Capitalism either expands or dies.
Indeed...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation_of_capitalBeyond the above, establishing capitalism entailed some very violent revolutions the world over. Which were progressive in the sense that relative to that which was prior to them. They prompted change against that which served as fetters to actualizing certain possibilities.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htmLet us take an example. No philosophical proposition has earned more gratitude from narrow-minded governments and wrath from equally narrow-minded liberals than Hegel’s famous statement: “All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real.” That was tangibly a sanctification of things that be, a philosophical benediction bestowed upon despotism, police government, Star Chamber proceedings and censorship. That is how Frederick William III and how his subjects understood it. But according to Hegel certainly not everything that exists is also real, without further qualification. For Hegel the attribute of reality belongs only to that which at the same time is necessary: “In the course of its development reality proves to be necessity.” A particular governmental measure — Hegel himself cites the example of “a certain tax regulation” — is therefore for him by no means real without qualification. That which is necessary, however, proves itself in the last resort to be also rational; and, applied to the Prussian state of that time, the Hegelian proposition, therefore, merely means: this state is rational, corresponds to reason, insofar as it is necessary; and if it nevertheless appears to us to be evil, but still, in spite of its evil character, continues to exist, then the evil character of the government is justified and explained by the corresponding evil character of its subjects. The Prussians of that day had the government that they deserved.
Now, according to Hegel, reality is, however, in no way an attribute predictable of any given state of affairs, social or political, in all circumstances and at all times. On the contrary. The Roman Republic was real, but so was the Roman Empire, which superseded it. In 1789, the French monarchy had become so unreal, that is to say, so robbed of all necessity, so irrational, that it had to be destroyed by the Great Revolution, of which Hegel always speaks with the greatest enthusiasm. In this case, therefore, the monarchy was the unreal and the revolution the real. And so, in the course of development, all that was previously real becomes unreal, loses it necessity, its right of existence, its rationality. And in the place of moribund reality comes a new, viable reality — peacefully if the old has enough intelligence to go to its death without a struggle; forcibly if it resists this necessity. Thus the Hegelian proposition turns into its opposite through Hegelian dialectics itself: All that is real in the sphere of human history, becomes irrational in the process of time, is therefore irrational by its very destination, is tainted beforehand with irrationality, and everything which is rational in the minds of men is destined to become real, however much it may contradict existing apparent reality. In accordance with all the rules of the Hegelian method of thought, the proposition of the rationality of everything which is real resolves itself into the other proposition: All that exists deserves to perish.
But precisely therein lay the true significance and the revolutionary character of the Hegelian philosophy (to which, as the close of the whole movement since Kant, we must here confine ourselves), that it once and for all dealt the death blow to the finality of all product of human thought and action. Truth, the cognition of which is the business of philosophy, was in the hands of Hegel no longer an aggregate of finished dogmatic statements, which, once discovered, had merely to be learned by heart. Truth lay now in the process of cognition itself, in the long historical development of science, which mounts from lower to ever higher levels of knowledge without ever reaching, by discovering so-called absolute truth, a point at which it can proceed no further, where it would have nothing more to do than to fold its hands and gaze with wonder at the absolute truth to which it had attained. And what holds good for the realm of philosophical knowledge holds good also for that of every other kind of knowledge and also for practical action. Just as knowledge is unable to reach a complete conclusion in a perfect, ideal condition of humanity, so is history unable to do so; a perfect society, a perfect “state”, are things which can only exist in imagination. On the contrary, all successive historical systems are only transitory stages in the endless course of development of human society from the lower to the higher. Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face of new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its own womb, it loses vitality and justification. It must give way to a higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish. Just as the bourgeoisie by large-scale industry, competition, and the world market dissolves in practice all stable time-honored institutions, so this dialectical philosophy dissolves all conceptions of final, absolute truth and of absolute states of humanity corresponding to it. For it [dialectical philosophy], nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain. It has, of course, also a conservative side; it recognizes that definite stages of knowledge and society are justified for their time and circumstances; but only so far. The conservatism of this mode of outlook is relative; its revolutionary character is absolute — the only absolute dialectical philosophy admits.
There is no moral high ground on which to defend capitalism and why many moral points are moot in that they would require a double standard in which one violence is okay but not another. Which is true to our ideological notions where the cop beating the shit out of some citizen can have state authority when one still retains the view of the legitimacy of the state to do so rather than people to oppose it. The same objective reality but perceived through a different lens based on one's values.
