Getting Beyond "Might Makes Right"
March 3, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Recently I participated in a discussion of the section of the film BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less! entitled "Scientific Communist Leadership—The Rosetta Stone We Need to Win." At the beginning of this section, BA reads quotation 4:10 from BAsics as "food for thought":
For humanity to advance beyond a state in which "might makes right"—and where things ultimately come down to raw power relations—will require, as a fundamental element in this advance, an approach to understanding things (an epistemology) which recognizes that reality and truth are objective and do not vary in accordance with, nor depend on, different "narratives" and how much "authority" an idea (or "narrative") may have behind it, or how much power and force can be wielded on behalf of any particular idea or "narrative," at any given point.
Most of our discussion was taken up with this particular quotation. Some people pointed out correctly that having an epistemology based on getting at the truth about reality was critical to changing the world and making revolution. Others raised questions about whether there really was objective truth. So it was lively.
What struck me, however, was what this quotation means for a future society that actually does lie beyond where "might makes right"—beyond class society. How and on what basis would decisions be made in a future classless communist society?
Most progressive people in our society would unhesitatingly answer this question with the assertion that all decisions would be made "democratically." I think not. Rather, decisions would be made scientifically in the interests of all of humanity.
What's the difference? In What Humanity Needs: Revolution, and the New Synthesis of Communism, BA points out (on page 98) that "when we get beyond the division of society into classes, into exploiters and exploited, the concept of democracy will no longer have meaning in the sense of the protection of the rights of a minority—or an institutionalized means through which the rights of the people are supposed to be protected—because there will no longer be sections of society ruling over and oppressing the greater part of society." Thus, "what meaning, then, is there to 'the rule of the people' when there is just the people . . . ?"
What would it mean to make all decisions scientifically and not on different ideas (or "narratives") based on the institutionalized power, popularity, or social clout they have behind them at any given time?
Let's look first at how decisions are made in science itself. For most of humanity's history, it was an obvious fact that the sun revolved around the earth. You could sit under a tree all day and watch it happen. The sun moved and you didn't, or so it seemed. Only you did move even though the movement was not felt by your senses.
Yet when some of the earliest scientists began to understand the reality of the situation, they were hit with a lot of "power and force wielded on behalf of" church and state. Should this question have been decided on the basis of popular vote? Or should it have been worked out on the basis of careful astronomical observations which compared the predictions of rival theories, even though those observations were actually performed by a small minority of society and only subsequently popularized to society as a whole? Which method would actually get at the truth of things?
Or what about biological evolution? Were all the animals created at once during "seven days," and were humans a special creation given dominion over the animals? Or was it the case that humans, apes, and all other animals evolved over millions of years from a common ancestor? When scientists first began to understand the fact of evolution and to study the mechanisms that made it happen, they took a lot of flak from a "narrative" that had a huge amount of authority behind it: the Bible. Teachers were even criminally prosecuted for teaching the facts of evolution.
Should the reality of evolution have been decided by popular vote? What might the outcome have been? Or should the issue have been wrangled out on the basis of the evidence (fossils, genetics, and the observation of mutation and change taking place in the laboratory)? Here we see just how fundamental it is that, "What people think is part of objective reality, but objective reality is not determined by what people think." (BAsics 4:11)
Nor, as many argue under capitalism, could issues be safely left to free speech and the "marketplace of ideas" for correct resolution. That only begs the question. For under the dictatorship of exploiting classes, who decides who gets to speak freely and who holds the power to distort the "free market"?
Learning from how scientists get at the truth of things, why shouldn't a future classless society get at it in the same way? In such a society, what will it mean that people broadly are educated in the scientific method and try to get at the truth of different ideas by looking at the evidence?
As with issues in science, there would be people with relatively specialized knowledge and responsibility. But now they would be trying to share both the knowledge and the responsibility with all of society to enable people collectively to make decisions based on the overall, not on parochial interests or partial knowledge. Solutions would not be reached on the basis of relative authority or might (expressed either in voting or in the institutionalized authority of a minority), but rather on what best meets the needs of society as a whole. Such questions actually can be decided on the basis of objective reality when society operates on a different epistemology that recognizes that reality and truth are objective and not "social constructs" or "narratives."
Even with that understanding broadly held in society—and in the absence of antagonistic class relations—there will still be plenty of contradiction in society, with new contentious issues rising all the time! It will still be the case that truth will often be held initially by a small minority (and not just for reasons of specialization) and truth may emerge from unexpected or unorthodox sources. Thus, new and emerging truth will still have to fight (with evidence and reason) for recognition and acceptance.
How do we get to a world like this? In short, a total revolution that establishes a whole different kind of society, a whole different kind of class rule, and a whole different kind of democracy that serves the tumultuous process of getting humanity beyond class divisions of any kind. This would be a socialist state that would back up the people's right to abolish exploitation, national chauvinism, the oppression of women and to abolish classes themselves, the economic system which gives rise to classes, and the ideas and division of labor that correspond to that system. And that would back struggles to effect radical transformations in people's thinking. A society led by a far-seeing revolutionary vanguard. It would be a period of lively and sharp struggles to overcome all forms of "might makes right" in how society is organized and how people think. And ultimately to abolish the state itself. During this whole process the scientific method would be increasingly applied in every aspect of society. (To get an idea of this whole transition and process I strongly recommend reading Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).)
I think this is some of what it means that for society to advance beyond "might makes right"—humanity must come to adopt a new epistemology, a method of finding and understanding what is objectively true.
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