I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity, and human happiness can develop and grow; not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the state, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest; not the individualistic, shabby, and fictitious liberty extolled by the school of J.J. Rousseau and the other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would be rights of all men, represented by the state which limits the rights of each -- an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero. No, I mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual, and moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual, and moral being -- they do not limit us but are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom. 1
Mikhail Bakunin
In chapter two we discussed and generally elaborated T.S. Kuhn's method of understanding scientific progress. Since then we've struggled to demonstrate that Classical Marxism Leninism is inadequate to present daily revolutionary needs, and that though Anarchist and Maoist alternatives offer additional insights, they too are inadequate.
The present United States situation is grossly unjust though also obviously pregnant with immense liberatory possibilities. To release these possibilities requires revolution, and revolution presupposes powerful revolutionary ideology.
Past paradigms can't do the now necessary job: we must create a new one that can. That is this book's 'message' and the effort it tries to support.
Over the next few years left praxis must create new ideology and movement. As a contributory step we now distill from our critical understandings of past ideologies an awareness of what a new ideology must be like: what it must explain, what it must enable us to do, how it must be the same and different from past ones, how it must alter over time, and how it might be created through our activities.
The most general summary answer to these questions is that our efforts at creating a new revolutionary paradigm must continue the trend we saw in the developmental transition from Classical Marxism Leninism through Anarchism and into Maoism. Methodology must be further improved, and psychological consciousness awarenesses further enlarged, both at our new ideology's roots, and then derivatively all throughout it.
The coming American revolution will be a collective anti-authoritarian mass-based process. It needs non-elitist theory with methods all people can use, and with growth dynamics that will fight all tendencies toward sectarianism. It cannot be built on the Classical Marxist Leninist or even the Maoist dialectical methodologies alone; those will have to be simplified, and amended as well.
In the United States, dynamics between individuals and between people and the 'roles' they must fulfill are very critical to day-to-day revolutionary affairs. Sexism, racism, and authoritarianism are crucial factors in all people's lives and in all revolutionary calculations. The psycho-social side of societal relations is equally as causal in social movement dynamics as the material-economic side. A new theory must perceive that reality, understand it, and create strategies to change it, in ways relevant to our specific contexts. It will need to arm us for answering the crucial questions of revolutionary day-to-day work. Why do people often do things detrimental to their own welfares? What prevents people from fighting the injustices around them? How do varying organizing approaches affect people's attitudes toward the left? What tactics should we use, what programs are important, what tasks must we undertake today? In each specific daily situation, how do people's feelings or habits, or the dynamics of institutional arrangements or of culture, or of personal interaction, affect revolutionary potentials?
Such a theory needs also to arm us to answer the larger questions that affect people's overall values, motives, morale, and style. What is it in history that gives us a right to have faith in reaching a better future? What is it in 'human nature' that can give us the values we require for a new society? What are the needs a new society must fill and what are the things its organization must accomplish? What is oppression? How did it arise in history, why does it persist, and to what extent can we eliminate it? Why are some societies stable and others not? Which are the institutions, productive relations, and ideologies that are fostering change, and which are impeding it? Which groups are capable of revolutionary motion and which will likely oppose it? In essence, what in the national and what in particular local situations in the United States fosters revolution, what hampers it, and how can our various tactics affect each?
Classical Marxism gives us criteria for a new theory, Maoism and Anarchism give us insight into directions it will likely take. We can thus expect that our theory will be very concerned with the roles of ideas, race, sex, and authority, and that it will be aware of the multiplicity of dynamics that actually constitute most historical situations. We can reasonably expect that it will have a powerful perspective that sees in human nature a relatively constant good, or at worst a neutral basis upon which personality develops, due to upbringing, education, culture, work, and all other kinds of 'socialization.' And we can expect that it will study the process of personality development and that it will understand the interrelation of human nature, personality, institutions, cultures, and economies.
But a new ideology won't stop with theory. Our study of Classical Leninism suggests that a new strategy must be concerned both with society's power relations and with its interpersonal ones. It needs to provide guidelines for building a movement, contesting the authorities for power, and developing the institutions and values of a new society.
