NARODNYA VOLYA (PEOPLE’S WILL)
“The secret political organization of Narodnik terroists formed in
August 1879 following the split in the Zemlya i Volya organization. It was headed by an
Executive Committee consisting of A. I. Zhelyabov, A. D. Mikhailov, M. F. Frolenko,
N. A. Morozov, Vera Figner, Sophia Perovskaya, A. A. Kvyatkovsky, and others.
“While still adhering to the
Narodnik utopian-socialist ideas, Narodnaya Volya believed also in political struggle,
regarding the overthrow of the autocracy and the achievement of political freedom as a
major aim. ‘The Narodnaya Volya members,’ Lenin wrote, ‘made a step forward when they
took up the political struggle, but they failed to connect it with socialism’ [LCW 8:72].
“Narodnaya Volya fought heroically
against the tsarist autocracy. But, going by the erroneous theory of ‘active’ heroes and
a ‘passive’ mass, it expected to achieve the remaking of society without the participation
of the people, by its own efforts, through individual terrorism that would intimidate and
disorganize the government. After the assassination of Alexander II on March 1, 1881, the
government was able, by savage reprisals, death sentences, and acts of provocation, to
crush it out of existence. Repeated attempts to revive the organization during the
eighties ended in failure.
“While criticizing Narodnaya Volya’s
erroneous, utopian programme, Lenin expressed great respect for its members’ selfless
struggle against tsarism and had a high opinion of their technique of secrecy and their
strictly centralized organization.” —Note 78, Lenin, SW I (1967).
NATIONAL INTERESTS (Under Capitalism)
What are often described as “national interests” in a capitalist state are in fact the
interests of its ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Thus when the U.S. government tells
Americans that it is in the “national interests” of the United States that it should
make war against Vietnam or Iraq, we should understand full well that this is only a
camouflaged way of talking about the class interests of the capitalists who currently own
and control the country.
“It’s in our national interest to prevent this from happening [the
collapse of the giant insurance corporation AIG]. This is beyond a company and beyond
its shareholders. It’s in our national interest.” —Hank Greenberg, former head of AIG,
pleading on CNBC for the U.S. government bailout of the company, Sept. 16, 2008. The
government proceeded to do just that, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars,
because Greenberg’s ruling class pals who were running the government felt exactly
the same way.
“Great powers have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies.
They only have permanent interests.” —Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary,
mid-nineteenth century. Quoted in Robert Smith Thompson, The Eagle Triumphant:
How America Took Over the British Empire (2004), p. 101.
NATURAL DISASTERS
Growing numbers of what we still call “natural disasters” are in fact not completely
“natural” at all! Instead, they are more and more being caused by human activity directed
by the ruling capitalist class in order to increase their profits, and almost totally
without regard to what their polluting factories and machines are doing to the climate
and to humanity. It is not just through their endless wars that the capitalist-imperialists
kill so many people, but in many other ways as well.
[Speaking of contemporary American capitalist society:] “During
good times, it’s easy to deride ‘big government’ and talk about the inevitability of
cutbacks. But during disasters, most everyone loses their free market religion and
wants to know that their government has their backs. And if there is one thing we
can be sure of, it’s that extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy, Typhoon
Haiyan in the Philippines, and the British floods—disasters that, combined, pummeled
coastlines beyond recognition, ravaged millions of homes, and killed many
thousands—are going to keep coming.
“Over the course of the 1970s,
there were 660 reported [major] disasters around the world, including droughts,
floods, extreme temperature events, wildfires, and storms. In the 2000s, there were
3,322—a fivefold boost. That is a staggering increase in just over thirty years,
and clearly global warming cannot be said to have ‘caused’ all of it. But the
climate signal is also clear. ‘There’s no question that climate change has increased
the frequency of certain types of extreme weather events,’ climate scientist Michael
Mann told me in an interview, ‘including drought, intense hurricanes, and super
typhoons, the frequency and intensity and duration of heat waves, and potentially
other types of extreme weather though the details are still being debated within the
scientific community.’”
—Naomi Klein, This Changes
Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014), p. 107. [Klein is only a reformer,
but what she says here is correct. —Ed.]
NATURAL SELECTION [Evolutionary Biology]
At the most abstract level natural selection is the propagation of certain configurations
of matter relative to other configurations by virtue of the effects that they have on the world.
The English biologists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace formulated the theory of
evolution by natural selection to account for the diversity, complexity and functionality of
life. Natural selection is a powerful and ever-present condition of biological nature, but it
does not exist as an independent “force”; it is simply the consequence of certain ubiquitous
features of this biological nature, namely variation (not all individuals are the same), heredity
(some of those differences can be passed on to offspring) and differential “competence” (some
variants happen to be more well suited to the prevailing conditions in an environment). Those
variants that happen to be more competent at dealing with the constraints and challenges of a
particular environment will automatically tend, on average, to have the opportunity to produce
more offspring of their likeness more regularly than other variants (and, willy-nilly, be able
to pass on those traits that conferred this greater success). Cumulative natural selection,
taking place over many generations wherein “small but useful increments” (to borrow a phrase
from Darwin) are added to existing configurations, is perhaps the most important mechanism by
which biological complexity and diversity are generated. However, natural selection need not
result in change per se; it can also maintain existing configurations, favouring them over
alternatives that arise in a population, if those existing configurations are better suited to
the environment. Like so much in biology and other complex systems, the answer to the question,
“What will happen?”, will be, “It depends”.
Biological organisms, which always exist in the
context of other organisms, have, through billions of years, evolved and adapted to live in each
other’s presence and to benefit from this proximity. This has resulted in vastly different
strategies for eking out an existence. The members of one lineage may evolve to exploit the
members of another lineage, which will themselves evolve to avoid being exploited or to mitigate
the harm done by exploitation; thus selection can result in biological “arms races”, and this is
certainly an important feature of the struggle between hosts and parasites and predators and
prey. Selection can also favour cooperative alliances (known as “symbioses”), in which two or
more parties allocate resources in a mutually beneficial way. Exploitation and cooperation have
evolved many times independently throughout the history of life, and they are present in varying
degrees all throughout the tree (or web) of life. Within species, selection can also favour
different behaviours or “strategies”, for example with regard to mating preferences and resource
allocation in familial groups. However diverse the strategies, adaptations and complexes produced
by selection, they only ever get to be selected if they can “pay” for themselves; that is, if the
cost of their use does not, on average, outweigh their benefit. The sheer diversity of life, and
the ubiquity of both exploitation and cooperation (and all the gradations in between) shows that
there is certainly a lot hidden within this basic formula! But it is important to realise that
there is nothing deeply mysterious about this; it all comes back to the qualifier, “It depends”
(“it” being the pressures imposed by the environment, and the existing features and constraints
of the organism—themselves products of past selection and evolution).
