognitive and practical activities are carried forward and transferred on to newer cycles of cognitive and practical activities.
+''The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality'' recognizes that quantity changes develop into changes in quality, and vice versa. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness in the development of both conscious and practical activities. Conscious development also develops from quantitative changes to quality changes, and vice versa. For example, once a person accumulates a certain quantity of knowledge, the quality of their knowledge will change. For example, once a person has learned the function of every component part of a car engine, they will have a ''quality shift'' in their understanding of car engines — they will now have competency of the functioning of the engine as a whole. This is also true of practical activities. A quantity of practical experience will lead to quality shifts in practical ability. For example, once a person has practiced riding a bicycle enough that they can reliably ride the bicycle without falling, we would say that the person “knows how to ride a bicycle,” which represents a quality shift from the state of “learning how to ride a bicycle.”
+''The Law of Unity and Contradiction Between Opposites'' states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are defined by internal and external contradictions. This is reflected in the universal law of consciousness by the fact that practical needs serve as the basis for conscious activity, and that cognitive processes serve, in essence, to negate contradictions between consciousness and material reality through practical experience. In other words, the cognitive process is defined by a never-ending process of contradiction between the material and the ideal, as human beings seek to negate contradictions between our conscious understanding of the world and our practical experiences in search of ''truth -'' the accurate alignment of consciousness with the material world.
+=== b. Truth, and the Relationship Between Truth and Reality ===
+''- Definition of Truth''
+All cognitive processes lead to the creation of ''knowledge'', which is what we call human understanding of objective reality. But not all knowledge has content consistent with objective reality, because consciousness exists as the subjective reflection of objective reality in the human mind. The collective cognitive practice of all of humanity throughout history, as well as the cognitive practice of each individual human being, has demonstrated that the knowledge which people have gained and are gaining is not always consistent with objective reality. On the contrary, there are many cases of misalignment between consciousness and reality, and even complete contradiction between human thought and objective reality.
+Within the theoretical scope of Marxism-Leninism, the concept of ''truth'' is used to refer to knowledge which is aligned with objective reality. This alignment is tested and proven through practice. In this sense, the concept of truth is not identical with the concept of “knowledge,” nor with the concept of “hypothesis.” According to Lenin: “The coincidence of thought with the object is a '''process''': thought (= man) must not imagine truth in the form of dead repose, in the form of a bare picture (image), pale (matte), without impulse, without motion…”<ref>''Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1914.</ref>
+-----
+==== Annotation 232 ====
+Here, Lenin is dispelling Hegel’s conception of “absolute truth,” which is not to be confused with Lenin’s concept of “absolute truth” as “objective truth” which aligns consciousness with objective reality [see Annotation 58, p. 56]. For Hegel, “absolute truth” was the idea that there will eventually be some end point to the process of rational consciousness at which we will finally arrive at some final stage of knowledge and consciousness. This rational end point of consciousness, at which the dialectic ends and all contradictions are negated, is Hegel’s “absolute truth.”
+Lenin is also pushing back against the metaphysical conception that all “truths” exist as static categories of information which do not change. Instead, Lenin points out that seeking truth — i.e., aligning consciousness with material reality — is a never-ending process, in particular because reality is constantly developing and changing. Thus, the alignment of consciousness with reality — the pursuit of truth — is a living and dynamic process which will never end, since the development of reality will never end.
+''- The Properties of Truth''
+All truths are ''objective, relative, absolute,'' and ''concrete.''
+The ''objectivity'' of truth is the independence of its content from the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning. Truth is not an arbitrary human construct, nor is truth inherent in consciousness. On the contrary, truth belongs to the objective world, and is determined by the objective world. The affirmation of the objectivity of truth is one of the fundamental points that distinguishes the concept of absolute truth of dialectical materialism from the concept of absolute truth of idealism and skepticism — the doctrines that deny the objective existence of the physical world and deny the possibility that humans are able to perceive the world.
+-----
+==== Annotation 233 ====
+The Dialectical Materialist conception of objective truth stands in contrast to ''idealism'', which states that conscious reasoning alone leads to truth, and that the subjective ideal determines material reality [see Annotation 7, p. 8].
+This objectivity of truth also refutes ''skepticism'', which states that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 32, p. 27].
+Distinction must also be drawn between the concept of absolute truth as it is understood in dialectical materialist philosophy and the conception of absolute truth in Hegel’s idealist dialectics. Dialectical materialism defines absolute truth as “objective truth;” that is to say: a complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness (as compared to relative truth, which is a partial alignment between consciousness and objective reality).
+Hegel, on the other hand, views absolute truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe (see Annotation 232, p. 228) with the ideal serving as the first basis and primary mechanism for bringing absolute truth to fruition.
+Truth is not only objective, but also ''absolute'' and ''relative''. Absolute truth [see Annotation 58, p. 56] refers to truth which reflects a full and complete alignment of consciousness and reality. Theoretically, we can reach absolute truth. This is because, in the objective world, there exists no thing nor phenomenon which human beings are completely incapable of accurately perceiving. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also ''relative''.
+-----
+==== Annotation 234 ====
+Dialectical materialist philosophy recognizes that it must be theoretically possible to know everything there is to know about a given subject, since we are theoretically capable of accurately perceiving, sensing, and measuring all data which pertains to a subject. However, dialectical materialism also recognizes the practical limitations of human beings. As Engels writes in ''Anti-Dühring'':
+<blockquote>
+If mankind ever reached the stage at which it should work only with eternal truths, with results of thought which possess sovereign validity and an unconditional claim to truth, it would then have reached the point where the infinity of the intellectual world both in its actuality and in its potentiality had been exhausted, and thus the famous miracle of the counted uncountable would have been performed.
+But are there any truths which are so securely based that any doubt of them seems to us to be tantamount to insanity? That twice two makes four, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, that Paris is in France, that a man who gets no food dies of hunger, and so forth? Are there then nevertheless eternal truths, final and ultimate truths.
+Certainly there are. We can divide the whole realm of knowledge in the traditional way into three great departments. The first includes all sciences that deal with inanimate nature and are to a greater or lesser degree susceptible of mathematical treatment: mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry. If it gives anyone any pleasure to use mighty words for very simple things, it can be asserted that certain results obtained by these sciences are eternal truths, final and ultimate truths; for which reason these sciences are known as the exact sciences. But very far from all their results have this validity. With the introduction of variable magnitudes and the extension of their variability to the infinitely small and infinitely large, mathematics, usually so strictly ethical, fell from grace; it ate of the tree of knowledge, which opened up to it a career of most colossal achievements, but at the same time a path of error. The virgin state of absolute validity and irrefutable proof of everything mathematical was gone forever; the realm of controversy was inaugurated, and we have reached the point where most people differentiate and integrate not because they understand what they are doing but from pure faith, because up to now it has always come out right. Things are even worse with astronomy and mechanics, and in physics and chemistry we are swamped by hypotheses as if attacked by a swarm of bees. And it must of necessity be so. In physics we are dealing with the motion of molecules, in chemistry with the formation of molecules out of atoms, and if the interference of light waves is not a myth, we have absolutely no prospect of ever seeing these interesting objects with our own eyes. As time goes on, final and ultimate truths become remarkably rare in this field.
+</blockquote>
+-----
+Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached ''complete'' alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment — in some (but not all) aspects — between consciousness and the material world.
+-----
+==== Annotation 235 ====
+''False consciousness'' is consciousness which is incorrect and misaligned from reality. Discovering and rooting out false consciousness is one of the primary concerns of dialectical materialism, as false consciousness can be a serious impediment to human progress. The term “false consciousness” was first used by Friedrich Engels in a personal letter to Franz Mehring in 1893 (a decade after the death of Karl Marx), and in this letter Engels uses the term interchangeably with the word “ideology”* to describe conscious thought processes which do not align with reality:
+<blockquote>
+Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, he does not investigate further for a more remote process independent of thought; indeed its origin seems obvious to him, because as all action is produced through the medium of thought it also appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought. The ideologist who deals with history (history is here simply meant to comprise all the spheres – political, juridical, philosophical, theological – belonging to society and not only to nature), the ideologist dealing with history then, possesses in every sphere of science material which has formed itself independently out of the thought of previous generations and has gone through an independent series of developments in the brains of these successive generations. True, external facts belonging to its own or other spheres may have exercised a co-determining influence on this development, but the tacit pre-supposition is that these facts themselves are also only the fruits of a process of thought, and so we still remain within that realm of pure thought which has successfully digested the hardest facts.
+</blockquote>
+Although the ''term'' “false consciousness” is not found in writing until after Marx’s death, the ''concept'' underlying the term “false consciousness” is found often in the works of Marx and Engels. For instance, in ''The Holy Family,'' Marx and Engels explain how communist, class conscious workers have been able to break free of false consciousness of capitalist society:
+<blockquote>
+They (the communist workers) are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labor and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement.
+</blockquote>
+This allusion to “the difference between being and thinking” recurs again and again in the works of Marx and Engels.
+<nowiki>*</nowiki> Lenin also discussed the concept of false consciousness extensively, and argued that dialectical materialism was the key to negating the false consciousness of the working class, writing in ''What the “Friends of the People” Are'':
+<blockquote>
+It never has been the case, nor is it so now, that the members of society conceive the sum-total of the social relations in which they live as something definite, integral, pervaded by some principle; on the contrary, the mass of people adapt themselves to these relations unconsciously, and have so little conception of them as specific historical social relations that, for instance, an explanation of the exchange relations under which people have lived for centuries was found only in very recent times. Materialism removed this contradiction by carrying the analysis deeper, to the origin of man’s social ideas themselves; and its conclusion that the course of ideas depends on the course of things is the only one compatible with scientific psychology. Further, and from yet another aspect, this hypothesis was the first to elevate sociology to the level of a science.
+</blockquote>
+Note that this convention of using the word “ideology” to mean “false consciousness” has never been common, and Marx and Engels both used the word “ideology” more often in its more usual sense of “a system of ideas,” but it is still occasionally encountered in socialist literature, as Joseph McCarney explains in ''Marx Myths and Legends'':
+<blockquote>
+Marx never calls ideology ‘false consciousness’. Indeed, he never calls anything ‘false consciousness’, a phrase that does not occur in his work... The noun is almost always accompanied by an epithet such as ‘German’, ‘republican’, ‘political’ or ‘Hegelian’, or by a qualifying phrase, as in ‘the ideology of the bourgeoisie’ or ‘the ideology of the political economist’. More typical in any case is the adjectival usage in which such varied items as ‘forms’, ‘expressions’, ‘phrases’, ’conceptions’, ‘deception’, and ‘distortion’ are said to have an ‘ideological’ character. Even more distinctive is the frequency, amounting to approximately half of all references in the relevant range, of invocations of the ‘ideologists’, the creators and purveyors of the ideological forms.
+</blockquote>
+-----
+“Relative truth” and “absolute truth” do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.
+Lenin wrote that “absolute truth results from the sum-total of relative truths in the course of their development; [...] relative truths represent relatively faithful reflections of an object existing independently of man; [...] these reflections become more and more faithful; [...] every scientific truth, notwithstanding its relative nature, contains an element of absolute truth.”<ref>''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'', Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1908.</ref>
+Correct realization of the dialectical relationship between relative and absolute truth plays a very important role in criticizing and overcoming extremism and false consciousness in perception and in action. If we exaggerate the absoluteness of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its relativity, we will fall into the false consciousness of metaphysics, dogmatism, conservativism, and stagnation.
+-----
+==== Annotation 236 ====
+Intentional or unintentional exaggeration of the absoluteness of truth — i.e., considering our knowledge to be more complete and/or aligned with reality than it actually is — leads to incorrect viewpoints and mindsets, including:
+''Metaphysics'' is a philosophical system which seeks truth through the systematic categorization of knowledge [see Annotation 8, p. 8]. This is a flawed method of seeking knowledge because it considers truth to be essentially static and unchanging, and upholds the erroneous notion that truth can be systematically broken down into discrete, isolated categories. In addition to being fundamentally incorrect about the nature of truth and knowledge, it leads to the incorrect presumption that such static categorization of knowledge can lead to truth ''at all''. Metaphysics fails to see truth and consciousness as a ''process'', and instead sees truth as a static assembly of categorized facts and data.
+''Dogmatism'' occurs when one only accounts for commonalities and considers theory itself as the sole basis of truth. Dogmatism inherently overstates the absoluteness of knowledge, as dogmatic positions uphold certain theoretical principles as complete, inviolable, and completely developed. This explicitly denies the continuously developing process of advancing knowledge and consciousness.
+''Conservativism'' includes any position that seeks to prevent change, or to undo change to return to an earlier state of development. Such positions deny the continuous development of consciousness, knowledge, and practice, and incorrectly assert incorrect positions; or mistake relative truth for absolute truth.
+''Stagnation'' is an inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability.
+On the contrary, if we exaggerate the relativity of the truth of knowledge which we possess, or downplay its absoluteness, we will fall into relativism, thereby leading to subjectivism, revisionism, sophistry, and skepticism.
+-----
+==== Annotation 237 ====
+''Relativism'' is the belief that human consciousness can ''only'' achieve relative understanding of the world, and that truth can therefore never be objectively discovered. Relativism is, thus, the overstatement of the relative nature of truth and the denial of the existence of absolute truth. Relativism leads to such incorrect viewpoints and mindsets as:
+''Subjectivism'': which occurs when one centers one’s own self and one’s own conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality [see Annotation 211, p. 205]. This position denies that truth can be discovered in the external material world, falsely believing that absolute truth stems only from conscious activity.
+''Revisionism'': a failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private [see ''Private and Common'', p. 128]. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.
+''Sophistry:'' the use of falsehoods and fallacious arguments to deceive [see Annotation 116, p. 118]. Sophistry is, thus, the intentional denial of truth and the intentional mischaracterization of truths as either overly relative or as not truths at all.
