How do supporters, in words, of SCIENTIFIC communism fight against SCIENTIFIC centralism?
To be a Marxist or to like to talk about Marxism?
Can a person completely ignorant of the philosophy of Marxism consider himself a communist? Some will say, “A rhetorical question. Of course not.” But Proriv’s mail suggests otherwise. Such people make up the majority in the left movement today.
Proriv did not accidentally raise the question of the conscience of a communist. Every person who claims to be a communist in the proletarian movement must be able to honestly, conscientiously, i.e. diamatically, answer to oneself the question: “Did I become a communist, in fact, so that my entry into the party would help the cause? What can I do as a Marxist?”
The practice of the struggle for communism shows that almost everything is in order with members in parties with communist names. They are available. But there are no victories on the left flank due to the absence of real Marxists.
What does it take for a person to become a Marxist, really?
Firstly, a person who calls himself a Marxist is obliged, without making any allowance for fatigue, to study all that knowledge which made Lenin and Stalin victorious communists. If this fails, then do not rush to appropriate the name of a communist, which presupposes, first of all, the mastery of science. As a last resort, let your comrades call you a Marxist, if they are sure of it.
Secondly, every subject who recognizes himself as a Marxist is obliged to have on his account opportunists who have been put to shame in the theoretical form of the class struggle, as well as research, propaganda, and agitation works published in one way or another. If this is not the case, learn to defeat or re-educate opportunists, write yourself, and take your time before teaching others.
Thirdly, every person who is recognized as a Marxist among his comrades-in-arms is obliged to organize, in person or in absentia, the studies of applicants for the title of communist. If it doesn’t work out, learn to teach so that in the end you will be addressed as a teacher.
Fourth, every Marxist must be able to work in a team and with a team, be able to organize people to achieve strategic goals. If it doesn’t work out, learn from one who already succeeds - don’t compete, but, selflessly helping him, learn.
Fifth, never think about a career, about fame, about gratitude, or about material gain. All this makes becoming a Marxist IMPOSSIBLE. If all this secret tinsel, generated by stupidity and envy, occupies you, evokes more than indifference in you, dear reader, know that you, for the time being, have nothing to do with Marxism, regardless of what you have read and written.
You will work for communism, simply, sparing no effort, overcoming fatigue, and what only empty, conceited and greedy people dream of will fall on your shoulders - fame, recognition by the majority, and with them gigantic responsibility, hatred, envy, lies, and intrigues of outright enemies and competitors who “adore” you.
Today, however, all those who trail behind the proletarian movement call themselves communists and are only capable of assenting to the leaders of the trade union-strike form of resistance to the tyranny of the entrepreneurs. The struggle for communism has been sacrificed by the modern left to helpless babble about the need to help the proletariat in its Sisyphean struggle for the «swamp penny».
The easily predictable stupidity of modern party leaders with communist names, elected under the procedures of democratic centralism, has reached such a level that at the demonstration of sexual minorities held on June 12, 2013 in Moscow, there was about the same number of red sickle banners (from the RKSM (b) to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation) as gay rainbows. There was a struggle not for communism against bourgeois tyranny, but against the «Putin regime», for fair democratic elections, and…same-sex marriages, apparently, as a model of an honest choice.
On the question of the fragmentation of Marxism in the CPSU
Kurmeev,1 repeating the “backsides” of the CPSU, “teaches” or, as modern young people say, “roasts”:
“…Marxism consists of at least three interrelated parts: philosophy, political economy and scientific communism. Moreover,” according to Kurmeev, “Marxist-Leninist philosophy includes two mutually interconnected sides: dialectical materialism and historical materialism”
Kurmeev obtained a good butter oil2 from the «two sides» of philosophy that are mutually interconnected .
I’m not even talking about the fact that, according to the classics, the BASIC question of any pre-Marxist philosophy, and not Marxist-Leninist philosophy, has TWO sides. As is often the case with our opponents, this principle worked well: they heard the ringing3…
Our opponents are unaware that the basic question of philosophy and its two sides were inherent in ALL philosophy only as long as it was split into the philosophy of the vulgar materialists and the philosophy of the militant idealists. The philosophy of Marxism, creatively applying the dialectical method to all the problems of being, gave an unambiguous answer to the centuries-old fundamental question of pre-Marxist philosophy. This answer turned out to be an axiom, the proof of which is sincerely demanded only by Kashchenko’s4 patients. For dialectical materialists, the basic question of all previous philosophy turned into the statements: matter is primary, the world is cognizable. Now you can safely begin to transform the world, putting science ahead of practice.
And the fact that there are still «philosophers» of other schools and trends no longer has any fundamental significance for Marxists. Or, perhaps, Kurmeev has not yet decided for himself the question of how matter and consciousness are related, which of them is objectively primary, is the world cognizable, and, instead of applying the main answer of philosophy, continues to struggle with the main question.
But why does Kurmeev divide the unified philosophy of Marxism into only two sides? Why not tell your readers that the content of the philosophy of Marxism in the textbooks of the CPSU was divided into sides, chapters, and even paragraphs? To break up philosophical thinking, it is probably useful to «know» that a complete course of Marxist philosophy contains two sides, 24 chapters and 96 paragraphs, «mutually interconnected with each other.»
Anyone who studied philosophy in the social science universities of the USSR knows that, in the departments of philosophy, the teachers were highly specialized. The seasoned teachers lectured on dialectical materialism, while the rest, weaker ones, lectured on historical materialism, since they understood dialectical materialism no more than the teachers of scientific communism. Finding traces of professors of philosophy and scientific communism of the Soviet “make” in the ranks of modern parties with communist names is extremely problematic, since in this environment there were subjects who only voiced lectures about “their The footnote you wrote explains the phrase as tautology, then explains tautology as rhetoric, then explains rhetoric, etc. side” of philosophy from year to year. The Soviet philosophical cadres, unfortunately, turned out to be completely opportunistic.
Today, even a schoolboy will not agree to upload half of Windows into the “computer,” and the “philosophers” of the CPSU managed to “load” only one of the “sides” of the philosophy of Marxism into their “heads”.
A Marxist philosopher is not the one who every year voices the text of one of the “sides” of the philosophy of Marxism, approved at the department and in the party committee by a majority of votes, and torments students with cramming and D’s, but the one who is able to PRACTICALLY solve the actual problems of the theoretical form of the real class struggle and arm the working class with the victorious STRATEGY of the political form of the class struggle.
The fact that Lenin’s work “Three Sources…” exists was memorized by everyone who received social science training in the USSR, in particular: Volkogonov, and Yakovlev, and Zinoviev, and Yushenkov, and Gaidar, and Gorbachev, and Zyuganov. But this did not have a positive effect on their thinking. All their lives they have been opportunists with CPSU membership cards.
If we are guided by the provisions of Lenin’s work, «Three sources…» then we will have to admit that «THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARXISM IS MATERIALISM.»
For a conscientious person, this definition is quite enough to grow into a Marxist in the future, since this definition presupposes the knowledge of the most important thing in the WORLD VIEW, i.e. practically EVERYTHING, since the category “matter” covers ALL FORMS of macro-, micro-, and socio-cosmos that exist in the universe. The materialist, by simply recognizing matter as an objective reality, acquires knowledge of everything, if, of course, he understands that the philosophical concept of matter is infinitely different from the concept, for example, of a weaver about a roll of calico.
