MACH, Ernst (1838-1916)
Austrian physicist and philosopher. Mach was one of the founders of
“empirio-criticism”, a form
of positivism or idealist
empiricism. Mach viewed reality as a “complex of sensations”,
which is a prominent form of subjective idealism.
Lenin strongly criticizes Mach’s views, and subjective idealism in general, in his important
philosophical work, Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism (1908).
One of Mach’s idealist notions was that a
great many entities we talk about in science, such as molecules and atoms, do
not actually have any real existence, but are merely “theoretical constructs” which we have
found to be useful in conceptualizing how the world works despite their non-existence! In
the case of atoms and molecules, it was only in his old age, shortly before his death, and
long after the further absolute confirmation of the existence of molecules and atoms by
many experiments, and with Einstein’s theoretical explanation of Brownian motion which
depended on the actual existence of atoms and molecules, did Mach finally, yet still
reluctantly, admit that atoms probably really did exist.
MACH’S PRINCIPLE (or CONJECTURE) (Philosophy of Science)
The vague hypothesis that “mass there influences inertia here”. According to Mach both
inertia and gravitation are consequences of the general distribution of matter in the
universe.
Mach was an extreme relativist. While
Newton argued that there were such things as “absolute space” and “absolute time”, Mach
would have none of either. He argued that the notions of rest and motion are meaningless
except against a material background as a reference. More specifically, he argued that
the local physical laws observed on the earth depend on the large-scale distribution of
matter in the universe, or—as is often said—upon the existence of the “fixed stars”.
Newton had pointed out that if you spin two spheres tied together around a point between
them there will be a tension on the rope, a tension that is not there if the two spheres
are not spinning. This he took to be a method of distinguishing one type of relative motion
from absolute rest. Since Mach was determined to explain all motion as being
entirely relative, he had to explain why there was tension in the rope in one case and
not the other. The best he could come up with was to claim that “somehow” the existence
of the rest of the matter in the universe creates the inertia in the spheres that causes
the rope between them to have tension when they are spun relative to that external mass
(the “fixed stars”). He used a similar argument about why the water in a spinning bucket
has a concave shape even after the bucket itself is no longer moving relative to that
water.
The modern view in physics is that both
Newton and Mach were at least partly wrong; the result is sort of a dialectical synthesis
of the ideas of absolute and relative space in the form of inertial frames. (See
the Wikipedia article on inertial
frames.)
Einstein had great respect for Mach as
a person and for his early writings on mechanics, but as time went on he had more and
more negative attitudes towards Mach’s philosophical views, such as his notion that the
laws of science are merely economical ways of describing a large collection of facts. And
with respect to “Mach’s Principle” (which, ironically, Einstein himself had given that
name to and was for a long time quite enthusiastic about), he eventually concluded that
“As a matter of fact, one should no longer speak of Mach’s principle at all.”
MACHINE TRACTOR STATION (MTS)
A local centralized facility making tractors and other agricultural machinery available to
collective and state farms (kolkhozy and
sovkhozy) in the Soviet Union. MTSs were initiated in 1927-28,
and existed until 1958 in the Khrushchev era when the machinery was transferred to
individual collective farms.
“The tractor had long been seen as the key to collectivization. In
the autumn of 1927 the large Shevchenko Sovkhoz in the Ukraine managed to acquire 60
to 70 tractors, which were organized in ‘tractor columns’ to work its own fields and
those of neighboring Kolkhozy or peasant holdings. The example was imitated elsewhere;
and in 1928 Shevchenko established the first Machine Tractor Station (MTS) with a park
of tractors to be leased out to Kolkhozy and Sovkhozy in the region. In June 1929 a
central office, Traktorsentr, was set up in Moscow to organize and control a
network of state MTSs. Peasant prejudices against the innovation, and perhaps against
the degree of state intervention involved in it, were hard to overcome. Tractors were
sometimes denounced as the work of [the] Anti-Christ. The success of the experiment
seemed, however, to have been limited mainly by the supply of tractors; in the autumn
of 1929 only 35,000, most of them of American manufacture, were available for the
whole of the USSR. Everywhere it came, the tractor was a powerful agent of
collectivization.” —E.H. Carr, non-Marxist British historian, The Russian Revolution
from Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929) (1979), ch. 16.
MADRASAH [Also: MADRASA, MADRESE, MADRASHA, etc.]
[From Arabic, but also a common loan word in many other languages:] A school or academy. Any
type of school, whether secular or religious, and from the elementary level through the
university level, may be called a madrasah. However, as the term is commonly used in
the West, the implication is that these are Islamic religious schools.