Selection can effect change at vastly different
speeds, it can reverse direction, it can tend towards stable equilibrium, and it can produce
recurrent patterns. This is all ultimately grounded in the everyday, mundane goings-on of
material, biological entities interacting with one another.
Modern evolutionary theory recognises that
selection can take place at various levels, from genes to individuals all the way up to species
and even larger categories. Selection is one of several processes in the evolution of life,
which biological science aims to understand by integrating these processes into a coherent
framework. —L.C.
NATURE — Dialectics Of
[Intro material to be added... ]
“Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious
dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception
of nature and history. But a knowledge of mathematics and natural science is essential
to a conception of nature which is dialectical and at the same time materialist.”
—Engels, Preface to the 1885 edition of Anti-Dühring, MECW 25:11.
“... in nature, amid the welter of innumerable changes, the same
dialectical laws of motion force their way through as those which in history govern
the apparent fortuitousness of events; the same laws which similarly form the thread
running through the history of the development of human thought and gradually rise to
consciousness in thinking man.... And finally, to me there could be no question of
building the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering them in it and
evolving them from it.” —Engels, ibid., MECW 25:11-13.
“And since biology has been pursued in the light of the theory of
evolution, one rigid boundary line of classification after another has been swept
away in the domain of organic nature.... It is precisely the polar antagonisms put
forward as irreconcilable and insoluble, the forcibly fixed lines of demarcation and
class distinctions, which have given modern theoretical natural science its restricted,
metaphysical character. The recognition that these antagonisms and distinctions,
though to be found in nature, are only of relative validity, and that on the other
hand their imagined rigidity and absolute validity have been introduced into nature
only by our reflective minds—this recognition is the kernel of the dialectical
conception of nature. It is possible to arrive at this recognition because the
accumulating facts of natural science compel us to do so; but one arrives at it more
easily if one approaches the dialectical character of these facts equipped with an
understanding of the laws of dialectical thought.” —Engels, ibid., MECW 25:14.
“Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern
science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasing daily,
and thus has shown that, in the last resort, nature works dialectically and not
metaphysically....
“An exact representation of the
universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of
this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of
dialectics with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life
and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring,
MECW 25:23-24.
NEGATION (In Dialectics)
Negation in dialectics is not the same thing as negation
in formal logic. In formal logic, negation is the total denial of a statement or
assertion. But as the term is used in discussing dialectics, negation involves the
resolution of a dialectical contradiction which transforms or resolves a thing,
situation or process in certain important respects, while also maintaining some
similarity or continuity with the previous thing, situation or process in other respects.
This is best illustrated by an example:
Capitalism is the negation of feudalism.
The defining social contradiction of feudalism, that between landlords and peasants, is
resolved when capitalism replaces feudalism, and (for the most part, at least) the nobility
and peasantry no longer exist. However, capitalism continues some other aspects of
the broader situation that formerly included feudalism, most notably the exploitation of one
class by another, which now occurs in the form of capitalists exploiting workers.
See also entries below.
[On negation in dialectics:] “Not empty negation, not futile negation,
not skeptical negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and essential in
dialectics,—which undoubtedly contains the element of negation and indeed as its most
important element—no, but negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development,
retaining the positive, i.e., without any vacillations, without any eclecticism.”
—Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Book Science of Logic” (1914), LCW 38:226.
“The error of formal logic is in its perception of negation as an
external negation between one process and another, which is moreover regarded as an
absolute negation; this approach completely misunderstands reality. The opposite of
this approach is dialectical materialism, that is, scientific observation and study.
Material reality is self-motion, and moreover this self-motion is interconnected. Any
process itself moves forward because of the struggle of contradictions, and through
a sudden transformation it changes to move in an opposite direction. The entire history
of development of any process is constructed of a thesis, an antithesis which negates
the thesis, and a synthesis which is a negation of the negation of the antithesis. The
thesis already contains contradiction or antithesis within it, the antithesis also
contains the thesis within it, and the synthesis incorporates both the thesis and
antithesis. So-called negation, as Lenin has stated, ‘is neither random nor complete
negation, is neither skeptical nor vacillating negation; it is rather negation as an
element which preserves connection, an element of affirmation, i.e., without any
vacillations, without skepticism’. [This is an English translation of the Chinese
translation of Lenin’s comment that Mao used. See standard English translation from
LCW 38:226 in the quotation just above this one.] Negation does not destroy everything
and make a clean break with the past, it is not absolute; things that are in front
contain things that come later, and things that come later contain things that are in
front. Without the motion of negation, there can be no motion of affirmation. All
processes are like this.
“Negation is the ever-higher
development of a process.
“A dialectical negation does
not constitute a complete break with the past or its complete elimination.
“The first negation creates the
possibility of the second negation.
“A dialectical negation is the
cause of movement of a process of development, and this negation manifests itself as
two aspects: one aspect manifests itself as sublation, namely the overcoming of the
principal things of the old entity which are incompatible with preservation; the
other aspect manifests itself as affirmation, namely the provision of status to and
the preservation of the various things of the old entity which are still temporarily
compatible with existence.” —Mao, 1936/1937, marginal notes in his copy of the Chinese
translation of M. Shirokov & A. Aizenberg et al., A Course on Dialectical
Materialism; in Nick Knight, ed., Mao Zedong on Dialectical Materialism
(1990), pp. 276-7.
“Marxist philosophy, as distinguished from preceding philosophical
systems, is not a science dominating the other sciences, rather it is an instrument
of scientific investigation, a method, penetrating all natural and social sciences,
enriching itself with their attainments in the course of their development. In this
sense Marxist philosophy is the most complete and decisive negation of all preceding
philosophy. But to negate, as Engels emphasized, does not mean merely to say ‘no.’
Negation includes continuity, signifies absorption, the critical reforming and
unification in a new and higher synthesis of everything advanced and progressive
that has been achieved in the history of human thought.” —A. A. Zhdanov, “On the
History of Philosophy”, 1947.
NEGATION OF THE NEGATION
The central notion in the negation of the negation is that of certain common forms of
dialectical development which, in some respects, return
to (or come around again to) where they began, but which in other respects have fundamentally
changed. The pictorial image which best illustrates this is the spiral, or better yet, the spiral
in three dimensions which is known as a helix (e.g., a coiled telephone cord). Each time
around the cord comes back near to where it started, while at the same time being in an entirely
different geometric plane.