Matter is infinite, it has never arisen and will never disappear, and the whole diversity of the universe is a natural product of the development of the forms of moving matter. Figuratively speaking, the conscious statement “I am a materialist” is cognitively similar to the spell “Sim-sim, open the door” in the ancient Arabic tale “Ali Baba and the Forty Opportunists,” which opened the door to the treasury.
Our opponents will naturally cry out that it is impossible to know everything, because it is never possible. But, such cries are proportional to the degree of their ignorance in philosophy. They do not understand that no one calls them immediately to know the still UNKNOWN. But one who does not fight to know everything already KNOWN by mankind can only be a certified sluggard. Today, any school honors student, due to perseverance alone, acquires more knowledge in the field of physics, chemistry, or biology than any genius of the eighteenth and many talents of the nineteenth century.
But since Lenin was writing “Three Sources…” for the younger generation of industrial workers and party members who were just about to begin mastering the ABC of the Russian language at the same time as the philosophy of Marxism, he listed those basic subjective facts that brought human culture close to the emergence of Marxism as forms of denial of the bourgeois branch of culture, built on the EXPLOITATION of man by man with the boundless animal greed of the minority and the hellish suffering of the majority. Lenin only touched on the topic of the HISTORICAL development of philosophical materialism, showing that it was precisely the deep and creative understanding of Hegel’s dialectics that allowed Marx to see developing matter in society. «Deepening and developing philosophical materialism,” Lenin wrote, “Marx extended to the knowledge of human society. The greatest achievement of scientific thought was Marx’s historical materialism.” As we can see, deepening and developing philosophical materialism, extending it to the study of ALL history, Marx developed philosophical materialism to the level of historical and did not create some kind of second “side” of Marxist philosophy which allows the isolation of material history to some extent from dialectics. And the fact that in the educational process, according to pedagogy, we are forced to master consistently chapter by chapter, does not mean that the philosophy of Marxism is a cast from the table of contents of a textbook on philosophy. Just as a bunch of parts of a machine is not equal to the machine itself, so the philosophy of Marxism is not equal to the sum of memorized paragraphs. Just as a certain number of carbon atoms does not form a diamond under arbitrary conditions, great efforts are required for the jagged paragraphs of a textbook to take shape in an all-pervading, carefully structured stream of truth that sweeps away all misconceptions.
Marx proceeded from the fact that society is a special case of matter, therefore human history is the history of the development of matter of this type and, as it turned out, does not contradict the UNIVERSAL objective laws of development discovered by Hegel. In connection with this, Lenin, following the example of Engels, calls the philosophy of Marxism «historical materialism.» For the same reason, in Lenin’s work, «Three Sources…» there is NO indication at all that historical materialism is a kind of «second side» of the philosophy of Marxism.
In other words, historical materialism is the next level of development of the philosophy of materialism, it is a product of the application of dialectics to the history of society as matter, and therefore it (historical materialism) discovers the objective dialectical laws of the movement of society along the historical path, and not the laws of the mechanical movement of subjects in space. The content of historical materialism will develop as long as humanity develops, just as physics develops as long as scientists manage to penetrate into the next secrets of the macro- and micro-worlds.
The geometry of Euclid took place already at the moment when he formulated the axiom of parallel lines. In the future, it only remained to consistently carry out this axiom through all particular cases of geometric collisions. The result was consistently positive. Similarly, the philosophy of materialism took place and completed its development in depth after the establishment of the fact of the applicability of the laws of dialectics to the discovery of the laws of development of the whole society. From now on, the philosophy of materialism can safely develop indefinitely in breadth, being filled with an ever-increasing number of solved particular «theorems», details of the spontaneous and conscious stages of the historical development of mankind.
But it was not there. Such “philosophers” justify their inability to operate with philosophical materialism as a monolithic stream by the division of philosophy into different sides, which forced them to turn into “highly specialized” cretins, to the point of complete loss of wisdom and conscience.
One of the reasons leading to the fragmentation of the philosophy of Marxism by our opponents is that they do not possess the dialectical doctrine of the totality of opposites and, as a result, do not have the skills of a holistic, complex, systemic, i.e. dialectical vision and understanding of multifactorial problems. They do not know what opposites are and that they, for the most part, are not antagonistic, but, moreover, identical, that opposites always exist in unity, i.e. in the necessary contact. All our opponents, as if by prior agreement, always distort Lenin’s quotation about the «core» of dialectics, i.e. about the UNITY of opposites, where they arbitrarily insert the word «struggle», which Lenin does not have in his «Philosophical Notebooks». But they think that it will be more revolutionary. They didn’t understand that the struggle of opposites is only one of the consequences of the unity of opposites. If there is no unity, there will be no identity, there will be no struggle.
For example, two capitalists inextricably linked by the market will compete with each other only if they are identical to each other as capitalists, and, at the same time, they are antagonists and therefore irreconcilable competitors. And this competitiveness is visible in each of their «mutually beneficial» contracts. As soon as one of the entrepreneurs goes bankrupt, i.e. ceases to be identical to the essence of the «capitalist», he objectively loses the ability to be an identical opposite, i.e. competitor.
The facts of the struggle are always on the surface, and it does not require wisdom to reveal them. Revolts of slaves, serfs, Luddites, Carbonari, Maidan, Tahrir, Bolotnaya Square and thousands of other cases of unproductive riots, «senseless and merciless», which arose unexpectedly for the victims and participants, and without the preliminary participation of the intellect, ended in tragedies for the bulk of the participants in SPONTANEOUS acts of such a struggle.
The ability to see the process of development of phenomena through the identity and unity of opposites that give rise to the phenomenon is an indicator of the level of mastery of the “core” of dialectics. Namely, by applying the doctrine of the identity of opposites, Marx proved, for example, that the labor force of the proletarian, i.e. its creative and physical potential of a person under conditions of capitalism, relations of private property, is identical to a commodity, is a commodity, that the proletarian is doomed to be a proletarian as long as he is in a state of unity with the bourgeois, as long as he feeds on the illusion that he can sell his labor to the capitalist for a fair price, not realizing that the capitalist pays only for the ability to work, and not for the quantity and quality of the labor actually expended. Only by identifying the labor power of the proletarian with a commodity can one reveal the secret of the exploitation of the proletarian as a commodity.
The proletarian, not united in a political party of the working class, is at the same time the most sold, and the most exploited, and the most revolutionary, and the most uneducated FORCE of our time. It is this unity of opposites that makes a person a proletarian and determines his behavior in history, full of contradictions.
Or, another example of the identity of opposites. The development of capitalism, i.e. the development of its opposites, is identical to the maturation of the material and political prerequisites … of communism. As Lenin wrote, the Russian communist revolution was hampered by the underdevelopment of capitalism in tsarist Russia, the weak development of the mining and metallurgical complex, which negatively affected the degree of maturity of the material and technical foundations of communism, which was burdened by the dominance of petty-bourgeois illusions even in «leftist» environments. Consequently, the rate of development of capitalism is directly proportional to the rate of maturation of the objective prerequisites for communism, the scale of the aggravation of social contradictions.