MAKHNO, Nestor (1888-1934)
The most prominent leader of the anarchist movement and army in southern Ukraine during the
period of the Russian Civil War. Makhno was a commander of the peasant-based Revolutionary
Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, more popularly known as the Anarchist Black Army, which
engaged in fairly large scale guerrilla warfare during 1918-21. Makhno and the anarchists
were opposed to all forms of government, even one imposing the rule of the working class
and peasantry. At different times Makhno supported the Bolsheviks against the Tsarist White
armies, then the Ukrainian Directorate [a provisional peasant nationalist regime formed in
1918], the Bolsheviks again against the Whites, and then fought against the Bolsheviks in
an attempt to organize a utopian anarchist society called the Free Territory of Ukraine.
When the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand Machno fled into exile in France.
MARAS
The maras are youth gangs in Central America (especially El Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras).
“[T]here are ... roughly 70,000 members of Central America’s maras,
or youth gangs, which provide a ready supply of teenagers willing to ferry drugs, mind
kidnap victims and carry out other low-level tasks. The blossoming links between the
drug traffickers and the maras are a big worry.” —The Economist, Jan. 22,
2011, p. 45.
MARGIN CALL [Capitalist Finance]
A demand from a stock broker for additional funds from an investor who purchased stocks or
other investment securities “on margin” (i.e., partly with a loan from the broker). If the
value of the stocks that were purchased falls, then the value of the portion purchased with
money loaned by the broker also falls, which means his collateral in the form of those stock
certificates is worth less than it was earlier and the broker is now in danger of losing
money. The broker thus demands that the “investor” (i.e., speculator) cover that loss in the
value of the collateral by giving him an equivalent amount of money (or securities).
In a financial crisis all the speculators
who have overextended themselves (i.e., most of them!) can suddenly be faced with margin
calls which force them to sell other assets at a loss in order to come up with the necessary
cash. Since many speculators are doing this simultaneously, it can lead to a very sudden
major and continuing crash in the values of stocks and bonds in general, in a kind of
vicious circle.
MARGINALIST THEORY
The marginalist theory, or Theory of Marginal Utility, in bourgeois economics,
is a conception designed to replace the labor theory
of value developed by Marx from the cruder versions of the classical bourgeois economists.
These “more modern” bourgeois economists chafed under the well-established idea that the
value of commodities derives from the amount of
socially necessary labor time incorporated
into them, and longed for another “source” of value which would not give the working class so
much credit. They settled on the “marginal” (or “additional”) usefulness of a commodity
to the purchaser, or to some hypothetical eventual purchaser.
This theory is actually quite incoherent. It
cannot explain, for example, how two different commodities which are equally useful to you
(whether “at the margin” or not) might commonly have such enormously different actual values.
Nevertheless, this absurd notion has become a cornerstone of bourgeois economics.
[More to be added... ]
“MARKET SOCIALISM”
An attempt to combine “socialism” with capitalism, and in particular with the capitalist
commodity market (including the market for labor-power).
From the revolutionary Marxist (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) perspective this makes no sense
whatsoever, because we define socialism as the transitional
stage between capitalism and
communism. But various types of
revisionist thinkers view “socialism” as merely a
modification of capitalism, and sometimes even such a slight modification that some of
them consider a lightly “regulated” capitalist welfare state (such as in Scandinavia)
to be “socialism”!
Clearly nothing like European
social democracy can be in any way viewed as genuine
socialism, either economically or politically. But couldn’t we imagine a society
where there are really no capitalists, but still separate, decentralized state-run
enterprises that use a market to sell commodities to each other, and sell mass-consumption
commodities to the people? Couldn’t there still be a labor market as well, with these
enterprises hiring workers, and even continuing to extract
surplus value from them—but then turning
all of this surplus value over to the state for the expansion of production and
for public purposes (education, health care, retirement benefits, and so forth), with no
“profits” going to any rich owners of the enterprises (because there are none)?
One important thing to seriously ponder in
a thought experiment of this kind is just how stable such a system would be. In
fact it would be extremely unstable, and would inevitably degenerate back into traditional
capitalism. There would still be foremen, supervisors, layers of management of plants and
enterprises, influential people running the government and the dominent political parties,
and so forth. And these people would soon develop (if they didn’t already have) special
interests of their own, both as individuals, and collectively as a new social class. In
other words class society would soon reassert itself, and we would soon be back in the
horrible capitalist world where we live today.
“But couldn’t we keep such tendencies
under control?” someone might ask. “Couldn’t we perhaps use the methods developed in Mao’s
China to have managers also engage in productive labor, to rotate streams of ordinary workers
into management and government positions for limited periods of time, etc. Couldn’t we even
engage in struggle against those who get too uppity and start to gather too many
private privileges and too much individual power, and so forth?” The answer is that this
sort of thing might work for a while, and will have to be made to work during the
relatively short socialist transition period to communism. But if society is organized in
such a way that these measures are permanently necessary, then an eventual breakdown
and return to capitalism is inevitable. The entire underlying material basis for capitalism
must be destroyed, and destroyed down to its lowest roots, if capitalism is itself to be
destroyed once and for all.