How can a process of development both return
to, and not return to, its starting place? This is possible if there is more than one
dialectical contradiction at work. Specifically,
it is possible (and indeed typical, and perhaps even necessary) where one overriding
contradiction works itself out via a sequence of sub-contradictions.
The favorite (and probably the clearest) example
of this for us Marxists is the development of the overall exploitation contradiction according
to historical materialism. The first exploitative
socioeconomic formation was
slave society, where slaves were exploited by slave owners.
Slave society then developed into feudalism, which was different
in many respects from slavery. But in at least one key respect it was the reproduction of slave
society; that is, exploitation still continued, though in a new form (the exploitation of
peasants by the landlord aristocracy). Society was then once again revolutionized, as feudalism
was overthrown by capitalism, and once again a great many things changed. But that same key
respect of exploitation was once again reproduced in a new form, the exploitation of workers by
the capitalists via the extraction of surplus value. [Note,
by the way, that this will be the end of the line for the progressive transformation of the
exploitation contradiction. The only possible further step at this point is the ending of
exploitation entirely, through the overthrow of capitalism, and the building of first
socialism and then communism.]
The negation of the negation, then,
as Lenin summarized it, is “the repetition at a higher stage of certain features, properties,
etc., of the lower [stage]”, and 2) “the apparent return to the old” [LCW 38:222]. It is the
development of a larger or overall contradiction by means of the replacement of one
sub-contradiction with another sub-contradiction which has both differences from, and
similarities to, the earlier one.
See also:
HEGELIAN TRIADS,
SUBLATION
“The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist
mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of
individual private property, as founded on the labor of the proprietor. But capitalist
production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is
the negation of the negation. This does not re-establish private property for the
producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist
era: i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the
means of production.” —Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. 32: International ed., p. 763;
Penguin ed., p. 929.
[So Marx is saying here that
capitalist private property is the negation of the individual private property that
belongs to the artisan who produces it in a pre-capitalist economy; that the
distribution of goods to individual people under communism is the negation of
capitalist private property; and that communist distribution is the negation of
the negation of the individual property of the individual artisan. In other words, Marx
is explaining this specific example of the development of “private property” relations
in society in terms of dialectical terminology. This, of course, is only one
example of the negation of the negation in economics; political economy abounds
with developments which can be explained in such terms! —S.H.]
NEGATION OF THE NEGATION — Engels’s View Of
“To attempt to prove anything by means of dialectics alone to a crass
metaphysician like Herr Dühring would be as much a waste of time as was the
attempt made by Leibniz and his pupils to prove the principles of the infinitesimal
calculus to the mathematicians of their time. The differential gave them the same
cramps as Herr Dühring gets from the negation of the negation...
“But what then is this fearful
negation of the negation, which makes life so bitter for Herr Dühring and with
him plays the same role of the unpardonable crime as the sin against the Holy Ghost
does in Christianity?—A very simple process which is taking place everywhere and
every day, which any child can understand as soon as it is stripped of the veil of
mystery in which it was enveloped by the old idealist philosophy and in which it is
to the advantage of helpless metaphysicians of Herr Dühring’s calibre to keep it
enveloped. Let us take a grain of barley. Billions of such grains of barley are milled,
boiled and brewed and then consumed. But if such a grain of barley meets with
conditions which are normal for it, if it falls on suitable soil, then under the
influence of heat and moisture it undergoes a specific change, it germinates; the
grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which
has arisen from it, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal life-process of
this plant? It grows, flowers, is fertilized and finally once more produces grains of
barley, and as soon as these have ripened the stalk dies, is in its turn negated. As
a result of this negation of the negation we have once again the original grain of
barley, but not as a single unity, but ten-, twenty- or thirtyfold. Species of grain
change extremely slowly, and so the barley of today is almost the same as it was a
century ago. But if we take ... [an] ornamental plant, for example a dahlia or an
orchid, and treat the seed and the plant which grows from it according to the
gardener’s art, we get as a result of this negation of the negation not only more
seeds, but also qualitatively improved seeds, which produce more beautiful flowers,
and each repetition of this process, each fresh negation of the negation, enhances
this process of perfection.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring (1876-1878), MECW
25:125-6.
[Ed. Note: On occasion some
people have objected to Engels’s description here of the “normal” development of
barley grains into plants, etc., as if this showed some teleological or other invalid
viewpoint. That would be irrelevant even if it were true (which it isn’t). If the
word “normal” bothers you in this passage, simply substitute a longer phrase it is
short for, such as “in the way in which it evolved to develop under the appropriate
conditions for its regeneration”. Notice that such a substitution does not in any way
change the validity of the explanation of the negation of the negation that
Engels was presenting. In other words, as I said, these sorts of misconstruals and
pedantic objections are really quite beside the point. —S.H.]
“With most insects, this process follows the same lines as in the
case of the grain of barley. Butterflies, for example, spring from the egg by a
negation of the egg, pass through certain transformations until they reach sexual
maturity, pair and are in turn negated, dying as soon as the pairing process has been
completed and the female has laid its numerous eggs. We are not concerned at the
moment with the fact that with other plants and animals the process does not take such
a simple form, that before they die they produce seeds, eggs or offspring not once but
many times; our purpose here is only to show that the negation of the negation
really does take place in both kingdoms of the organic world.” —Engels, ibid.,
MECW 25:126. [Engels then goes on to give further examples of the negation of the
negation in the inorganic world (e.g., geology), and in the world of ideas (e.g.,
mathematics). —S.H.]
“And so, what is the negation of the negation? An extremely
general—and for this reason extremely far-reaching and important—law of development
of nature, history, and thought; a law which, as we have seen, holds good in the
animal and plant kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in history and in philosophy...
It is obvious that I do not say anything concerning the particular process of
development of, for example, a grain of barley from germination to the death of the
fruit-bearing plant, if I say it is a negation of the negation.... That, however, is
precisely what the metaphysicians are constantly imputting to dialectics. When I say
that all these processes are a negation of the negation, I bring them all together
under this one law of motion, and for this very reason I leave out of account the
specific peculiarities of each individual process. Dialectics, however, is nothing
more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human
society and thought.
“But someone may object: the
negation that has taken place in this case is not a real negation: I negate a grain
of barley also when I grind it, an insect when I crush it underfoot.... These
objections are in fact the chief arguments put forward by the metaphysicians against
dialectics, and they are wholly worthy of the narrow-mindedness of this mode of
thought. Negation in dialectics does not mean simply saying no, or declaring that
something does not exist, or destroying it in any way one likes.... [T]he kind of
negation is here determined, firstly, by the general and, secondly, by the particular
nature of the process. I must not only negate, but also sublate the negation. I must
therefore so arrange the first negation that the second remains or becomes possible.