+''Skepticism:'' the belief that truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality [see Annotation 200, p. 192]. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable.
+-----
+In addition to objectivity, absoluteness, and relativity, truth also has ''concreteness.'' The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is what we call ''concreteness''.
+Knowledge, if detached from specific historical conditions, will fall into pure abstraction. Therefore, it will not be accurate — it will not align with reality — and such knowledge cannot be considered truth. When emphasizing this property, Lenin wrote: “Truth is always concrete, never abstract.”<ref>''Once Again On The Trade Unions,'' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1921.</ref> Mastering the principle of the concreteness of truth has an important methodological significance in cognitive and practical activities. It is required that consideration and evaluation of all things and phenomena must be based on a historical viewpoint [see Annotation 114, p. 116]. In developing and applying theory, we must be conscious of specific historical conditions. According to Lenin, Marxism’s nature, its essence, lies in the concrete analysis of specific situations; Marx’s method is, above all, to consider the objective content of the historical process in a specific time.
+-----
+==== Annotation 238 ====
+In other words, Marxism is rooted in seeking truth by examining reality from a historical and comprehensive viewpoint. For more information, see Annotation 114, p. 116.
+''- The Role of Truth in Reality.''
+In order to survive and develop, humans must conduct practical activities. These activities involve transforming the environment, nature, and human society. At the same time, through these activities, humans perform — knowingly or unknowingly — the process of perfecting and developing our conscious and practical abilities. It is this process that helps human cognitive activities develop. Practical activities can only be successful and effective once humans apply accurate knowledge of objective reality to our practical activities. Therefore, truth is one of the prerequisites that ensure success and efficiency in practical activities.
+The relationship between truth and practical activities is a dialectical relationship which serves as the basis for the movement and development of both truth and practical activity: truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth which people have gained through practical activities.
+-----
+==== Annotation 239 ====
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-89.png|''Truth and Practical Activities have a dialectical relationship in which truth develops through practice, and practice develops through the correct application of truth.'']]
+Practice only develops when truth about the universe is consciously applied to practical activities. For example, farm output increases as we learn more truth about the way crops grow and how land can be properly managed. Simultaneously, truth can only be developed through practical activity, as all ideas and knowledge must be tested through methodological observation, experimentation, and other forms of practical activity.
+A ''theory'' is an idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. Theories are not inherently truthful; holding incorrect theories constitutes ''false consciousness''. ''Practice'' (or ''praxis'') is purposeful conscious activity which improves our understanding of the world. Theory and practice have a dialectical relationship with one another which, if understood, helps us to discover truth.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-90.png|''Truth and practical activities mutually develop one another over time.'']]
+This dialectical relationship between theory and practical activities means that we must never favor theory over practice, nor practice over theory, but that we must rather balance development of theoretical understanding as we engage in practical activities to test our knowledge against reality and to develop our practice with ever-advancing understanding of the world. As practice and theory develop one another, our understanding of objective reality comes closer and closer to truth.
+In ''Theses on Feuerbach'', Marx summarizes the relationship between theory and practice, writing:
+<blockquote>
+The problem of the external world is here put as the problem of its transformation: the problem of the cognition of the external world as an integral part of the problem of transformation: the problem of theory as a practical problem.
+</blockquote>
+Here, Marx explains that theory is concerned with solving the “problem” of transforming the external world through practice, and that “cognition of the external world” is required to solve the “problem of transformation. In other words, we must improve our theory in order to improve our practical ability to transform our world, and we learn about the world (thus improving our theory) through those practical activities.
+Marx also writes in ''Theses on Feuerbach'' that:
+<blockquote>
+The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but it is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power... of his thinking.
+</blockquote>
+This point is key for understanding the dialectical relationship between practice and theory: in order to be useful, theory must be ''proven through practice''. Thus, we must seek to develop our practice through theory, and our theory through practice.
+Engels summarizes these ideas a bit more colorfully in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
+<blockquote>
+Before there was argument there was action... In the beginning was the deed ... And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
+</blockquote>
+-----
+Engels wrote in ''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'' of the uselessness of what might be called “pure theory,” divorced from practice, and the sort of radical skepticism which refutes that any practical knowledge can ever really be obtained by human beings:
+<blockquote>
+There is yet a set of different philosophers — those who question the possibility of any cognition, or at least of an exhaustive cognition of the world... The most telling refutation of this (scepticism and agnosticism) as of all other philosophical crotchets, is praxis, namely experiment and industry.
+</blockquote>
+It is ''practice'', according to Engels, which proves the merit and utility of theory.
+Through experiment and industry — through practical activities in the material world — we can test our ideas and dialectically develop both theory and practice. Lenin built upon these ideas in his own work, writing in ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'':
+<blockquote>
+The materialist theory, the theory of the reflection of objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity: things exist outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images. Verification of these images, differentiation between true and false images, is given by practice.
+</blockquote>
+Here, Lenin explains how only a proper understanding and application of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice can lead to the negation of false consciousness [see Annotation 235, p. 231] and the dialectical development of both practice and theory. Simply arguing and debating about ideas without relating them directly to practice will never lead to truth, nor will such pure-theory argumentation develop theory or practice in any meaningful way.
+This brings to mind another line from Marx’s ''Theses on Feuerbach'':
+<blockquote>
+The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.
+</blockquote>
+The philosophy of dialectical materialism and the system of materialist dialectics are designed specifically to produce ''action'' and to avoid such “scholastic questions” and “pure-theory argumentation.”
+Ho Chi Minh summarized these ideas perhaps most clearly and precisely of all in the very title of his article: ''Practice Generates Knowledge, Understanding Advances Theory, Theory Leads to Practice:''
+<blockquote>
+Knowledge comes from practice. And through practice, knowledge becomes theory. That theory, again, has to be put into practice. Knowledge advances not just from thought to theory, but, above all, from applying theory to revolutionary practice. Once the world’s law is fully grasped as theory, it is critical to put that theory into practice by changing the world, by increasing production, and by practicing class struggle and struggling for national self-determination. This is a continuous process of obtaining knowledge.
+</blockquote>
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-91.png|''“If Uncle Ho says we will win, we will win!” — Propaganda poster from the 30<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1984).'']]
+= Afterword =
+If it seems that this book has come to an end somewhat abruptly, it’s because this is really just the first of four major sections of the full volume from which this text is drawn. If you are reading this afterword after reading the entirety of the preceding contents, then congratulations, you have completed the equivalent to a full semester’s coursework for a class on dialectical materialist philosophy which all Vietnamese college students are required to take!
+The next sections in this curriculum, each covered in the original full volume, include:
+=== Part 2: Historical Materialism ===
+This section covers the definition and basic principles of historical materialism, which is the field of work dedicated to applying dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to human history and human society. In the West, historical materialism and dialectical materialism are often conflated, but this is in error. Historical materialism is an ''applied field'' of dialectical materialist philosophy and materialist dialectical methodology which is used in the pursuit of understanding and interpreting human history.
+=== Part 3: Political Economy ===
+This section condenses the three cardinal volumes of ''Capital'' by Karl Marx and covers three primary doctrines:
+. The doctrine of value.
+. The doctrine of surplus value.
+. The doctrines of monopolist capitalism and state monopolist capitalism.
+Political Economy, in this course, can be considered the application of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics to the analysis and understanding of the capitalist mode of production from the perspective of the socialist revolutionary movement.
+=== Part 4: Scientific Socialism ===
+This section relies on an established understanding of dialectical materialism, historical materialism, and political economy as a foundation for developing socialist revolution. The three chapters of this section on Scientific Socialism are:
+. The Historical Mission of the Working Class and the Socialist Revolution
+. The Primary Social-Political Issues of the Process of Building a Socialist Revolution 3. Realistic Socialism and Potential Socialism
+=== Moving Forward ===
+We are already working on the translation of Part 2 of this curriculum, and we hope to complete it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we believe this book provides the reader with enough of a foundation to continue studying and to begin applying the principles of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics in political struggle.
+We highly discourage readers from self-study in isolation, just as we discourage individual political action. The best way to study socialism is ''alongside other socialists''.
+Depending on where you live, you may be able to find political education resources provided by communist parties, socialist book clubs, or other organizations. If such resources aren’t available, it should be fairly easy to find study groups, workshops, and affinity groups online where you can study with like-minded comrades. Of course, socialist revolution requires more than just study, as we hope this book has thoroughly explained. Theory ''must'' be coupled with practice. As Ho Chi Minh wrote: “If you read a thousand books, but you fail to apply theory into practice, you are nothing but a bookshelf.”
+To avoid atrophying into the proverbial bookshelf, we encourage you to go out into the world and apply these ideas creatively and collectively with other socialists. Dialectical materialism is a philosophy that was developed from the ground up for ''application in the real world''. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics provide a functional model of reality, a way of looking at highly complicated systems, with all their dynamic internal and external relations. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we see human systems as processes in motion. In order to fully comprehend such dynamic processes, we must engage with them, which is why Ho Chi Minh taught that “we are not afraid to make mistakes; we would only be afraid of making mistakes if we were not determined to correct them.”<ref>''Revolutionary Ethics,'' Ho Chi Minh, December 1958.</ref>
+As we mentioned in the foreword, many socialists in the West suffer from a lack of practical ''engagement''. Far too many socialists fall into utopianism, idealism, and social chauvinism and we believe this largely stems from failures to test ideas against reality through ''praxis''. We hope that this book has impressed upon the reader that simply arguing about pure theory is a useless and futile pursuit. Indeed, sparring verbally over such “scholastic questions,” as Marx described them, is counter-productive. Marx and Engels defined such failure to engage in theory as “critical criticism” — that is to say, criticism for the sake of criticism. As Marx and Engels wrote in ''The Holy Family,'' such critical criticism is futile, as we will never ''think'' our way to revolution:
+<blockquote>
+According to Critical Criticism, the whole evil lies only in the workers’ “thinking”. It is true that the English and French workers have formed associations in which they exchange opinions not only on their immediate needs as workers, but on their needs as human beings. In their associations, moreover, they show a very thorough and comprehensive consciousness of the “enormous” and “immeasurable” power which arises from their co-operation. But these mass-minded, communist workers, employed, for instance, in the Manchester or Lyons workshops, do not believe that by “pure thinking” they will be able to argue away their industrial masters and their own practical debasement. They are most painfully aware of the difference between being and thinking, between consciousness and life. They know that property, capital, money, wage-labour and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement and that therefore they must be abolished in a practical, objective way for man to become man not only in thinking, in consciousness, but in mass being, in life. Critical Criticism, on the contrary, teaches them that they cease in reality to be wage-workers if in thinking they abolish the thought of wage-labour; if in thinking they cease to regard themselves as wage-workers and, in accordance with that extravagant notion, no longer let themselves be paid for their person. As absolute idealists, as ethereal beings, they will then naturally be able to live on the ether of pure thought.
+</blockquote>
+Engels expressed his frustration with such endless, utopian, idealist debates in ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'':
+<blockquote>
+Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.
+</blockquote>
+Engels concludes by punctuating ''why'' he and Marx had developed dialectical materialism as a praxis-oriented philosophical foundation for scientific socialism: “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.” We hope that the readers of this text will seek out real bases for your development in theory and praxis, and we trust that you will quickly discover that developing practice develops theory, and vice-versa.
+Remember that Marx and Engels, themselves, were not just theorists who scribbled down their thoughts in an “scholarly” vacuum. They were revolutionists themselves, highly engaged in political struggle and, in so struggling, they risked their lives and freedom over the course of many decades. This struggle is what led to the change and development of their ideas over time. The same can be said for every other successful socialist revolutionary in history.
+Vo Nguyen Giap, the great general who led Vietnam’s military forces through resistance wars against fascist Japan, colonialist France, and the imperialist USA, describes how he applied such principles on the battlefield in his book ''People’s War, People’s Army'':
+<blockquote>
+During the Resistance War, owing to constant fighting, the training of our troops could not be carried out continuously for a lengthy period but only between battles or campaigns. We actively implemented the guiding principles ‘To train and to learn while we fight.’ After the difficult years at the beginning of the Resistance War, we succeeded in giving good training to our army. The practical viewpoint in this training deserves to be highlighted. The content of training became most practical and rich. Training was in touch with practical fighting: the troops were trained in accordance with the next day’s fighting, and victory or defeat in the fighting was the best gauge for the control and assessment of the result of the training. On the basis of gradual unification of the organisation and its equipment, the content of training in the various units of the regular army was also systematised step by step.
+</blockquote>
+Here, Vo Nguyen Giap has provided a concrete example of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, and their inseparability. This fundamental aspect of dialectical materialist philosophy demands that we think and act like ''scientists'' to change the world, rather than simply speculating and imagining ineffectually like armchair philosophers. As Marx wrote in ''Theses on Feuerbach'' “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” We encourage you to apply what you learn in this and other books to ''change the world.''
+=== Advice on Further Study ===
+As you advance in your studies of socialist literature and theory, we offer the following advice:
+First, you must recognize that the specific language used by revolutionary leaders and thinkers may vary widely across time and around the world. Fashions in language develop over time, and many contributions — like the text you’ve just read — come to us through translation from countless languages. This is why we believe it critical to develop an understanding of the ''spirit'' of the ideas of any particular text, and not to get bogged down in semantics and terminology. Liberal ideologists have done much to distract and divert intellectual energy with endless metaphysical altercation over the “proper” usage of this or that word. We caution strongly against this attitude, which makes us susceptible to sophistry, opportunism, and the sewing of undue conflict and division amidst the working class. We have pointed out various instances where Marx, Engels, and Lenin used different language to describe the same concepts. We also offer the reminder that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were writing in different languages at different times, just as socialists around the world have different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As socialism is an international movement, we must stress the importance of avoiding linguistic barriers by engaging with one another in good faith and testing conflicting ideas and interpretations of theory against one another through practice instead of getting bogged down with “critical criticism.”
