By Franz J. T. Lee February 10, 2010
A. Towards a New International
All previous Marxist Internationals
had a sound theoretical
revolutionary foundation. The ideological battles of reformism and
Stalinism, accompanied by brutal assassinations and witch-hunt trials,
against revolutionary theory, against brilliant men and women,
like Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg, were so fierce that the ruling
classes
practically destroyed four promising emancipatory endeavors within 160
years. Plato died long ago but in capitalism his ideas are more alive
than ever. Leon Trotsky was assassinated on Latin American soil, but
his international 'dum spiro spero' (as long as I breathe I hope!), his
Fourth International still yearns for concrete realization, for
permanent world revolution, for emancipation in embryo.
In the attempt to revive massive international working class struggles,
inter alia, theoretically what have we in Venezuela especially to take
into account?
In this short commentary, for
Venezuela, and for the rest of the globe,
let us theoretically highlight some essential elements and reflections
which are indispensable for the building of a New International.
Let us scrutinize our general historic
weltanschauung, our intellectual
prison. Beyond doubt over the
last decade remarkable things have occurred in
Venezuela with regard to reform and revolution, capitalism and
socialism globalization and emancipation. No matter how we characterize
them, like never before the poorer classes benefited from the
Bolivarian Revolution; but also the middle and upper classes enjoyed
their 'fair share'.
However, as a result of equal, unequal
and combined development, as
reflected in the world capitalist market, to which all of us belong, we
barely have touched the most radical elementary tasks of socialist
transformation. The reactionary forces attack full scale day and night,
nationally and internationally. We could not even succeed to realize
some basic tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution, like
liberation from the
alienating fangs and pangs of religious servility, like radical
separation
of State and Church, of State powers, the national agrarian reform and
capitalist industrialization. At any event, these tasks are already
obsolete, new mortal dangers face us.
Huge efforts were made but Venezuela
remains to be a capitalist State; nationalization within capitalism is
not socialism. Venezuela still has a capitalist economy, based on
exploitation of working class
physical labor force; in clear text, in spite of the global depression,
this means that the many are becoming poorer each minute and that
the few are becoming richer every second. This President Chavez knows,
but he is no messiah, to prevent a social disaster, he urgently needs
radical working class participation. For this to come into being the
conditio sine qua non is that Venezuela begins to think freely, to
theorize, to philosophize en masse.
Concerning the above, Venezuela is no
historic exception, this intellectual massacre dates back to the
'Conquista'. On
all continents massive,
colonial,
capitalist mind and thought control played havoc with all the
revolutionary and socialist experiments
across the 20th century.
All of them tried to reach freedom within the realm of world
capitalism, we tried to poison the mamba with its own revolutionary
venom. Many of us have infected ourselves more and more with ruling
class formal logic, with capitalist expressions and vulgar language.
There is an occult physics, the results of investigations of natural
sciences. serving bellicose interests, are kept away from us. Millions
have no idea what is happening in NASA or the Pentagon, we know nothing
about HAARP and similar projects. In fact, billions know nothing about
current developments and what really is awaiting us in the near future.
In what danger Venezuela finds itself, because of oil, millions do not
have the foggiest idea, especially not those who want to get rid of
Chavez. They saw nothing and heard nothing that happened on April
11-13, 2002 in Venezuela. There are always sectors of the population
that never ever can see concentration camps, Bantustans, a Guantanamo,
Auschwitz or Gaza.
Why is this so?
In
a
certain sense, already
centuries
ago our
ruling class
enemy
had
his trump card in
hand. In essence, Christianization had all the ideological ingredients
for total body, mind and thought control; its nebulous effects
are lasting till this very day; worse even, they could last for
centuries more. By and large, Europe stole and destroyed our
cosmic 'souls',
our natural habitat, our ideas, languages, beliefs, forms of society
and replaced them with third grade commodities.
B. After the imperialist world wars of
corporeal destruction now
follows the Mental Holocaust
To get an idea of the global labyrinth
of ideology in which we are caught,
let us look briefly at some of the intellectual arms of mass
destruction, at our general conceptions of who and what make history.