And here is where it is necessary to come
to understand the nature of bourgeois “right”,
and how it grows out of the commodity form itself. If you have commodities, if you have
commodity exchange, if you have the extraction of surplus value (even if for a time it
is somehow arranged that it is put to public uses), then eventually you will have
a complete system of capitalism again, because capitalism grows out of those
seeds.
What we revolutionary Marxists are trying
to do is to transform society so that classes no longer exist, so that class struggle no
longer needs to exist, and so that not even any “struggle” to prevent the development
of classes again is necessary any more! There is a way to do this, but it requires
uprooting capitalism completely, and on a world scale, down even to the existence of
commodity markets and the commodity form. And this is why we are also determined opponents
of any “market socialism” schemes.
The main motivation for favoring “market
socialism” comes from those who can only conceive of socialism in the form it took in the
Soviet Union, and view that failure as something that is inevitable in a “command economy”.
Thus they are straining their brains to think of another way to make socialism work. Well,
there is another way, a way that was outlined by Marx, Lenin and Mao. And that way is not
the state capitalism of the revisionist Soviet Union nor is it “market socialism”. Those
who champion that last scheme have just not investigated the problem deeply enough to
understand the inherent flaws in their proposals.
For those seeking to look into the question
of “market socialism” further, I suggest first seriously studying the great work by Marx,
“The Critique of the Gotha Programme” (1875) which is available online at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm.
MARTIN, Bill (1956- )
An eclectic radical American intellectual who is a professor of philosophy at DePaul
University in Chicago. His philosophical views have been influenced by many diverse and
conflicting sources, but especially by Kant and by modern
Continental philosophers such as
Sartre, Althusser,
Derrida and Badiou. Overall we
believe it is fair to call Martin a radical Kantian, especially in ethics.
For a number of years Martin was close to
the Revolutionary Communist Party and served to lend some limited
academic respectability to them through this association. With Bob
Avakian he co-authored a book of philosophical conversations entitled Marxism and the
Call of the Future (2005). A couple years later, however, Martin broke with the RCP and
became a participant in the Kasama Project whose core consists
of others who have also left the orbit of the RCP. Martin considers himself to be a “Maoist”,
though he is at pains to reject a number of what he views as “dogmatic principles” of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. In his book Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of
Liberation (2008), as in his joint work with Avakian and elsewhere, Martin argues for
a Kantian re-envisioning of ethics within Marxism. Thus Martin has many similarities to the
philosophical idealists within Marxism in Lenin’s day, who also called for a “return to
Kant”.
Among Martin’s other books are several on
rock music and a forthcoming volume entitled A Debriefment of Maoism: Alain Badiou and the
Renewal of the Communist Hypothesis, which will likely demonstrate how deeply
enamored Martin and the Kasama Project are with Badiou.
[See also my “Report on a Discussion by Bill
Martin & Raymond Lotta of a book by Martin and Bob Avakian” (April 2007), at:
http://www.massline.org/Philosophy/ScottH/BillMartin-RayLotta.htm —S.H.]
MARTOV, L. (or Julius) (Real name: Yuli Osipovich Tsederbaum) (1873-1923)
A prominent Russian Menshevik leader. He was born in Istanbul into
a Russian Jewish “middle-class” family. Martov led the struggle against Lenin at the Second
Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1903 (which was really its founding
Congress). His “Mensheviks” (“minority”) were defeated on the issue of the composition of
the editorial board of the Party publication Iskra [“Spark”], but won the vote on the
issue of who should be allowed to be a member of the Party. (Lenin wanted a party of fully
committed and dedicated revolutionaries; Martov wanted a party with much looser and broader
membership rules.) This led to the split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks (“majority”).
Martov, however, was generally on the “left”
wing of the Mensheviks, and opposed Russian participation in World War I, which he agreed
with Lenin was an imperialist war. He thus became the central leader of the “Menshevik
Internationalist” faction, which opposed the main Menshevik party leadership. Martov also
opposed the Mensheviks becoming part of the Provisional Government after the overthrow of
the tsar, but was unable to stop them from doing so and from continuing their support for
the war.
Martov was thus marginalized both within the
overall R.S.D.L.P., and even within the Mensheviks. After the October Revolution, he became
even more marginalized, and in 1920 legally emigrated to Germany where he died three years
later. In his last few years he established a newspaper called Socialist Messenger
which continued publication in Paris and then New York until the last of the Mensheviks
abroad petered out. It is rumored that Lenin himself provided the initial money for Martov
to set up this newspaper! If true, it would not be too surprising; Lenin thought that even
the enemies of the people should still be allowed a small voice, as long as they were unable
to corrupt the masses.