+Next, we encourage students of socialist philosophy to always keep in mind that the doctrines and philosophies of revolutionary figures are products of the times and places in which they were conceived. It would be a mistake to view the works of any revolutionary figure as a road map or a set of instructions to follow by rote. Even Marx and Engels changed and developed their own ideas over the decades they were active, as they addressed in the 1872 preface to ''The Communist Manifesto'':
+<blockquote>
+The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’ s Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.) Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although, in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated.”
+</blockquote>
+Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Ho Chi Minh also frequently took pains to point out that their revolutionary theories were devised specifically to suit the particular objective conditions of their own respective times and places. For example, in ''What is to be Done'', Lenin discusses the question of secrecy in revolutionary activity. Lenin recognizes that secrecy is not always necessary, such as in the more liberal social democracies which existed in Europe in his era. In Russia, however — with its autocratic monarchy — material conditions called for more covert activity:
+<blockquote>
+In countries where political liberty exists the distinction between a trade union and a political organisation is clear enough, as is the distinction between trade unions and Social-Democracy. The relations between the latter and the former will naturally vary in each country according to historical, legal, and other conditions; they may be more or less close, complex, etc. (in our opinion they should be as close and as little complicated as possible); but there can be no question in free countries of the organisation of trade unions coinciding with the organisation of the Social-Democratic Party. In Russia, however, the yoke of the autocracy appears at first glance to obliterate all distinctions between the Social-Democratic organisation and the workers’ associations, since all workers’ associations and all study circles are prohibited, and since the principal manifestation and weapon of the workers’ economic struggle — the strike — is regarded as a criminal (and sometimes even as a political!) offence.”
+</blockquote>
+Ho Chi Minh was even more explicit about the requirement to tailor theory to current and local material conditions in a speech to the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1950:
+<blockquote>
+Studying Marxism-Leninism is not just a matter of repeating the slogan ‘workers of the world, unite’ like a parrot. We must unify Marxism-Leninism with the reality of Vietnam’s revolution. Talking about Marxism-Leninism in Vietnam is talking about the specific guidelines and policies of the Communist Party of Vietnam. For example, our priority now is: great solidarity!
+</blockquote>
+In a 2001 document, the Communist Party of Vietnam explained how Ho Chi Minh tailored lessons learned from prior revolutionaries to the specific material conditions of revolutionary Vietnam:
+<blockquote>
+Ho Chi Minh’s thought is... the creative application and development of Marxism-Leninism to the specific conditions of our country. Ho Chi Minh learned profound lessons from Lenin and the Russian October Revolution, but he did not simply use those lessons as a template, nor did he just copy that foundation. Instead, he absorbed the spirit of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin’s thesis allowed Ho Chi Minh to see what was necessary for the Vietnamese people — the path of national liberation. Ho Chi Minh had creative arguments that contributed to enriching Marxism-Leninism in the issue of national liberation revolution, building a new democratic regime and the transitional path to socialism in an Eastern, semi-feudal colony which was still very backward: Vietnam.
+</blockquote>
+As you find your own revolutionary path, you must carefully examine the objective conditions of your own time and place, and work collectively and collaboratively with your fellow revolutionists to decide how theory and lessons gleaned from history apply to your own circumstances. And, of course, you must test the validity of your conclusions against reality through ''practice''.
+=== Creative Application of Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics ===
+Finally, we implore you to apply dialectical materialism ''creatively''. Don’t look at this (or any other) book as a set of static instructions. Dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics are living, breathing systems of thought which benefit from the ideas and imagination of comrades working and struggling together. Seek the ''spirit'' of these ideas, study revolutionary theory and history, then ''apply'' what you learn in your daily life. Combat dogmatism and avoid arguments over pure theory. Determine what works and what doesn’t through activity in the real world, and apply what you learn from practical experience to your theoretical development. Over time, you will begin to see how practice and theory impact and develop one another. When you are struggling with a particular problem in revolutionary practice, you will find yourself reading theory in a new light, discovering information and ideas which might be applicable to your immediate circumstances. And as you study theory, you will find that it also impacts your practice, giving you tools and perspective and methodologies for action which you might never have imagined on your own.
+We have tried to make this book a useful companion for further study. We have also made the digital version available for free online. If you have found it useful, we hope you will share it freely and widely.
+=== In Closing ===
+One last time we would like to thank Dr. Vijay Prashad and Dr. Taimur Rahman for their wonderful insights on our translation, and to acknowledge the monumental work of the Vietnamese scholars who wrote and revised the original text from which this volume is drawn. We also want to recognize once more the donors and supporters who have given us the precious resource of time to translate and annotate this work. Finally, we want to thank the teams at the Iskra Books and The International Magazine, who have provided invaluable editing and peer review services, promotion, and guidance. You can find all their publications, respectively, at:
+IskraBooks.org
+InternationalMagz.com
+If you would like to download the free digital version of this book, support future translation work, or if you would like to get in touch, you can visit our website:
+BanyanHouse.org
+We will leave you, now, with the immortal words of the Manifesto:
+'''Workers of the world, unite!'''
+You have nothing to lose but your chains.
+=== In Solidarity, ===
+''-'' ''Luna Nguyen, Translator &amp; Annotations''
+''-'' ''Emerican Johnson, Editor, Illustrator, &amp; Annotations''
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-92.jpg|''“Marxism-Leninism — Long Live the Victories” — a demonstration to welcome the liberation army in the South of Vietnam on April 30, 1975.'']]
+<br />
+= [Appendices] =
+== Appendix A: Basic Pairs of Categories Used in Materialist Dialectics ==
+This is a summary of the basic pairs of universal categories and their characteristics which are discussed in depth starting on p. 126.
+{|
+| | '''Private'''
+| '''Common'''
+|
+|-
+| | A specific item, event, or process.
+| The properties that are shared between Private things, phenomena, and ideas.
+|
+|}
+''Private'' is commonly referred to in literature as ''Special/Specific'' while ''Common'' is commonly called ''General''. ''Note:'' When an aspect or characteristic is not held in common with anything else in existence, it is considered ''Unique''. The Unique can become Common, just as the Common can become Unique. Example: a Unique design for an object may be replicated, making it Common. A type of item that is Common may gradually disappear until there is only one example left, making it Unique. ''See p. 128.''
+{|
+| | '''Reason'''
+| '''Result'''
+|
+|-
+| | Mutual impact between things, phenomena, or ideas which causes each to change.
+| The change caused by a Reason.
+|
+|}
+''Reason'' and ''Result'' may be referred to as ''Cause'' and ''Effect'', respectively, though this should lead to confusion with metaphysical conceptions of cause and effect. ''Note:'' Reasons can be Direct or Indirect. ''See p. 138''
+{|
+| | '''Obviousness'''
+| '''Randomness'''
+|
+|-
+| | Refers to events that always and predictably happen due to factors of internal material structure.
+| Events caused by external impacts and interactions which are thus not completely predictable.
+|
+|}
+''Obvious'' may be referred to as ''Necessary,'' while ''Randomness'' may be referred to as ''Accidental. See p. 145.''
+{|
+| | '''Content'''
+| '''Form'''
+|
+|-
+| | What something is made of.
+| The shape that contains content.
+|
+|}
+Ways in which Content and Form are discussed and perceived can can vary wildly depending on the subject being discussed and the viewpoint from which the subject is being considered. ''See p. 145.''
+{|
+| | '''Essence'''
+| '''Phenomena'''
+|
+|-
+| | Features that make something develop a certain way.
+| The expression of the essence in certain conditions.
+|
+|}
+''See p. 156.''
+{|
+| | '''Possibility'''
+| '''Reality'''
+|
+|-
+| | What may happen, or might exist, in the future, if certain developments take place.
+| What is happening, or what exists, at the present moment.
+|
+|}
+''See p. 160.''
+== Appendix B: the Two Basic Principles of Dialectical Materialism ==
+'''The Principle of General Relationships''' This principle states that:
+“Materialist dialectics upholds the position that all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in mutual relationships with each other, regulate each other, transform into each other, and that nothing exists in complete isolation.”
+From this Principle, we find the characteristics of ''Diversity in Unity'' and ''Unity in Diversity''; the basis of Diversity in Unity is the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea contains many different relationships; the basis of Unity in Diversity is that many different relationships exist — unified — within each and every thing, phenomenon, and idea.
+'''''The Characteristic of Diversity in Unity''''' is derived from the fact that there exist an infinite number of diverse relationships between things, phenomena, and ideas, but all of these relationships share the same foundation in the material world.
+'''''The Characteristic of Unity in Diversity''''' is derived from the fact that when we examine the universal relationships that exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity.
+'''The Principle of Development''' This principle states that:
+'''“'''Development is a process that comes from within the thing-in-itself; the process of solving the contradictions within things and phenomena. Therefore, development is inevitable, objective, and occurs without dependence on human will.”
+'''''The Characteristic of Objectiveness of Development''''' stems from the origin of motion. Since motion originates from mutual impacts which occur between external things, objects, and relationships, the motions themselves also occur externally (relative to all other things, phenomena, and objects). This gives motion itself objective characteristics.
+'''''The Characteristic of Generality of Development''''' stems from the fact that development occurs in every process that exists in every field of nature, society, and human thought; in every thing, every phenomenon, and every process and stage of these things and phenomena.
+'''''The Characteristic of Diversity of Development''''' stems from the fact that every thing, phenomenon, and idea has its own process of development that is not totally identical to the process of development of any other thing, phenomenon, or idea.
+== Appendix C: the Three Universal Laws of Materialist Dialectics ==
+=== The Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality ===
+The law of transformation between quantity and quality is a universal law which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought. The law was formulated by Friedrich Engels in ''Dialectics of Nature'', and states that:
+“In nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion.” ''See more on p. 163.''
+=== The Law of Unification and Contradiction Between Opposites ===
+The law of unification and contradiction between opposites is the essence of dialectics. It states, as formulated by V. I. Lenin in ''Summary of Dialectics'':
+“The fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradiction which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas.” ''See more on p. 175.''
+=== The Law of Negation of Negation ===
+The law of negation of negation describes the fundamental and universal tendency of movement and development to occur through a cyclical form of development through what is termed “negation of negation.” Formulated by Friedrich Engels in ''Anti-Dühring,'' it states:
+“The true, natural, historical, and dialectical negation is (formally) the moving source of all development--the division into opposites, their struggle and resolution, and what is more, on the basis of experience gained, the original point is achieved again (partly in history, fully in thought), but at a higher stage.” ''See more on p. 185.''
+== Appendix D: Forms of Consciousness and Knowledge ==
+''Consciousness'' refers to the self-aware, productive, and creative motion and activity of the human brain. Practical activity is the most direct basis, motive, and purpose of consciousness, and is the criterion for testing truth. See: ''The Relationship Between Praxis and Consciousness'', p. 216.
+''Knowledge'' is the content of consciousness. Knowledge includes data about the world, such as ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived by direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.
+Consciousness and Knowledge have a dialectical relationship with one another: knowledge is developed within consciousness, and consciousness develops to higher levels as knowledge is accumulated and tested against reality (which also develops knowledge itself). In this manner, consciousness and knowledge develop into higher forms over time in individual consciousness and human society. Thus, consciousness and knowledge can be considered as existing in various forms which represent stages of development in dialectical processes of development.
+Note that the development processes of knowledge and consciousness are dialectical in nature, not linear. For example, after empirical consciousness develops into theoretical consciousness, theoretical consciousness will then impact empirical consciousness, developing empirical consciousness into a higher stage of development. This is true for all development processes related to empirical and theoretical consciousness. These development processes and forms of consciousness and knowledge are explained in more detail in Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism, starting on page 204.
+=== Forms of Consciousness ===
+Consciousness is a process of the development of knowledge through a combination of human brain activity and human practical activity in the physical world (i.e., labor). The development of consciousness can be considered on the criteria of ''concrete/abstract'' and of ''passive/active''. For more information, see Annotation 216, p. 210.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-99.png]]
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-100.png]]
+=== The Cognitive Process ===
+The Cognitive Process is a model developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin which represents the dialectical path of consciousness to truth. For more information, see ''Dialectical Path of Consciousness to Truth'' on page 219.
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-101.png]]
+=== Forms of Knowledge ===
+''For more information see Annotation 218, p. 214.''
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-102.png]]
+== Appendix E: Properties of Truth ==
+Truth is the alignment of consciousness with objective reality. All truths are objective, relative, absolute, and concrete. Truths also have characteristics of concreteness and abstractness.
+'''Objectivity:''' The content of truth is external to the subjective will of human beings. The content of knowledge must be aligned with objective reality, not vice versa. This means that the content of accurate knowledge is not a product of pure subjective reasoning but is objective in nature.
+'''Absoluteness:''' Absolute truth<ref>Note: Absolute Truth in dialectical materialist philosophy should not be confused with Hegel’s conception of Absolute Truth as a final point at which human consciousness will have achieved absolute, complete, and final understanding of our universe.</ref> is derived from the complete alignment between objective reality and human consciousness. The possibility of acquiring absolute truth in the process of the development of conscious understanding is theoretically limitless. However, in reality, our conscious ability to reflect reality is limited by the specific material conditions of each generation of humanity, of practical limitations, and by the spatial and temporal conditions of reflected subjects. Therefore, truth is also ''relative''.
+'''Relativity:''' Relative truth is truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached ''complete'' alignment. To put it another way, relative truth represents knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. In relative truth, there is only partial alignment — in some (but not all) aspects — between consciousness and the material world.
+'''Dialectical Relationship Between Absolute and Relative Truth:''' Relative truth and absolute truth do not exist separately, but have dialectical unity with each other. On the one hand, “absolute truth” is the sum of all “relative truths.” On the other hand, in all relative truths there are always elements of absolute truth.