At first, let us note that a capitalism sui generis does not exist.
Also we do not have
Christian capitalism or a United States capitalism. Just a look at
Marx's
'Capital' or Lenin's 'Imperialism' will reveal the nonsense of
categorizing different capitalism or socialism. Like anything
else, else, capitalism has
appearance forms and formations, it was born in social violence, in
Miletus, where rebelling slaves were burnt at the stake; it put on its
own bloody baby socks, thereafter it slipped into its terrorist army
boots and now in globalization it is in mortal historic agony. It is
totally off its mind and threatens to take the whole of humanity into
its bloody coffin.
C. Hegel: Capitalism merits to pass
away
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the
teacher of Feuerbach, Marx and
Engels, of the fathers of scientific, philosophic socialism,
unequivocally said it: Everything that comes into existence merits to
pass away!
Yes, world capitalism, in the 21st
century, the bell now tolls for you too.
The rulers supposedly are searching for life in the universe, yet they
cannot preserve a myriad of living things right under their very noses.
Oh, ye pharisees, a generation of vipers!
What is threatening the process of capitalist world production, surplus
value and gigantic extra-profits, that is, modern history? Against what
the Bolivarian Revolution, a New International, must be directed?
In globalization, in the current world depression, systemic
contradiction, murderous concentration, inexorable competition, savage
centralization
and megalomaniac monopoly are taking their toll!
Since years, we said it over and over
again, what is massacring millions of
global wage laborers is simply perpetual, global, economic
exploitation. This is
accompanied by political domination, social discrimination, terrorist
military 'humanism' and all
forms of ideological and religious alienation. Also here in Venezuela,
like elsewhere, the latter has caused conceptual confusion, learning
and 'thinking' by rote, in one word, ideology.
All these compound what
scientifically and philosophically is identified as world capitalism.
Wherever these realities exist, we know that they form part of world
capitalism, getting rid of them, well, that is socialism.
There does not exist a 5 percent
capitalism or socialism. or even a
'transitional' socialism. Socialism is not 'half pregnant' with
emancipation, it is simply the dialectical negation, the other side,
the 'left' side of capitalism and vice versa. When the one disappears,
dialectically the other also vanishes ...
when the master perishes also the slave gives up the ghost.
In
stringent, extensive works,
in word and deed, over the last
centuries Marxist and non-Marxist scholars, globally have elaborated
the inhuman, barbaric quintessence of capitalist vandalism.
Now what has the above to do with conceptualization of the revolution?
With theoretical emancipation in Venezuela? With our world outlook, our
weltanschauung?
For millennia, this current world
order, step by step, was anticipated
theoretically by the respective ruling classes and their 'think tanks'
and scholars, from
ancient Plato and Aristotle and their respective schools, to the
modern think tanks like
the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, with
people like John R. Bolton in Senior Fellow position or Thomas
Donnelly, author of the Document "Rebuilding America's Defenses -
Project for a New American Century" in the position of resident
scholars.
Logically, in Venezuela, we have to
study the transhistoric superstructures of the coming into existence of
'Small Venice', within the context of the big lies about the
'discovery' of America by Christopher Columbus, of the transatlantic
slave trade, the formation of the world market, colonialism and
imperialism. We have to be familiar with history, with the
history of the global wars of independence of the 'Third
World'
against
European
colonialism. Among others, certainly we need the true historic reports
about the revolutionary endeavors of Jose Marti, Kwame Nkrumah, Simon
Bolivar and Patrice Lumumba. We have to know their organizations,
strategies and tactics, however, they are not messiahs; these historic
documents do not contain absolute truths, they are not panaceas or
recipes; emancipation cannot be copied, imported
or exported.
Concerning the above, hours after hours, every Sunday in his program
'Alo Presidente' Chavez patiently explains these historical realities
to the public.
Emancipation is new, novel,
innovative, it is not an international
capitalist commodity. It is the negation of world imperialism, it is
living,
creative, transcendental socialism, not sui generis, but simply
emancipation in re.