MARX, Karl (1818-1883)
The primary founder, along with Frederick Engels, of the science
of society and social revolution which is now customarily known as Marxism.
[More to be added...]
“As to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering either the
existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me
bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle
and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new
was to demonstrate: 1) that the existence of classes is merely linked to
particular historical phases in the development of production, 2) that class
struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) that this
dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes
and to a classless society.” —Marx, Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852,
Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence (Moscow: 1975), p. 64; in a slightly different
translation in MECW 39:62.
“These two great discoveries, the materialist conception of history and
the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to
Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science. The next thing was to
work out all its details and relations.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878),
MECW 25:27.
MARXIST THEORY
See also:
MARXISM, REVOLUTIONARY
THEORY
“The world’s greatest movement for liberation of the oppressed class,
the most revolutionary class in history, is impossible without a revolutionary theory.
That theory cannot be thought up. It grows out of the sum total of the
revolutionary experience and the revolutionary thinking of all countries in the world.
Such a theory has developed since the second half of the nineteenth century. It
is known as Marxism. One cannot be a socialist, a revolutionary Social-Democrat, without
participating, in the measure of one’s powers, in developing and applying that theory,
and without waging a ruthless struggle today against the mutilation of this theory by
Plekhanov, Kautsky, and Co.” —Lenin, “The Voice of an Honest French Socialist” (1915),
LCW 21:354.
“MASS INCIDENTS” [In China]
This is the euphemism being used in present day capitalist China for the rapidly growing
number of incidents of collective protest, workers’ strikes, local refusals by the people
to follow the orders of the authorities, and other forms of social unrest. One Chinese
sociologist, Sun Liping, estimated the number of “mass incidents” in 2010 as 180,000.
There are many specific reasons for the
huge growth in the number of such events, including the typically very low pay of workers,
the exceedingly long hours of work, the dangerous working conditions, the lack of social
services, the especially poor treatment of migrant workers from the countryside, the
frequent outright theft of land from peasants, the high-handedness of the police and
authorities, widespread political corruption, worsening inflation, and many other such
things. On occasion the authorities will be forced to back down and grant some concessions,
but the more typical response is to further tighten “public security” (expanded police
forces and physical control over the masses). The Chinese government is expanding its
expenditure for “domestic security” by 12% in 2012 over the already high level in 2011, to
a total of $111 billion. (This is $5 billion more than China will be spending on
its military budget in 2012!) [Figures from the NY Times,
May 10, 2012.]
This increasing reliance on state violence
to control the masses will of course mean that many future “mass incidents” will themselves
be much more serious and much more violent. There are very good reasons for the growing
anxiety of the Chinese leaders about the ever increasing discontent among not only the
workers and peasants, but even among the “middle class”.
MASS LINE
The method of revolutionary leadership summarized by the phrase “from the masses, to
the masses”.
“The mass line is the primary method of revolutionary leadership
of the masses, which is employed by the most conscious and best organized section of
the masses, the proletarian party. It is a reiterative method, applied over and over
again, which step by step advances the interests of the masses, and in particular their
central interest within bourgeois society, namely, advancing towards proletarian
revolution. Each iteration may be viewed as a three step process: 1) gathering the
diverse ideas of the masses; 2) processing or concentrating these ideas from the
perspective of revolutionary Marxism, in light of the long-term, ultimate interests of
the masses (which the masses themselves may sometimes only dimly perceive), and in
light of a scientific analysis of the objective situation; and 3) returning these
concentrated ideas to the masses in the form of a political line which will actually
advance the mass struggle toward revolution. Because the mass line starts with the
diverse ideas of the masses, and returns the concentrated ideas to the masses, it is
also known as the method of ‘from the masses, to the masses’. Though implicit in
Marxism from the beginning, the mass line was raised to the level of conscious theory
primarily by Mao Zedong.” —Scott H.,
The Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement, Chapter 43.
See also: MASS PERSPECTIVE below, and
WILL OF THE PEOPLE
MASS PERSPECTIVE
“A mass perspective is a point of view regarding the masses
which recognizes: 1) That the masses are the makers of history, and that revolution
can only be made by the masses themselves; 2) That the masses must come to see through
their own experience and struggle that revolution is necessary; and 3) That the
proletarian party must join up with the masses in their existing struggles, bring
revolutionary consciousness into these struggles, and lead them in a way which brings
the masses ever closer to revolution. A mass perspective is based on the fundamental
Marxist notion that a revolution must be made by a revolutionary people, that a
revolutionary people must develop from a non-revolutionary people, and that the people
change from the one to the other through their own revolutionizing practice.