It must give us criteria for our day-to-day activities. It needs to take into account our weaknesses and strengths, and needs to work to hamper the former and foster the latter. It needs to understand centralization, bureaucracy, and work styles, decentralization, democracy, and spontaneity. It needs to instruct us as to the nature of good organization, and help us move towards it. It needs to tell us what good leadership is, and help us move towards that too.
Our new strategy must enable us to find revolutionary potentials in each of society's sectors and in its various dynamics and institutions, and help us bring those potentials to fruition. It needs to have methods of communication, organization, and struggle that are suited to the abilities of involved groups, applicable to the dictates of present conditions, and carefully aimed towards future goals.
Based on the lessons of Anarchism, we can expect that such a new strategy will include a process through which revolutionaries not only contest power, but through which they also learn how to create and 'administer' a new society. We can expect that within factories, schools, hospitals, and all other institutions, the new strategy will call for the creation of more and more revolutionaries, each of whom is self-confident, and able to function strategically, and thereby able to contribute to the development of a wholly new society.
We know from our understanding of the new left that a new strategy needs to have workable methods for its practitioners to use in fighting their own weaknesses, while also making themselves continually more revolutionary in personality. It needs mechanisms that insure wide participation at every level of analysis and planning, as well as very clear well outlined methodologies and values. Everything needs to revolve around the dual problems of growing in size, commitment and ability, while also effectively dealing with all those supporting the status-quo.
A new strategy should thus give its practitioners a strong identity without making them sectarian or extremist. It should provide methods for analysis while not hampering people with excessively positive attitudes about themselves or their environments. It should provide a context that fosters desires for growth rather than desires for ego-fulfilling stagnant 'correctness.'
At present America's status-quo forces have material strengths, organizational strengths, and structural and ideological weaknesses. Revolutionaries have material weaknesses, personality weaknesses and strengths, potential ideological strengths, and of course great strengths based on the potential emergence of revolutionary tendencies in all oppressed Americans. As a result, the status-quo task is to use material force to annihilate everything threatening, while also guarding against the weaknesses which could further provoke revolutionary strengths. The revolutionaries' task is to translate the potential inadequacies of the status-quo's relations and the power of their own new ways and new ideas into concrete gains leading to eventual victory -- while at the same time also guarding against their own weaknesses and most especially the tendencies to use self-defeating oppressor-oppressed behavior patterns. A new strategy needs safeguards against internal weaknesses that can couple effectively with methodologies aimed at increasing membership and material strength.
Based on our understandings of Anarchism's emphasis on the need for mass consciousness changes we expect that a new strategy will include very detailed processes for consciousness changing -- processes that provide new visions while at the same time overcoming old ones, without creating 'ego' problems like those that plagued the new left.
We expect that a new revolutionary process will unfold internally as a mechanism/or creating liberated people and externally as a mechanism for confronting the injustices of the United States. It will be guided by a methodologically and humanistically broadened new theory. It will be rooted in an all-sided understanding of present realities, including an understanding of where people's consciousnesses are at. It will be aimed at creation of a new society that will be at least clearly enough envisioned so we can always successfully communicate about it, and successfully orient our tactics towards actually reaching its goal.
But how will such a strategy and the theory and goal behind it come into being, and then enter people's consciousnesses? Certainly herein we've given only a few criteria for their content. What are the steps which might actually bring them into being, and how might people embark on the involved tasks? Where might they start; how should they proceed?
We should clarify -- the process as the last chapter suggested has already long since begun. We see two main directions of its present development.
First, and as has thus far been primarily the case, people can return to Marx's own writings and essentially begin anew in light of their own criticisms of Classical interpretations and in accord with their own present 'experience lessons.' Such efforts seek to stay within overall Marxist frameworks, making additions and alterations with it as base. Frequently they begin by uncovering Marx's own actually varied understandings of human behavior and consciousness formation (passed over by the Classicists and in some sense even by the pragmatic Marx himself because of their then untranslatability into practical prescriptions) and by moving off those to altered historical and strategic results. For this approach, theories of alienation play growing roles as do understandings of the mediating agencies between production, daily living, and revolutionary practice and consciousness formation. Views of history become altered with economic but non-technical, and also non-economic factors playing ever greater roles. Power and control factors play greater roles in analysis and are seen as more important in real life history. Strategic orientations derivatively become more flexible, reflect greater understandings of human needs, motivations and potentials, and generate anti-hierarchical organizational desires. Growth orientedness becomes a sought after end. In essence, as in the last chapter, the Classical view is subjected to thorough overhaul in light of various Anarchist, Maoist, and New Left lessons, all within the basic confines of Marx's own conceptual categories.