A working class consciousness is a historic class consciousness,
without it neither a socialist revolution nor a workers' International
could ever function, could ever be victorious. The ruling classes have
done everything in their might to prevent a historic working class
consciousness. They launched many concepts of history to sow total
confusion. Below we will deal with some of them.
They have to be studied, especially
now and here, at the most
trying moment of the Bolivarian Revolution. Concepts like socialism or
revolution, especially like emancipation, should be used in their
praxico-theoretical context and not at whim and caprice.
The master mind of the Absolute Idea, the Prussian State philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in a letter to his friend Friedrich
Wilhelm Schelling in 1796 explained to us the historic essence of the
French Revolution, its "vitalizing power of ideas", the victory of
bourgeois, democratic, capitalist ruling class ideas over feudal,
religious revelation, over dogmatism and obscurantism:
" I believe that there is no better
sign of the times than the fact
that humanity is being represented as worthy of dignity and esteem in
itself . . . . The philosophers demonstrate this dignity, the people
will learn to feel it; and they will no longer be content to demand
their rights which have been reduced to dust, but will seize them,
appropriate them . . . . Thanks to the propagation of ideas which
demonstrate how things ought to be, the indolence of those who confer
eternity on everything that exists is disappearing. The vitalizing
power of ideas . . . will elevate the spirits and [men] will learn to
devour these ideas." (1)
Very clearly Hegel underlined the
power of ideas, and the necessity
that across the socialization processes "men will learn to devour
these ideas", that is, the ruling ideology, the ruling ideas of the
ruling classes.
For us who are participating in world
revolution, to negate the French
Revolution, to negate capitalism, the very same Hegel illuminated the
titanic voyage, ... 'without theory, no revolution' (Lenin) ...
the gigantic theoretical task and eventual triumph of the bourgeois
capitalist revolution, a clear sign that we have to surpass this
victory with the three socialist "i's", with praxical invisibility,
theoretical invulnerability and creative invincibility, with militant,
optimistic, "human emancipation" (Marx):
In one of his lectures on the
'Philosophy of History' given at
the University of Berlin, Hegel glorified the social power of
bourgeois ideas in the French Revolution as follows:
"Never since the sun had stood in its
firmament and the planets
revolved around him had it been perceived that man's existence centers
in his head, i.e., in thought . . . . Anaxagoras had been the first to
say that nous governs the world; but not until now had man advanced to
the recognition of the principle that thought ought to govern spiritual
reality. This was accordingly a glorious mental dawn. All thinking
beings shared in the jubilation of this epoch. Emotions of a lofty
character stirred men's minds at that time; a spiritual enthusiasm
thrilled through the world, as if the reconciliation between the divine
and the secular was now first accomplished." (2)
In which way does feudal geocentrism
affect our religious beliefs? What are the historic visions of a
modern, capitalist, heliocentrist mind? How could we creatively surpass
this capitalist vale of tears?
A new international must have the global task to get rid of all forms
of exploitative production, whose only aim is the production of surplus
value, of profits for an elitist minority, Money and capital are just
social relations, contradictory expressions of the capitalist mode of
production, which is self-destructive, which is transforming everything
into commodities, into market relations, into barbaric nothingness. A
new international, a mode of creation and creativity, which has to
venture far beyond capitalism and socialism is a conditio sine qua non
to negate current globalized vandalism and to save natural and social
life on planet earth.
Surely, from the cradle to the grave, we are perpetual students. Cum
ira et studio our
object
and subject matter concern
life and death on Geo, its
myriad
of multiversal relations and
transcendental
contradictions
and contradictory transcendence.
Over the previous centuries, officially and
unofficially, the accumulation of capital, which is nothing else than
modern history, its ideological superstructure has affirmed basically
only two major world
outlooks, ancient, feudal geocentrism
(with its idealist core) and bourgeois (mechanical, materialist)
heliocentrism, with their corresponding modes of thinking and thought:
formal and dialectical logic.
Idealism fears contradiction, it wants peace, its absolute identity,
unity,
nothing;
materialism wants to get rid of
its own over-flowing contradiction, of its panta rhei, it wants
everything, also unity. A new logic and
philosophy have to escape from this revolutionary cul de sac, have to
solve
the famous 'Crocodile Dilemma', it is a matter of being devoured and
not being devoured by the globalized crocodile. It concerns the
categories exit, exodus, 'exvolution'.