Our opponents, no matter what problem they take for research, use the word dialectic only as a figure of speech. As a result of the fragmentation of their philosophical education, the object of study always breaks up in their minds into separate opposites, and the content of the connections and, moreover, the essence of the relationship between them remain unclear and misunderstood.
Therefore, our on-duty critics will probably never understand that in the philosophy of Marxism, materialism is dialectical, dialectics is materialistic, and materialism is historical; and all this in one “bottle.” Any attempt to schematize this unity, to separate the “one” from the “other” and the “third,” is tantamount to killing the integral philosophy of Marxism in the mind of the individual.
Matter, history, and dialectics are both opposite and identical in Marxism. But, if you are drawn to dismember the philosophy of Marxism and dilute it into dialectical materialism and historical materialism, i.e. consider dialectics separately from history, and history apart from dialectics, this means that you are identical with the subject who calls himself a composer because he knows seven notes, but in whose musical fantasy chords never sound, and he is not at all familiar with harmonics, and the meaning of the word composition is unknown.
If Kurmeev, before writing, would have re-read Lenin’s work, he would have noticed that at the end of the first section of «Three Sources…» Lenin summarizes: «Marx’s philosophy is complete philosophical materialism.»
Why philosophical? Yes, because, without being a dialectician, you will never understand the intricacies of contradictions and opposites of the historical process of the development of society as a matter. Without dialectically deciphering the history of mankind as the history of the development of a special form of matter, you will not become a materialist philosopher. Not possessing philosophical materialism, i.e. without solving the actual problems of the life of society wisely, therefore, effectively, a person has no reason to call himself a Marxist.
To draw a line between the philosophy of Marxism and all other historical versions of «philosophies», a Marxist needs to be a MATERIALIST philosopher, since Marx is just the name of a genius, which says little about the essence of his philosophy. And the word materialism unambiguously indicates exactly what is the foundation of the philosophy of Marxism.
But in order not to confuse the philosophy of materialism, for example, with the materialism of physicists, chemists, biologists, or vulgar materialists, it must be remembered that the philosophy of Marxism, i.e. philosophical materialism - is materialism, aimed precisely and, above all, at understanding the HISTORY of mankind. And in order to ensure the truth of historical materialism, to give it a high resolution, it is necessary that historical materialism be DIALECTICAL materialism, that ALL logical constructions and proofs without exception be based on the dialectical method. And the dialectical method is most extensively, consistently, and in detail set forth, so far, only in Hegel’s book «The Science of Logic». Without having creatively studied this book, as Lenin wrote, there is no reason to pretend that you own exactly dialectics, and even more so that you understood something in Capital…
The philosophy of Marxism is at the same time materialistic, historical, and dialectical. If it were otherwise, it would be impossible to discover the universal absolute laws of development of both matter and consciousness. Dialectics only theoretically formulates what is inherent in matter objectively, what organically «lives» in it. Our opponents perceive all these names not as synonyms for the philosophy of Marxism, but as something special, separate. Meanwhile, it is the dialectical method of thinking that allows materialism to become integral, meaningful, historical, and scientific.
Of course, such concepts as matter, history, and dialectics, taken as separate categories, especially in the minds of the bearers of non-Marxist «philosophies», are not identical. In their minds, they are, as a rule, sharp opposites, and in the convolutions of «agnostic philosophers» many of these categories do not exist at all, since agnostics deny both matter and any possibility of its knowledge, including understanding the lessons from the history of mankind.
But in Marxism, each of these categories (dialectics, matter, history) are derived, figuratively speaking, from each other. Each of them in Marxism is true, and, as truths, they are, all the more, identical, and therefore in the practice of cognitive activity they are one and cannot provoke a struggle among themselves, but only the development of consciousness in the direction of increasing its cognitive ability.
An example always incompletely and inaccurately corresponds to a philosophical generalization, however, the identity of even antagonistic opposites can be illustrated. The dollar, the pound and the euro are specific opposites, moreover, antagonistic, competing for the purpose of mutual liquidation, however, for the philosophy of Marxism, all these opposites are simply money, and like money, they are absolute identities, since they have absolutely identical functions, and therefore in their unity they form a world system of convertible and competing currencies.
For a struggle between opposites to arise, they must be antagonistic to the extent of mutual negation, i.e. not like a proton and an electron in an atom, but like, for example, plus and minus in mathematics. The historically doomed side of antagonism is undergoing its first negation. Just as the franc, the lira, and the mark disappeared, the dollar, the pound, and the euro will also disappear, although not like the “morning mist”. The disappearance of individual currencies is a consequence of the struggle between them; there is evidence, on the one hand, of the inevitability of the disappearance of currencies in general and, on the other hand, proof of the predictive power of diamatic thinking. Now it has become even clearer that the predictions of Marxism regarding the inevitability of mankind’s deliverance from the yoke of money, i.e. from the squalid form of relations between people is only a matter of time.
Namely, having deeply mastered the doctrine of the identity of opposites, turning it into a method of his revolutionary thinking, Marx came to the conclusion that the development of society as matter fundamentally different, for example, from a herd, will reach an optimum when the struggle ceases to be an organic companion of the unity of opposites, and all opposites, having lost antagonism, will turn into identities, i.e. into unity of opposites without struggle, into development without conflict.
In short, either communism is the identity and unity of opposites without antagonisms and, consequently, development without struggle, or the ideas of communism are unrealizable if there is no objective possibility of excluding antagonisms and struggle from the human psyche and practice.
This contradiction can be resolved if we compare the prospects of a society consisting only of smart, adequate people, with a society in which, for example, 40% of citizens are smart, adequate, and 60% of citizens are small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, all kinds of Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky5. It is clear that, with such a proportion in the system of market democratic centralism, fools will always have an advantage over smart people in voting, and the “development” of such countries can only occur through crises, civil and world wars, as it was in the twentieth century, as it happens wherever supporters of market democracy carry the uneducated masses with them.
It is easy to understand that a society consisting of 100% smart and, therefore, really educated people will be free from conflicts in general, and all social energy will be directed to creation.
True, there are people who will still argue that a conflict-free society is impossible, as if they already lived in a society where all citizens are 100% smart and honestly educated people.
It is ridiculous to imagine that communism has been built, politics as a form of relations between people has been destroyed, and the struggle, in traditional forms for politics, continues in any area of ??social life.
Thus, only by mastering the teachings of Marxism-Leninism on the diamatics of identity, on the unity of opposites and the laws of their struggle, on the synthesis of the individual, particular, general, and universal, one can understand the structure and essence of the philosophy of Marxism, turning it into a guide to action, and not into separate phrases, crammed for passing the Unified State Exam.
Kurmeev, of course, will ask, “Are you denying the structure of Marxism, which Lenin described in his work ‘Three Sources…’?” No, I deny that Kurmeev conscientiously studied this work, correctly understood it, and I affirm that the work of the brilliant Lenin requires more effort in studying it than those spent by fans of the “literacy program”.
Is it possible to solve the problem from the standpoint of Marxism without solving it diamatically?