“The relation between the
mass line and a mass perspective is simply that only those with a mass perspective
will see much need or use for the mass line. It is possible to have some notion of
the mass line technique, and yet fail to give it any real attention because of a weak
mass perspective. On the other hand, it is also possible to have a mass perspective
and still be more or less ignorant of the great Marxist theory of the mass line.
“The mass line and a mass
perspective are nevertheless best viewed as intimately related, as integrated aspects
of the Marxist approach toward the masses and revolution. I have found the most
felicitous phrase for both aspects together is ‘the mass line and its associated mass
perspective’.” —Scott H.,
The Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement, Chapter 43.
See also: SECTARIAN
MATERIALISM VS. IDEALISM
This is the basic question, and the most fundamental dispute, in the entire history of
philosophy. Which is primary and which depends on the other: Matter or mind? For
us materialists, the answer is completely obvious: the material world exists independently of
anyone’s mental ideas and thoughts of it, and mind and mental phenomena are merely a set of
functional characteristics of certain complex organizations of matter (i.e., brains).
See also:
IDEALISM
“The spirit of materialism is intolerable to the idealist!!” —a
wonderfully ironic statement by Lenin while speaking specifically of Hegel’s discussion
of Democritus, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book Lectures
on the History of Philosophy” (1915), LCW 38:267.
“Teacher: Si Fu, name the basic questions of philosophy.
“Si Fu: Are things external
to us, self-sufficient, independent of us, or are things in us, dependent on us,
non-existent without us?
“Teacher: Which opinion is
the correct one?
“Si Fu: There has been no
decision about it....
“Teacher: Why does the
question remain unresolved?
“Si Fu: The Congress which
was to have made the decision took place two hundred years ago at Mi Sang monastery,
which lies on the bank of the Yellow River. The question was: Is the Yellow River real
or does it exist only in people’s heads? But during the Congress the snow thawed in the
mountains and swept away the Mi Sang monastery with all the participants in the Congress.
So the proof that things exist externally to us, self-sufficiently, independently of us
was not finished....”
—Bertolt Brecht, Turandot,
Scene 4A.
MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM
This is a great philosophical work by Lenin which defends and develops scientific
materialism. It was written in 1908 and first published in May 1909. Its purpose was to
combat various Kantian, religious and other
idealist doctrines which were becoming popular among a certain
strata of the Russian revolutionary movement, including among some of the Bolsheviks.
In the late 19th century, physics
entered into a period of crisis with the discovery of radioactivity and other anomalies, and
the advent of the earliest quantum-related speculations. Thus some of the materialist
assumptions, that most physicists had explicitly or tacitly assumed, came into question,
especially by scientists and philosophers who had been strongly influenced by Kant or early
forms of positivism. These idealist theories spread beyond
physics and philosophy, and led to a resurgence of subjective
idealism among intellectuals. It was the intrusion of this trend into the revolutionary
movement itself that alarmed Lenin, and moved him to write this book.
Since at the beginning of the 21st
century Kantianism and various other forms of philosophical idealism are once again quite
rampant, even among some philosophers who claim to be Marxists or influenced by Marxism, and
since these people are misleading many young revolutionaries in the universities, it is all
the more important to once again promote the serious study of Lenin’s Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism.
“The book is the outcome of a prodigious amount of creative scientific
research carried out by Lenin during nine months. His main work on the book was carried
out in Geneva libraries, but in order to obtain a detailed knowledge of the modern
literature of philosophy and natural science he went in May 1908 to London, where he
worked for about a month in the library of the British Museum. The list of sources
quoted or mentioned by Lenin in his book exceeds 200 titles.
“In December 1908 Lenin went from
Geneva to Paris where he worked until April 1909 on correcting the proofs of his book.
He had to agree to tone down some passages of the work so as not to give the tsarist
censorship an excuse for prohibiting its publication. It was published in Russia under
great difficulties. Lenin insisted on the speedy issue of the book, stressing that ‘not
only literary but also serious political obligations’ were involved in its publication.
“Lenin’s work Materialism and
Empirio-criticism played a decisive part in combating the Machist revision of Marxism.
It enabled the philosophical ideas of Marxism to spread widely among the mass of party
members and helped the party activists and progressive workers to master dialectical and
historical materialism.
“This classical work of Lenin’s
has achieved a wide circulation in many countries, and has been published in over 20
languages.” —Note 11, LCW 14 [1968].
