Communists Are Rebels

April 1980

by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Pamphlet reprinted from Revolutionary Communist Youth and Revolutionary Worker
This excerpt can be found on pages 15-18 of the printed pamphlet.

Who said that order is the order of things? The bourgeoisie and all exploiting classes, and their ideological apologists and advertising men, insist on this. But where is it every really true? Not in nature. We are told to think so, and on the surface it may appear so—because we are on a small part of an infinite universe and because this universe is not only infinite but infinitely changing. Ironically, this leaves us open to the notion that there is, there must be, “order to it all”—a “master plan”—god.

Here we are, one small, infinitesimal part of the universe, which is infinite—in time as well as space. But we tend—and are instructed and encouraged by the reactionaries and reactionary philosophy—to look at things as if what we see around us is, first of all, centered around us, when in fact it is not centered around anything. (The Christian bible, in its account of “the creation,” has it that the stars, etc.—the heavens—were put there by god to provide light for the earth and its creatures, especially man. In fact, in opposition to what the bible says, the earth is actually much younger than most of these stars, etc., and they were not “put there” for the earth—nor, for that matter, was the earth “put there” for them.) Second, we are encouraged and conditioned to view things as they are now as the way they always have been and will be (“As it was in the beginning, is now and always shall be—world without end”—this is metaphysics, it is wrong). In this way, it is made to seem as if everything has a place in some pre-determined order, and the way things happen at any given point in time and space (and specifically the point where we are at) is made out to be the only way they could have happened or ever will happen—and often this is even elevated to the level of a “miracle” (for example, the birth of a child). And with this outlook it appears that things must, according to some all-encompassing plan and/or will (god), happen the way they do, rather than recognizing that they merely do happen the way they do—in an endless procession of events.

Am I denying all notion (or validity to the notion) of cause and effect? No—but these are not unchanging absolutes, either. Every cause is also an effect, and vice versa. Everything has a cause—and yet nothing has a CAUSE. Find the cause of any given thing and each of the things making up that cause in turn has its cause…and on and on, infinitely. Hence, in another aspect, everything is accident and there is no “cause for everything”—no “master plan”…and no god.

But what about “free will”? Are people merely the passive objects of accident, do they exercise no choice in what they do? No, that is wrong. People, and their ideas, do indeed play a great role in reacting upon and changing the world around them (and themselves as well). But the basis and limits for this—and the source of their very ideas—lie in the objective world outside of them, and in particular the society in which they find themselves, which they are not fee to choose at will but only in accordance with the level of development of the productive forces that are at hand at any given time. And further, human society and the people and their ideas that make it up, also are only one small part of, and occupy a place in, the endless concatenation of events, of cause and effect—they do not stand outside or above it.

“But where did it all come from”? We are told everything must have a beginning and an end; and in fact, for particular things—in a relative sense, and only in that sense—this is true. People, for example, are born, live and then die. But the matter of which they are composed is neither created nor destroyed. And just because, for 70 or so years—out of infinity!—particular elements were combined in that particular form (a person), what about that makes a “miracle” or justifies the argument that “it all had to come from somewhere”?

“Then were did matter come from”? It did not “come from” anywhere—it has always existed, in one form or another, whether energy or mass. Again, because particular forms of matter have a (relative) beginning and end, why should it follow—and in fact it does not follow, nor is it true—that matter itself, in one form or another, must likewise have a beginning and an end? And, as I said, even the beginning and end of particular forms of matter can only be relatively established.

Take the life of a person (including birth and death), for example. The boundary lines here are conditional and relative. When is a person actually alive? The anti-abortion nuts and others go around and around on this, trying to fix an absolute point, but they cannot—because there is no such thing. There are qualitative leaps from one form of matter to another, but no absolute boundary lines. Things are and are not at the same time: they exist and are going out of existence at one and the same time. When does a person actually die? The example I cited earlier speaks to that—and proves that this, too, is conditional and relative (now it is when the brain, not the heart, effectively dies; but years from now that, too, will change—the whole brain does not die all at once, and that’s only one aspect of it, because undoubtedly in the future “dead” brain cells, like hearts today, will be able to be revived; and what will it mean when brain transplants become possible, what will that do to the conventional notions of life and death?).

The sun (and the earth with—or before—it) will become extinct, but not the matter, including energy, which today constitutes the sun. What is the sun? It is not a little yellow ball you can hold in your hand, it is heat, light and other forms of matter. Energy is matter, just as mass is—and the one is constantly being transformed into the other in nature, on a macro- as well as micro-scale. Go in “either direction”—macro or micro—and you will find that things exist—and are divisible—infinitely (“Zeno’s paradox,” which you are no doubt familiar with, is one expression of these laws.).¹

Order, stability, rest, equilibrium, the dividing lines between things—these are conditional and relative. Motions, instability, change and the transformation of one thing into another because of the development of the contradiction within the thing to a certain point and then a qualitative leap: this is the real order—and disorder—of all things, in nature and society (and within people, including in their thinking). Motion is the mode of existence of matter; there is no matter without motion, and vice versa. And motion itself is contradiction—in motion, by definition, something is both in one place and not in that place at any given point in time. Since motion is the mode of existence of matter and since the motion of all things and their development is determined by the contradiction within them, there need have been and there was no “initial impulse” to start everything—no god.

For all these reasons, all ideas of stagnation, permanence—and permanent order—of unchanging absolutes, are contrary to nature and its laws and to humanity’s struggle with the rest of nature, through society, and to the laws of social development (and of thought). In political expression, these ideas are reactionary and serve reactionary social forces.

This is the philosophical basis for communist politics, and specifically for the views I have summarized on the question of carrying forward the revolution under socialism, revolutionizing the party as part of revolutionizing society as a whole and advancing to communism. When communism is reached, will everything then, finally, “settle down”? As Mao put it—“I just don’t believe it!” Such a notion is contrary to dialectics, to the laws of nature and society (and thought) and their development. Even then, new knowledge of the truth, as it first emerges, will be upheld only be a minority (though not the same minority in each case). They will no doubt be ridiculed—but not politically suppressed, imprisoned, tortured, even killed. Why not? Because the material conditions will be such—the elimination of scarcity and of the basis for the monopolization of wealth as well as knowledge and skills, etc. by a few—that people will no longer have a need to carry out such suppression, and along with this people will have learned better and moreover undergone an all-around, fundamental change ideologically. In fact, until that happens there will not yet be communism—it will be reached only when these material and ideological conditions are realized, won through struggle. And, under communism, new truths, changes, advances, will still win out and come to be embraced by society as a whole (or overwhelmingly) only through struggle—though not through antagonistic struggle and political suppression. And then, in turn, these ideas, institutions, etc. will grow old and be superseded by new, arising ones—until they, in their turn, grow old and are superseded…and on and on.

Footnote

1. And this law, of infinite divisibility, applies to time as well as space. [back]

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