Speaking about the essence of Marxism, it is enough to ask the question, can a person who remembers only human anatomy, but is completely unfamiliar with physiology and biochemistry, be a therapist? Clearly, no. A man cannot become a Marxist even if he has memorized Hegel’s Science of Logic, Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, and Fourier’s Abridged Treatise on Domestic and Agricultural Association.
Of course, if you have just begun to study Marxism, then you are doomed to the fact that you will have to start your introduction to this science from somewhere. But the process of gradual assimilation of the theoretical heritage of mankind and the complete mastery of philosophical materialism differ from each other, just as a basket of unwashed vegetables differs from a ready-made salad. But the preparation of a salad involves a certain sequence of processing and combining the ingredients. Very often, not particularly conscientious people confuse their easy reading of “something and somehow” with mastered Marxism.
In the practice of coming to know the history of solid Marxists, it becomes known that their coming to a scientific worldview and leadership in the proletarian movement began in different conditions. For some, it all started with rally practice, hard labor, for some, with theory, moreover, for some, with philosophy, and for many with economic theory, but, in the end, the only one who became a practical Marxist was the one who built all the information blocks in his mind into a coherent, specific hierarchical system of knowledge and acquired mental skills and abilities, thanks to which correctly understood objective connections and mediations turned a “heap” of information into a developing scientific system and not, in the Kurmeev way, into “two mutually interconnected sides» .
What are the constituent parts, and how are they interconnected in Marxism?
Can the philosophy of materialism exist in Marxism apart from «political economy»? No. Is it possible to understand real «political economy» if one does not apply the dialectical method of the philosophy of materialism in studying it? No. Is there even one fragment of Marx’s study of capital where he dispensed with the dialectical method? No. Is the study of capital from beginning to end a case of applying the dialectical method to the material of real bourgeois theory and practice of political economy? Yes.
In this case, is it possible to classify political economy as one of the constituent parts of Marxism? No.
Marx himself, in the second preface to “Capital: Critique of Political Economy,» writes:
“Insofar as political economy is bourgeois, i.e. since it considers the capitalist system not as a historically transient stage of development, but, on the contrary, as an absolute, final form of social production, it can remain scientific only as long as the class struggle is in a latent state or is revealed only in single manifestations.”
As follows from Marx’s statement, political economy «can remain scientific» only up to a certain point, i.e. it is not fact that, in all fragments and ultimately, it is.
Therefore, in the second section of «Three Sources…», devoted to political economy as the SOURCE of Marxism, you will not find Lenin’s words that political economy is a COMPONENT part of Marxism. Indeed, the greatest connoisseur of the philosophy of materialism, Lenin, could not call the PRODUCT of CRITICISM of the parasitism of the political economy of capitalism, political economy. Political economy and criticism of political economy are «two big differences.» If Kurmeev and other anti-breakthroughs STUDY the work called “Capital: Critique of Political Economy,” they themselves would understand that capitalist POLITICAL ECONOMY, since the time of Montchretien and Petty, both as theory and as reality, throughout the centuries of its existence has served the cause of the expanded production of CAPITAL and only capital, i.e. growth in the exploitation of the dwindling number of proletarians, the organic consequence of which is an increase in the reserve labor force, i.e. unemployment, pauperization, epidemics of suicide, mass prostitution, mass savagery of youth, its fascistization and clericalization, and therefore endless wars; and therefore the logic of capitalism is absolutely impossible to apply as the basis for the logic of building communism.
A component of Marxism can only be Marx’s CRITICISM of political economy and a POSITIVE exposition of the theory of the expanded reproduction of SOCIETY itself as the main object of the theory and practice of communism. Those who wish to understand this deeply will have to STUDY (oh, horror, but not this!) the second volume of Marx’s Capital: Critique of Political Economy.
So, if bourgeois political economy can be recognized as a source of information for reflection, radically reworked by Marx, then political economy as a theory of capitalism cannot be represented as an integral part of Marxism. Evidence of a misunderstanding of the essence of the Marxist doctrine on this issue, by almost an absolute number of theorists of the collapsed CPSU, was the presence in the USSR of textbooks called «Political Economy». But, if this name, to some extent, could be justified in relation to the first part of the textbook, which examined the pre-monopoly and monopoly stages of capitalism, then to call «Political Economy» the second part of the textbook, devoted to socialism and questions of building communism, i.e. a classless society that got rid of politics, i.e. permanent clashes of MANY antagonistic interests means to demonstrate your ignorance.
Textbooks on the economic theory and practice of capitalism should have been called Critique of Political Economy in the USSR. And a textbook on a positive exposition of the laws of creation of a communist society should have been called The Theory of Expanded Reproduction of a Communist Society, all the more, everything necessary for this had already been done by Marx in the second volume of his work “Capital: Critique of Political Economy.»
Let us repeat, in the work «Three Sources …» Lenin does NOT indicate that political economy is an integral part of Marxism. The defeat suffered by the CPSU in the theoretical form of the class struggle is also explained by the fact that the majority of the members of the CPSU considered political economy an integral part of Marxism, but were completely unfamiliar with the contents of the second volume of Marx’s book “Capital: Critique of Political Economy,” where the laws of simple and extended crisis-free reproduction of capital are formulated and, at the same time, the impossibility of fulfilling the requirements of these laws under capitalism is proved. And if you try to force the rank and file members of the CPSU to find fragments in this volume about the expanded reproduction of society as the main content of the reproduction process under communism, then this would always end in a heart attack.
Further, for the attention of artists who like to pretend to be strict and passionate quoters: In the third part of his work «Three Sources …» Lenin does not use the expression «scientific communism» at all, but he clearly speaks of the genius of Marx, who created the «doctrine of the class struggle.» I suspect that it is not «scientific communism», but the doctrine of the class struggle that Lenin considered to be an integral part of Marxism, which Kurmeev and his like-minded people, who are too lazy to re-read the works of the classics again and completely, have no idea about. If we take into account the content of Lenin’s work, for example, “A Great Beginning,” then it is easy to see that the class struggle, in the form of a struggle for political power, despite its absolute necessity and inevitability, is not the most important element of Marxism. As Lenin argued, the overthrow of the bourgeois government, the demolition of its political machine, was the easiest of the tasks that the Bolsheviks had to solve. It turned out to be much more difficult to build a society with a fundamentally different type of production relations and social consciousness.
At any rate, not a single communist party succeeded in doing this in the 20th century. And the reason for such a sad course of events lies in the primitive understanding of the category «class struggle» and the laws of development of its forms. All modern communist parties, including the Chinese one, have demonstrated in practice the rejection of the theoretical form of class struggle, replacing it with magnificent formal mass events, and a lack of understanding of the laws of class struggle in general, naively believing that, after depriving the bourgeoisie of political power within each individual country, there is nothing else and no one to fear. They turned out to have forgotten Lenin’s warnings in the field of theory about the mortal danger threatening socialism and emanating from petty-bourgeois ideology, and Stalin’s achievements in the practice of economic competition between socialism and capitalism within the country and on a world scale. Modern parties with communist names, even those that are in power today, show a complete lack of understanding of what this means: communist expanded social reproduction. The most that Khrushchev thought of was to devour America by eating and digesting more bread, meat, milk, and vegetables; and wearing out clothes and shoes more than the Americans. Strictly speaking, China is following the same path today. Some optimism is inspired by recent statements by the new leader of the CPC that more attention should be paid to the study and implementation of the theory of Marxism.