As such, criticism of the means are often obscured rejections of the ends, it emphasizes the means to position itself as not of the same means for different ends even as the maintenance of the status quo requires such a means.
Many more be subject to violence, their lives ruined as a natural consequence of the status quo and it barely registers much of an emotional impact, it's business as usual, but things turn hysterical should someone of a greater position within the system be hurt. Should those with power and influence have their interests threatened.
"No body panics when things goes according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If Tomorrow I tell the press that like a
gangbanger will get shot or a truck load of
soldiers will be blown up, no one panics. Because it's all, part of the plan. But when I say that one little old
mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds."
Attention should be paid to what occurs in order to see the sort of meaning given to that reality.
Those who wish to side with workers don't subscribe to the morality of a ruling class which would would downplay one's violence but condemn another's.
A great modern example is the struggle of blacks in the US, something beautifully articulated by MLK Jr of the reactionary nature of those that prioritize order and stability over justice.
Thus in practice, they effectively prioritize the status quo and must experience it as legitimate when they oppose any efforts to right the wrongs.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.htmlI must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Means are significantly related to the means rather than to be considered in some abstract universalizing morality that is but a reflection of the ideas and interests of a particular class over others.
(See '
Dialectic Interdependence of End and Means' of Trotsky's Their Morals and Ours & '
Means and Ends' in the Marxist Glossary).
And that morality must be grounded rather than some abstract uniuversal, because when the ruling class speaks of 'we', it is to blind the fact that they speak from the perspective of themselves as if it were shared by all. Which is why one must always be suspect of one's use of we, to question the substance of whether there really is a 'we' among you.
https://www.guernicamag.com/john_berger_7_15_11/The word we, when printed or pronounced on screens, has become suspect, for it’s continually used by those with power in the demagogic claim that they are also speaking for those who are denied power. Let’s talk of ourselves as they...
A simple but intuitive question I think should be posed, and I draw it from
Alfred North Whitehead's thoughts.
He [Whitehead] has a strong materialistic sense of history: ‘The great convulsions happen when the economic urge on the masses have dove-tailed with some simplified end.' He also recognizes why 'gradualism' may be insufficient: 'It may be impossible to conceive a reorganization of society adequate for the removal of some admitted evil without destroying the social organization and the civilization which depends on it.' Can war, for example, be eliminated without eliminating an economic system that seems to require war? (History 282)
And I have wondered of this tendency to oppose conflict that is inevitable on the basis of the objective conditions in which we live, that peace and stability are but periods of one holding
hegemonic power over another and conflict is what occurs when another group develops another power to challenge another.
And many shy away from this conflict, it hurts their very sense of the world, no doubt violence and war is one of the most ghastly and destructive things for any group of people to experience. But one's aversion to war and conflict doesn't resolve conflicts embedded in the conditions of a society. And I like Evald Ilyenkov's summary of the debates between Machists and Leninist Dialecticians. I think he shows philosophically the sort of perspective that is adopted by some that may, like the white moderate, seem even supportive of progressive development but lack revolutionary character and instead have an evolutionary view of society's progress.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/positii.htmThe reader has probably already managed to notice how often and persistently the magical word equilibrium is repeated in the quotations from those texts. Yes, here we are dealing not simply with a word, but a genuine symbol – a symbol of faith, a fundamental and key category of the logic of their thinking. No matter where their arguments originate, or where they lead to, they inevitably begin with equilibrium and end with equilibrium.
From their works the reader discovers that equilibrium is not simply or solely an equal balance on the scales with which everyone is familiar from personal experience, but it is something much more important and universal, something metaphysical.
It turns out that this magical concept contains within it both the secret of life and the secrets of the functioning of social organisms, and even the mysteries of all cosmic systems and events. It turns out that all these mysteries, secrets and enigmas are simple and easy. One only has to apply to them the magical 'lock pick' – and they become transparent and simple.
It turns out that the entire infinite Universe strives to achieve equilibrium. Thus the history of mankind, the history of social organisms (people, lands, states and civilisations), is directed towards and yearns for equilibrium.
Immediately, everything becomes clear: both the condition of economic and political relations and the organisational principle of the living body of the frog, and the direction of the evolution of the solar system.
It is remarkable that in not one of the works of the Machists will we find an intelligible explanation of the meaning of this word. They all prefer to explain it by means of examples. But throughout the entire system of such examples, the actual meaning of this 'empirio-symbol' clearly shines through: it is first of all a state of inviolable rest and immobility. It is the absence of any noticeable changes or deviations, the absence of motion.