In the global 'war of ideas', currently formal logic (used by nearly
all of us) guards idealist unity; dialectics (used by a handful of
scientists and philosophers) wants to
eliminate materialist contradiction. Between these two philosophic and
ideological extremes multifarious belief systems and conceptions of
history have been developed. A new logic, a new creative world outlook
is not yet in sight.
Mutatis mutandi, we know that the
various 'Western
and Christian' dominant
ideas corresponded to the zeitgeist and weltgeist of their respective
epochs. They reflected the ruling class interests of their
intellectual, slave-owning, feudal, colonial or imperialist
procreators. Ever
since the original accumulation of capital in the Mediterranean region
of Ancient Greece. the most effective long lasting instrument to
dominate and exploit slaves, peasants and workers was the control of
their minds and thoughts ... this was the transhistoric objective of
all ruling class controlled religion, ideology, education, norms,
culture and
socialization. Currently, by applying sophisticated technology and
gadgets, this Orwellian mind and thought control, this mental holocaust
is nearly perfected. It is the intellectual bulwark of globalization
against international working class unity and class consciousness. It
is directed against any
emancipatory endeavor to develop a global working class consciousness,
it is directed against all workers internationals. Over the
last five hundred years of colonial capitalist expansion ruling class
religion and ideology have played havoc with the minds of millions of
global workers.
Within the present world order, we
just do not have sufficient
planetary space, neither the necessary revolutionary time, nor the
emancipatory energy of mind rapidly to eliminate the toxic, lethal and
alienating effects of this heinous, cardinal and capital crime. This
makes the launching of revolutions or a workers' international a
well-nigh Sisyphus task.
With few exceptions, nearly everything
that we know our masters have
'informed' us, have taught us in school and in the universities; as
Hitler stated, to control us, they have to control our education. Big
lies, ideology and consumerism continuously are blindfolding us in all
walks of life, prevent any true negation of capitalism. Hence, we have
to know that
the genesis of our truth is the conversion of the Orwellian big lies of
the Murdoch empire
into their opposites: War is not Peace, Freedom is not Slavery!
This building of social consciousness
goes intimately much deeper: the
birth of emancipatory class
consciousness is more radical, flows more profound and glows crimson
gold. There are dangerous ideological hurdles to transcend, namely the
toxic ruling class conceptions of history, of the quo vadis of
planetary life.
A revolutionary movement without a historic perspective is already
doomed to failure before its first fight.
D. The Great God conception.
The Great God conception of history is the master key, the fons et
origo to comprehend all mind and
thought control mechanisms; it
is the most effective weapon of ruling class power and hegemony. We
will deal with it here a bit more extensively.
Billions believe that a Great
monotheist, patriarchal God makes
history. History is the development of his divine will. We all are just
peons on the great chessboard of heavenly bliss and of devilish evil.
How the 'Holy Bible' and the 'Great
God' were keeping 'the poor in
order' Charles Kingsley,
Canon of the Church of England,
four
years after Karl Marx, explained:
"We have used the Bible as if it were a mere
special constable's hand
book, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they
were being overloaded, a mere book to keep the poor in order."
Not
even
the
bourgeoisie
was
able to make the political French and economic Industrial
Revolutions 'by the Grace of a Great God', At first, to secure victory,
it had to launch the Renaissance, the Reformation, a
scientific
and
technological revolution, and
to
separate Church and State, to usher in Big Reason, Big Capital, Big
Business, Big War. All ruling classes knew (and know) that they
themselves, that class struggles were
(and are) making or breaking history. Hence, Marx emphasized that all
social critique, all social theory, all revolutionary theory must begin
with the criticism of ruling class religion.
E. Great Men Making History
The next myth to bamboozle he
downtrodden for centuries was the
conception that Great Messiahs or Great Men, kings, princes, leaders,
dictators or tyrants make history. The fairy tales, political songs,
national anthems, children's story books, comic strips, the 'Holy
Scriptures', religious dogmas, doctrines, world news and history text
books are full of dates and names of great men and saints who
'sacrificed' themselves for the well-being of humanity.