+'''Concreteness:''' The concreteness of truth refers to the degree to which a truth is attached to specific objects, in specific conditions, at a specific point in time. This means that all accurate knowledge always refers to a specific situation which involves specific subjects which exist in a specific place and time. The content of truth cannot be pure abstraction, disconnected from reality, but it is always associated with certain, specific objects and phenomena which exist in a specific space, time, and arrangement, with specific internal and external relationships. Therefore, truth is associated with specific historical conditions. This specificity to time, place, relations, etc., is ''concreteness''.
+'''Abstractness:''' Abstract knowledge is knowledge which is not attached (or less attached) to specific times, places, relations, etc. Some degree of abstraction is necessary to develop theoretical understanding of general laws and the nature of objective reality, but care should be taken knowledge does not become completely detached from specific historical conditions, as this will result in ''pure abstraction''. Knowledge which is purely abstract will not align with reality, and such knowledge cannot be considered truth.
+== Appendix F: Common Deviations From Dialectical Materialism ==
+Throughout the history of the development of dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics, there have been many philosophical and methodological deviations which have derived from incorrect analysis, interpretation, and a failure to properly link theory and practice. Below are descriptions of some of the more common deviations which the reader should be aware of.
+'''Bureaucracy:''' An expression of ''dogmatism'' which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory.
+'''Conservativism:''' A mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas.
+'''Dogmatism:''' A breakdown of the dialectical relationship between theoretical consciousness and empirical consciousness, which arrests the development process of knowledge and consciousness. Usually the result of: failure to seek commonalities; considering theory itself as the sole basis of truth rather than practice; ignoring practical experience and considering pre-established theory, alone, as unalterable truth.
+'''Eclecticism:''' An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. Empiricism: A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects.
+'''Idealism:''' A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that relying on human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. Various forms of idealism exist, broadly broken down into subjective idealism, which denies the existence of an external objective world, and objective idealism, which accepts that an external objective world exists, but denies that knowledge can be reliably gained about it through sense perception.
+'''Opportunism:''' A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, no coherent viewpoint, leaning on whatever is beneficial for the opportunist in the short term.
+'''Revisionism:''' A failure to recognize and accept commonalities in conscious activity, focusing only on the private. Revisionism leads to constant and unnecessary reassessment and reevaluation of both knowledge and practice. Revisionism, thus, is a position which overstates the relativity of truth and ignores truths which are more fully developed towards absoluteness.
+'''Rigidity:''' An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness.
+'''Skepticism:''' The belief truth is essentially undiscoverable, because human consciousness is ultimately unreliable and incapable of accurately reflecting material reality. By denying that truth is discoverable at all, skepticism explicitly rejects absolute truth and declares that all truth is relative and unreliable. Solipsism: A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. As Marxist ethicist Howard Selsam wrote in ''Ethics and Progress: New Values in a Revolutionary World'': “If I believe that I alone exist and that you and all your arguments exist only in my mind and are my own creations then all possible arguments will not shake me one iota. No logic can possibly convince [the] solipsist.”
+'''Sophistry:''' The use of falsehoods and misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, and with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. This kind of bad faith argument has no place in materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics must, instead, be rooted in a true and accurate understanding of the subject, material conditions, and reality in general.
+'''Subjectivism:''' The centering of one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test one’s own perceptions against material and social reality. Subjectivists tend to believe that they can independently reason their way to truth in their own minds without practical experience and activity in the material world.
+'''Utilitarianism:''' An ethical philosophical theory founded by Jeremy Bentham which seeks to maximize “utility,” which is considered to be a metaphysical property embodying “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness.” Karl Marx dismissed utilitarianism as overly abstract, in that it reduces all social relationships to the single characteristic of “utility.” He also viewed utilitarianism as metaphysically static and tied to the status quo of current society, since utilitarianism does not address class dynamics and views all relations in the current status quo of society, making utilitarianism an essentially conservative theory. Marx also pointed out that Utilitarianism essentially views individuals as private individuals, not as social individuals, and seeks to work out solutions to the practical problems of human society through reasoning alone without examining material conditions and processes, and without taking into consideration practice and development, writing:
+<blockquote>
+“The whole criticism of the existing world by the utility theory was... restricted within a narrow range. Remaining within the confines of bourgeois conditions, it could criticise only those relations which had been handed down from a past epoch and were an obstacle to the development of the bourgeoisie... the economic content gradually turned the utility theory into a mere apologia for the existing state of affairs, an attempt to prove that under existing conditions the mutual relations of people today are the most advantageous and generally useful.”
+</blockquote>
+= [Back Matter] =
+== Glossary &amp; Index ==
+{|
+| | '''Absolute Truth'''
+| Absolute Truth can refer to:<br />
+<br />
+. The recognition that objective and accurate truth can be drawn from sense perception of the material world along with labor and practice activities in the material world. The opposite of this position is Relativism. See p. 56, 94, 194, 228–229, 232–234.<br />
+<br />
+. Hegel’s notion of Absolute Truth: that there will eventually be some end point of to the process of rational consciousness at which point humanity will arrive at a final stage of knowledge and consciousness. See p. 228.<br />
+<br />
+See also: Relative Truth, Relativism, Stagnation, Truth.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Absolutization'''
+| To hold a belief or supposition as always true in all situations and without exception. See p. 49.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Abstract Labor'''
+| The abstract conception of expenditure of human energy in the form of labor, without taking into account the value of labor output. When the value of labor output ''is'' taken into consideration, it is referred to as ''concrete labor''. See p. 15, 17.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Adam Smith'''
+| (1723–1790) British logic professor, moral philosophy professor, and economist. Along with David Ricardo, Adam Smith was one of the founders of ''political economy'', which Marx both drew from and critiqued in his analysis and critique of capitalism. See p. 14, 155.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Ahistoric Perspective'''
+| A perspective which considers aspects of human society without due consideration of historical processes of development. For example, Adam Smith and David Ricardo viewed political economy ahistorically, viewing capitalism as a static, universal, and eternal product of natural law rather than seeing capitalism as a product of historical processes of development which would change and develop over time. See p. 116.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Base'''
+| Also known as: Economic Base; Economic Basis. The material processes which humans undertake to survive and transform our environment to support our ways of living. In the dialectical relationship between base and ''superstructure'', the base refers to the relationship which humans have with the means of production, including the ownership of the means of production and the organization of labor. See p. 23. See also: Superstructure.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Biological Motion'''
+| One of the five basic forms of motion described by Engels in ''Dialectics of Nature''. Biological motion refers to changes and development within living objects and their genetic structure. See p. 61.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Biological Reflection'''
+| A complex form of reflection found within organic subjects in the natural world and expressed by ''excitation'', ''induction'', and ''reflexes''. See p. 65.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Bourgeoisie'''
+| The owners of the means of production and the ruling class under capitalism; also known as the capitalist class. See p. 3, 23, 30, 41, 50, 63, 96. See also:<br />
+<br />
+Proletariat, Petty Bourgeoisie.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Bureaucracy'''
+| An expression of dogmatism which arises when theory becomes overly formalized, to the extent that practical considerations are ignored in favor of codified theory. See p. 217–218.<br />
+C→→M→→C C = A Commodity<br />
+M = The Money Commodity<br />
+The mode of circulation described by Marx as occurring under pre-capitalist economies of simple exchange, in which the producers and consumers of commodities have a direct relationship to the commodities which are being bought and sold. The sellers have produced the commodities with their own labor, and they directly consume the commodities which they purchase. See also: M→C→M’<br />
+Marx called this mode of circulation “simple commodity production.” See p. 16.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Capitalism'''
+| The current stage of human political economy, defined by private ownership of the means of production. ''Referenced throughout.''
+|
+|-
+| | '''Capitalist Class'''
+| See: Bourgeoisie
+|
+|-
+| | '''Capitalist Commodity Production'''
+| The capitalist mode of production which utilizes the M→C→M’ mode of circulation, in which capitalists own the means of production and pay wages to workers in exchange for their labor, which is used to produce commodities. Capitalists then sell these commodities for profits which are not shared with the workers who provided the labor. See p. 15.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Category'''
+| The most general grouping of aspects, attributes, and relations of things, phenomena, and ideas. Different specific fields of inquiry may categorize things, phenomena, and/or ideas differently from one another. See p. 126.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Category Pair'''
+| A pair of philosophical categories within materialist dialectics. Materialist dialectics tend to focus on ''universal category pairs'' which can be used to examine the characteristics, relations, and development of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Examples of category pairs include: private and common; content and form; reason and result; essence and phenomena. See p. 127.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Characteristics'''
+| The features and attributes that exist internally — within — a given thing, phenomena, or idea. See p. 115.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Chemical Motion'''
+| Changes of organic and inorganic substances in processes of combination and separation. See p. 61.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Chemical Reflection'''
+| The reflection of mechanical, physical, and chemical changes and reactions of inorganic matter (i.e., changes in structures, position, physical-chemical properties, and the processes of combining and dissolving substances). See p. 65–66.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Circulation'''
+| The way in which commodities and money are exchanged for one another. See p. 16.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Commodity'''
+| In Marxist political economy, commodities include anything which can be bought and sold, with both a use value (i.e. it satisfies a need of any kind) and a value-form (aka. ‘Exchange value’ and understood as the average socially necessary labour time needed to produce this object). Under capitalism, more and more human activity and production is ‘commodified’ (mediated through market exchange). See p. 15, 87, 133.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Common'''
+| See: Private and Common
+|
+|-
+| | '''Common Laws'''
+| Laws (of nature and/or human society) that are applicable to a broader range of subjects than ''private laws'', and which impact many different subjects. For instance: the law of preservation of mass, the law of preservation of energy, etc. See p. 162.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Comprehensive Viewpoint'''
+| A ''viewpoint'' which seeks to consider the internal dialectical relationships between the component parts, factors, and aspects within a thing or phenomenon, and which considers external mutual interactions with with other things, phenomena, and ideas. Dialectical materialist philosophy demands a comprehensive basis in order to fully and properly understand things and phenomena in order to effectively solve problems in real life and develop humanity towards communism. See p. 115, 172, 235.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Conception'''
+| A relatively complete ''reflection'' within human consciousness of objective things and phenomena. See p. 221–22.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Concrete Labor'''
+| The production of a specific commodity with a specific value through labor. When labor is considered without the consideration of output value, it is referred to as ''abstract labor''. See p. 15, 17.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Conditioned Reflex'''
+| Conditioned reflexes are reactions which are learned by organisms. These responses are acquired as animals associate previously unrelated neural stimuli with a particular reaction. See p. 66, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Consciousness'''
+| The dynamic and creative reflection of the objective world in human brains; the subjective image of the objective world which is produced by the human brain. See p. 68–69, 70.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Content'''
+| See: Content and Form.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Content and Form (Category Pair)'''
+| Content is the philosophical category which refers to the sum of all aspects, attributes, and processes that a thing, phenomenon, or idea is made from. The Form category refers to the mode of existence and development of things, phenomena, and ideas. Form thus describes the system of relatively stable relationships which exist internally within things, phenomena, and ideas.<br />
+<br />
+Content and Form have a dialectical relationship with one another, in which content determines form and form impacts back on content. See p. 115, 147155, 166.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Contradiction'''
+| A contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose one another, leading to mutual development. See p. 123, 159, 163, 169, 175–191.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Consciousness'''
+| The self-aware, productive, creative motion and activity of the human brain. See p. 216, 249.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Conservativism'''
+| Also referred to as Prejudice; a mindset which seeks to prevent and stifle development and to hold humanity in a static position. Not only is this detrimental to humanity, it is also ultimately a wasted effort, because development is inevitable in human society, as in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 125, 233.
+|
+|-
+| | '''David Hume'''
+| (1711 — 1776) Scottish philosopher who developed radical skepticism as a philosophy of empiricist rejection of human knowledge. See p. 11, 29, 56, 7273.
+|
+|-
+| | '''David Ricardo'''
+| (1772 — 1823) British economist who, along with Adam Smith, was one of the key figures in the development of Political Economy which was a basis for much of the work of Marx and Engels. See p. 14, 18, 155.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Deductive Inference'''
+| Logical inference which extrapolates from the general to the specific. See p. 224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Definition'''
+| The first phase of rational consciousness. During this phase, the mind begins to interpret, organize, and process the basic properties of things and phenomena at a rational level into a conceptual whole. See p. 224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Development'''
+| The change and motion of things, phenomena, and ideas with a forward tendency: from less advanced to more advanced; and/or from a less complete to a more complete level. See p. 38, 45–46, 52, 55, 61, 65, 76–96, 105–107, 114118, 119–127, 131–132, 138–140, 143, 147, 154, 155–165, 169–175, 177–181, 183–207, 210, 213, 216–223, 225–229, 233, 235–237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Development Viewpoint'''
+| A viewpoint which considers that, in order to perceive or solve any problem in real life, we must consider all things, phenomena, and ideas with their own forward tendency of development taken in mind.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dialectic; Dialectical; Dialectics'''
+| In Marxism-Leninism, the term dialectic (adjective: dialectical) refers to regular and mutual relationships, interactions, transformations, motions, and developments of things, phenomena, and processes in nature, society and human thought. “Dialectics” refers to a dialectical system. See p. 3, 9–11, 47.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dialectical Materialism'''
+| A universal philosophical and methodological system which forms the theoretical core of a scientific worldview. Dialectical Materialism was first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with the express goal of achieving communism. Dialectical Materialism has since been defended and developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as well as many others. See: p. 3, 6, 1011, 19–21, 27–30, 33, 38, 45–47, 48–97, 101, 104, 204, 209, 226, 228, 230–232, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dialectical Negation'''
