Understand basics of Marxism to meet new challenges

Vanguard February 2011 p. 6
Duncan B.

Australian workers are readying themselves for new battles in 2011. The New Year starts on a high note following the defeat of the ABCC’s attempt to destroy building workers’ rights in the Ark Tribe case.

The struggles of the workers at the Melbourne Visy plant and the NUW workers at Woolworth’s Hume Distribution Centre and at Swift-JBS Brooklyn are an inspiration to us all.

Building workers have long been in the forefront of struggle, having been under continuous attack by the big construction firms and the ABCC. Vanguard is confident that they will vigorously continue to defend their rights and livelihoods in 2011. Workers in other industries are also sure to resist the bosses’ attacks.

Ideological preparation necessary
We must be prepared to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing situation in Australia and the world. This includes being ideologically prepared. Central to ideological preparation is an understanding of the basic concepts of Marxism-Leninism. These include an understanding of Marxist economics, the class struggle, dialectical and historical materialism, the class nature of the state, and imperialism.

Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Dialectical and historical materialism form the basis of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. It is essential that all Communists understand dialectical and historical materialism. Without this understanding we cannot correctly analyse the contradictions of capitalist society and guide the Australian people away from imperialist domination, to national independence and to socialism.
Dialectical materialism is so called because its approach to the study of the phenomena of nature is dialectical, while its interpretation of these phenomena is materialistic. Historical materialism is the extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of society and history.

The dialectical method of thought requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development and their coming into being and going out of being.

Dialectics recognises that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and natural phenomena. They all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born, between that which is disappearing and that which is developing, constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes. Put simply, “dialectics is the study of the contradiction within the very essence of things” as Lenin wrote in his article On the Question of Dialectics.

Mao Zedong studied contradiction
Mao Zedong analysed the question of contradiction in great detail in his article On Contradiction. He determined that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things and that a movement of opposites exists in the process of development of each thing from beginning to end (“universality of contradiction”). Mao pointed out that every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction that distinguishes it from other forms (particularity of contradiction).

He also investigated the questions of the principal contradiction in a process and the principal aspect of a contradiction. In a complex process there can be many contradictions. The principal contradiction determines and influences the existence and development of the other contradictions. The principal aspect of a contradiction is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction.

The importance of Mao Zedong’s work is that On Contradiction relates seemingly dry philosophy to the practical questions of building a revolutionary movement and winning national independence and socialism.

As Mao wrote in the article in question; “Changes in class society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new, it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new.”

What is materialism?
The founders of Marxism-Leninism, Marx, Engels and Lenin, consistently promoted materialism. What do we mean by materialism? Addressing the issue of materialism in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Engels asked the rhetorical question: “Did God create the world, or has the world been in existence eternally?” He answered that “Philosophers were divided into two great camps according to their answer to this question. Those who asserted the primacy of mind over nature and, in the last analysis, therefore assumed some kind of creation of the world... formed the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belonged to the various schools of materialism.”

Social being determines consciousness
An important teaching of historical materialism is that the material life of a society determines the ideas, theories, political views and political institutions of that society.

Marx wrote in the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, “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 being that determines their consciousness.”

As Mao Zedong succinctly put it in On Practice, “In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.” This means that both the workers and the capitalists have their own forms of thought and action. Uniting to help one another on the one hand versus ruthless throat cutting and exploitation on the other!

Recommended Reading:
Marx and Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party
Marx: Preface and Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Engels: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State; Socialism: Scientific and Utopian; Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy; Anti-Duhring
Mao Zedong: On Contradiction; On Practice