LABOR AND CAPITAL
[Intro material to be added... ]
[Marx speaking as if to all classical political economists:]
“Labor is the sole source of exchange-value and the only active creator of use-value.
This is what you [correctly] say. On the other hand, you say that capital is
everything, and the worker is nothing or a mere production cost of capital. You have
refuted yourselves. Capital is nothing but defrauding of the worker.
Labor is everything.” —Marx, TSV, 3:260.
See also: ALIENATED LABOR.
LABOR POWER
“By labor-power or capacity for labor is to be understood the aggregate of those
mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises
whenever he produces a use-value of any description.” —Marx, Capital, vol. I,
ch. 6: (International, p. 167; Penguin, p. 270.) “A commodity which its possessor, the
wage-worker, sells to capital.” —Marx, “Wage Labor and Capital”, (MECW 9:202, as edited
in Engels’ 1891 edition.)
Labor power is therefore the worker’s
ability to work, which is what is sold to the capitalist for the wages received.
Labor power is not the same as labor itself, however! As everyone is aware,
once the capitalists sell the products that the workers produce, and even after paying
the workers their wages (which means the market value of their labor power), they
still have a large surplus left over from which they take their profits. The
fact that the actual labor of the workers generates this additional
surplus value beyond the workers’ wages (i.e., beyond
the value of their labor power) means that the real implicit value of their actual
labor must greatly exceed the value of what they sell to the capitalists, their
labor power. And therefore labor power and labor must be carefully distinguished
if we are to understand the source of the capitalists’ profits.
The distinction between labor power and
labor is often confusing for those new to Marxist political economy. In addition to
Chapter 6
of Volume I of Marx’s Capital, another good place to go to clear up this confusion
is to carefully read Engels’ 1891 edition of Marx’s pamphlet, “Wage Labor and Capital”
and especially Engels’ introduction where he goes into the difference between labor power
and labor quite thoroughly. This edition is available in an inexpensive paperback from
International Publishers, and available online at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm.
Engels’ introduction is also available separately in MECW 27:194-201.
LAISSEZ-FAIRE [Pronounced: “lassay fair”]
[From the French, meaning “to let people do as they please”.] The bourgeois doctrine
which opposes any governmental interference in the economy beyond that necessary to
maintain peace and sacred capitalist property rights. This was well-nigh universally
accepted by bourgeois economists in the 19th century, especially after
John Stuart Mill popularized it in his Principles
of Political Economy in 1848. However, during the imperialist era, and especially
during the Great Depression of the 1930s, much of
the bourgeoisie and many of its apologists came to appreciate that much government
intervention in the economy on behalf of the capitalists was highly desirable, and
even necessary for the continuation of capitalism. In particular
Keynesian economists argued that the capitalist economy had
to be carefully “managed”, and even the more traditional economists of the
“neo-classical synthesis” school all
recognized that the government at least needed to manage interest rates, the money supply,
and so forth. After the stablization of capitalism for a long period after World War II,
laissez-faire (in a somewhat less pure form) came back into fashion again, often under
the new name (for much the same old ideas), neo-liberalism.
It is really only with the financial crash of 2008 and the deepening crisis leading toward
the development of a new depression that bourgeois economists are once again
starting to question their doctrine of near total faith in the virtues of laissez-faire
and the “free market”.
LAO ZI [also Romanized as Lao Tzu and Lao-Tse]
(6th century BCE)
Chinese philosopher and sage, the original source of Taoism.
Lao Zi (which literally means “the old master”) inspired the semi-religious Taoist book
Tao-te-Ching (“The Way of Power”) which was compiled some 300 years after his
death, and which teaches self-sufficiency, simplicity and detachment. From the Marxist
standpoint, Lao Zi is of interest mostly because of the primitive, but intriguing,
dialectics that he put forward, and also his faith in the people. For example, consider
this fine statement attributed to him, which sounds very much like the Maoist
mass line:
“Go to the people.
Live with them.
Learn from them...
Start with what they know;
Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders,
When the work is done,
The task accomplished,
The people will say,
We have done this ourselves!”
LASSALLE, Ferdinand (1825-1864)
“Lassalle was a German petty-bourgeois socialist who played an
active part in organizing (in 1863) the General Association of German Workers, a
political organization that existed up to 1875. The programmatic demands of the
Association were formulated by Lassalle in a number of articles and speeches.