How? This depends on the particular nature of each individual case.” —Engels, ibid.,
MECW 25:131.
“Once again, therefore, it is no one but Herr Dühring who is
mystifying us when he asserts that the negation of the negation is a stupid analogy
invented by Hegel, borrowed from the sphere of religion and based on the story of the
fall of man and his redemption.... Men thought dialectically long before they knew
what dialectics was, just as they spoke prose long before the term prose existed.
The law of negation of the negation, which is unconsciously operative in nature and
history and, until it has been recognized, also in our heads, was only first clearly
formulated by Hegel.” —Engels, ibid., MECW 25:132.
NEGATION OF THE NEGATION — Mao’s View Of
Mao frequently referred to the concept of the “negation of the negation” over the years.
But in August 1964 he was reported as saying in one conversation that “this does not exist
at all”. (See first quotation below.) The Sinologist Nick Knight plausibly argues, however,
that Mao did not at all abandon the concept of the “negation of the negation”, but
rather merely used another term (“affirmation, negation”) for essentially the same idea.
(See second quotation below.)
“Engels talked about the three categories, but as for me I don’t
believe in two of those categories. (The unity of opposites is the most basic law,
the transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity of the
opposites quality and quantity, and the negation of the negation does not exist at
all.) The juxtaposition, on the same level, of the transformation of quality and
quantity into one another, the negation of the negation, and the law of the unity
of opposites is ‘triplism’, not monism. The most basic thing is the unity of
opposites. The transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity
of the opposites quality and quantity. There is no such thing as the negation of
the negation. Affirmation, negation, affirmation, negation … in the development of
things, every link in the chain of events is both affirmation and negation.
Slave-holding society negated primitive society, but with reference to feudal society
it constituted, in turn, the affirmation. Feudal society constituted the negation in
relation to slaveholding society but it was in turn the affirmation with reference
to capitalist society. Capitalism was the negation in relation to feudal society,
but it is, in turn, the affirmation in relation to socialist society.” —Mao, in an
informal discussion about philosophy with Kang Sheng and other comrades, August 18,
1964; online as
Talk on Questions of Philosophy.
“It is evident, therefore, that one can find a good number of
references to the concept of the ‘negation of the negation’ in the Mao texts of the
late 1950s and early 1960s. It would appear that Mao’s August 1964 ‘rejection’ of
the concept is thus at odds with his otherwise relatively frequent and positive
references to it. However, parallel to such references to the ‘negation of the
negation’ emerges a different appellation for the concept, one which suggests that
Mao was seeking a label more in keeping with the more fundamental philosophical
category of the unity of opposites. In his important ‘Sixty Articles on Work Methods’
of January 1958, we discover that in referring to the three categories of Marxist
philosophy, Mao did not actually employ the title of the ‘negation of the
negation’:
“‘The law of the unity of
opposites, of quantitative to qualitative changes, and of affirmation and negation,
will hold good universally and eternally.’
“The formula used here to
describe the third philosophical category—‘affirmation’ and ‘negation’—is identical
to that used by Mao in his August 1964 talk on philosophy; ‘affirmation, negation …
in the development of things, every link in the chain of events is both affirmation
and negation’. What we have here is merely a change in title, for the substance of
the concept remains unchanged. The concept of the ‘negation of the negation assumes
that the factor which negates the negative (for example, capitalism’s negation of
feudalism) will initially constitute a positive factor, the affirmative. Over time,
however, its positive character will transform into its opposite, the affirmative
becoming the negative, as a new and historically progressive force emerges to
challenge it. This cycle, of negation, affirmation, negation as described by Mao in
August 1964, is in essence no different from that described earlier by himself and
other Marxist philosophers, including Lenin and Engels, under the rubric of the
‘negation of the negation’. Mao’s demonstrable predilection for linking and using
oxymoronic categories (life and death, truth and falsehood, materialism and idealism,
right and wrong, finite and infinite, advanced and backward, to name but a few)
suggests that he would have been unsympathetic to a formula which described a
contradictory process and yet appeared to link like to like: the negation of the
negation. By renaming the concept ‘affirmation and negation’, Mao could leave the
substance of the concept unaltered while bringing its title into line with the
pervasive idea that the unity of opposites exists in all things and processes.”
—Nick Knight, from the Introduction to Mao Zedong on Dialectical Materialism
(1990), pp. 22-23. [A fuller extract, with citations, can be found at:
http://www.massline.org/Philosophy/Others/Knight-Mao-NegOfNeg.pdf]
NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMICS
[Sometimes with a hyphen: neo-classical]
Neoclassical economics is the revised
version of classical bourgeois economics (of Adam Smith,
David Ricardo, et al.) which originally developed as
the “marginalist” school (of León Walras, Carl
Menger, William Stanley Jevons, and Alfred
Marshall) in the second half of the 1800s and which since then has been by far the most
dominant form of bourgeois economics. When most bourgeois economists refer to “economics”,
they mean neoclassical bourgeois economics. There have been some further more minor
modifications to neoclassical economics as it has developed over the century and more
since then, including: 1) demoting land from its place in classical economics as one of
the so-called “three factors of production” (along with labor and capital) to being
viewed as just one form of capital; 2) further emphasis on utility maximization; 3)
rational choice theory (insisting that economics is just a matter of rational choices
that people supposedly almost always make in the marketplace); and 4) the ever-greater
abstraction and mathematization of economics based on these bourgeois principles and the
ever-diminishing relevance of all this to the real world.
In addition, some bourgeois economists
have claimed that there has been a “synthesis” of neoclassical economics with
Keynesianism, though this “neoclassical synthesis” is
essentially still the same thing as before (see entry below).
Monetarism, as in the theories of
Milton Friedman, though considered by bourgeois
economists to be diametrically opposed to the “neoclassical synthesis”, is itself just
another slightly different sub-variety of neoclassical economics.
“It is only natural that neoclassical economists should work on the
principle that ‘what is good for capitalism is good.’ I only wish that they could
achieve a degree of self-understanding sufficient to admit that this is their
principle and to proclaim it as openly as we radicals proclaim the opposite.”
—Paul Sweezy, “Comment”, in Assar Lindbeck, The Political Economy of the New
Left (1977), p. 147.