Second, people can start anew, working from criteria developed from understandings of old ideologies, but initially, right from the start, developing their own more modern descriptive categories, terminology, methods, and so on. They'd be motivated in a similar way as the neo-Marxists (and also study Marx's own writings in addition to criticizing Classical interpretations) with but one significant addition they would feel that the likelihood of creating successful new ideology would hinge at least in part on getting away from habitually misused concepts, though not from the real power of the understandings often lurking behind those concepts. We would thus expect people of this second orientation to create new views translatable to the language of the neo-Marxists, but perhaps better suited to present needs in their own category/terminology, and also perhaps going a bit beyond what the neo-Marxists themselves generate, precisely because of the new approach's complete escape from traditionally habituating formulations.
In any case, which ever approach one takes, an early step in the task will be the development of a usable 'psychological picture' of how people act, of what they are like, and of what they want, and then the incorporation of that understanding into creation of a generally broader political perspective. As a result we also expect creation of some form of a rather more organic theory of history that puts significant emphasis on race, sex, ideology, authority, and personal relations, and that has a powerful understanding of how consciousness and behavior mesh with, cause, and are caused by material interactions. We expect that, though such a theory would begin taking shape 'on the desks' of people who have been active in the movement, it would take usable form only in the hands of actually practicing revolutionary activists. 2
We might reasonably expect people to move from first discussing Classical ideas toward a wide debate on new theoretical outlines, new strategic orientations, new goals, and especially new understandings of organizational and organizing methodology. Then we expect such views would be used and simultaneously evaluated, and continuously improved upon. We would expect collective agreements to emerge, a rough ideology to evolve, and a movement, essentially already in existence, to adopt it all. Then since the ideology would be growth oriented we expect that with time it would get ever better, especially as more and more people of varying backgrounds contributed their insights and analyses of their own particular situations.
Such a new ideology would aid our manner of revolutionary struggle. It would help us create solidarity and provide a large context within which revolutionaries could all function together. It would provide work guidelines and a common language for communication. It would provide strength and identity but it would also foster an abhorrence for sectarianism and a desire for truth. It would be self-consciously self-critical. It would deal with all forms of oppression and liberation in organically unified ways. It would give local practitioners the means to create programs, evaluate them, and carry them out. It would help people become interested members of an on-going process of personal and political growth -- a process that would go from experience to knowledge to change and back to knowledge, over and over, right up through development of a new society and a whole new way of life. Such a new ideology will be 'friendly' and it will also work. The debate between it and Classical Marxism Leninism and Maoism will end precisely as larger and larger numbers of previously apolitical people gravitate toward the new paradigm's movements, much like the way the debate between Mao and the Classical Leninists ended with the growth of the Red Army among the peasants.
Perhaps by way of conclusion we can go somewhat out on a limb and 'fantasize' a contrast between Classical Marxism Leninism and such a new ideology as if it already fully existed.
Both Classical Marxism Leninism and the 'new' ideology employ a materialist perspective. Both use a dialectical method, both use abstraction, and both believe in the primacy of practice as the final arbiter of truth. But the new ideology changes the dialectical method a bit and also adds a number of other new, useful, broadening methodologies. The result is a better basis for all-sided analysis, and a much lesser tendency towards fetishism and sectarianism.
Both ideologies believe that the ways humans interrelate and learn are important. Both believe that history flows not according to plan, but according to the dictates of chance and necessity within a framework of largely understandable contradictions, causes and effects, but each has a somewhat different view about what is most important to the involved processes.
Classical Marxism Leninism puts the base and superstructure of each society in relief with the base getting the most attention; the new ideology puts the base and superstructure together as well as the totality of things in people's heads in relief, with all getting equal attention. Classical Marxism Leninism focuses in on the class struggle while the new ideology adds the dynamics of caste, movement, and group struggle in equal weight to those of class. Classical Marxism Leninism sees the main struggle at the productive level between forces and relations, whereas the new ideology sees main conflicts actually between oppressive and liberating potentials at all of society's levels. Classical Marxism Leninism sees the defining conflict rooted in the dynamics of production, while the new ideology sees it rooted in the dynamics of given human natures and formed human personalities in given historical contexts.
