The “Reform
versus Revolution Antinomy” –
Dialectical Synthesis Solution.
Dear Reader,
The ‘dialectogram’ JPG image, posted below, describes
a predicted dialectical synthesis solution to the “social revolution versus
social reform” supposed ‘Kantianoid’ antinomy that Marx also envisioned, as
evidenced by the three quotes from Marx’s [and, in one case, also from Engels’s]
writings and speeches that are included in that ‘dialectogram’.
“Social Revolution” does not necessarily
require barricades and blood in the streets.
“Social Revolution”, in its Marxian meaning, does not
necessarily exclude lawful, non-violent means, if the resulting reforms institute
changes of sufficient depth. “Social
Revolution”, in its Marxian meaning, applies to any movement for societal
change that accomplishes a change in the prevailing ‘“social relations of
[societal self-re-]production”’ of a given human society – e.g., to an «aufheben» of the capital/wage-labor relation [Marx], yielding a new, higher “social
relation of production” -- notwithstanding if that change in fundamental social
relations is achieved without criminal violence, and in accord with the rule of law, by
means of majoritarian, democratic, legislative and constitutional amendment
enactments.
Pseudo-Marxian “Marxists” – e.g., Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, and Maoists – want you to think that social
revolution and social reform constitute an [undialectical]
radical diremption because, without mass violence, and a consequent breakdown
of the rule of law,
their little putschist parties cannot hope to launch their coup d’état,
imposing their one-party police-state dictatorship OVER the proletariat, i.e., upon the majority class, and thereby winning for
themselves all of the perverted perks of power that they wet-dream about every night.
The capitalist ruling class
ruling faction will,
of course, attempt to suppress such social change with police and
military criminal violence, but, as was shown by the circa 1989 revolutions that
overthrew Stalinist, pure-state-bureaucratic-ruling-class state-capitalism in East
Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe, sufficiently majoritarian popular support
for such a social revolution can stay the hand of police and army, and enable
an overthrow of the old ruling class – as it did with the Stalinist
national ruling classes
there -- with amazingly little public violence.
Of course, the unstayed hand of the Western, ‘Rocke-Nazi’ ruling class ruling
faction soon
imposed a profound Mafia and “social
shock treatment” collective punishment on the Russian people, and on the
peoples of Eastern Europe, which did later lead to counter-revolutionary social violence.
Quotations from Marxian writings and speeches that demonstrate
Marx’s [and Engels’s] distance from the “MarxIST” pseudo-Marxians include the following –
When
Marx and Engels participated, personally and signally, in the European
continent-wide revolutionary uprisings of 1848, Europe was ruled largely by violently-repressive
monarchical police states.
Marx and Engels thus saw no way forward for humanity’s evolution
other than by way of violent revolution. But the progress of capitalist representative
democracy during Marx’s lifetime led him later to revise his views
regarding the necessity of violent
revolution for the supercession of capitalism --
“Someday the worker must seize political power in order
to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics
which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on Earth, like
the old Christians who neglected and despised politics. But we have not asserted that the ways to
achieve that goal are everywhere the same.”
“You
know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be
taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries -- such
as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I
would perhaps also add Holland -- where the workers can attain their goal by
peaceful means.” [Marx, 8 Sep. 1872, Amsterdam, Address after
the Fifth Congress of the International Working Men’s Association [“First International”]].
The
key to the “institutions, mores, and traditions” that make possible a
relatively peaceful transition to what we name ‘political-economic
democracy’ is, according to Marx, the advancement of capitalist
representative democracy to the point of universal suffrage -- to the right of the
“propertyless” working-class majority to vote in national & local elections:
“...the first step in the revolution by the working
class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the
battle of democracy.” [Marx and
Engels, 1848, The
Communist Manifesto]; “But
universal suffrage is the equivalent of political power for the working class
of England, where the proletariat forms the large majority of the population,
where, in a long though underground civil war, it has gained a clear consciousness
of its position as a class, and where even the rural districts know no longer
any peasants, but only landlords, industrial capitalists (farmers) and hired
labourers. The carrying of universal suffrage
in England would therefore be a far more socialistic measure than anything
which has been honoured with that name on the continent. Its inevitable result, here, is political
supremacy of the working class.”
[Marx, 1852, commenting on the Chartist movement].
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¡ENJOY!
Regards,
Miguel Detonacciones,
Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];
Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;
Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;
Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.