No matter how dear, heroic, valiant
and loving our leaders were (and
are), without their wives, children, horses or cooks, they never could
make a world revolution all by themselves. Also it would be the acme of
ignorance to blame them for huge floods or severe droughts.
Sad to say, in Humania South,
ideology has taken its toll, the
rank and file, the manipulated electors, that is, the political 'cannon
fodder' staunchly believe that one man, a president, could decide the
future of a country. Also, he is to be blamed for recession, or to be
adored for having personally toppled the apartheid system. Hence, the
'small man', the 'lonely crowd', the 'motley crowd' believe that they
have no responsibility, are not citizens of the divine
Commonwealth, hence the 'One-dimensional Man' can happily participate
in the perennial pan et cirsenses or in 'Wein, Weib und Gesang' (Wine,
Woman and Song).
This conception of history is
counter-emancipatory, nips all
possible creativity in the bud, in school, destroys juvenile daydreams,
simply because a handful of citizens could ever hope to become 'great'
in global capitalism, and they do not come from 'les miserables' or
'the wretched of the earth'.
F. The Great Idea making History
Surely only Great Gods and their
earthly representatives, the Great
Men, can make history.
To control the bodies, minds and
thoughts of human slaves, at first
they have to be transformed into docile labor merchandise, that is,
they must accept their social servility, be inculcated with a slave
mentality, be filled with alienating inferiority complexes, be
transformed into Pavlov dogs, parrots and zombies. To exploit maximally
the workers, their physical labor force, their intellectual capacity
have to be
reduced to a minimum, and, if they cannot be suppressed and expurgated
anymore, then these
empty shells, the 'mad cows' are either cremated in Falujah or Gaza, or
thrown onto the dung heap of history.
In order to accomplish all this, a
formal logic, a superior language,
an ideology, corresponding ideas and concepts, racist behavior
patterns, loyal manipulated students and teachers are indispensable
elements for
the capitalist status quo to perpetuate itself.
* In history, who controlled the factory production
of ideas?
* Who bought and sold
them?
* Whose labor power was exploited to mint ideas that only serve the
accumulation of power, capital and super profits?
** The same great god-men and
men-gods!
From Plato's doctrine of ideas till
Hegel's Absolute Idea, we can
follow the trail of the Mental Holocaust, of the destruction of the
working class mind, of its emancipatory ideas. As such working class
consciousness is disappearing in the maelstrom of the Murdoch empire,
in the burning crucibles of Bild, The New York Times, in CNN,
Venevision, Globovision, Univision, etc. ...
This is the reason why we have to wake up, our emancipatory hope is
that we begin to grasp what we are elaborating in this rather lengthy
but pertinent commentary.
G. The Herrenvolk, the Master Race
making History
The Great Gods have their great
'chosen peoples'. Among those who are
not chosen figure the 'Kaffirs', 'Bushmen'. Palestinians, 'camel
drivers', 'indigenas', 'Red Indians', 'blacks', 'reds'. 'gypsies',
communists, Marxists, etc. ...
The conception of the 'Great Race making history' justifies
ideologically
colonialism,
race
supremacy, social segregation, apartheid and fascism. It has its
matrix in
'machismo', sexism, double standards, ruling class morality ,
superiority complexes, degradation of women, the
discrimination of socialists and of 'Third World' peoples, especially
of Africans and 'indigenas'.
Summa sumarum, all these conceptions of history form part of the Big
Lies of the
ruling ideas of the respective ruling elites to conserve their social
class interests, their power, privileges and parasitic existence. It is
these classes that are currently attacking the Bolivarian Revolution at
full force, that want to topple President Chavez's government, and as
'fifth columnists', are penetrating all walks of political life in
Venezuela.
Currently, in Venezuela, like elsewhere, it becomes quite obvious that
we have to defend ourselves intellectually.
