Letter from a Reader
Wrangling Over the "Anarchy/Organization Form of Motion"
January 6, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
A group of us got together recently to dig into "On the 'Driving Force of Anarchy' and the Dynamics of Change: A Sharp Debate and Urgent Polemic: The Struggle for a Radically Different World and the Struggle for a Scientific Approach to Reality" by Raymond Lotta. The leadership of a collective body understood the need to discuss this "urgent polemic" and set up a time and date for people to get together. The group which met was a little broader than just the collective body, including a comrade with a deeper grasp of the overall topic and political economy in particular who was invited to be part of the discussion. This salon proved to be a very important and lively, and initial, digging into the polemic. People’s understanding was uneven, but everyone jumped in to be part of the process at one point or another. Everyone was very exhilarated and wants to do this again soon. I hope a brief report on this session will encourage others to get together and wrangle over this critical piece.
We had to keep coming back to the starting point of "what is true and why" to wrangle on these questions of theory, and as part of that the point made by BA, "we may not like all this, but that's where we are." As a reflection of wielding the epistemological method which proceeds from reality, not formulas or "precepts," it is critical for us not to just repeat what is in the polemic and then figure out how to explain all of this to others. We have to ourselves dig into whether and how the analysis in the polemic is true and how we understand reality first and then, yes, we do need to get this out into the world. There is a crying need for more science and more rigorous and critical thinking, which we tried to wield.
One point that was made in the opening rounds was that our responsibility to struggle through these lines is not just part of taking responsibility for the line of our own party, which is extremely important, but we have a special responsibility in this party in this country for what the line among those who consider themselves communists in the world today will be and forging an international communist organization on a scientific communist line. We discussed the stakes of applying BA’s new synthesis to bringing forward new initiators of a new stage of communism worldwide. If we aren’t having this discussion in the context of these stakes posed by the "sharp debate and urgent polemic" in the context of the whole world, we won’t be having the right discussion.
We started out with a discussion of the development of commodity production and the leap from feudalism to capitalism with people bringing in some study they had done of Engels’ Anti-Duhring. With the help of the more experienced comrade, we dug into the whole process described there and how this process is not driven by "greedy" capitalists or by the struggle of the workers against their exploitation but rather the cutthroat competition between capitalists to each cut their own costs in one way or another—which leads to organization on the level of each enterprise but anarchy in society as a whole as they compete.
We got into examples of how the anarchy/organization form of motion actually is overall the determining factor of the fundamental contradiction in the capitalists' quest for profit. The dynamism generated by this competition for more and more profit produces a very dynamic economic system, but this "dynamism" is not just creative, it is also destructive—destructive of commodities, of technology when it becomes obsolete and, more importantly, destructive of human beings as part of the forces of production either through terrible exploitation or when they are no longer profitable. The example of how in Africa the capitalists of various kinds are now engaged in many different vicious forms of domination and exploitation—taking the form of a huge land, mineral and resource grab, throwing the people off the land and destroying the local agriculture. The movie Darwin’s Nightmare was referenced as well. We walked thru some of the section on the environment to understand more deeply how this anarchy/organization contradiction drives the "ceaseless striving for more surplus," at the potential expense of the whole planet as well as how it interacts with other contradictions like the geopolitical needs of imperialism.
One way this was posed for discussion was: Is "the ceaseless striving for more surplus" driven by compulsion/necessity of the capitalist to survive, or is it a process of opportunity/freedom where the various capitalists are just seizing on the opportunity to make more profit and they could just as easily decide to just stay at the level they are at? As part of that discussion we also examined the expression the "capitalist is capital personified." It is not a choice s/he makes to chase the creation of more surplus value and all the implications of that, but a compulsion to do so as long as they want to remain capitalists. All of this is happening "behind the backs" of the capitalists and their system. It is only by wielding and deepening the science of communism that the vanguard party can arm the masses with the real understanding of how this system works. "And in this reality is the basis of radically changing things. It’s in confrontation and struggling to change that reality, and not through some other means. It’s through understanding and then acting to transform that reality along pathways that the contradictory character of that reality does open up...." (From the quote in the polemic from Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon by Bob Avakian)
We dug into the criticism of this analysis presented at the beginning of the II section of the polemic—"A Refusal to Come to Grips with the Nature of Capitalist Accumulation—Or Why the 'Capitalist Is Capital Personified.'" At first there was a tendency to belittle and dismiss the 3 points in that section in defense of the argument that the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is principal as being superficial and illogical. However it was pointed out that this is actually the main line holding sway in the world today among those who consider themselves communists and among progressive intellectuals who consider themselves Marxists. We got into some of the best arguments made for this position, trying to get at how people were thinking with this analysis as well as what the implications are. We need to dig into this, deepen our own understanding of how reality actually works and be ready to take on very sophisticated arguments for that position, not being satisfied with a superficial approach of a reaffirmation of our own beliefs.
Then we did get into some of the implications of this analysis that the class contradiction is the principal form of motion. We dug into the tendency historically among communists that communist revolution is inevitable because of the internal contradictions of the imperialist system—a ‘general crisis’ of imperialism—and that the masses will surely rise up against their oppression as a reflection of the class contradiction being the principal and determining form of motion.
A thought experiment was posed: Is it possible for the contradiction between anarchy and organization to be mitigated, either by the capitalists directly or by the bourgeois state in its role of safeguarding the interests of the bourgeoisie as a class overall? We discussed how there are no international structures capable of imposing limits, and the dependence on fossil fuels at this point is such that any single unit of capital which tried to go against this "ceaseless striving for more surplus value" would not exist very long. Right now the imperialists are in crisis and don’t have much maneuvering room. But we barely scratched the surface on this and a number of other key questions.
Many other questions were put on the table which we didn’t fully get into this time. There was some discussion of the relationship between economism, reification and identifying the principal form of motion of the fundamental contradiction being the class struggle. We also decided that we need to get more into the interpenetration of the two forms of motion in a future discussion. Often the imperialists attempt to solve some of the sharp challenges they face in ways which then actually heighten the contradiction, like Japan relying on nuclear power. It will be important to go more deeply into all of the three examples in the polemic. And we have to understand that this dynamic of anarchy/organization does not define all the contradictions in society even while it does interpenetrate with them, often in unexpected and perverse ways, for example, the question of the oppression of women.
We closed with an appreciation for why BA Everywhere is in fact what the world cries out for and how this polemic highlights the reality that we have a special and urgent responsibility to make this campaign successful and everything that encompasses about making revolution in the belly of the beast. Again, there is a lot more to get into and everyone is down for another session soon!
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