NEO-COLONIALISM
[Often without the hyphen.] Neo-colonialism is the modified form of colonialism which
seeks to hide the real political control and economic domination and exploitation of a
country by one or more outside capitalist-imperialist countries. An outright, old-style
colony is “owned” and openly dominated, exploited, and administered by some imperialist
power. This imperialist overlord maintains its domination through open military force,
putting down any rebellions by the people in the colony, and by being willing to go to
war when necessary against other imperialist predators to secure that colony as its
private preserve and keep other exploiters out. But in a neo-colony the open, formal,
and “legal” domination of the oppressed country is absent. Instead, most of the same
results are accomplished surreptitiously, through the establishment by the imperialist
power of economic and political control through local comprador agents who are in
nominal governmental control of the neo-colony. However, if these local agents fail to
follow the most important orders from the imperialists, they are then forcibly
overthrown and replaced by more compliant lackies.
There are both advantages and
disadvantages to neo-colonialism (as opposed to old-style colonialism) from the point
of view of the capitalist-imperialists. By far the greatest advantage is that under
neo-colonialism it is vastly easier to fool the people of the oppressed nation about
who is really in control of their country. It is also easier to raise local armies to
do the dirty work of maintaining the real control by imperialists. On the other hand,
there are some increased secondary dangers to the imperialists. Thus their local
agents might get too independent and try to govern more in their own interests rather
than in the interests of the imperialists. This is why periodic coups or assassinations
ordered by the imperialists are still “necessary”, or even military interventions by
them. It is also true that it is more difficult to maintain each neo-colony as the
private preserve of a single imperialist power. Still, on the whole, the great change
from old-style colonialism to neo-colonialism—which was primarily accomplished in the
world by (presumed) national liberation struggles in the several decades following
World War II—has proven to be both necessary for the imperialists, and to their own
net advantage.
See also below, and:
NATURAL RESOURCE CURSE
NEO-COLONIALISM — Development Of
Open colonialism began in the early years of capitalism, such as with the conquest of
the New World by Spain, Portugal, France and Britain, and then with the beginning
conquest of India by Britain in the 18th century and of the conquest of the East Indies
by Holland. But as many of the old colonial powers began to weaken, many colonies
(especially in the New World) became formally independent.
In the Americas the newly developing
capitalist power, the U.S.A., proclaimed the “Monroe Doctrine”, that no European power
would be allowed to capture and control new colonies in the New World. Britain, however,
found that it was able to economically penetrate South America quite well. As the
British historian Eric Hobsbawm expressed it, South Amerca became “an informal part of
the British Empire”. This was an
early pioneer form of neo-colonialism. To some degree the British also economically
penetrated the U.S. itself, and developed some of the mechanisms of neo-colonialism
that way. But the U.S. was growing and developing very rapidly during the 19th century,
and eventually began to challenge and surpass the economic might of Britain.
However, in the last decades of the
1800s capitalism developed into its new imperialist form, a form much more predatory
and voracious. There was a mad rush of the major imperialist countries to carve up
Africa and other regions and establish new outright colonies as their own private
preserves for economic exploitation. The U.S. also joined this mad rush and seized a
number of colonies (including Cuba and the Philippines) from Spain. In World War I
the imperialist countries fought among themselves to see which would be top dog in a
world completely dominated by imperialism and colonialism. World War I did not fully
resolve the issue, and broke out again a generation later in the form of World
War II.
Many colonial countries came out of
World War II with tremendously increased nationalist sentiments, and over the next
few decades a major change happened in the world: the transformation, over most of
it, from colonialism to neo-colonialism. This was aided somewhat by some of the
imperialist countries themselves, the ones (including the U.S.) which were late to
the colonial banquet and which stood to benefit by ending the system of exclusive
colonies. The existing imperialist powers tremendously resisted this change, but they
were unable to stop this transformation in most of their one-time colonies. They were,
however, able to co-opt it, to make neo-colonialism little different in reality from
the open colonialism that preceded it. The imperialist powers still dominate most of
the poorer countries of the world, and tremendously exploit them, including their
material resources and their cheap supply of human labor.
NEO-KANTIANISM [Of the Late Nineteenth Century through the Time of Lenin]
“Neo-Kantianism—a reactionary trend in bourgeois philosophy
preaching subjective idealism under the slogan of a return to Kantian philosophy. It
arose in the middle of the nineteenth century in Germany, where at this time there
was an increased interest in Kantianism. In 1865 Otto Liebmann’s book Kant and
the Epigones was published, each chapter ending with the call: ‘Back to Kant’.
Liebmann put forward the task of correcting Kant’s ‘main error’—the recognition of
‘things-in-themselves’. The revival of Kantianism
was helped by the works of Kuno Fischer and Eduard Zeller, and one of the early
representatives of neo-Kantianism was Friedrich Albert Lange who tried to use
physiology as a basis for agnosticism.
“Later, two main schools of
neo-Kantianism were formed: that of Marburg (Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, etc.) and
that of Freiburg or Baden (Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, etc.). The former
tried to substantiate idealism by speculating on the successes of natural science,
especially on the penetration of mathematical methods into physics; the latter
counterposed the social sciences to natural science, trying to prove that historical
phenomena are strictly individual and not subject to the operation of any laws. Both
schools put the question of the logical basis of science in place of the fundamental
question of philosophy. Criticizing Kant ‘from the right’, the neo-Kantians declared
the ‘thing-in-itself’ to be a ‘limiting concept’ to which knowledge was tending.
Denying the objective existence of the material world, they regarded as the object
of knowledge not the laws of nature and society, but merely the phenomena of
consciousness. In contrast to the agnosticism of the natural scientists, that of the
neo-Kantians was not ‘shamefaced materialism’, for it asserted the impotance of
science in regard to cognition and changes of reality. The neo-Kantians openly
attacked Marxism, counterposing to it ‘ethical socialism’. In accordance with their
theory of knowledge they declared socialism to be the ‘ethical ideal’ of human
social existence, an ideal to which mankind was striving but which it could not
attain. This ‘theory’ of the neo-Kantians was seized upon by the revisionists,
headed by Eduard Bernstein, who put forward the slogan: ‘The movement is everything,
the final goal is nothing’. Neo-Kantianism was one of the philosophical pillars of
the Second International. In Russia attempts to ‘combine’ neo-Kantianism and Marxism
were made by the ‘legal Marxists’. G. V. Plekhanov, Paul Lafargue and Franz Mehring
opposed the neo-Kantian revision of Marxism. Lenin laid bare the reactionary nature
of neo-Kantianism and showed its connection with other trends of bourgeois
philosophy (immanentism, Machism, pragmatism, etc.).” —Note 18, LCW 14.