+| A stage of development in which a new subject arises from a contradiction between two previous subjects; dialectical negation is never an endpoint of development, as every dialectical negation creates conditions for further development and negation. See p. 123, 175–176, 183, 185–195, 197–202, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dialectical Relationship'''
+| A relationship in which two things, phenomena, or ideas mutually impact one another, leading to development and negation. See p. 47, 51, 62.
+|
+|-
+| | '''(Characteristic of) Diversity'''
+| The characteristic which all things, phenomena, and ideas share, dictating that no two subjects (and no two relationships between any two subjects) are exactly the same, even if they exist between very similar things, phenomena, and ideas and/or in very similar situations. See p. 114–115, 125.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Diversity in Unity'''
+| The universal principle which states that even though all relationships are diverse and different from one another, they also exist in unity, because all relationships share a foundation in the material world. See p. 109–110, 125, 130.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dogmatism'''
+| An inflexible adherence to ideals as incontrovertibly true while refusing to take any contradictory evidence into consideration. Dogmatism stands in direct opposition to materialist dialectics, which seeks to form opinions and conclusions only after careful consideration of all observable evidence. See p. 136–137, 174, 217–218, 233.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Duality of Labor'''
+| The Marxist economic concept which recognizes labor as having two intrinsic and inseparable aspects: abstract labor and concrete labor. See p. 15.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Dynamic and Creative Reflection'''
+| The most advanced form of reflection, which only occurs in matter that has the highest (known) level of structural complexity, such as the human brain. See p. 68–69, 79.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Eclecticism'''
+| An approach to philosophical inquiry which attempts to draw from various different theories, frameworks, and ideas to attempt to understand a subject; the philosophical error of inconsistently applying different theories and principles in different situations. See p. 32–33, 101, 118, 192, 194.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Economic Base'''
+| See: Base
+|
+|-
+| | '''Economism'''
+| Economism is a style of political activism, typified by the ideas of German political theorist Eduard Bernstein, which stresses directing the struggle towards short-term political/economic goals (such as higher wages for workers) at the expense of the larger socialist revolutionary project. See p. 30.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Eduard Bernstein'''
+| (1850 — 1932) German political theorist who rejected many of Marx’s theories. See p. 30, 174.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Emotional Consciousness'''
+| The lower stage of the cognitive process. In this stage of cognitive development, humans, through practical activities, use our senses to reflect objective things and phenomena (with all their perceived specific characteristics and rich manifestations) in human consciousness. See p. 219224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Empirical Consciousness'''
+| Empirical consciousness is the stage of development of consciousness in which perceptions are formed via direct observations of things and phenomena in the natural world, or of society, or through scientific experimentation and systematic observation. Empirical Consciousness results in Empirical Knowledge. See p. 210–214.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Empirical Knowledge'''
+| Knowledge which results from processes of empirical consciousness and which is characterised by rich and detailed, but still incomplete, understanding of phenomena. It can be utilized for practical ends, but still falls short of full theoretical analysis and comprehension. See p. 212–214.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Empiricism'''
+| A broad philosophical position which holds that only experience (including internal experience) can be held as a source of knowledge or truth. Though nominally opposed to idealism, it is considered a faulty (or naive) form of materialism, since it sees the world as only unconnected, static appearances and ignores the reality of dialectical (changing) relationships between objects. See p. 9–12, 29, 94, 96–97, 100, 218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Empirio-criticism'''
+| A more developed form of empiricism, proposed by Ernst Mach, which holds that sense data and experience are the sole sources of knowledge and that no concrete knowledge of the external material world can ever be obtained due to the limitations of human senses. See p. 26–29, 32, 54, 55–57, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Epistemology'''
+| The theoretical study of knowledge. It primarily deals with the philosophical question of: “how do we know what we know?” See p. 45, 98, 204.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Ernst Mach'''
+| (1838 — 1916) Austrian physicist who attempted to build a philosophy of natural science based on the works of German philosopher Richard Avenarius’ philosophical system of Empirio-Criticism. See p. 27–29, 32, 52, 72, 193.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Equilibrium'''
+| A state of motion in which one or more subjects are not undergoing changes in position, form, and/or structure. Equilibrium is only ever a temporary stasis of development which will eventually yield to motion, development, and/or negation. See p. 62–63, 122–123, 181.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Essence'''
+| See: Essence and Phenomena
+|
+|-
+| | '''Essence and Phenomena (Category Pair)'''
+| The Essence category refers to the synthesis of all the internal aspects as well as the obvious and stable relations that define the existence, motion and development of things and ideas. The Phenomena category refers to the external manifestation of those internal aspects and relations in specific conditions. Essence always determines which phenomena appear, but phenomena do not always accurately reflect essence in human perception; in other words, it is possible to misinterpret phenomena, leading to a misunderstanding of essence, or to mistake phenomena for essence. See p. 156–160.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Exchange Value'''
+| A quantity relationship which describes the ratios of exchangeability between different commodities, with Marx’s famous example of 20 yards of linen being equivalent in exchange value to one coat. Through analysis Marx shows that in reality the thing being compared is the amount of socially necessary labour required to make the commodities being compared. See p. 15, 18.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Excitation'''
+| Reactions of simple plant and animal life-forms which occur when they change position or structure as a direct result of physical changes in their habitat. See p. 66, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''External Contradictions'''
+| See: Internal and External Contradictions.
+|
+|-
+| | '''False consciousness'''
+| Forms of consciousness (ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc.) which are incorrect and misaligned from reality. Equated with ‘ideology’ by Engels, it refers to an idealistic, dogmatic perspective which will inevitably result in errors of analysis and therefore practice. See p. 231–233, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''First International'''
+| Also known as the International Workingmen’s Association; was founded in London and lasted from 1864–1876. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were key figures in the foundation and operation of this organization, which sought better conditions and the establishment of rights for workers. See p. 35
+|
+|-
+| | '''(Basic) Forms of Motion'''
+| Engels broke motion down into five basic forms which are dialectically linked; the different forms of motion differ from one another, but they are also unified with each other into one continuous system of motion. Understanding this dialectical relationship between different forms of motion helped to overcome misunderstandings and confusion about motion and development. See p. 61–62.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Form'''
+| See: Content and Form.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Form of existence of matter'''
+| The ways in which we perceive the existence of matter in our universe; specifically, matter in our universe has the form of existing in space and time. See p. 59.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Form of Value'''
+| See: Value-Form
+|
+|-
+| | '''Forward Tendency of Motion'''
+| The tendency for things, phenomena, and ideas to move from less advanced to more advanced forms through processes of motion and development. See p. 197.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Friedrich Engels'''
+| (1820–1895) a German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, &amp; co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx. ''Referenced throughout.''
+|
+|-
+| | '''Fundamental and Non-Fundamental Contradictions'''
+| A fundamental contradiction defines the essence of a relationship. Fundamental contradictions exist throughout the entire development process of a given thing, phenomenon, or idea. A non-fundamental contradiction exists in only one aspect or attribute of a thing, phenomenon, or idea. A nonfundamental contradiction can impact a subject, but it will not control or decide the essential development of the subject. See p. 178–179.
+|
+|-
+| | '''(Characteristic of) Generality'''
+| A universal characteristic which holds that all things, phenomena, and ideas interact and mutually transform one another. See p. 108–109, 111, 114, 124125.
+|
+|-
+| | '''General Relationship'''
+| Relationships which exist broadly across many things, phenomena, and ideas. General relationships can exist both internally, within things, phenomena, and ideas, and externally, between things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 106–110, 114.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Generality (of relationships)'''
+| Relationships can exist with across a spectrum of generality; this spectrum ranges from the least general relationships (''unique relationships'' — which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas) to the most general relationships (''universal relationships'' — which occur between or within all things/phenomena/ideas). See p. 109.
+|
+|-
+| | '''George Berkeley'''
+| (1685 — 1753) An Anglo-Irish philosopher whose main philosophical achievement was the formulation of a doctrine which he called “immaterialism,” and which later came to be known as “Subjective Idealism.” This doctrine was summed up by Berkeley’s maxim: “''Esse est percipi''” — “To be is to be perceived.” See p. 11, 27, 29.
+|
+|-
+| | '''George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel'''
+| (1770 — 1831) German philosophy professor &amp; objective idealistic philosopher; developed the system of idealist dialectics which Marx and Engels used as a basis for developing materialist dialectics. See p. 8–11, 29, 69–71, 97, 98, 100–105, 132, 157, 165, 182, 192, 193–194, 209, 228.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Historical Materialism'''
+| The application of materialist dialectics and dialectical materialism to the study of human history. See p. 21–23, 27, 36, 38, 45, 80.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Historical Viewpoint'''
+| A viewpoint which demands that subjects be considered in their current stage of motion and development, while also taking into consideration the development and transformation of the subject over time. See p. 116–118, 125–126, 143, 185, 234.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Idealism'''
+| A philosophical position which holds that the only reliable experience of reality occurs within human consciousness. Idealists believe that human reason exclusively or as a first basis is the best way to seek truth. See p. 8–12, 26–29, 48–51, 53, 56–58, 69–70, 96, 101–102, 104, 157, 174, 209, 218, 228.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Immanuel Kant'''
+| (1724 — 1804) German philosopher who developed a system of idealist dialectics which were later completed by Hegel and whose metaphysical philosophies of epistemology and rationalism served as the basis for later empiricists such as Bacon and Hume. See p. 20, 29, 56, 72–74, 100–102, 205.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Induction'''
+| The reaction of animals with simple nervous systems which can sense or feel their environments. Induction occurs through unconditioned reflex mechanisms. See p. 66, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Inductive Inference'''
+| Logical inference which extrapolates from specific observations to general conclusions. See p. 223–224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Intelligibility'''
+| The human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Internal Contradictions'''
+| See: Internal and External Contradictions.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Internal and External Contradictions'''
+| Internal contradictions are contradictions which exist within the internal relations of a subject, while external contradictions exist between two or more subjects as external relations. See p. 178–179.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Judgment'''
+| The phase of rational consciousness which arises from the definition of the subject — the linking of concepts and properties together — which leads to affirmative or negative ideation of certain characteristics or attributes of the perceived subject. See p. 223.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Karl Marx'''
+| (1818–1883) German theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, and leader of the international working class. ''Referenced throughout''.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Knowledge'''
+| The content of consciousness; data about the world, such as: ideas, memories, and other thoughts which are derived through direct observation and practical activities in the material world, through scientific experiments, or through abstract reflection of practical and scientific activities which occur within consciousness.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Labor Value'''
+| The amount of value which workers produce through labor. See p. 14, 17–18, 23.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Law of Negation of Negation'''
+| A universal law of materialist dialectics which states that the fundamental and universal tendency of motion and development occurs through a cycle of dialectical negation, wherein each and every negation is, in turn, negated once more. See p. 163, 185, 195, 198, 200, 201, 202, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Law of Transformation Between Quantity and Quality'''
+| The universal law of dialectical materialism which concerns the universal mode of motion and development processes of nature, society, and human thought, which states that qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of the quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and, ideas, and, vice versa, quantitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas arise from the inevitable basis of qualitative changes of things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163–165, 172–173, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Law of Unification Contradiction Between Opposites'''
+| and The universal law of dialectical materialism which states that the fundamental, originating, and universal driving force of all motion and development processes is the inherent and objective contradictions which exists in all things, phenomena, and ideas. See p. 163, 175, 181.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Law of Development of Capitalism'''
+| Also known as Theory of Accumulation and Theory of Surplus Value. The dynamic through which the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. See p. 18.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Laws'''
+| In dialectical materialism, laws are the regular, common, obvious, natural, objective relations between internal aspects, factors, and attributes of a thing or phenomenon or between things and phenomena. See p. 162.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Laws of Nature'''
+| Laws that arise in the natural world, including within the human body (and are never products of human conscious activities). Such law includes the laws of physics, chemistry, and other natural phenomena which govern the material world. See p. 162, 213.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Laws of Society'''
+| Laws of human activity in social relations; such laws are unable to manifest beyond the conscious activities of humans, but they are still objective. See p. 162–163.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Laws of Human Thought'''
+| Laws which govern the intrinsic relationships between concepts, categories, judgments, inference, and the development process of human rational awareness. See p. 163.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Life-Process'''
+| Processes of motion and change which occur within organisms to sustain life. See p. 69–72, 79, 88.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Ludwig Feuerbach'''
+| (1804 — 1872) German philosophy professor, materialist philosopher; Marx and Engels drew many of their ideas from the works of Feuerbach (whom they also criticized). See p. 8, 11–13, 21, 55, 74, 80, 114, 205, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''M→→C→→M’'''
+| The mode of circulation described by Marx as existing under capitalism, in which capitalists spend money to buy commodities (including the commodified labor of workers), with the intention of selling those commodities for ''more money'' than they began with. The capitalist has no direct relationship to the commodity being produced and sold, and the capitalist is solely interested in obtaining more money. See p. 16. See also: C→M→C
+|
+|-
+| | '''Machism'''
+| See: Empirio-Criticism.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Manifestation'''
+| How a given thing, phenomenon, or idea is expressed externally in the material world. See p. 115.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Marxism-Leninism'''
+| A system of scientific opinions and theories focused on liberating the working class from capitalism and achieving a stateless, classless, communist society. The core ideas of this system were first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then defended and further developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. See. p. 1.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Material Conditions'''