Lassalle regarded the state as a supra-class organization and, in conformity with
that philosophically idealist view, believed that the Prussian state could be
utilized to solve the social problem through the setting up of producers’
co-operatives with its aid. Marx said that Lassalle advocated a ‘Royal-Prussian
state socialism’. Lassalle directed the workers towards peaceful, parliamentary
forms of struggle, believing that the introduction of universal suffrage would
make Prussia a ‘free people’s state’. To obtain universal suffrage he promised
Bismarck the support of his Association against the liberal opposition and also
in the implementation of Bismarck’s plan to reunite Germany ‘from above’ under
the hegemony of Prussia. Lassalle repudiated the revolutionary class struggle,
denied the importance of trade unions and of strike action, ignored the
international tasks of the working class, and infected the German workers with
nationalist ideas. His contemptuous attitude towards the peasantry,which he
regarded as a reactionary force, did much damage to the German working-class
movement. Marx and Engels fought his harmful utopian dogmatism and his reformist
views. Their criticism helped free the German workers from the influence of
Lassallean opportunism.” —Footnote 140 to LCW vol. 5, pp. 558-559.
LATHI [Pronounced: lah-tee, or lah-thee (to rhyme with catty or Cathy)]
[From Hindi and related languages:] A stick or cane, typically 3 or 4 feet long, used
in a type of martial arts in India (often with longer sticks), but more commonly today
known because of its use by police forces to force submission by the masses. Lathis
are typically made of wood or very strong cane and often have a sturdy metal cap on the
end. Blows from them can cause serious injury and sometimes even death. Britain, when
it controlled India as a colony, first introduced lathis as a police weapon. They also
developed what is known as the lathi charge (or sometimes as one word,
lathicharge), where rows of police charge the protesting masses in military
fashion and viciously beat them.
“In modern times, lathi is the primary weapon of the Indian riot
police along with helmets, shields, tear gas and other methods. Policemen are
trained in highly co-ordinated drill movements which can leave many of the rioters
crippled. This drill has been quite controversial among human rights activists so
in many places the police do not follow the drill but hit in such a way to disperse
the crowds. Security guards and police officers often carry a lathi along with or
in place of firearms. They prefer lathi for their ease of use and comparative
safety and only resort to firearms in situations when lathi cannot be used
efficiently.” —Wikipedia article on lathis.
LENINISM
The further development and extension or modification of Marxism which is attributed
(either correctly or incorrectly) to V. I. Lenin. The term ‘Marxism-Leninism’ refers to
the science of revolutionary Marxism which includes the contributions of Lenin (as
well as those of Marx, Engels and others), while the term ‘Leninism’ itself tends to
focus more on those elements of Marxism-Leninism which are attributable (properly or
not) to Lenin specifically and not primarily to Marx and Engels. Thus those who
imagine that Marx was a bourgeois humanist and Lenin was not, will see a larger part of
Marxism-Leninism (as it is usually understood) as being due to Lenin, than those who
see more agreement between the ideas of Marx and Lenin in the first place. Therefore,
what is counted as distinctively ‘Leninist’ depends on the speaker’s notion of what
Marxism itself was properly viewed as before Lenin, as well as their notion of
how Lenin influenced and/or developed Marxism.
Leninism as it should be properly
understood by revolutionary Marxists includes at least these main overall points:
1) The application of Marxism to the
particular cirmstances and conditions of Russia;
2) The regeneration of Marxism as a
revolutionary theory after its degeneration into bourgeois reformism in
the Second International after the death of Marx and Engels;
3) The further development of
Marxism in the changed conditions of the new capitalist-imperialist era, and with the
successful October revolution in Russia. And within this 3rd point, the
following main sub-points:
a) The recognition that
capitalist-imperialism was a whole new stage of capitalism, that it necessarily
involved both predatory wars and inter-imperialist wars, and that it represented a
further diseased and moribund social system which had become ripe for revolution,
including wars of national liberation in imperialist colonies.
b) A greater emphasis on the role of
the revolutionary proletarian party, along with a somewhat different conception of
the character of such a party (as a party of professional revolutionaries, for
example);
c) The actual direction of a
proletarian revolution and the implementation of the first major dictatorship of the
proletariat, and in the course of that developing many of the essential principles
of proletarian rule.
See also entries below.
“To expound Leninism means to expound the distinctive and new in
in the works of Lenin that Lenin contributed to the general treasury of Marxism and
that is naturally connected with his name.” —Stalin, “The Foundations of Leninism”,
lectures delivered at the Sverdlov University, April-May 1924, Works 6:71.
