Freedom and Responsibility

I’ve been reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and today specifically I got to the chapters Rebellion and The Grand Inquisitor. I would like to reflect on some of the powerful topics that these sections brought up. If you haven’t read The Brothers Karamazov, please read at least these sections.

Rebellion / The Grand Inquisitor

The topic that is brought up that was so profound for me was the topic of freedom. The Inquisitor in the parable believes that people can’t be happy with freedom. He takes on the burden of freedom so that the people can live in innocence and without responsibility. He absolves them of their sins and through unity allows them to experience happiness.

I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that most people live in blissful ignorance as to what their lives really require. Not many people understand the consequences of what they consume and support. The amount of human suffering that goes into making shoes and clothing, the oppression of workers in factories assembling our phones and electronics, the wars and imperialism that drive our economy, and even the working conditions of those who provide services to us do not seem to register in our minds as having to do with us. People who are ignorant to these facts retain their innocence and can live in happiness. Ivan speaks of children and their innocence in the chapter rebellion, how they have not yet bitten the fruit and gained the knowledge of good and evil. They share no responsibility in the sins of their fathers.

This innocence is fragile though, and eventually most people are exposed to this knowledge whether they want it or not. With this  knowledge comes a heavy burden. Once you understand that your relative comfort comes directly from the suffering of others, there is no turning back. At this point there are only two options. Take responsibility, and live a life of rebellion and uncertainty, or deny responsibility and live in cognitive dissonance. Neither choice is pleasant, both require suffering. Freedom isn’t free, it comes with duty. The Grand Inquisitor believes that rebels can’t have happiness because of this.

This is what I have been thinking. I don’t think people are prepared yet for freedom (hear me out). We are a long ways from taking responsibility for all of the horrors and destruction that we have produced. Our goal as revolutionaries is to prepare people for freedom. To give them the support and tools that they need to be able to accept responsibility. It will not make people happy at first, and people will need to work much harder since they can no longer rely on the labor of others to support them. Freedom also means liability for your actions, and this will be a very difficult transition for a society that has avoided taking it for so long. The Grand Inquisitor is correct to a certain extent in that there is a great suffering in freedom, and that many would rather follow as sheep. There is the great work ahead of us in preparing society for freedom, it’s the purpose behind what we do. Through education, community, organization, hard work and the guidance from those who have accepted responsibility we will finally have both happiness and freedom. We will have fulfilled our responsibility and atoned for sins of our fathers, finally able to achieve peace with ourselves.

On Practice

http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm

I haven’t read much of Mao’s works yet, but what I have read so far has been very impressive. Much of Mao’s theory that I’ve read has focused on self-criticism and anti-hypocrisy. His writing is also very accessible and does not require as much of a background in academia to understand. Where Marx often devolves into very difficult segments of accounting and criticism of classical philosophy, Mao explains very clearly and uses examples to teach. I’ve only started but it’s much more pleasant to read compared to Marx.

On Practice focuses on how practical and rational knowledge depend on each other. Neither practical or rational knowledge is effective on their own. Mao talks of early capitalist workers rebelling against their workplaces, and how the failures and lessons learned helped to develop Marxism. Revolution is put in perspective by Mao, it is not a static dogmatic ideology, but rather the constant failure and revision of new ideas and practices. All of these ideas require engaging with real struggle to develop, and this gives importance to developing an understanding of revolutions in the past.

Literature presents an indirect look to the lessons learned by others. It can be helpful in developing an understanding of what we’ve experienced with our senses, but is not enough in and of itself. This is where many academics fail, as they are able to rationalize information, but this information is only second-hand. It is only able to be synthesized through the limits of language.

The other side of the problem is those who have practical knowledge but refuse to develop it into rational knowledge. They see what is on the surface but do not understand the internal laws and connections that develop. A complete sense of understanding comes from the combination of sense and logic. This is similar to how an engineer designs things he does not have experience operating, or how an officer leads troops when he himself does not have experience. Second hand knowledge is insufficient, and Mao’s lesson is that to have revolutionary knowledge requires living and participating in revolutionary action and experiencing both its success and failure.

I really don’t do Mao’s work justice, please take a few minutes to read it.

Why You Should Care

Communism is a bad word in America. Not many people take you seriously when you talk about it, and I can’t really blame many of them. Growing up, all references to communism have treated it as a failed project, a utopian dream, or a group of totalitarian states that are worse than Nazi Germany. Communism has been proven false they say, Capitalism is the end of history, it is human nature for us to live like this. Essentially we are told that there is no hope. This is how the world is and always will be, and it is futile to resist.

Think about what freedom means to you now. We live in debt, working long hours with nothing to show for it after the idle class of bosses, landlords, bankers and politicians take their share. Finance controls the direction of production through investment, and the state is a puppet of corporate interests. Elections are a farce, and we are subject to the influence of propaganda and lies from the time we are little. The only choices we are encouraged to make are which shows to watch, what shirt to wear, or who you want as your boss/president, all of which are false choices in reality. We are told what to like and controlled through advertisement, distraction and false elections. There is no hope for anything better, there is just the constant reassurance that everything is going to remain exactly as it is.