+| The material external environment in which humans live, including the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See p. 6, 22, 40–42, 70–72, 80–81, 87, 92–95, 116–118, 161, 174, 179, 181, 206–207, 210, 229.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Material Production Activity'''
+| Material production activity is the first and most basic form of ''praxis''. In this form of praxis activity, humans use tools through labor processes to influence the natural world in order to create wealth and material resources and to develop the conditions necessary to maintain our existence and development. See p. 206–208.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Materialism'''
+| A philosophical position that holds that the material world exists outside of the mind, and that human ideas and thoughts stem from observation and sense experience of this external world. Materialism rejects the idealist notion that truth can only be sought solely through reasoning and human consciousness. See p. 10–13, 48.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Materialist Dialectics'''
+| A scientific system of philosophy concerned with motion, development, and common relationships, and with the most common rules of motion and development of nature, society, and human thought. See p. 10, 21, 45–47, 98202, 227, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Matter'''
+| A philosophical category denoting things and phenomena, existing in objective external reality, which human beings access through our sense perceptions. See p. 26, 27, 32, 48, 51–52, 53–69, 72, 88–95, 97, 103, 164–165.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Means of Production'''
+| Physical inputs and systems used in the production of goods and services, including: machinery, factory buildings, tools, equipment, and anything else used in producing goods and services. See p. 2–3, 7, 14–16.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mechanical Motion'''
+| Changes in positions of objects in space. See p. 61.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mechanical Philosophy'''
+| A scientific and philosophical movement popular in the 17<sup>th</sup> century which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices, resulting in a belief that all things — including living organisms — were built as (and could theoretically be built by humans as) mechanical devices.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mental Reflection'''
+| Reactions which occur in animals with central nervous systems. Mental reflections occur through conditioned reflex mechanisms through learning. See p. 65, 68, 224.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Metaphysical Materialism'''
+| Metaphysical materialism was strongly influenced by the metaphysical, mechanical thinking of ''mechanical philosophy'', which was a scientific and philosophical movement which explored mechanical machines and compared natural phenomena to mechanical devices. Metaphysical materialists believed that all change can exist only as an increase or decrease in quantity, brought about by external causes.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Metaphysics'''
+| A branch of philosophy that attempts to explain the fundamental nature of reality. Metaphysical philosophy has taken many forms through the centuries, but one common shortcoming of metaphysical thought is a tendency to view things and ideas in a static, abstract manner. Generally speaking, metaphysics presents nature as a collection of objects and phenomena which are isolated from one another and fundamentally unchanging. See p. 52.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Methodology'''
+| A system of reasoning: the ideas and rules that guide humans to research, build, select, and apply the most suitable methods in both perception and practice. Methodologies can range from very specific to broadly general, with philosophical methodology being the most general scope of methodology. See p. 44.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mode'''
+| The way or manner in which something occurs or exists. See p. 19–20.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Mode of Existence of Matter'''
+| Refers to how matter exists in our universe; specifically, matter exists in our motion in a mode of ''motion.'' See p. 59.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Motion'''
+| Also known as “change;” motion/change occurs as a result of the mutual impacts which occur between two things, phenomena, or ideas in relation with one another. See p. 23, 47, 59–63. 74, 106–107, 122–127, 145, 163–165, 169-173-186, 197, 201–202.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Motion in Equilibrium'''
+| Motion in equilibrium is motion that has not changed the positions, forms, and/or structures of things. Motion in Equlibrium is only ever temporary in nature; all motion will ''eventually'' lead to changes in position, form, and/or structure. See p. 62.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Narodnik'''
+| Agrarian socialist movement of the 1860s and 70s in the Russian Empire, composed of peasants who rose up in a failed campaign against the Czar. See p. 29–30.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Natural law'''
+| See: Laws of Nature.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Natural Science'''
+| Science which deals with the natural world, including chemistry, biology, physics, geology, etc. See p. 13, 19, 26, 103.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Negation'''
+| The development process through which two contradicting objects mutually develop one another until one is overtaken by the other. In dialectical materialism, negation takes the form of ''dialectical negation''. See p. 123, 175176, 183, 185–202.
+|
+|-
+| | '''New Economic Policy'''
+| Also known as the NEP; this early Soviet policy was devised as Vladimir Illyich Lenin to be a temporary economic system that would allow a market economy and capitalism to exist within Russia, alongside state-owned business ventures, all firmly under the control of the working-classdominated state. See p. 33–34.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Objective Dialectics'''
+| The dialectical processes which occur in the material world, including all of the motion, relationships, and dynamic changes which occur in space and time. See p. 98, 102–103, 182.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Objective Existence'''
+| Existence which manifests outside of and independently of human consciousness, whether humans can perceive it or not. See p. 50, 58, 228.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Objective Idealism'''
+| A form of idealism which asserts that the ideal and consciousness are the primary existence, while also positing that the ideal and consciousness are objective, and that they exist independently of nature and humans. See p. 50.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Objectiveness'''
+| An abstract concept that refers to the relative externality of all things, phenomena, and ideas. Every thing, phenomena and idea exists externally to every other thing, phenomena, and idea. This means that to each individual subject, all other subjects exist as external objects. See p. 111–114, 124.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Obviousness'''
+| See: Obviousness and Randomness
+|
+|-
+| | '''Obviousness and Randomness (Category Pair)'''
+| The philosophical category of Obviousness refers to events that occur because of the essential internal aspects of a subject which become reasons for certain results in certain conditions: the obvious has to happen in a certain way, it can’t happen any other way. The Randomness category refers to things that happen because of external reasons: things that happen, essentially, by chance, due to impacts from many external relations. A random outcome may occur or it may not occur, and may occur in many different ways. Obviousness and Randomness have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 144–146.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Opportunism'''
+| A system of political opinions with no direction, no clear path, and/or no coherent viewpoint, focusing on whatever actions or decisions might be beneficial for the opportunist in the short term. See p. 174.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Opposites'''
+| Such aspects, properties and tendencies of motion which oppose one another, yet are, simultaneously, conditions and premises of the existence of one another. See p. 61, 175–179, 181, 184, 190, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Ordinary Consciousness'''
+| Perception that is formed passively, stemming from the daily activities of humans. See p. 210–216.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Period of Motion'''
+| Development which occurs between two quality shifts, including the quality shifts themselves. See p. 170.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Perspective'''
+| See: Viewpoint.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Petty Bourgeoisie'''
+| Semi-autonomous merchants, farmers, and so on who are self-employed, own small and limited means of production, or otherwise fall in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Also called the petite bourgeoisie. See p. 3–6.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Petty Commodity Production'''
+| See: Simple Commodity Production.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Phenomena'''
+| Anything that is observable by the human senses. See p. 156. See also: Essence and Phenomena.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Physical Motion'''
+| Motion of molecules, electrons, fundamental particles, thermal processes, electricity, etc., in time and space. See p. 61.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Physical Reflection'''
+| Reflection which occurs any time two material objects interact and the features of the objects are transferred to one other. See p. 67–68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Point of View'''
+| See: Viewpoint.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Populism'''
+| The political philosophy of the Narodnik movement; this political philosophy was focused on bringing about an agrarian peasant revolution led by intellectuals with the ambition of going directly from a feudal society to a socialist society built from rural communes. Populism overtly opposed Marxism and dialectical materialism and was based on subjective idealist utopianism. See p. 30.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Positivism'''
+| The belief that we can test scientific knowledge through scientific methods, and through logic, math, etc.; positivism tends to overlap significantly with ''empiricism'' in theory and practice. See p. 32, 209.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Possibility'''
+| See: Possibility and Reality.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Possibility and Reality (Category Pair)'''
+| The philosophical category of Possibility refers to things that have not happened nor existed in reality yet, but that would happen, or would exist given necessary conditions. The philosophical category of Reality refers to things that exist or have existed in reality and in human thought. See p. 160–162.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Practice'''
+| See: Praxis.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Pragmatism'''
+| Pragmatism refers to a form of subjectivism in which one centers one’s own immediate material concerns over all other considerations. See p. 218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Praxis'''
+| Conscious activity which improves our understanding, and which has purpose and historical-social characteristics. Used interchangeably with the word “practice” in this text. See p. 205–206, 235.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Prejudice'''
+| See: Conservatism.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Primary and Secondary Contradictions'''
+| In the development of things, phenomena, and ideas, there are many development stages. In each stage of development, there will be one contradiction which drives the development process. This is what we call the primary contradiction. Secondary contradictions include all the other contradictions which exist during that stage of development. Determining whether a contradiction is primary or secondary is relative, and it depends heavily upon the material conditions and the situation being analyzed. See p. 178–179.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Primary Existence'''
+| Existence which precedes and determines other existences; materialists believe that the external material world is the primary existence which determines the ideal, while idealists believe that human consciousness (“the ideal”) is the primary existence from which truth is ultimately derived. See p. 50–51.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Primitive Materialism'''
+| An early form of materialism which recognizes that matter is the primary existence, and holds that the world is composed of certain elements, and that these were the first objects — the origin — of the world, and that these elements are the essence of reality. This was later developed into Metaphysical Materialism and, later, Dialectical Materialism. See p. 52.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Principle of General Relationships'''
+| A principle of dialectical materialism which states that all things, phenomena, and ideas are related to one another, and are defined by these internal and external relationships. See p. 106–107, 110, 114.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Private'''
+| See: Private and Common
+|
+|-
+| | '''Private and Common (Category Pair)'''
+| The Private philosophical category encompasses specific things, phenomena, and ideas; the Common philosophical category defines the common aspects, attributes, factors, and relations that exist in many things and phenomena. Private and Common are relative in nature and have a dialectical relationship with one another. See p. 128–138.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Private Laws'''
+| Laws which apply only to a specific range of things and phenomena, i.e.: laws of mechanical motion, laws of chemical motion, laws of biological motion, etc. See p. 162.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Production Force'''
+| The combination of the means of production and workers within human society. See p. 6, 23, 36.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Proletariat'''
+| The people who provide labor under capitalism; the proletariat do not own their own means of production, and must therefore sell their labor to those who do own means of production; also called the Working Class. See also: Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie. See p. 1–8, 22–23, 25–26, 29–31, 33–35, 40–41, 63, 231.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quality'''
+| The unity of component parts, taken together, which defines a subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. See p. 119–121.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quality Shift'''
+| A change in quality which takes place in the motion and development process of things, phenomena, and ideas, occurring when quantity change meets a certain perceived threshold. See p. 124, 153, 164, 168–174.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quantity'''
+| The total amount of component parts that compose a subject. See p. 119–121.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quantity range'''
+| The range of quantity changes which can accumulate without leading to change in quality related to any given thing, phenomenon, or idea. See p. 168–171.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Quintessence'''
+| Original Vietnamese word: ''tinh hoa''. Literally, it means “the best, highest, most beautiful, defining characteristics” of a concept, and, unlike the English word quintessence, it has an exclusively positive connotation. See p. 8, 21, 43, 45, 52.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Randomness'''
+| See: Obviousness and Randomness.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Rational Consciousness'''
+| The higher stage of the cognitive process, which includes the indirect, abstract, and generalized reflection of the essential properties and characteristics of things and phenomena. This stage of consciousness performs the most important function of comprehending and interpreting the essence of the perceived subject. See p. 219–225.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reason'''
+| See: Reason and Result
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reality'''
+| See: Possibility and Reality.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reason and Result (Category Pair)'''
+| The Reason philosophical category is used to define the mutual impacts between internal aspects of a thing, phenomenon or idea, or between things, phenomena, or ideas, that bring about changes. The Result philosophical category defines the changes that were caused by mutual impacts which occur between aspects and factors within a thing, phenomenon, or idea, or externally between different things, phenomena, or ideas. Not to be confused with the metaphysical concept of “cause and effect,” which attributes a single cause to any given effect. See p. 138–144.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reasoning'''
+| The final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject. See p. 223–225, 228–229.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Reflection'''
+| The re-creation of the features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction. See p. 64–75, 79–80, 90–92, 103, 165, 208–211, 214–215, 219–224, 228, 232, 237.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Relative and Absolute'''
+| “Absolute” and “Relative” are philosophical classifications which refer to interdependence: That which is ''absolute'' exists independently and with permanence. That which is ''relative'' is temporary, and dependent on other conditions or circumstances in order to exist. See p. 56, 233. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative Truth, Relativism, Truth.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Relative Truth'''
+| Truth which has developed alignment with reality without yet having reached complete alignment between human knowledge and the reality which it reflects; knowledge which incompletely reflects material subjects without complete accuracy. See p. 230, 232. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relativism, Truth.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Relativism'''
+| A position that all truth is relative and that nothing can ever be absolutely, objectively known; that only Relative Truth can be found in our existence. See p. 56–58, 233–234. See also: Absolute Truth, Relative and Absolute, Relative Truth, Truth.