The new ideology has significant psychological insight; Classical Marxism Leninism abstracts it out. As a result the new ideology deals far better with racism, sexism, authoritarianism, classism, and sectarianism.
Classical Marxism Leninism feels that beliefs follow after practice and so doesn't worry so much about their inner consistency. The new ideology realizes that beliefs and practice can each lead or hinder the other's validity and so worries about both.
The Classical Marxist theory of revolution is a theory of class interaction propelled by contradictions at the society's material base; the new theory of revolution is a theory of human interaction propelled by contradictions arising directly from human needs, desires, and potentials, operating at the intellectual, physical, productive, and social levels of society. It is a macro theory but it is also able to analyze micro situations. It corresponds to Classical Marxism wherever Classical Marxism is correctly applicable but goes beyond Classical Marxism wherever a situation's complexity so demands. It is comprehensive but always growing. It is powerfully suited to day-to-day use by real down-to-earth in-the-world people.
Classical Marxism Leninism aims at changing the world in accord with the 'dictates' of the flows of its economic base -- in some sense the value is to reach that which will inevitably be reached. The new ideology aims at changing the world in accord with human nature's present historical potentials, and human fulfillment's present historical demands. The value is to reach that which can be reached and is most desired. The contrast is between decentralist, self-management goals of the new ideology and various centralized socialisms and communisms of the old.
The Classical Leninist strategy is narrow; it doesn't sufficiently understand motivation, bureaucracy, authority, the ties between life, practice, and consciousness, or the real dynamics of corruption and co-optation. The new strategy is broader and better understands each of these things. It is more balanced; it is better rooted in the present and better aimed at a desirable future. It has better knowledge of real-world people.
The Classical Marxist Leninist's organizational forms rule their revolution; the new ideology's forms melt into the dictates of their revolution's needs. Classical Marxist Leninist top-down discipline stifles creativity, spontaneity, and initiative while also creating a new group of oppressors. The new revolution's self-discipline combines creativity, spontaneity, and initiative, with organization, in a collective assault on all oppressions.
The new revolutionist has a better understanding of tactical alternatives than the Classical Marxist Leninist and so he or she comes up with more varied and better programs, and what's more, in the new movement everyone is in a position to analyze social conditions, form programs, and evaluate results, precisely because all method and information is widely shared, while hierarchies of experience are continually struggled against.
The new revolutionist's identity is tied up in change and constant growth and the new theory helps foster those dynamics. The Classical Marxist Leninist's identity is tied up in the longevity of his or her ideology, and so the theory generally stagnates, while its users 'defend' it against all change.
Obviously a new ideology of the type "intimated" above doesn't yet exist and can't for some time to come. Still the fanciful comparison we've done graphically illustrates the type of qualities a new ideology must have if it's to adequately aid future United States left practice.
In any case it's clear from our critical studies and from the lessons of modern revolutionary thinkers and recent revolutionary experiences that it is time for some ideological and practical creativity. Continued esoteric exhumations of old writings will not turn us around the next revolutionary corner nor even necessarily bring us to its vicinity. Theoretic work must stop looking for miracles from the skies or from the graves of old 'masters.' It no longer suffices for us to speak precisely but continually say nothing really practically useful. In now creating new theory we must aim first at usability and thus take primary account of what our experiences have taught us, what our present conditions are, and of what our present organizing needs are, in factories, and also in communities, schools, and even households, and in all cases with reference to actual day-to-day activity. Only by struggling to create new ideology that can guide and in turn be enlarged by new practice can we truly confront the American beast and propel the next American revolution.
FOOTNOTES
1. Quoted in Noam Chomsky's essay "Anarchism" which appears in Essays on Socialist Humanism, The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Limited.
2. As a possible starting point for discovering such a psychological picture, people might especially want to read the works of Wilhelm Reich, Abraham Maslow, and R. D. Laing, as well as the recent book, Toward A Marxist Psychology, by Phil Brown, Harper Colophon Books, New York.
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