For this reason, I implore people to take a critical look at what is shaping your perception of communism. Don’t just accept the story we are told, but instead critically examine evidence and come to your own conclusions. Treat history and economics as a scientific endeavor as opposed to a religious work. The story of communism we are taught is based on anecdotal evidence  from the fascists and  bourgeoisie interests. There is an inherent class bias to what we’ve been taught in history books that we need to be aware of. Life did get worse for some people, but the working class had nothing to lose. The more you examine class struggle, the more you will come to realize just how much we have been fooled. Communism is a struggle against oppression and suffering, and a means to take control of our own lives. The goal of a revolution is an end to class. We can manage our own factories and workplaces, make our own decisions, and govern ourselves. Our state is a state for working people and by working people. There is no need for a class of parasites living off the product of our labor. The only reason this has been “proven” false is that these parasites are afraid that we’ll see past their veil. We don’t need them.

The State and Revolution

I just finished reading Lenin’s “The State and Revolution”. While the book is directed at those who already are familiar with Marx’s works, I think anarchists should give it a read. I was an anarchist, and if I had read this earlier I don’t think I would have avoided reading Marx for so long.

Lenin makes the point that the state is a necessary tool in the transition to higher communism. I know the state immediately brings to mind corruption and oppression, but this is where the book really shines. What Lenin does is show what exactly Marx and Engels meant by the role of the state after the revolution. The current state is the product of the capitalist mode of production. It is responsible for maintaining property relations and suppressing the masses. By taking control of the state, the proletariat would possess the means of defending themselves against reaction. The working class socializing the means of production is not utopian, it is the only feasible way that a lasting revolution can happen. The elite of society are not going to sit idle as the working people take back control of their lives. The working class must defend itself against reaction.

“But that is authoritarian!” cry the anarchists. That is exactly the point. Engels points this out in his essay On Authority.

 “Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?”

What would the American Revolution be if we had just declared our independence and did nothing to defend it? America needed to be organized to resist the imperialism of it’s oppressor. The fact that we’ve turned this around and become the imperial nation should get people thinking about what is wrong. Even though the American revolution pushed the boundaries of freedom, we as a country have become reactionary. We need to continue the revolutionary spirit.

The destruction of capitalism will be violent, but only because there are those that will fight to keep us enslaved. It is not ideal, but there will never come a time when it will be. To ask the workers to wait and hope the bourgeoisie will give up capitalism of their own accord is to ask the workers to remain in an abusive relationship. To tell workers they are going too far is to have a double standard. The rich have long sent us to die by the thousands, watched us starve and wither away in depression. They have filled jails and factories with us. People will die, but even more will if we let Capitalism drag on. Already we see hundreds of thousands die in imperialist wars and colonized countries. Anything we do to fight this is only self-defense. We are exploited and abused, and taking control of the world we’ve built with our own hands is our path to freedom.

Das Kapital

My project over the summer has been to read through all three volumes of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, which has been quite a project. 2845 pages of text worth of project to be precise. At first I found the reading very dry and tedious, but after getting into the real substance of the work I found it fascinating. The books were completely different from how I expected them to be. Marx approaches Capital in a very scientific and thorough manner, and in doing so creates something very powerful.

The three volumes outline the logical and historical evolution of capitalism. Volume I starts with the process of production, starting with an analysis of the commodity, which has very far-reaching implications. Capitalism is discussed as a specific mode of production, including how labor and currency come to be treated as commodities with value and how surplus labor comes to be divorced from the workers. Volume II expands on this by taking a look at the market, turnover time, rate of surplus value, rate of profit, and the different spheres of production. Volume III brings everything together, including debt and credit, rent, monopolies and trusts, the general rate of profit and its tendency to decline, competition, imperialism and its role in economics, periods of crisis and much more.

I would recommend anyone interested in economics to give these books a chance. The Labor Theory of Value addresses a lot of the contradictions and inconsistencies found in classical and current economic theory. Almost all of what Marx wrote was far ahead of his time and is still relevant today. He predicted our current global crisis almost a century and a half ago.

If you are interested in reading it, all three books are available free online. Check out http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Introduction

Hello Comrades!

I’d like to start by saying I’m a communist, so be prepared for very political and wordy posts. My political writing will be directed  both at those who are new to radical thought, and at those who are already familiar with the works of Marx and others like him. Many of my posts will just be my thoughts on the world in general.

Before I get into the substance of what I would like to write about, I’d like to explain what my intentions are. I’ve been wanting to start a blog for some time to record my thoughts on political economy, social issues, system dynamics, engineering, etc. My goal is to come to a better understanding of how the world works, and to encourage thought and discussion so that I can learn from others and hopefully have some of my ideas help others understand.

To give you a sense of my background, I’m currently a geotechnical engineer. I have an interest in philosophy, political economy, history, drawing, strategy, games, music, etc. My views have changed drastically in the past few years. Politically I’ve changed from conservative to liberal to anarchist to communist. I’ve changed my views on religion, and my idealism has been replaced with dialectic materialism. This evolution of thought is the end result of the combined efforts of teachers and friends, as well as books, news, life experience and constantly keeping an open mind. I come from a privileged background which both gave me many opportunities to experience great things and exposure to propaganda and hateful ideas. If you catch me falling into old habits, feel free to call me out in the comment section.

To all my friends and comrades, thank you. I hope you all enjoy the blog.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. 

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!