Stalin was one of the few communists who fully assimilated Lenin’s teachings about the NEP, as a new form of class struggle, and about the economic competition of socialism with capitalism, as a form of class struggle; and therefore brilliantly, creatively carried out everything that was demanded of him, as from the leader, the objective laws of conducting these forms of class struggle. It was necessary, according to the requirements of dialectics, to dynamically become the leading force of the main contradiction of the modern era. And Stalin ensured this by combining science with practice in all elements of social life. The superiority of Stalin is especially noticeable against the background of the modern attempts of reformers aimed at «increasing the efficiency» of modern university and academic science.
The USSR won the Second World War precisely because before the war the first round of the struggle in the form of an economic competition between the two systems had already been actually won, and communist production relations, having got rid of mainly commodity-money brakes, provided the USSR with advantages over both the fascist economy and over the «Allied» coalition deliberately arming fascism in Germany.
Therefore, it does not seem to me accidental that Lenin’s clear statement of the question of the «doctrine of the class struggle» as an integral part of Marxism was replaced by professors of the CPSU, such as Yakovlev and Volkogonov, with the less clear and more tautological phrase «scientific communism.» It was necessary to substantively develop the very doctrine of the class struggle, and not abandon the clear term and replace it with a vague tautology. But the substitution of concepts is one of the rules of the theoretical form of the class struggle of the opportunists against communism.
The building of communism in one single country could not be anything other than the next stage of the class struggle, transferred to cultural soil, understanding by this, of course, not only artistic culture. Therefore, there is every reason to assert that if Marxism has a third component, then it should be the poorly developed theory of the cultural revolution as the next necessary form of class struggle. Of course, this should not be a cast from the Chinese model of the Cultural Revolution, however, one must take into account how the Cultural Revolution in China influenced the working people and the bourgeoisie, accustoming the former to even greater activity and organization, and the latter to complaisance and relative moderation of appetites. The great shortcoming of the Chinese Cultural Revolution was its lack of focus on giving the public consciousness a scientific level. Maoism and Marxism essentially differ from each other precisely in the degree of scientificity. Therefore, it is no coincidence that, having smashed a lot of the «dog heads» of the Chinese bourgeoisie and opportunists within the CCP, the current CCP has been building the NEP for many years, which is very similar to regulated state capitalism, without any noticeable signs of the dominance of a centrally planned economy or sprouts of communism over the elements of the Chinese and world markets.
«Scientific communism», as an expression, carries a fair amount of tautology. The fact is that the theorists of «utopianism» have grown only to the level of non-scientific socialism and were incapable of more. Therefore, scientific communism, as the name of “an integral part of Marxism,” is, after all, “butter oil,” since communism can only be called such a structure of society in which ALL social life is already based on the provisions of SCIENCE. It is clear that the expression “a scientific system based on science” is an excess. A society in which there is still no private ownership of the basic means of subsistence and, at the same time, the public consciousness does not yet have a scientific level, the classics of Marxism called primitive communism, but they were not going to repeat this experience, since it only leads to slavery.
If we proceed from the provisions set forth in the work, for example, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats”, then MARXISM, as an example of the breadth and depth of the scientific worldview, which has gone far beyond the framework of the encyclopedias of its time, according to Lenin, “is based on - firstly, on the materialistic understanding of history and, secondly, on the dialectical method.” As we see, not on the «sides» of the philosophy of Marxism, but on the pillars of all Marxism.
Approximately, just as a bridge does not exist without supports, in other words, foundations, Marxism is impossible without pillars in the form of the materialistic understanding of history and the dialectical method. Moreover, in the absence of an agreement on which side of the bridge is considered left or right, nothing threatens the bridge. The bridge will perform its functions only if the issues with its foundations are correctly resolved.
All the substantial riches of Marxism, all its fundamental and applied fragments exist only because all the key facts and qualitatively different periods in the history of mankind are assigned by the classics of Marxism to the foundations of the dialectical method and materialism, in short, diamatics.
As for the first, as Lenin puts it, «the foundations of Marxism,» i.e. “Materialistic understanding of history,” Lenin, in his work “Who are the friends of the people ….” calls it simply and briefly - materialism .
“As for the second foundation of Marxism,” Lenin writes further, “the dialectical method, … it consists precisely in the rejection of the methods of idealism and subjectivism in sociology.”
As we see, in the theoretical form of the class struggle against the «populists», Lenin defines Marxism, first of all, according to its TWO foundations, i.e. on TWO of its own internal foundations, forming in their unity the essence of MARXISM: materialism and the dialectical method.
Hence, Marxism is equal to: materialism plus dialectical method, free from subjectivism and idealism. I.e. everything is stated, practically, in the same way as in a later work - «Three sources …»
Both foundations of Marxism are not located side by side, like isolated building blocks. These foundations are «looped» both logically and practically. Without setting foot on the ground of materialism, there is no possibility and even no need to liberate dialectics from idealism and subjectivism, and without liberating dialectics from idealism and subjectivism, we lose the “lens” through which alone we can see history in an objective materialist light. A materialist without dialectics is the same as an objective computer without a subjective user, an objective block of marble without a subjective Rodin. Kurmeev does not explain to his readers how his «sides» of the philosophy of Marxism are united. We prove that each fragment of philosophical materialism is born by the dialectical method, and each grain of the method is drawn from the objective laws of the development of the forms of matter.
Guided by the provisions of Lenin’s work «Who are the friends of the people…» it is possible to solve in a Marxist vein the issues of military development, and the issues of the cultural revolution, and the issues of pedagogy, and the issues of the expanded reproduction of communist society, etc. etc. A person who has mastered these tenets of Leninism is insured against the influence of subjective and idealistic fragments found in Hegel’s texts, especially if, unlike Kurmeev, he studied Hegel’s works not from textbooks of the CPSU.
I deny Hegel’s idealistic delusions consciously and objectively, and I leave Kurmeev’s accusations to the court of his conscience, especially if he understands diamatics. But it’s not about me, but about the fact that Kurmeev is trying to engage in ideological work for the masses. If, as the main methods of his struggle, Kurmeev continues to use the method of dismemberment, distortion, and simplification of Lenin’s theoretical heritage, defamation of opponents, and shameless fraud, then Kurmeeev and his allies will not succeed in anything but further degradation of himself as an ideologist.
Arguing over the «sides» of the philosophy of Marxism, it is not out of place to take into account the fact that Marx never used the expression «historical materialism» in his writings. He spoke only about the materialistic understanding of history. For the first time, the expression «historical materialism» was introduced by Engels in 1890, i.e. after the death of Marx, in one of his private letters.
But in the 20th volume of the collected works of Marx and Engels, in the subject index, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU noted in a strange way: by placing in this index the expression “Historical materialism. - see Materialist understanding of history.» I.e. in the «encyclopedias» of Marxism - «Anti-Duhring» and «Dialectics of Nature», neither Marx nor Engels use the expression «historical materialism», but the institute, «for some reason, helps» the classics, «specifying» what they had in mind.