“It is usual to point to the exceptionally militant and exceptionally
revolutionary character of Leninism. This is quite correct. But this specific feature
of Leninism is due to two causes: firstly, to the fact that Leninism emerged from
the proletarian revolution, the imprint of which it cannot but bear; secondly, to the
fact that it grew and became strong in clashes with the opportunism of the Second
International, the fight against which was and remains an essential preliminary
condition for a successful fight against capitalism. It must not be forgotten that
between Marx and Engels, on the one hand, and Lenin, on the other, there lies a whole
period of undivided domination of the opportunism of the Second International, and
the ruthless struggle against this opportunism could not be constitute one of the
most important tasks of Leninism.” —Stalin, ibid., Works 7:73-74.
LENINISM — Bourgeois Conception Of
Bourgeois writers often recognize, to some limited degree, some of the elements of
Leninism as we revolutionary Marxists understand it. (See entry above.) In particular
they often recognize the greatly increased attention Leninism gives to colonial or
semi-colonial countries, to the potential role for earlier revolutions that Leninists
see there, to the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, and so forth. They
sometimes even tie this loosely together with some partial recognition of imperialism
(though never as something inherent in modern capitalism!). But the one
thing that bourgeois writers most focus on in their discussion of what they
call “Leninism”, to the point where everything else is almost totally obscured, is
the nature and role of the Leninist party.
This conception of Leninism starts
with some actual elements of Lenin’s ideas about a revolutionary party, though it
tends to grossly distort or exaggerate them as follows:
1) The working class and masses are
presumed to be seldom, if ever, spontaneously revolutionary;
2) The working class is presumed to
be only capable of reformist or trade union consciousness on its own;
3) A revolutionary party is viewed
as absolutely essential in all circumstances to bring revolutionary ideas to the
workers and masses from the outside, and to lead them in a revolutionary
direction;
4) This party must be composed of
carefully and thoroughly trained, full-time professional revolutionaries;
5) The party must be tightly
organized and highly disciplined according to the principles of democratic
centralism—which the bourgeois ideologists assume must really be highly authoritarian
and totally undemocratic;
6) This party must be viewed as the
vanguard of the proletariat, even when it is first formed by a small number
of people, because only through its leadership can the masses make revolution;
7) This party, will institute what
it calls the “dictatorship of the proletariat” when it achieves power, but this will
actually be a dictatorship of the party (and ultimately of the top party leadership)
over the masses, and must inevitably operate in a “totalitarian”, fascist manner.
8) And finally, under this bourgeois
conception of Leninism, when the party actually is in power in one or more countries,
it will be bent on total world conquest.
Well! That is the bourgeois
conception of Leninism! This is obviously a total parody of Lenin’s ideas and of
genuine Leninism. Points 1 and 2 are already quite exaggerated; Lenin never claimed
that there were no spontaneous revolutionary ideas among the masses! He was well aware
of the great Paris Commune, for example, which was
created by a spontaneous uprising. Lenin only argued that the dominant forms of
spontaneity in bourgeois society are indeed reformist
in perspective, and that therefore the most class conscious section of the
masses, which constitutes itself into a proletarian party, must of course provide
leadership for the whole revolutionary movement.
Point 3 is distorted in at least two
major ways: First, there are times (such as during the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China) when the party has lost its way
and must itself be corrected and reconstituted by the revolutionary masses. Second, most
of the revolutionary ideas which the party brings to the masses do not really
come from “the outside”, but instead from among the masses themselves through the use
of Marxist summation and the method of the mass line.
Point 4 is basically true of genuine
Leninism; we do seek to build a party whose core, at least, is composed of
carefully trained professional revolutionaries. We also insist, however, that this
party have very close ties to the masses, that in socialist society (at least) party
members also spend substantial time participating in labor, and that the masses keep a
close eye upon the party and supervise it, so that it always remains working in
their interests! It is also true, as point 5 in the bourgeois conception of
Leninism has it, that a Leninist party should be highly organized and highly disciplined.
However, a true Leninist party actually takes the democracy aspect of democratic
centralism seriously and even insists that democracy must be the principal
aspect.
With regard to point 6: There has
indeed been a very wrong tendency in many new or small MLM parties, which are not yet
even in much contact with the masses in their country, to falsely view themselves as
a “vanguard”. A true vanguard is a party that is
actually out front and really leading the masses in struggle, and in
the direction of social revolution. This is very different than any self-proclaimed
miniscule phony “vanguard”.