We have to take up arms against 'full spectrum dominance'. To be able
to
grasp our current problems in Venezuela at their very roots, we have to
become radical, that is, to become conscious of the true radix of our
despair and hope, of the species man himself. Our major natural and
social problems are man made, hence, as men we can solve them. We can
get rid of our traumas and fears of great gods, great ideas, great men,
great races
and great societies by means of creating real and true concepts which
correspond to our objective, subjective and
'transjective' cosmic reality.
In other words, also in Venezuela, we
have to learn to think again. Too much intellectual damage has been
produced by the major mass media controlled by the 'opposition' and
world
imperialism, Systematically our own
'soul', our intellectual capacity, was brutally destroyed by
colonialism and capitalism. It was replaced with feeling 'great', to
adore 'great' divinities, to learn 'great' ideas by rote, to adore and
genuflect in front of the 'great' men, and to glorify the 'white man'.
This brought about the Great Depression, Nixon's Great Society, Great
World Wars, that is, Great Business.
In Venezuela we enjoy freedom of thought and expression as nowhere else
on this globe. We are not forbidden to study the Holy Bible, the
Holocaust, Hitler's Mein Kampf, the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion,
the Manifesto of the Communist Party or Orwell's 1984.
* Why are we not studying these books?
* Why are we more interested in
entertainment, consumption, carnival and pan er circenses?
*Who can still create a single idea in an inferno of noise coming from
all over the capital cities throughout the nights?
Modern technological, ideological smog is hammering our brains out of
their sockets! We are in the center of the next version of a corporate
world war,
of the destruction of the human mind, and we are not conscious of the
damage already meted out. This is already the partial victory of
corporate
imperialism.
Instead of participation in the real
emancipation of the human mind,
across the globe millions of already brainless victims, of 'Manchurian
Candidates', of doped students,
are yelling desperately about the terror of 'dictatorship' and
'tyranny' in Venezuela. Their artificial hatred and indignation are
injected permanently by the global Murdoch Moloch; all are marching
towards their coming butchers; since a decade they are humming the only
program
ever received from their warlords: Chavez must go!
H. Capturing the Imagination of the Masses
The very first thing that a new workers' international necessarily has
to consider is how to accomplish the historical task of the First
International, the praxis and theory dialectical contradiction, as
elaborated already in 1845 in the "11th Thesis of Marx on Feuerbach":
"Philosophers have hitherto
only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."
This
reveals the objective and subjective relation between word and deed.
Marx warned that isolated theory or even political sweet talk do not
exist, that ivory tower
ideology is senseless, but he also warned that blind activism is
useless.
He
stated:
"It is not sufficient that thought pushes itself to objective reality,
reality itself must approximate thought."
In
other
words, it is extremely difficult, if not well-nigh impossible, to
create a revolutionary workers' class consciousness in an aggressive,
capitalist environment, in a capitalist State, based in Big Business
and which is penetrated by bourgeois capitalist structures and
institutions.
This is why Leon Trotsky, who signed the foundation of the Third and
Fourth Internationals, negated Stalinism; like Fidel Castro and Che
Guevara, he was against a local 'socialism' sui generis, the building
of socialism on an island, in one country and
in a single bloc of states. This is why he advocated permanent,
global, socialist revolution, creative human emancipation. This is
the point of departure of the foundation of a New International.
I.
Praxis
is emancipatory creative power
Furthermore, Marx clearly saw the role and power of ideas, thought,
theory and class consciousness in the coming 'war of ideas'; expressis
verbis
he stated:
"When (revolutionary) theory captures the imagination of the working
masses, it converts itself into material force (Gewalt)"
Finally, when at last, in
Venezuela,
precise, decisive and incisive ideas
become social theory, not barren ideology, and when they pass from one
sane worker's brain to the other, in schools, universities, factories
and
other institutions, then praxis, emancipatory
creative power, have entered the Bolivarian Revolution, Then,no
reactionary force could stop it in its forward march towards victory
anymore.
****
Footnotes:
(1)
See:
http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft2h4nb1h9&chunk.id=d0e6745&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e6553&brand=eschol
(2) Ibid.
Source: G.W.F. Hegel, Seite 529, Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophie der
Geschichte, Werke 12, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1986.
(3) See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people#cite_note-2
franz@franzlee.org.ve
|