NEPAL — Maoist Parties In
The story of the many political organizations in Nepal which have called themselves “Maoist”,
or else which have at one time or another supported Mao and/or People’s War, is complex, and
many of the parties have been “Maoist” in name only. Others have been revolutionary or
Maoist for a time, and then changed into social-democratic or parliamentary reformist
parties. There have been a very large number of splits, mergers, conflicting lines within
parties, and drastic shifts in the dominant political lines—usually in a rightist direction.
Here is a brief summary:
The original Communist Party of Nepal was
formed at a meeting in 1949 in Calcutta [now Kolkata], India. It developed in a generally
revisionist direction, though it also included revolutionary activists such as Mohan Bikram
Singh who joined the party in 1953. Singh was born into a feudal landlord family in 1935, but
rebelled against his father and became a Communist.
The first major schism in the CPN occurred
in 1968 when a group led by Pushpa Lal [Pushpa Lal Shrestha] broke away. This new party
developed along the lines of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) with which it was closely associated. [It merged into a new revisionist party,
the CPN (Marxist) in 1987, which later become the CPN (Unified Marxist-Leninist).] In 1971
M. B. Singh was finally released after 9 years in prison, and he along with Nirmal Lama founded
the Central Nucleus group which they hoped could unite the various truly revolutionary strands
within the Communist movement. They tried to bring Pushpa Lal’s group into this effort, but
were unsuccessful. In 1974 Singh and Lama founded a new party called the CPN (Fourth Congress)
which soon became the largest of the various nominally Communist parties in Nepal. This party
supported Mao Zedong Thought and a protracted armed revolution which would also require a mass
uprising. However, this party made no immediate progress toward these goals and did not remain
united for very long.
Independently of all this, in 1978 various
factions of the Nepal Communist movement came together to form the Communist Party of Nepal
(Marxist-Leninist). This party was initially founded on the pattern of the Communist Party of
India (M-L), supported the Chinese Revolution, and itself soon engaged in armed struggle on
a limited scale. However, in 1982 it changed its line and abandoned that armed struggle. [In
1990 it merged with another revisionist party, the CPN (Marxist), to form the present totally
bourgeois reformist Communist Party of Nepal (Unified
Marxist-Leninist).]
Returning our attention once again to the CPN
(Fourth Congress), in 1983 a schism developed between M.B. Singh and Nirmal Lama over the
legitimacy of the Jhapa Revolt, and Singh left to found the
CPN (Masal). In 1984 the CPN (Masal) was one of the parties which founded the
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM).
In November 1984 the CPN (Masal) itself split,
with the minority led by M.B. Singh keeping the original name, though it was also known as
the CPN (Mashal-COC). The other faction, which was led by Mohan Baidya [or Vaidya], also
known as “Kiran”, called itself the Communist Party of Nepal (Mashal). While M. B. Singh felt
that the Jhapa revolt was unorthodox and divisive to the Nepalese Communist movement and not
the correct path forward, Kiran and others (such as “Prachanda” [Pushpa Kamal Dahal] came to
believe that the Jhapa rebellion had served to expose revisionism and was the Nepalese
equivalent of the Naxalbari rebellion in India. Kiran now also felt that M.B. Singh was a
right opportunist for constantly postponing the armed struggle. However, these political
differences mostly coalesced after the late 1984 split in Masal, and the precipitating
reasons for the split seem to have been personal, including Singh’s authoritarian leadership
style and a scandalous adulterous affair that he had.
The new CPN (Mashal) also became a member of
RIM alongside the CPN (Masal)—although the CPN (Masal) was later expelled. The CPN (Mashal)
advocated immediate armed struggle, and like Masal was an illegal underground party. In 1986
the party reformulated its ideology from “Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought” to
“Marxism-Leninism-Maoism”. That same year the party attempted to launch a rebellion in
Kathmandu under Kiran’s direct leadership. This was later called the “Sector Incident” and
failed miserably. Just a few police posts were attacked and a statue of King Tribhuvan was
painted black. The failure of this rebellion led to the resignation of Kiran and other party
leaders and the elevation of Prachanda to the position of General Secretary. More significant
than the Sector Incident was the popular uprising against the King and his regime in 1990,
in which a united front of the CPN (Mashal) and the CPN (Masal), called the “United National
People’s Movement”, played a key role. This won some short-term democratic concessions from
the reactionary feudal regime.
In November 1990 the CPN (Mashal) merged with
the CPN (Fourth Congress) and two smaller groups to form the Communist Party of Nepal (Unity
Centre). Shortly afterwards a group led by Baburam Bhattarai and Shital Kumar split off from
the old CPN (Masal) and also joined the CPN (Unity Centre). In a period of economic and
political chaos in 1992 the CPN (UC) joined in a united front with other Communist groups
and called for a general strike on April 6th. Beginning on the eve of the strike the feudal
regime began attacking activists and on April 6th itself the government shot and killed at
least 14 people, some of them bystanders. Events such as this set the stage for the later
People’s War.
In 1994 Prachanda and Bhattarai led a split
away from the CPN (Unity Centre) and briefly formed a second party with that same name. In
1996 they changed that name to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). [The older CPN (Unity
Centre) party continued and in 2002 merged with part of the old CPN (Masal), which had split
again in 1999, to form a new party, the CPN (Unity Centre-Masal).]
On February 13, 1996 the CPN (Maoist)
launched the 10-year Nepalese People’s War. Although the People’s
War (PW) was initially quite small and primitive it gradually expanded and became more
powerful as it spread throughout the rural areas. For some time the feudal government used
only police forces (actually paramility forces) to attack the revolutionaries, and the Nepal
Army mostly stayed on the sidelines. But gradually the Nepal Army became more active in its
counter-revolutionary efforts and beginning in 2001 the Nepal Army and the revolutionary
forces came into open confrontation. Nevertheless the PW continued to expand and win the
ever-broader support of the Nepalese people. Some entire extensive regions of the contryside
were liberated, and by 2006 some estimates were that the revolutionaries controlled 80% of
the countryside.
And then a very strange thing happened—the
CPN (Maoist) gave up the fight! There has never been a satisfactory explanation from
Prachanda and the other leaders of the party as to just why they did so. In part it may
have been a simple failure of nerve, or a fear that if they actually seized nationwide power
the Indian Army or U.S. imperialist forces might directly intervene. (Of course this
probability existed from the start, which is why any strategic plan for revolution should
not just have been a People’s War until Kathmandu could be captured. That would very
probably only mark the completion of the first stage of the PW, which might very well
be pushed back into the countryside again for a long period because of foreign
intervention.)