In point 7 the bourgeois ideologues
of course conclude that any dictatorship over their class and their
supposed inalienable rights, must in fact be a vicious, totalitarian dictatorship
over the people as a whole. But what genuine Leninism (and Marxism!) means by the
dictatorship of the proletariat
is a society in which the working class and broad masses have full and complete
democratic rights, far more so than they have under
bourgeois democracy for example. No party
which exercises dictatorship over the people is a Leninist party, no matter
what it calls itself. Yes, revisionism in
power does this (as in Soviet Union from at least the mid-1950s on), but we actual
Leninists are deadly opponents of these revisionists.
And finally, with respect to point
8, we Leninists are indeed determined to bring about social revolution everywhere
in the world, and create world communism. Of course this is something very different
than “world conquest” in the sense the bourgeoisie understands it! Anyway, this is
actually nothing new in Leninism; Marx and Engels proclaimed this goal in the
Communist Manifesto long before Lenin was even born.
So the bourgeois conception of
“Leninism” is a complete distortion of the real thing. It is an almost complete lie
and slander of Lenin, which starts from small distortions and builds toward total
nonsense. It is true that Leninism does give more emphasis to the leading role of
the party than does Marx or Engels, and does have a somewhat different conception
of what such a party must be like. But, first, this is a natural development and
extension of the ideas of Marx and Engels, and second, this is only one aspect of
Leninism as it should be properly understood.
LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude (1908-2009)
A prominent bourgeois anthropologist and sociologist, often considered in academic circles to
be the “father” of modern anthropology. He was influenced by linguistics, geology, Freudian
psychoanalysis and possibly to some limited extent by Marxism (as he himself claimed). He
introduced the concepts of “structuralism” from linguistics
and geology into anthropology and sociology, where it became an intellectual fad for a short
period.
One aspect of “structuralism” in anthropology,
as Lévi-Strauss understood it, was that all societies follow certain universal patterns
of thought and behavior. This is the sort of principle that obviously has some validity
to it, but which can easily be pushed to unreasonable extremes. A progressive aspect of this
way of looking at human culture is that it opposed the traditional attitudes towards native
peoples as being biologically “primitive” and having “savage” or “primitive” mental capabilities.
A less positive aspect of this way of looking at culture is that it tended to lead to the
“postmodern” idea that all worldviews
are “equally valid”, and that more modern forms of society are not really more advanced than
those of primitive societies. While it is true that the people in hunter-gatherer society,
for example, are not biologically primitive, their societies definitely are primitive,
and their traditional conceptions of the world are also definitely primitive as compared with a
modern scientific outlook.
Lévi-Strauss not only had a great
influence within anthropology and sociology, he also influenced the intellectual and academic
communities in general, especially in literary theory and Continental philosophy. Unfortunately,
this influence proved to be mostly negative.
LIBERATION THEOLOGY
A movement that developed primarily in Roman Catholic countries during the world political
radicalizations of the 1960s, and is sometimes considered to be a form of Christian socialism.
It seeks to reinterpret Christian doctrine and activities from the perspective of the poor,
downtrodden and oppressed, and thus has a pro lower class political character as well as a
religious character. Theologians of this school view poverty itself as the result of sin,
the sin of exploitation by the capitalists and the sin of the class war that the rich wage
against the poor. Liberation theology was especially popular for a time in Latin American
countries which had formerly been colonies, and which it viewed as still suffering from
“post-colonial deprivation”.
One of the founders of liberation theology
was the Peruvian Dominican theologian, Gustavo Gutiérrez Merina (1928- ), who sought
to blend Marxism with Catholic social thought. His book, A Theology of Liberation:
History, Politics, Salvation (1971), was very influential among liberal Latin American
Catholics. Another influential work in this sphere was Liberation Theology, by the
Brazilians Leonardo and Clodovis Boff.
While basically just a Catholic reformist
movement there were a few cases of guerrilla warfare engaged in by renegade Catholic priests
and their associates. From the 1970s on liberation theology spread to some African countries,
where it focused on condemning apartheid and other forms of racism. Liberation theology also
inspired similar reformist trends such as Black theology, gay theology, etc. While liberation
theology still exists, especially in Brazil, it seems to have lost much of its original
radical force. In part this is due to the ferocious crackdown on this trend by
ultra-reactionary popes and the Catholic hierarchy.