The dialectical method, free from idealism and subjectivism, directed at the formation of a materialistic understanding of history, and, formed on this basis, the scientific materialistic worldview is dialectical materialism.
In a physiologically healthy human brain, millions of years of evolution have laid down an objective prerequisite for developing an adequate form of creative reflection of being. Therefore, if you look at the material world without mystical and career prejudices, then, with due mental diligence, it will open to you in all the richness of its periodically changing properties, opposites, relationships, and mediations, i.e. dialectically.
It is impossible to become a Marxist materialist on the basis of only a burning desire or a firm belief in the «components» of Marxism. Social life is a complex, dynamically developing system woven from opposites and contradictions. You can master it by arming yourself with the dialectical method, at least to the extent proposed by Hegel. So, at least, did Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
That is why I define the philosophy of Marxism for myself as the dialectical method of materialism or, in short, diamatics, although my opponents pretend to be a capricious child who does not understand what is at stake, and, as if someone is forcing them to use only this word. For most readers, this term did not create any difficulties. The trouble with the modern communist movement lies in the fact that some subjects carefully pronounce the words «dialectical materialism», absolutely not understanding «what it is eaten with.»6
I use the method of revealing the essence of Marxism, through three sources, developed by Lenin, in the work “Three Sources …” in propaganda work less often, because, as practice has shown, it is difficult for people who have not had time to study diamatics to a sufficient extent, and it is difficult to move from a clear fragmentation of sources to understanding the reasons for the monolithic nature of Marxism. Our opponents, who do not know diamatics, can only reason «arithmetically», considering the constituent parts of Marxism as located «side by side», although «two sides are mutually connected with each other» . Marxism appears in their minds as a tautology: a + b + c = a + b + c.
Why did it happen this way?
Strictly speaking, after the death of Lenin, the objective position of the Soviet government was so difficult, the shortage of personnel for the Marxists was terrible, and the volume of practical tasks was so grandiose that Stalin had to mobilize all his personal knowledge of dialectics for the practical implementation of GOELRO plans, industrialization, and collectivization of the country in order to defeat internal opportunism and European fascism during the Second World War. In this «time pressure» Stalin did not have time to exercise any effective and efficient control over the social science professorship, most of which was formed under the conditions of tsarism, when official professors were divided into workshops consisting of philosophers, theologians, vulgar economists (at best, legal Marxists), patriotic historians, and lawyers, who, to a large extent, as it became clear later, were more easily inclined towards anti-communism than towards communism.
Struggling with elementary mass illiteracy, including technical illiteracy, and solving the issue of practically raising the means of production in the USSR to the required level, Stalin did not have time to find a form and time for guaranteed education and training of the corps of Marxist theorists. Therefore, for a long time, the “red professors” stewed in their own juice, avoided a concrete struggle with petty-bourgeois dishonesty, and plunged more and more into dissertation speculation; and teaching and self-studying Marxism were carried out quite chaotically, artisanally, including in Bukharin’s “schools”. And if not for Stalin’s personal victories in the theoretical form of the class struggle over the constantly mutating Trotskyism at the plenums, conferences, and congresses of the party, then the «perestroika» of the germ of socialism into capitalism would have occurred already at the end of the 20s.
At one time, Lenin significantly simplified the task of protecting the minds of workers and young intellectuals from the idiocy of idealism by expelling the most aggressive representatives of the fifth column - philosophers and theologians - from the country. Stalin got rid of most of the theoreticians of Trotskyism, ideologically crushing them at the Plenums and condemning them at open trials of 37-38, which proved the fascist, wrecking, sabotage, terrorist nature of their practical activities.
But neither one nor the other method solved the problem of the positive formation of a galaxy of young and, of course, competent Marxists, i.e. dialectical materialists.
Even the complete physical absence of a generation of conscious opportunists in a party does not automatically make a party a Marxist one. The fact is that Marxist under-education, the practice of a protracted «literacy campaign,» is a form of opportunism that makes a member of the party especially dangerous for the party itself in the course of the development of the theoretical form of the class struggle.
The fact remains that a huge number of «red professors» in the USSR created and taught anti-communist «Marxism,» physically dividing it into three separate parts. I.e. Lenin’s work «Three sources …» was «understood» by all social scientists mechanistically, and the study of the basics of dialectics was carried out with the most superficial linkage with materialism, and materialism was only flavored with the word dialectics.
Why does Kurmeev not take all this into account? And because Kurmeev knows only one, the structural «definition» of Marxism, taught in the CPSU, and for a long time did not reread either Lenin’s work «Three sources …», or «Who are the» friends of the people «…», in which Lenin brilliantly defended in practice the theoretical form of the class struggle, namely Marxism, from its distortion and vulgarization by the Narodniks, which was already forgotten in the CPSU in the time of Khrushchev.
Precisely in this way, vulgarly, in Kurmeev’s way, practically everyone in the collapsed CPSU imagined Lenin’s teaching about the sources and components of Marxism. All the venerable theoreticians of the CPSU did not understand that the division of the premises of Marxism into three separate sources is a historical reality generated by the relative ignorance of their creators. In the collapsed CPSU, they did not understand that Marx’s merit was not at all that he allegedly corrected and mechanistically combined the sources of Marxism, but that Marx reworked in a dialectical key all the brilliant guesses of his conscientious predecessors, and synthesized the resulting NEGATIONS into a single true, FUNDAMENTALLY new teaching.
The propaganda activists of the CPSU were irreconcilably divided into the guild of “in-itself-philosophers,” the guild of proudly-raised political economists, and the guild of scientific communists. Each guild squinted contemptuously at the other two guilds, because it considered the other two guild workers to be complete ignoramuses in the secrets of their guild. Philosophers have never read “Capital: Critique of Political Economy” in good faith. Political economists have never read Hegel’s “Science of Logic” in good faith, and scientific communists have never read either one or the other. The training program for scientific communists classified these works as non-core.
Auxiliary workshops of Marxism, i.e. the workshop of historians of the CPSU, somehow owned only factoscopy, but did not own all three components of Marxism. There was still in the structure of the CPSU a workshop of secretaries of party committees and army political workers of various levels, who were relatively well versed only in party and military charters and instructions. The program of their party education included the study of the three parts of Marxism in a volume not exceeding the volume of Marxism taught in…technical universities.
Each candidate and doctor of philosophical, economic and historical sciences in the CPSU was proud of his scientific one-sidedness and claimed only an increased salary. Therefore, in the 35 years that have passed since Stalin’s death, the CPSU turned out to be incapable of anything in theory, except to give rise to jokes about developed, mature and overripe, democratic socialism, and even with a «human face» that gradually grew into a market muzzle.
Meanwhile, Marxism is not a children’s block toy at all, from the cubes of which one can compose a word, but the highest achievement of social consciousness, the essence of which is that it is a synonym for an extremely creative form of thinking, which has all the prerequisites for self-development, since it is based on a materialistic worldview, consequently, on the objective property of the universe - infinity, which generates the obligation of an endless process of development of everything, including consciousness.