Equilibrium means the absence of any state of conflict, of any contradictions whatsoever, i.e. of forces which pull in different, contradictory directions. And where is this seen? You will never see such a state, even in the shop, even in the example of the scales. Even here equilibrium is only a passing result, an ephemeral effect, which is achieved at precisely that moment because two opposing forces are directed at each end of the lever: one presses upward, and the other presses downward.
In the Russian language, equilibrium means: 'A state of immobility, of rest, in which a body is under the influence of equal and opposing forces.' But according to the logic of Machism, the presence of opposing forces exerting pressure at one point (or on one body) is already a bad state of affairs. It resembles the state which is designated in Hegelian language as contradiction, as 'a body's state of discomfort', in which two opposing forces exert pressure, either squeezing the body from two opposite sides or tearing it in half.
Such an understanding of equilibrium is therefore unacceptable for the Machists. How could it possibly be that equilibrium turns out to be only the passing and quickly disappearing result of contradiction, the result of the action of opposites applied at one point, i.e. the very state which every living organism tries to escape as soon as possible, and by no means the state which it supposedly is striving to achieve.
Here then arises the concept of equilibrium which the Machists want to counterpose to contradiction, which is the presence of two opposing forces. It is a state in which two opposing forces have ceased to exist and therefore no longer squeeze or tear apart the ideal body (or the equally ideal point of their application). The forces have ceased to exist and have disappeared, but the state which they have established at a given point still remains. Equilibrium is a state of this kind. A state characterised by the absence of any opposing forces whatsoever, be they internal or external, physical or psychic.
In this form, equilibrium is the ideal. It is the ideal model of the cosmos and the psychics, the fundamental philosophical category of Machism, and the starting point of Machist arguments about the cosmos, about history, and about thinking. The aspiration to escape once and for all from all contradictions whatsoever from whatever kind of opposing forces, is the striving for equilibrium.
In addition to all the rest, equilibrium finds under these conditions all the characteristics which ancient philosophy describes with the words 'inner goal', 'objective goal', and 'immanent goal'. According to Machist logic, equilibrium is by no means a real state, given in experience, even if in passing, but only the ideal and the goal of nature, man, and being in general.
Such an equilibrium is static, complete, disturbed by nothing, an equilibrium of rest, an equilibrium of immobility, a state of 'suspension in the cosmic void'. It is the ideal model of the Machist Bogdanovian concept of equilibrium.
Simply put, they reject the dialectical view in which things are in conflict and instead idealized a sort of passive equilibrium, ignoring that such a state exists in tensions.
And I wonder if this is inevitably a result of the sort of linear view of causality prominent among many un-dialectical thinkers (at least in the simplest sense of what
dialecticalism can be summarized as).
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s06.htmlThe cause-effect connection can be conceived as a one-way, one-directional action only in the simplest and most limited cases. The idea of causality as the influence of one thing on another is applied in fields of knowledge where it is possible and necessary to ignore feedback and actually measure the quantitative effect achieved by the cause. Such a situation is mostly characteristic of mechanical causality. For example, the cause of a stone falling to the ground is mutual gravitation, which obeys the law of universal gravitation, and the actual fall of the stone to the ground results from gravitational interaction. However, since the mass of the stone is infinitely small compared with the mass of the earth, one can ignore the stone's effect on the earth. So ultimately we come to the notion of a one-way effect with only one body (the earth) operating as the active element, while the other (the stone) is passive. In most cases, however, such an approach does not work because things are not inert, but charged with internal activity. Therefore, in experiencing effect they in their turn act on their cause and the resulting action is not one-way but an interaction.
It's basically a sort of abstract thinking that is distant from considering the world, its a mentality that has detached itself from the concrete. I should know in that I actually have a significant tendency to block things out in order to maintain an illusion of peace and this illusion is quite destructive in it's neglect, it's passivity, it's lack of confrontation to find resolution to problems.
History shows people acting in confrontation with problems that act on their lives.
http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/BlackHistoryMonth/MLK/CommAddress.htmlSomewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals. Without this hard work, time becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.
There is always a struggle, always conflicts and confrontation and it's not guaranteed that things won't turn simply into barbarism. But such chaos and crisis is also the opportunity for progressive developments in overcoming fetters of human potential. If not, then what were the bourgeoisie revolutions if they were not progressive developments. One would then reject all that has developed under capitalism presumably and turn into some sort of
anti/post-modernist that seems self destructive.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
- By FiveofSwords
- By paeng
- By Pants-of-dog
- By Godstud