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask
why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” —Dom Hélder Câmara,
a Brazilian Archbishop.
LIFE — Origin Of
Specific details surrounding the origin of life are appropriate to the sciences of chemistry
and biology, and not revolutionary science. But, as materialists we view the origin of
life as having been of necessity a natural process, based originally on natural chemical
and physical processes.
“With regard to the origin of life, therefore, up to the present,
natural science is only able to say with certainty that it must have been the result
of chemical action.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878), MECW 25:68.
LIN BIAO [Old style: LIN PIAO] (1908-71)
High-ranking military and political leader in revolutionary China who proved to be the
worst sort of careerist, and who betrayed the revolution and even attempted to assassinate
Mao.
Lin was born in Wuhan, in Hubei province,
and was the son of a factory owner. He was educated at the Wampoa Military Academy where
he became radicalized. When he graduated in 1926 he joined up with the Communist Party to
fight the Guomindang. He became commander of the Northeast People’s Liberation Army in
1945. In 1959 he was appointed Minister of Defense, and—apparently just for careerist
motives—made a very strong show of supporting Mao and opposing the capitalist-roaders
during the early years of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution. This led to his appointment as the Vice-Chairman of the Party at the 9th
Party Congress in 1969, and Mao’s designated heir. But by 1971, Lin’s health was
deteriorating, and there were hints that he might be removed as Mao’s designated successor.
Fearing his personal grandiose career hopes were flitting away, and along with his son and
a few close supporters, he drew up a plan with the code name “Project 571” to assassinate
Mao during a train journey from Shanghai to Beijing, and then seize power in a military
coup. This plot was uncovered, and in September 1971 Lin tried to escape by air to the
revisionist Soviet Union. However, his plane crashed in Mongolia and he was killed.
In the years after his death a massive
political campaign to criticize Lin Biao together with Confucius took place in China.
There are indeed many lessons to be learned about how, especially after the seizure of
political power, the revolutionary proletariat must be alert for careerists and
unprincipled opportunists. Not only must communists be trained to be “honest and above
board” in putting forward their own views, but revolutionary parties must carefully avoid
awarding and promoting those who are mere opportunist toadies. “Yes men” are far more
dangerous to the revolution than those who at times honestly and openly disagree with the
party leadership. In reality, we should be highly suspicious of those who never
disagree with us! Either such people are just not thinking on their own, or else they
have ulterior motives for always agreeing with us. Either way, they should never be
promoted to high office in a revolutionary party or government.
LIU Shaoqi (Oldstyle: LIU Shao-ch’i) (1898-1969)
High ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party who during the period of socialism was
the leader of those in the Party taking the capitalist road toward the restoration of
capitalism in China. He was overthrown by the Maoist revolutionaries during the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Liu was born in Hunan Province to a
moderately rich, land-owning peasant family. He was educated in Changsha and Shanghai
(where he learned Russian). In 1921-22 he went to study in Moscow, and while there joined
the newly-formed CCP. He returned to China and became a labor organizer in Shanghai. His
orientation was always more toward the cities than the countryside. He was elected to the
CCP Politburo in 1934 and became its expert on matters of organization and Party structure.
In 1939 he wrote his notorious book on “self-cultivation”, How to Be a Good Communist.
In 1943 he became Secretary General of the Party, then Vice-Chairman in 1949. While Mao was
still Chairman of the CCP, Liu became Chairman of the People’s Republic of China in 1958
(i.e., head of state).
Liu advocated and did his best to institute
all sorts of “reforms” tending in the direction of restoring capitalism, such as promoting
production above political consciousness; financial incentives and bonuses (as opposed to
moral incentives); easing of the restrictions on the market economy (rather than tightening
them and steadily restricting the “law of value”); promoting
rewards for “loyal cadres” and special treatment for the children of high Party officials;
and, in general, promotion of a new privileged strata within the Party and State. As the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution developed in the late 1960s Liu led the sly and
semi-camouflaged resistence to it. This had the effect of more and more turning the GPCR
against him and his minions as its primary target. In 1967 Liu was informally removed
from power, and in October 1968 he was formally “expelled from the Party forever, and
stripped of all his positions in and outside the CCP.” He died in November 1969 while
under house-arrest back in Hunan. In 1980 he was “rehabilitated” by Deng
Xiaoping’s gang of revisionists who seized control of the CCP after Mao’s death in
1976.