However, by dogmatizing the initial condition of diamatic thinking: “matter is primary, consciousness is secondary,” our opponents themselves destroy the possibility of revolutionary thinking. They do not understand that humanity is a matter that is qualitatively different from all other matter, since it has a unique level of active thinking that transforms the reflected being, first of all, in its consciousness, capable of drawing conclusions from the objective clues of nature and history that are ahead of social practice, and, on the basis of these conclusions, i.e. known laws of development, gives the social movement a revolutionary, i.e. conscious, planned, purposeful, creative, transforming character.
Our opponents do not suspect that, by absolutizing the position of Marxism on the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness, they contradict diamatics, take the position of vulgar materialism, philosophical tailism, and therefore are always forced to drag along after events, trying in one way or another only to explain them belatedly, and not organize an event that is unpredictable for conservatives and fully consistent with objective prerequisites.
The diamatic understanding of the fundamental question of philosophy lies in the fact that its content cannot but turn into its opposite outside the fundamental question of philosophy, i.e. beyond the question of whether the subject belongs to the materialistic or idealistic philosophical schools. A subject who recognizes himself as a materialist is obliged to make the primary scientifically consistent, i.e. revolutionary in nature, thought.
If the idealist does not know where this or that thought came from, then the materialist, understanding the course of the objective development of society, sees the tendencies of this development and, consequently, scientifically formulates the program of action of the party and the masses, understanding on what objective basis this foresight is based.
Recognition of the secondary nature of consciousness ends with the moment of recognition of the PRIMACY of matter and, consequently, the primacy of the objective laws of the movement of society along the path of development of its qualitative and quantitative properties and characteristics. Having recognized the objective nature of the laws of movement of the material world, especially of society, diamatic consciousness begins to comprehend the content of the objective laws of its movement, both in the era of the domination of the non-scientific level of social consciousness, once at the stage of the STRUGGLE of the rudiments of scientific consciousness against the persistent traditions of the non-scientific level of social consciousness, and in era of domination of the scientific level of public consciousness.
In this, the actually human era of development, social practice for the first time begins to move in close connection with scientific FORESIGHT, and in a strategic sense, FOLLOWING accurate scientific forecasts. The movement towards communism in the USSR stopped precisely because the CPSU did not train theoreticians who were capable of formulating the tasks of constructing communism in terms of objects. And it is impossible to move towards communism if your thought is always secondary, if you do not know how, and therefore are afraid, to formulate a specific strategy for moving towards communism.
Our opponents do not understand the diamatics of these diametrically opposed epochs of prehistory and human history. Social, spontaneous forms of production relations in exploitative epochs exist and develop as the primary force pushing society forward without strategic foresight. Therefore, both slave owners, and feudal lords, and capitalists unconsciously, spontaneously prepared and are preparing everything necessary for their destruction. In the modern, post-industrial era, when science no longer surprises anyone (even most clerics), Marxist-Leninist theory is a sufficient factor for building a world communist society. It is only necessary that this theory become the property of the majority of socially mature subjects.
It would seem that everyone who today joined a party with a communist name should have wondered why Lenin managed to lead the party from victory to victory, while the entire multimillion-strong CPSU trampled on socialism, successfully “developing” it only on paper for decades. Why did Lenin, in 14 years, under conditions of the most severe censorship and modest possibilities of copying equipment, manage to organize the illiterate Russian proletariat into the working class, lead it to a radical social revolution, and ensure for it the vanguard role; and numerous modern leaders of parties with communist names, who for more than 20 years have rallied, in conditions of bourgeois freedom of speech, cannot find an approach to the modern proletariat.?
Could Lenin or Stalin have won victories over all their enemies if they had not owned COMPLETE Marxism, but, like all Soviet «scientists,» only one of the constituent parts of Marxism?
Strictly speaking, Stalin was the last general secretary of the CPSU and the leader of the communist movement, who owned not 1/3 of Marxism, but Marxism as an integral and indivisible system of knowledge. True, Stalin admitted that he was not as brilliant as Lenin. But none of Stalin’s contemporaries could prove in any way that he was superior to Stalin in theory and organizational practice. Next to Stalin, of course, you can put Dimitrov, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, Alvaro Cunhal, and Fidel Castro, but only on the national scale and taking into account the role of assistance from the USSR during their formation.
Unfortunately, Kurmeev, like all post-Stalinist General Secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU, does not understand that all three sources of Marxism historically developed completely independently of each other. Feuerbach underestimated the role of dialectics in the materialist understanding of history. Ricardo applied the knowledge of dialectics only within the limits of his attempt to explain capitalism. Most of the utopians and enlighteners had heard of dialectics, but, as the content of their works testifies, they did not understand it at all, even Voltaire.
Marx, by virtue of his erudition and dialectical education, thanks to the ability to see opposites in their identity, i.e. thanks to the ingenious associativity of his thinking, diamatically connected these disparate parts in his mind and turned them not into a simple sum of information located side by side, but into a creative, constructive denial of the content of these “sources” in accordance with the objective laws of subjective knowledge. Only by comprehensively substantiating the ERRoneousness of these sources, highlighting rational grains in them, i.e. having freed unrelated concepts from the errors of the authors, Marx was able to synthesize a new, holistic, scientific worldview, with the help of Hegel’s dialectics, freed from idealism and subjectivism.
Whoever knows the meaning of the words analysis and synthesis, accepted in dialectics to designate mental operations for dividing the whole and creatively synthesizing negations, knows that the three sources of Marxism are the level of ANALYSIS of social being historically achieved by social consciousness, similar to the level of perception of an elephant by three blind men who identified, therefore, an elephant - one with a thick rope, one with a column, and one with a barrel.
Marxism is not a description of «components» side by side, or an arithmetical summation of these «components». Marx’s strength is, first of all, that he established the most important thing - RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS between these three objects of his research and, NEGATING their isolation, NEGATING superficial ideas about their essence, NEGATING the conclusions of his predecessors about the essence of the objects described by them, SYNTHESIZED «component” parts so that there is no trace left of their former fruitless discord.
Marxism is a denial of the idealism of Hegel’s dialectic, a denial of the POLITICAL ECONOMY of Smith and Ricardo, and of utopianism in all its socialist variants.
Unfortunately, Marx was understood in the main, neither by the majority of his contemporaries, nor by the majority of the modern left, primarily because of their mental laziness and empty conscience, i.e. adiamatism of their thinking.
Continuing the fantasies about my theoretical position, Kurmeev writes:
“Podguzov, on the other hand, rips out dialectical materialism from Marxist-Leninist philosophy… and turns it into a kind of club, arguing that no one except him and his supporters knows ‘diamat.’”
Firstly, are Kurmeev’s subjective sensations from a collision with my version of diamatics similar to collisions with a baton? It’s good that it’s not collision with a shaft. I apologize for the psychological damage caused. Secondly, it’s time to name at least one name who Kurmeev considers a living expert in the modern communist movement, at least in the field of dialectics. Who can be learned from? But Kurmeev does not mention this name, probably out of a sense of innate modesty. But if there is no such name yet, then I will focus on my own understanding of the philosophy of Marxism, not paying attention to critics, who NO ONE, including me, recognizes as an expert in the field of dialectics of materialism. I don’t see any problem with this.