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
“Logically” this should mean the mathematical development of any form of logic. In practice,
in bourgeois society, it usually just means the mathematical development of the various
kinds of deductive logic. It is almost always propounded
in axiomatic form, that is, along the same lines as geometry usually is, with axioms,
postulates, theorems, proofs, and so forth. As with most of modern mathematics, it can soon
become highly abstruse to the point where only specialists can understand the more complex
arguments and proofs.
MATHEMATICAL OBJECT (or ENTITY)
This category includes the various kinds of numbers (natural numbers such as 1, 2, 3...),
integers, real numbers (i.e., numbers that can be represented as a ratio or fraction of
two integers), complex numbers, vectors, etc., and the various types of geometric
shapes (points, lines, planes, triangles, circles, pentagons, cubes, spheres, etc.), and so
forth. All of these kinds of entities are abstractions;
that is, they are concepts or ideal figures that have been abstracted out of objects or
collections that approximate them in some way in the physical world.
From pairs of things we have abstracted the
concept of the number 2; from trios we have abstracted the number 3; from very tiny specks and
motes we have abstracted the concept of a mathematical point; from things in a row or more or
less straight scratches and marks we have abstracted the concept of a straight line. Once a
stock of such elementary abstractions have been formed we can extend them and combine them.
Thus the number 31 can be comprehended even if we have never directly abstracted that
particular number from varying collections of 31 items. A regular equilateral 73-sided
two-dimensional figure can be contemplated (and recognized to approximate a circle) even if we
have never actually seen a close physical approximation of such a figure.
In the philosophy of mathematics there have
been many and continuing disputes about the actual (“ontological”)
nature of mathematical objects, along with disputes about the nature of abstractions in general.
In what sense can these entities be said to “exist”? Do they form part of “reality”, even
though they are not physical things? Such questions arise because people were (and often still
are) very confused by the nature of abstraction. As usual in philosophy, the two big camps
are materialism and idealism.
Mathematical idealism is often termed mathematical Platonism (see entry below).
We materialists view abstraction as being an
important and necessary way for human beings to think about and understand the world, meaning
primarily the physical world and human society. Our ability to form abstractions evolved in
our species (and to lesser degrees in other animal species on Earth) because this promoted
our survival. But we grant that some of the systems of abstractions we have created are so
complex, and the interrelationships among the different abstract elements are sometimes so
difficult to immediately grasp, that the thorough investigation of these abstract realms
often requires a tremendous amount of concentrated thought. This is especially the case in
mathematics. This is the “world of abstractions” that mathematicians (and others) often
imagine to be on an ontological par with the physical world.
There are indeed actual logical relationships
between mathematical objects, relationships which are not themselves arbitrary or
“mere human inventions”, but real relationships that derive from the definitions and logical
structure of those systems of abstract mathematical objects. On the one hand, humans did
create these abstract mathematical objects in their minds, but the mathematical objects they
created have objective characteristics. Other intelligent life somewhere in the universe,
which creates those same abstract mathematical objects, will come to the same mathematical
conclusions about them as we do—because the same logical relationships will hold between
those same abstract elements. We find that the sum of the interior angles of a two-dimensional
Euclidean triangle add up to 180 degrees, and so will they.
The branches of mathematics that we human
beings have created are not themselves “part” of the universe (except in the sense that the
representations of this mathematics, whether on paper or in our brains, has a physical
basis). If you list all the things that exist in the universe, the number 2 will not be
among them along with trees and chairs. But on the other hand, the systems of mathematical
abstraction do have objective logical relationships within them. The thorough exploration of
those objective logical relationships between these abstract mathematical “objects” is what
mathematics is all about.
MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM
One of a number of related views about the nature of mathematical
“objects” (such as numbers, points, lines, and triangles) and their properties and
inter-relationships, which are (or seem to be) along the lines of Platonism
in general. That is, ideas about mathematical abstractions which are examples of philosophical
idealism.
Platonists are philosophical idealists, who
hold that ideas (rather than matter) are primary in the world. Since mathematics is the
exploration of the logical interrelationships between certain sorts of abstractions (relating
primarily to quantity and form), and since abstractions are themselves ideas, mathematicians
have very often been seduced by Platonism. They often view abstract entities such as numbers
and geometric shapes as having an independent existence from the physical world (in addition
to physical objects). For example, the great British number theorist G. H. Hardy wrote:
“For me, and I suppose for most mathematicians, there is another
reality [besides ‘physical reality’ —SH], which I will call ‘mathematical reality’....
I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or
observe it.” [G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (Cambridge University
Press, 1969), p. 123.]
Martin Gardner, the expert on mathematical games, put it this way in explaining why he is
an “unashamed Platonist” when it comes to mathematics:
“If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain
a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though
there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would
continue to be prime even if no one had proved them prime.” [Martin Gardner, When You
Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish (2009)]
The idealist flaw in the thinking here is that while prime numbers will still be prime
(whether or not anyone has yet proven this for particular numbers), numbers are
nevertheless not part of the world in the sense that atoms and planets and people are.