+|
+|-
+| | '''René Descartes'''
+| (1596 — 1650) French metaphysical philosopher who developed early methods of scientific inquiry. See p. 20, 53.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Result'''
+| See: Reason and Result.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Richard Avenarius'''
+| (1843 — 1896) German-Swiss philosopher who developed a system of subjective idealism known as “Empirio-Criticism.” See p. 27–29.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Rigidity'''
+| An unwillingness to alter one’s thoughts, holding too stiffly to established consciousness and knowledge, and ignoring practical experience and observation, which leads to stagnation of both knowledge and consciousness. See p. 217–218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Robert Owen'''
+| (1771 — 1858) Wealthy Welsh textile manufacturer who tried to build a better society for workers in New Hampshire, Indiana, in the USA by purchasing the town of New Harmony in 1825. Owen’s vision failed after two years, though many other wealthy capitalists in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century were inspired by Owen to try similar plans, which also failed.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific'''
+| An adjective which describes methodologies, approaches, and practices of gaining knowledge and insight which are methodological and/or systematic in nature. See p. 1–2.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific Consciousness'''
+| Conscious activities which actively gather information from the methodological and/or systematic observations of the characteristics, nature, and inherent relationships of research subjects. Scientific consciousness is considered ''indirect'' because it takes place outside of the course of ordinary daily activities. See p. 58, 210, 212, 215–216.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific'''
+| Experimental Human activities that resemble or replicate states of nature and society
+|
+|-
+| | '''Activity'''
+| in order to determine the laws of change and development of subjects of study. This form of activity plays an important role in the development of society, especially in the current historical period of modern science and technological revolution. See p. 206–208.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific Materialist Viewpoint'''
+| A perspective which begins analysis of the world in a manner that is both scientifically systematic in pursuit of understanding and firmly rooted in a materialist conception of the world. See p. 105.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific Socialism'''
+| A body of theory and knowledge (which must be constantly tested against reality) focused on the practical pursuit of changing the world to bring about socialism through the leadership of the proletariat. See p. 1–2, 21, 37–39.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Scientific Worldview'''
+| A worldview that is expressed by a systematic pursuit of knowledge that generally and correctly reflects the relationships of things, phenomena, and processes in the objective material world, including relationships between humans, as well as relationships between humans and the world. See p. 3839, 44–45, 48.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Second International'''
+| Founded in Paris in 1889 to continue the work of the First International; it fell apart in 1916 because members from different nations could not maintain solidarity through the outbreak of World War I. See p. 35, 174.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Self-motion'''
+| In the original Vietnamese, the word “''tự vận động''.” Literally meaning: “it moves itself.” See p. 59–60, 124.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Sensation'''
+| The subjective reflection of the objective world in human consciousness as perceived through human senses. See p. 27, 56–58, 68–69, 72, 85, 221–222.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Sensuous Human Activity; Sensuous Activity'''
+| A description of human activity developed by Marx which acknowledges that all human activity is simultaneously ''active'' in the sense that our conscious activity can transform the world, as well as ''passive'' in the sense in that all human thoughts fundamentally derive from observation and sense experience of the material world. See p. 13.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Simple Commodity Production'''
+| What Marx called the “C→M→C” mode of circulation. See p. 16–18.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Simple Exchange'''
+| When individual producers trade the products they have made directly, themselves, for other commodities. See p. 16–17.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Social Being'''
+| The material existence of human society, as opposed to ''social consciousness''. See also: Base. See p. 24, 54–55.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Social Consciousness'''
+| The collective experience of consciousness shared by members of a society, including ideological, cultural, spiritual, and legal beliefs and ideas which are shared within that society, as opposed to ''social being''. See p. 22, 24, 32, 54–55, 80. See also: Superstructure.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Social Motion'''
+| Changes in the economy, politics, culture, and social life of human beings. See p. 61–62.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Socialization'''
+| The idea that human society transforms labor and production from a solitary, individual act into a collective, social act. In other words, as human society progresses, people “socialize” labor into increasingly complex networks of social relations: from individuals making their own tools, to agricultural societies engaged in collective farming, to modern industrial societies with factories, logistical networks, etc. See p. 6, 36.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Socialized Production Force'''
+| A production force which has been socialized — that is to say, a production force which has been organized into collective social activity. See p. 6.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Socio-Political Activity'''
+| Praxis activity utilized by various communities and organizations in human society to transform political-social relations in order to promote social development. See p. 206–208.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Solipsism'''
+| A form of idealism in which one believes that the self is the only basis for truth. See p. 218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Sophistry'''
+| The use of misleading arguments, usually with the intention of deception, with a tendency of presenting non-critical aspects of a subject matter as critical, to serve a particular agenda. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of professional teachers in Ancient Greece, who were criticized by Socrates (in Plato’s’ dialogues) for being shrewd and deceptive rhetoricians. See p. 32–33, 56, 118, 182, 194.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Stage of Development'''
+| The current quantity and quality characteristics which a thing, phenomenon, or object possesses. Every time a quality change occurs, a new stage of development is entered into. See p. 24, 39, 125, 173–174, 179, 190, 196–197, 200, 212, 221.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Stagnation'''
+| An inability or unwillingness to change and adapt consciousness and practice in accordance with developing material conditions. Stagnation can stem from, or cause, overstatement of absolute truth in theory and forestall necessary development of both consciousness and practical ability. See p. 125, 218, 233. See also: Rigidity.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Struggle of Opposites'''
+| The tendency of opposites to eliminate and negate each other. See p. 61, 181, 184.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Subjective Factors'''
+| Factors which, from the perspective of a given subject, that same subject is capable of impacting. See p. 162–163, 175, 202.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Subjective Dialectics; Dialectical Thought'''
+| A system of analysis and organized thinking which aims to reflect the objective dialectics of the material world within human consciousness. Dialectical thinking has two component forms: dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics. See: p. 98–99, 103.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Subjective Idealism'''
+| Subjective idealism asserts that consciousness is the primary existence and that truth can be obtained only or primarily through conscious activity and reasoning. Subjective idealism asserts that all things and phenomena can only be experienced as subjective sensory perceptions, with some forms of subjective idealism even explicitly denying the objective existence of material reality altogether. See also: Empirio-Criticism, Objective Idealism. See p. 26–27, 50.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Subjectivism'''
+| A philosophical position in which one centers one’s own self and conscious activities in perspective and worldview, failing to test their own perceptions against material and social reality. See p. 56, 182, 217–218, 233–234.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Suitability'''
+| The applicability of a subject for a specific application or role. See p. 154.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Superstructure'''
+| The ideal (non-material) components of human society, including: media institutions, music, and art, as well as other cultural elements like religion, customs, moral standards, and everything else which manifests primarily through conscious activity and social relations. See p. 23. See also: Base.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Surplus Value'''
+| The extra amount of value a capitalist is able to secure by exploiting wagelabourers (by paying workers less than the full value of their labour). Workers will spend part of their workday reproducing their own labourpower (through earning enough to eat, secure shelter and other cultural needs) and the rest of the time will be spent producing surplus value which is then appropriated by the capitalist as profit. See p. 18, 22–23, 39.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Symbolization'''
+| The representation of an objective thing or phenomenon in human consciousness which has been reflected by sensation and conception. See p. 221–222.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Systematic Structure'''
+| A structure which includes within itself a system of component parts and relationships. See p. 114.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Theoretical Consciousness'''
+| The indirect, abstract, systematic level of perception in which the nature and laws of things and phenomena are generalized and abstracted. See p. 210–214, 217–218.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Theoretical Knowledge'''
+| Knowledge which is abstract and generalized, resulting from theoretical conscious activities which include repeated and varied observations. See p. 214, 217.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Theory'''
+| An idea or system of ideas intended to explain an aspect, characteristic, or tendency of objective reality. See p. 235.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value'''
+| See: Law of Development of Capitalism.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Thing-in-Itself'''
+| The actual material object which exists outside of our consciousness, ''as it exists outside of our consciousness''. See p. 72–74, 101, 158.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Third International'''
+| Also known as the Communist International (or the ComIntern for short); founded in Moscow in 1919, its goals were to overthrow capitalism, build socialism, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. It was dissolved in 1943 in the midst of the German invasion of Russia in World War II. See p. 35.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Three Component Parts'''
+| The three essential elements of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, first identified of Marxism-Leninism by Lenin in ''The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism''. 1. The Philosophy of Marxism. 2. The Political Economy of Marxism. 3. Scientific Socialism.See p. 21, 32, 34, 38.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Threshold'''
+| The amount, or degree, of quantity change at which quality change occurs. Truth is primarily discovered through labor and practice in the physical world. See p. 120, 168–169, 171, 173.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Truth'''
+| A correct and accurate conscious reflection of objective reality. See p. 9–10, 49, 56, 70, 75, 94–96, 194, 204, 209, 215–219, 225–237. See also: Labor, Practice.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unconditioned Reflex'''
+| Reactions which are not learned, but simply occur automatically based on physiological mechanisms occurring within an organism, characterized by permanent connections between sensory perceptions and reactions. See p. 66, 68.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unilateral Consideration'''
+| The consideration of a subject from one side only. See p. 49.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unintelligibility'''
+| A philosophical position which denies the human cognitive capacity to accurately perceive the external material world. See p. 48.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unique Relationship'''
+| The least general form of relationship, which only occur between two specific things/phenomena/ideas. See p. 109, 130.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Unity in Diversity'''
+| A concept in materialist dialectics which holds that within universal relationships exist within and between all different things, phenomena, and ideas, we will find that each individual manifestation of any universal relationship will have its own different manifestations, aspects, features, etc. Thus even the universal relationships which unite all things, phenomena, and ideas exist in infinite diversity. See p. 42, 110–111, 114, 125, 130.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Universal Law of Consciousness'''
+| A universal law which holds that consciousness is a process of dialectical development in which practical activity leads to conscious activity, which then leads back to practical activity, in a continuous and never-ending cycle, with a tendency to develop both practical and conscious activity to increasingly higher levels. See p. 219.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Universal Laws'''
+| Laws that impact every aspect of nature, society, and human thought. Materialist dialectics is the study of these universal laws. See p. 15, 162–163, 227.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Universal Relationship'''
+| The most general kind of relationship; relationships that exist between and within every thing and all phenomena; along with ''development'', universal relationships are one of the two primary subjects of study of materialist dialectics. See p. 80, 108, 109, 111, 165.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Use Value'''
+| A concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics which refers to tangible features of a commodity (a tradable object) that can fulfill some human requirement or desire, or which serve a useful purpose. See p. 15–18, 95.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Utopianism'''
+| 1. A political and philosophical movement which held the belief that “a New Moral World” of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity could be created through education, science, technology, and communal living. See p. 18. 2. The idealist philosophical concept which mistakenly asserts that the ideal can determine the material, and that ideal forms of society can be brought about without regard for material conditions and development processes. See p. 8, 17–18, 30, 94.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Value-Form'''
+| Also known as “form of value;” the social form of a commodity. Under capitalism, through the exchange of qualitatively different commodities, the money form of value is established as the general equivalent which can functionally be exchanged for all other values; money is therefore the most universal value-form under capitalism. See p. 15, 17, 155.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Viewpoint'''
+| Also known as point of view or perspective; the starting point of analysis which determines the direction of thinking from which phenomena and problems are considered. See p. 12, 20–21, 23, 25, 26, 30, 32–33, 38–39, 5559, 62, 64, 89, 93–94, 105, 111, 114–120, 122, 125–126, 130, 143, 147, 150, 172, 185–188, 195, 200–201, 233–235. See also: Comprehensive Viewpoint, Historical Viewpoint.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Viewpoint Crisis'''
+| A situation in which a specific viewpoint can’t be settled on, found, or agreed upon. See p. 26, 32–33.
+|
+|-
+| | '''Vladimir Ilyich Lenin'''
+| (1870 -1924) A Russian theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Bolsheviks, the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class. ''Referenced throughout.''
+|
+|-
+| | '''Working Class'''
+| See: Proletariat
+|
+|-
+| | '''Worldview'''
+| The whole of an individual’s or society’s opinions and conceptions about the world, about humans ourselves, and about life and the position of human beings in the world. See p. 1, 11, 37–39, 44–45, 48, 52, 96, 138, 201, 208–209, 218, 234. See also: Scientific Worldview.
+|
+|}
+<br />
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-2.png]]
+''For centuries, the banyan tree has been the symbol of communal life in Vietnam.''
+''Traditionally, the entrance to a village is graced by a large and ancient banyan tree. It is in the shade of these trees that villagers gather to socialize, draw water from wells, and make collective decisions together. The drooping accessory trunks represent the longevity of villagers — and of the village itself — while the arching canopy represents the safety and protection of the village. The shape of the banyan tree is seen in the full moon, which casts peaceful light across the Earth to guide travelers in the dark of night.''
+''Vietnam’s revolution against Japanese fascism and French colonialism began in 1945 beneath the cover of the Tân Trào Banyan Tree, which still stands in the city of Tuyên Quang.''
+''It is in this deep-rooted, humanistic spirit of collective action that we founded Banyan House Publishing. We hope to deliver volumes which will inspire action and change throughout the village that is our world.''
+''Visit us at:''<br />
+''BanyanHouse.org''
+<br />
+[[File:t-w-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-103.png]]
+<br />
+<references />