A sympathetic bourgeois biographer,
Lowell Dittmer, said of him: “Liu’s life may be viewed as an attempt to combine order with
revolution and equality with economic efficiency and technocratic values.” But for Liu
“order” meant a turn toward bourgeois rule, “equality” meant an end to class struggle, and
“efficiency and technocratic values” meant the capitalist marketplace. Liu Shaoqi was
not a personal opportunist; he was quite sincere and dedicated in his advocacy of
revisionism. He was all the more insidious and dangerous
to the cause of communist revolution because of this.
LOCKE, John (1632-1704)
English empiricist philosopher. He was a proponent of the idealist notion of
“natural rights” in ethics and politics, and was a major
influence on those who founded the United States.
Locke also wrote on political economy, and
as Marx said, “championed the new bourgeoisie in every way, taking the side of the
industrialists against the working class and against the paupers, the merchants against the
old-fashioned usurers, the financial aristocracy against the governments that were in debt,
and he even demonstrated in one of his books that the bourgeois way of thinking was the
normal one for human beings.” [Marx, quoted in an appendix to TSV, 3:592.]
See also:
Philosophical doggerel about
Locke.
LYSENKOISM
This is a term that has come to mean something like letting political wishful
thinking triumph over scientific fact, or even letting politics dominate and determine
what scientific truth “actually is”.
In the Soviet Union under Stalin and
Khrushchev, the agronomist Trofim Lysenko (see above) propagated a quack theory of genetics
based on the supposed inheritance of acquired characteristics. However, even before
the discovery of the central role of DNA in inheritance, the science of biology (and
genetics specifically) had determined that (at least normally) there is no such thing as
the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The giraffe’s neck is long not because its
ancestors stretched theirs during their lifetimes, but because the ancestors with naturally
longer necks survived, while those with shorter necks died before they could reproduce.
(Counterpoint: Recent research seems to show that there really are some exceptional
circumstances where there can be some inheritance of acquired characteristics, as with
certain bacteria, but the fact remains that even if this is so it is only in highly
atypical situations.) There were prominent geneticists in the Soviet Union who knew this
full well, such as Nikolai Vavilov, and who were persecuted and sometimes imprisoned for
their Mendelian views by Lysenko and the Soviet government. (Vavilov himself was arrested
in 1940 and is said to have died of starvation in a Siberian labor camp around 1943.)
Lysenko was welcome to his own opinions about genetics, but the persecution of those who
disagreed with him was the crime, which was made much worse by the support of Stalin (and
later Khrushchev) and the force of the state.
It is not entirely clear, however, how much
direct damage Lysenko and his theories actually did to Soviet agriculture, though certainly
there was some significant damage over the long run due to his disruption of genetic
research. There were many other problems in agriculture, some of them probably much more
important. For example, the brutal “top-down” method of agricultural collectivization
carried out by Stalin in the 1930s led to the death of many peasants, the destruction
of much of the livestock and to serious crop shortages. The continuing failure to use
the mass line to mobilize the peasants to work in their own
collective interests remained a major obstacle to the expansion of agricultural production.
And insufficient industrial support was also given to agriculture over a period of decades.
Unfortunately the Lysenko episode has led
to some widespread invalid conclusions, even among some Marxists, such as that any
“government interference” in science is unjustified, and that scientists and other experts
should be basically unrestricted in their activities. Of course any government will
appropriately promote and fund those scientists and those theories which it has confidence
in. And any government would be within its rights to restrict certain kinds of experiments
or technologies for which there is good reason to believe that there are serious potential
dangers for the people. Moreover, a socialist government in particular, will certainly
find it necessary to criticize bourgeois ideas that scientists, just as any other segment
of society, may still promote.
However, it is true that socialist society
should also allow, especially in the natural sciences, “a hundred flowers to bloom, and a
hundred schools of thought to content” (as Mao poetically put it). In looking at the
experience of socialism in both the Soviet Union and China it seems clear that overall
there was not enough freedom of thought and expression in the sciences, nor was
there sufficient allowance (and even encouragement!) of new and minority ideas and
views. On the other hand it, it was certainly necessary and correct to strongly criticize
views and theories insofar as they had a bourgeois ideological component, and sometimes
this was also insufficient! Of course this will generally be much more central and
important in the social sciences than in the natural sciences.
See also:
INSTRUMENTALISM.
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