Numbers are intellectual abstractions, or mental constructs. And whether a number is prime
or not is a matter of a certain type of logical relationship of that number to the other
numbers.
The “worldly existence” of ideas,
abstractions, and indeed even numbers and geometric shapes, depends on the prior existence
of matter, if only in the form of thinkers who can generate such abstractions in their
mind/brain.
MATHEMATICS — And the World
[To be added... ]
“But it is not at all true that in pure mathematics the mind deals
only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and figure have
not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on
which men learnt to count, that is, to perform the first arithmetical operation, are
anything but a free creation of the mind. Counting requires not only objects that can
be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered
except their number—and this ability is the product of a long historical development
based on experience.... Like all other sciences, mathematics arose out of the
needs of men: from the measurement of land and the content of vessels, from
the computation of time and from mechanics. But, as in every department of thought,
at a certain stage of development the laws, which were abstracted from the real
world, become divorced from the real world, and are set up against it as something
independent, as laws coming from outside, to which the world has to conform. That is
how things happened in society and in the state, and in this way, and not otherwise,
pure mathematics was subsequently applied to the world, although it is
borrowed from this same world and represents only one part of its forms of
interconnection—and it is only just because of this that it can be applied
at all.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878), MECW 25:37.
MATTER
1. [In materialist philosophy:] All the
physical constituents of reality, including matter in the physics sense (see below) and
also energy. But this category does not include mind and mental phenomena,
which are special ways of looking at the functioning of certain complex organizations
of matter (e.g., brains).
“[T]he sole ‘property’ of matter with whose recognition
philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective
reality, of existing outside the mind.” —Lenin, “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”
(1908), LCW 14:260-1.
2. [In physics:] The substance from which physical objects are composed; the material
substance that is generally considered to occupy space, have mass (“weight”), and which
most prominently exists in the form of atoms and their constituent parts (such as protons,
neutrons and electrons). Matter in this sense is now known to be interconvertable with
energy, and this is one reason why there needs to be the broader philosophical sense of the
term ‘matter’ as well. Within contemporary physics there are several categories of matter,
including ordinary matter (of which everyday objects are composed),
anti-matter, and the hypothesized dark matter.
MAY FOURTH MOVEMENT
An important radical nationalist movement of Chinese students and intellectuals which grew
out of demonstrations by students at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on May 4, 1919. This
demonstration condemned both the unfair terms of the Versailles Treaty ending World War I
which granted significant territorial concessions from China to Japan, and also the weak
warlord government in control of Beijing which went along with this imperialist deal.
“‘May 4’ refers to May 4, 1919, when the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal
revolutionary movement broke out. In the first half of that year, Britain, France, the
United States, Japan, Italy and other imperialist countries that had emerged victorious
from World War I held a conference in Paris to divide the booty. A decision was adopted
which stipulated that Japan would take over all the privileges previously held by Germany
in China’s Shantung Province. On May 4 that year, the students in Peking took the lead
and held rallies and demonstrations to protest against the decision. When the government
of the Northern Warlords resorted to suppression, the Peking students suspended classes
in protest. Students in other parts of the country quickly rose to express their
solidarity. The Northern Warlord government made mass arrests in Peking, which aroused
still greater indignation among the people of the whole nation. The patriotic movement
so far participated [in] mainly by the intellectuals rapidly developed into a nationwide
movement participated [in] by the proletariat, petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie. As the
patriotic movement surged ahead, the new cultural movement against feudalism and for
science and democracy unfolded prior to the May 4th Movement developed into a mammoth
revolutionary cultural movement with the propagation of Marxism-Leninism as its main
current.
“After the founding of the People’s
Republic of China in 1949, May 4 was officially proclaimed China’s Youth Day.” —Footnote
in Peking Review, vol. 19, #22, p. 12, May 28, 1976.
MAZUMDAR, Charu (1918-72)
[His family name is also often transliterated from Bengali as “Majumdar”.]
A great revolutionary in India who was the leader of the famous armed Naxalbari uprising of
peasants in 1967, and one of the main founders of the modern Maoist movement in India. He led
in the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969 as a split-off
from the revisionist Communist Party of India (Marxist). In 1972
Mazumdar was captured and tortured to death by police, and the CPI(M-L) fractured into many
pieces. However, the current powerful and rapidly growing Maoist-led revolutionary movement
in India has come together from some of the segments of that old party together with other
Maoist forces who had remained outside of the original CPI(M-L).