In any case, events have proven that aborting
the People’s War was an extremely serious error. True, by ending the PW and forming the
multi-party alliance with the leading non-revolutionary parties, the CPN (Maoist) was able
to get rid of the monarchy, probably once and for all. And the massive support that the party
won during the PW allowed them to win the highest number of votes in the 2008 Constituent
Assembly, and for Prachanda to briefly become Prime Minister. But the real political power
of the old bourgeois-feudalist regime actually still continued—as their control of the Nepal
Army and the early pushing aside of the CPN (Maoist) demonstrated. The even worse problem
was that the CPN (Maoist) itself changed irreversibly into a reformist social-democratic
party with no real possibility of ever getting back on the road to revolution. And the masses
too have been giving up on the party; in the 2013 Constituent Assembly elections they only
won 80 of 601 seats.
In 2002 the part of the old CPN (Unity Centre)
which had not gone on to become the CPN (Maoist) merged with the old CPN (Masal) to
form the CPN (Unity Centre-Masal). These were people who had opposed the PW and had not taken
part in it. After the fall of the feudal monarchy in 2006 there were several small factions
which split off from this party, and the largest piece left merged with the CPN (Maoist) in
January 2009, which then changed its name to the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).
Additions of groups and individuals like this which had opposed the PW moved that party
further to the right.
Since the UCPN (Maoist) terminated the PW
and continued to move in a rightist direction, there have been several splits of the more
Leftist forces away from it. In 2009 a small faction led by Matrika Yadav split and set up a
new party with the previous name, the CPN (Maoist). In June 2012 a much larger split occurred
when Kiran [Mohan Baidya] and a substantial number of other people broke away to form the
Communist Party of Nepal—Maoist (with a dash). Although this party has threatened at times
to relaunch a PW it has made no moves to actually do so. In fact, it has been difficult to
see what the actual differences are between the CPN-Maoist and the UCPN (Maoist). Apparently
the former is a bit more hostile towards Indian intervention in Nepal. There are continuing
efforts from both parties to reunite into a single party, which seems likely soon.
There are currently [end of 2015] a total of
at least five splinter parties from the UCPN (Maoist). The most determinedly revolutionary
of these groups appears to be the split-off from the CPN-Maoist led by Netra Bikram Chand
[“Biplap”] which occurred at the end of November 2014. This led to the founding of the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), without the hyphen and once again using the old name.
However, there have been many rumors that at least some of these five parties will merge
once again back into the UCPN (Maoist). It remains to be seen how the Nepal Communist
movement will develop from here.
NEUE RHEINISCHE ZEITUNG [New Rhenish Gazette]
Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung was a newspaper edited by Marx in Cologne from June 1,
1848 to May 19, 1849 when it was forced to cease publication.
“Marx and Engels managed the newspaper, Marx being the editor-in-chief.
It educated the masses, roused them to take action against counter-revolution; its
influence was felt throughout Germany. Because of its resolute and irreconcilable
position, its militant internationalism and the political exposures it published against
the Prussian Government and the Cologne authorities, the newspaper was hounded by the
feudal-monarchist and liberal-bourgeois press and persecuted by the government. In May
1849, at the time of the general offensive of the counter-revolution, the reactionary
Prussian Government took advantage of Marx not being a Prussian subject to banish him
from Prussia. Because of the banishment of Marx and the persecution of the other
editors, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had to cease publication. The last issue
(No. 301) appeared on May 19, 1849 printed in red. In a farewell address to the workers
the editors said that ‘their last word will always and everywhere be: The Emancipation
of the Working Class!’.” —Note 8 to Lenin, Selected Works, vol. I, (Moscow: 1967).
[See also Engels’ article “Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung”]
NEUROPLASTICITY
The ability of the brains of humans and other animals to change their physical structure in
various ways. These include: 1) the generation of new neurons (and other brain cells) and the
death of old ones; 2) the modification of neurons (for example, through the addition or
extension of axons and dendrites, or the degeneration of old axons and dendrites); 3) the
establishment of new neural connections (synapses) or the removal of old connections; and 4)
the modification of the strength of existing synaptic connections. Some of these types of
changes are more frequent and important to the ordinary functioning of the brain than others.
As recently as the 1990s it was still commonly thought that new neurons were not generated in
the adult human brain, but this dogma is now known to be false.
Strangely, the overall concept of
neuroplasticity is relatively new. Scientific materialism, however, has recognized from
the beginning that if thoughts, thinking, memories, and so forth change, then the physical
brain must be changing as well. But there was a long history of philosophical idealist
resistance to this materialist conception. However, by now neurophysiology has fully
established that the brain does change as a result of experience, and this is how humans and
other animals learn new information and skills, acquire memories, develop new thoughts, and
so forth.
“[T]he organ of mental phenomena [is] the brain...
“The nervous tissue whose activity
constitutes the basis of intellectual and speech acts is characterized by a high degree
of plasticity and interchangeability.” —Student’s Library: Psychology,
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986), p. 30.
“NEW SYNTHESIS” (by Bob Avakian)
A supposed further development of communist theory to a new stage by Bob
Avakian of the RCPUSA. It has been presented by the RCP and by
Avakian himself as “the most advanced representation of communist thinking”. One is temped to
summarize this “new synthesis” by adapting the words of Samuel Johnson: “Sir, your ‘new
synthesis’ is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part
that is original is not good.” But the problem is in finding much of anything substantial
that is really new or original in the first place! To see what an obscure mess of verbiage this
“New Synthesis” really is, take a look at Avakian’s own description of it in the following single
monstrous sentence:
“This new synthesis involves a recasting and recombining of the positive
aspects of the experience so far of the communist movement and of socialist society, while
learning from the negative aspects of this experience, in the philosophical and ideological
as well as the political dimensions, so as to have a more deeply and firmly rooted
scientific orientation, method and approach with regard not only to making revolution and
seizing power but then, yes, to meeting the material requirements of society and the needs
of the masses of people, in an increasingly expanding way, in socialist society—overcoming
the deep scars of the past and continuing the revolutionary transformation of society,
while at the same time actively supporting the world revolutionary struggle and acting on
the recognition that the world arena and the world struggle are most fundamental and
important, in an overall sense—together with opening up qualitatively more space to
give expression to the intellectual and cultural needs of the people, broadly understood,
and enabling a more diverse and rich process of exploration and experimentation in the realms
of science, art and culture, and intellectual life overall, with increasing scope for the
contention of different ideas and schools of thought and for individual initiative and
creativity and protection of individual rights, including space for individuals to interact
in ‘civil society’ independently of the state—all within an overall cooperative and
collective framework and at the same time as state power is maintained and further developed
as a revolutionary state power serving the interests of the proletarian revolution,
in the particular country and worldwide, with this state being the leading and central
element in the economy and in the overall direction of society, while the state itself is
being continually transformed into something radically different from all previous states,
as a crucial part of the advance toward the eventual abolition of the state with the
achievement of communism on a world scale.” —Bob Avakian, “Making Revolution and Emancipating
Humanity, Part I: Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right” (2007), online at:
http://rwor.org/avakian/makingrevolution/
[Uhhh, OK.... So what exactly is new in this “new synthesis” again? —S.H.]