Difference between revisions of "User talk:NonZeroSum"

Latest revision as of 20:57, 17 July 2025

Contents

License

Support for This Work

Dedication and Gratitude

Foreword

Preface to the First English Edition

Introduction

Editor’s Note

A Message From The International Magazine

Notes on Translation

Guide to Annotations

Original Vietnamese Publisher’s Note

Original Vietnamese Preface

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism

1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts

Annotation 1

2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism

a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism

Annotation 2

Annotation 3

Annotation 4

Annotation 5

Annotation 6

Annotation 7

Annotation 8

Annotation 9

Annotation 10

Annotation 11

Annotation 12

Annotation 13

Annotation 14

Annotation 15

Annotation 16

Annotation 17

Annotation 18

Annotation 19

Annotation 20

b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism

Annotation 21

Annotation 22

Annotation 23

Annotation 24

Annotation 25

Annotation 26

Annotation 27

Annotation 28

Annotation 29

Annotation 30

Annotation 31

c. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism

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Imperialism

Subjective and Empiricist Idealism

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d. Marxism-Leninism and the Reality of the International Revolutionary Movement

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II. Objects, Purposes, and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

1. Objects and Purposes of Study

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2. Some Basic Requirements of the Studying Method

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Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism — Leninism

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The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism

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