“But,” continues Kurmeev, “Podguzov narrows his ‘diamat’ to the idealistic dialectic of Hegel, who used it to prove that the Prussian monarchy and religion are an expression of ‘world reason’”
Firstly, I will give any prize to anyone who finds in my articles “evidence that the Prussian monarchy and religion are the expression of “world reason,” “absolute idea.” Second, without justifying Hegel, it can be easily understood if we look materialistically at his era. If Hegel had not inserted affectionate words about the “absolute idea” and the Prussian monarchy in his text, he, having done nothing, would have ended his life in poverty and illness, like Feuerbach, who wrote more straightforwardly. But Hegel, like many scientists of his era, in order not to have unnecessary «hemorrhoids» with the authorities and clerics, inscribed the name of God in his materialistic theories, glorified the king, DENYING God and kings with the essence of his constructions and conclusions. Neither God, nor the church, nor the king, nor the Russian gendarmes, due to their ignorance, could figure out the catch. Those who can read thoughtfully understand the revolutionary essence of both Hegel’s dialectics and Mendeleev’s tables.
But Hegel’s dialectic, according to Marx and Lenin, by its content played an immeasurably greater role in the formation of Marxism than the content of Feuerbach’s works, in which materialism was not dialectical enough to be extended to the main thing, i.e. to understanding history. And if Hegel’s dialectic really underlies the logic of «Capital», then Feuerbach’s materialism is good only within the limits of a statement of fact: there is no God.
«This narrowing of Marxism-Leninism to ‘diamatics’, relying on the works of Hegel and, above all, on the Science of Logic, prompted Poguzov to reject Marxist-Leninist dialectical democratic centralism and to promote idealistic ‘scientific centralism’.»
So, «logically,» Kurmeev pulled «by the ears» the concept of scientific centralism from Marxism. Why does a supporter of scientific communism oppose the idea of ??scientific centralism? Perhaps someone will believe Kurmeev that it was precisely guided by Hegel’s idealism that I moved away from dialectical democratic towards scientific centralism. But Kurmeev does not understand that, historically, democracy triumphed and triumphs there and then, where and when ignorant people who have not heard of dialectics prevail. Why are the American oligarchs doing everything to give the Arabs democracy? So that they, like the American people, do what they can for as long as possible, i.e. democratic elections of the best of the worst, and do not think about SCIENTIFIC centralism.
Particularly touching in this vinaigrette of Kurmeev’s incoherent jumps from one unfounded accusation to another, from elderberry to uncle, is «dialectical democratic centralism.» A wonderful example of eclecticism with a simultaneous substitution of concepts. I am often criticized for not giving references when quoting the classics. It would be nice to know from which «classic» Kurmeev dug up this pearl about «dialectical democratic centralism.»
Having studied Marxism, it is one thing to see the manifestation of the laws of objective dialectics, including the negation of negation, in the transition of a party from the category of revolutionary to the category of opportunist with an increase in the number of opportunists in the Central Committee due to democratic centralism, which happened in the CPSU, and another thing to imagine that a party where the majority has not yet learned to read properly, but votes when choosing central organs, is consciously guided by dialectics.
Lenin wrote in his works that in the vicissitudes of democratic centralism, in the alternation in power now of an opportunist majority, now of a Leninist majority, dialectics is manifested, but not at all that democratic centralism is dialectical. Democratic centralism in most cases is a celebration of ignorance, a consequence of the fact that, at least, the majority have no arguments, other than numbers, to PROOF the truth of their position. In such cases, the competent minority either has to agree with the erring majority or break off relations with it. Proriv prefers the latter and saves itself from many unproductive problems.
The opportunists have always constituted the majority in the former parties, since it is immeasurably easier to be an opportunist than a real Marxist. There has not been a year in the seventy-year history of the CPSU when the majority of the Central Committee, let alone the entire Party, were competent dialecticians, and democratic centralism was consciously dialectical.
Kurmeev, on the other hand, gets this: if at a SPECIFIC historical moment Lenin said something positive, for example, about bourgeois specialists, then there is a reason to talk about Leninist dialectical bourgeois specialists at any time, and if Lenin wrote about the need to apply cost accounting in the TRANSITION PERIOD, then despite the fact that cost accounting, beginning with Khrushchev, destroyed the planned economy of the USSR, we must stubbornly and at any time repeat Lenin’s dialectical cost accounting.
In this case, we are saddened not so much by Kurmeev’s speculative attempt to cover up the historical vices and limits of the effectiveness of democratic centralism in building the party with the words “Lenin” and “dialectics,” but, above all, by his shameless dogmatization of some provisions of Lenin’s work on three sources and three components Marxism, which turns Marxism into a scheme consisting, as Kurmeev writes, «at least» of philosophy, political economy and scientific communism. How can you not say this: please announce the entire list of the remaining «component» parts of Marxism in order to tear it into an even greater number of «Marxist workshops» and, thus, make it impossible to build a Party of Scientific Centralism.
Thus, the need arises to define Marxism not as the sum of its constituent parts, not as a set of individual phrases, words, and letters, but in essence, as the strongest crystal.
Marxism is the only unified, open to development, scientific worldview, a synthesis of truths about the most general objective laws of development, first of all, of society, as a matter of a special kind, and this is precisely what the knowledge of the universal absolute objective laws of the development of the universe is subordinated to.
The concepts of revolutionary and Marxist are related as individual and universal. Anyone who participates in the practice of transforming society on qualitatively new principles, who by his practical activity ensures the negation of backward forms of social relations between people and the creation of new, more progressive forms of social relations, can consider himself a revolutionary.
A Marxist can be informal and formal. Only those who bring their knowledge of the objective laws of the development of society to the point of their practical victorious application in all three forms of class struggle can consider themselves an informal Marxist. Formal Marxists can be considered those who selflessly work within the framework of the program of building communism and enthusiastically respond to the calls of the party of informal Marxists, although they do not fully master the theory of struggle and building communism. However, as practice has shown, such Marxists need to take a very small step in any direction in order to turn from a formal Marxist, for example, into an oligarch, a fascist, or an MMM investor with all the ensuing consequences.
An informal Marxist can only be considered one who, in the field of theory and practice, is able to make the ASCENT and make its content relevant and victorious.
If we try to formulate a definition of Marxism without using the name of the author of this doctrine, then, in short, Marxism is the most complete, i.e. comprehensive, doctrine of OBJECTIVE TRUTH.
And since truth is always concrete, i.e. is always historically relevant, then, consequently, a Marxist is not the one who memorized all the works of Marx, but who can give a true theoretical and organizational answer to the topical and important question posed to humanity by the objective course of its development. And this cannot be achieved if you do not possess the primary weapon of a Marxist: the dialectical method of materialism, or in short, diamat. This is what all the writings of Kurmeev and all his many years of fruitless practice show.
1. An important figure in the RKRP
3. Or “they did not know what they were talking about”
4. Peter Kashchenko: Russian psychiatrist, public and zemstvo figure, author of articles on psychiatry and the organization of psychiatric care.
5. Western-aligned Russian oligarchs who opposed Putin and the nationally-aligned oligarchs.