Charu Mazumdar was born into a progressive
landlord family in Siliguri, West Bengal, in 1918. Even as a teenager Mazumdar rebelled
against social inequalities, and joined up with the All Bengal Students Association, which
was a group of petty-bourgeois nationalist revolutionaries affiliated with the Anusilan group.
By the age of 20 he had dropped out of college and joined the Congress Party, and became an
an organizer amoung bidi workers. He shifted further left
and joined the Communist Party of India, and worked in the Kisan Sabha, its peasant
organization, with the poor and oppressed peasants in Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling. An arrest
warrant was issued for him, and he had to go underground for the first time.
The CPI was banned at the beginning of
World War II, but Mazumdar continued his peasant organizing work and was elected to the
Jalpaiguri district committee of the CPI in 1942. In 1943, mostly because of the British
imperialist looting of so much of India’s grain and their indifference to the welfare of
the Indian people, a major famine broke out in West Bengal. [See:
Famines—Imperialist Caused] Mazumdar organized a
fairly successful ‘seizure of crops’ campaign by the peasants in Jalpaiguri during this
famine.
In 1946 Mazumdar joined and help lead
the Tebhaga Movement of peasants trying to keep
more of their harvests from the grasping hands of the landlords. This movement helped
shape his conception of revolutionary struggle, and also helped prepare the peasant
masses for future revolutionary struggle. Later Mazumdar worked among tea garden workers
in Darjeeling. In 1948 the CPI was banned by the government, and Mazumdar was imprisoned
for three years. In January 1954 he married fellow CPI member Lila Mazumdar Sengupta.
A growing ideological struggle within
the CPI developed after its Palghat Congress in 1956, and Mazumdar quickly gravitated
toward the revolutionary left wing. In 1962 he was again imprisoned for opposing the Nehru
government’s war against revolutionary China. In 1964 the CPI split, reflecting within
India the Sino-Soviet Split, and Mazumdar joined the breakaway CPI (Marxist). But he
disagreed with the CPI (Marxist)’s electoral policy and decision to postpone armed
struggle until some indefinite point in the far future.
During the mid-1960s Mazumdar organized a
left faction within the CPI (Marxist) in northern West Bengal. He was in poor health in
1964-65 but devoted this time, even while in jail, to studying and writing about the path
of the Indian revolution on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. This led
to his very influential writings and speeches in the 1965-67 period, which were later
called the ‘Historic Eight Documents’.
In 1967 the CPI (Marxist) [or “CPM” as
it is generally known] betrayed the revolutionary movement by joining with the bourgeois
party, the Bangla Congress, in a coalition government in West Bengal. But on May 25 of
that same year Mazumdar showed there was another road possible by leading the peasants
in the vicinity of the village of Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal in
a historic uprising. The rebels annihilated a notorious police inspector, and took the
first step in launching the New Democratic revolution in India. The state government’s
Home Ministry, headed by the CPM leader Jyoti Basu, brutally suppressed this uprising,
and even murdered 11 women and 2 children in the process. But the ideology of “Naxalism”
spread rapidly and inspired revolutionaries around India and South Asia.
Many revolutionaries within the CPM, from
7 different Indian states, then set up what was originally called the All India
Coordination Committee of Revolutionaries (AICCR), on Nov. 12-13, 1967. This was renamed
the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR), and later
launched the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) as a new revolutionary party, on
April 2, 1969. Charu Mazumdar was its General Secretary. The CPI(M-L) held its first Party
Congress in Kolkata under strict underground conditions in 1970. Mazumdar was re-elected
General Secretary, and the Party Congress put forward its basic programme of protracted
people’s war, including the annihilation (killing) of class enemies.
Of course the Indian ruling class, both
in West Bengal and around the country, mounted a fierce crackdown on this new revolutionary
movement, and this reached a peak during and after 1971 when many key Naxalite leaders
were killed. Mazumdar was apparently betrayed by a renegade Party member, and was arrested
in Kolkata on July 16, 1972. He was taken to Kolkata police headquarters in the Lal Bazar
neighborhood where he underwent the most horrifying and cruel tortures. No one, not even
his family, his lawyer, or a doctor, was allowed to see him. He died at 4 a.m. on July 28,
while in police custody.
Although there were some secondary aspects
of Charu Mazumdar’s precise political line which were in error, including the prescription
that Mao Tse-tung should personally be considered the Chairman not only of the Chinese
Communist Party but also the CPI(M-L), Mazumdar was nevertheless a great revolutionary who
made extremely important contributions to the revolutionary movement in India and the
world. He is a martyr who is rightly well remembered and honored by our revolutionary
movement.
Much of the information
in this entry comes from
http://imp-personalities.blogspot.com/2007/09/charu-majumdar-father-of-naxalism.html
Many of Mazumdar’s political writings can be found in the Marxist Internet Archive at
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mazumdar/