See also: “EMBRACES BUT CANNOT
REPLACE”
NEWSPAPERS
See also: BOURGEOIS MEDIA
“Under capitalism, a newspaper is a capitalist enterprise, a means of
enrichment, a medium of information and entertainment for the rich, and an instrument
for duping and cheating the mass of working people. We have smashed this instrument of
profit-making and deceit. We have begun to convert the newspapers into an
instrument for educating the masses and for teaching them to live and run their economy
without the landowners and capitalists. But we are only at the start of the
road.” —Lenin, “The Work of the People’s Commissariat for Education” (Feb. 7, 1921),
LCW 32:130.
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” —Malcolm X,
in a comment on the capitalist media, quoted by Manning Marable.
NKVD [Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del]
Russian initials for the Commissariat (Ministry) of Internal Affairs in the Soviet Union during
the Stalin era, and which most notoriously included the secret police agency named OGPU, later
renamed the NKGB, and eventually the KGB under the revisionist clique
that took control after Stalin’s death. However, during most of this period the secret police
were usually referred to as NKVD rather than OGPU or NKGB.
The NKVD was used to monitor and quell
counter-revolutionary activity; however, it also instilled a significant amount of fear in the
general population, and arrested, imprisoned, tortured and even killed many thousands of
innocent people. No one was allowed to feel safe in Stalin’s USSR, not even close friends and
allies of the revolution, many of whom were arrested or killed on suspicion of being either
agents of foreign imperialism or of conspiring to overthrow the Soviet government. Much of this
was the direct result of Stalin’s own paranoia following the uncovering of coup plots from
within the state apparatus (and not just something emanating from some pathology of Stalin’s,
as is often claimed or implied in bourgeois accounts of the Great Purges). Two heads of the
secret police were themselves eventually executed (on charges of killing innocent people, among
other crimes), but surely the primary blame must be placed with Stalin, who, through staggering
irresponsibility, allowed and even encouraged this organ of the state to be bestowed with
almost limitless power to arrest anyone it simply deemed to be a threat. Obviously, such a
situation is extremely given to corruption and abuse (as indeed happened, and it is clearly
mind-boggling that anyone can fail to understand this from the outset).
Over-reliance on “administrative” methods
(repression) shows a fundamental failure to implement the mass
line, and must eventually lead to a situation where the masses lose faith in the very party
that is supposed to represent their interests. It is therefore clear that an organization like
the NKVD (in the manner in which it existed in the USSR) cannot exist in a genuinely
Marxist-Leninist regime, which must always, as Mao said, serve the people, listen to them and
learn from them. Communists must ensure at all costs that the organs of the revolutionary state
that emerges after the overthrow of capitalism all serve the masses with unfailing diligence
and sincerity. —L.C.
See also:
SOVIET UNION—Security Agencies,
OKHRANA, SECRET POLICE,
COINTELPRO, FBI
“NOBODY CARES”
When we revolutionary Marxists talk to people—especially young people—about the problems in
society, both within our own country and around the world, we sometimes get the response
“Nobody cares about that!” Of course that really just means that the particular person and his
or her milieu don’t presently care about that particular problem. In that case, we need to focus
our discussion with them on the social problems they do personally care about!
But what if they don’t seem to care much about anything beyond themselves and their personal
concerns? Here is a portion of a letter that I received recently from a young friend:
“People have been shoving ‘nobody cares’ in my face in response to my
speech and writing since I was a little kid. When I bring up anything beyond the most
puerile level of politics, people say that nobody cares. If it’s related to Palestine,
nobody cares. If it’s related to China, nobody cares. If it’s related to the country that
the person I’m speaking to is from, they don’t care. If it’s related to the United States,
nobody cares. If it’s related to the lot of the people of the ghetto, the people that I
am surrounded by and go to school with, nobody cares. And if it’s related to a book, then
people really don’t care.
“The implications for a revolutionary
Marxist are obvious. If the very people who are supposed to liberate themselves cannot
devote even a moment of their time to independent consideration of the world they live in,
then our work is impossible. If people care more about having sex, getting drunk, and
generally having a good time than they care about improving their own lives, then they
cannot be expected to respond to Marxism.
“My question is thus: What, in your
opinion, is the cause of this apathy? What can be done to combat it? Is it new and specific
to the most affluent parts of the world, or has it been around for a long time?” —M.K.
A partial response to this could perhaps be sort of along these lines:
It is true that if people, young or old, really
do not care about some social problem or existing outrage, they will not want to discuss
it, let alone participate in any activity or struggle against that particular injustice. This is
why our approach to the masses is to first try to determine what issues particular people
or groups of people do already care about, and try to draw them into struggle around those
issues. As they then participate in that one or a few areas of struggle we try to get them to
understand that it is the capitalist system which is responsible for not only the one or
a few issus which do concern them, but for most of the other major problems in contemporary
society as well. That is, we try to broaden and deepen their understanding, and develop them into
people strongly opposed to the whole capitalist-imperialist system.
However, we also understand that there are many
people today who are not sufficiently concerned with any of the very serious problems and
outrages in contemporary society to the point where they are even willing to investigate the
causes of those problems let alone actively join the struggle against them. In a few cases these
will be people who actually benefit from these injustices and will probably never come to be
personally victimized by them nor come to oppose them. This includes members of the enemy
bourgeoisie and those directly working for them (such as the
police and most politicians), for example, but also some members of other classes, such as the
petty bourgeoisie and even some of the better off
working-class sections of the so-called “middle class”.
But the largest part of those who today are
apathetic toward injustice and other social problems will likely be forced by the evil
workings of the capitalist system to eventually become very concerned indeed. If the capitalist
system were really capable of satisfying the needs and interests of the great majority over the
long run, then very few individuals would ever consider rising up against it. But the actual
fact is that the ruling capitalist class, and their system, is in growing economic and political
crisis and is driving more and more millions of people down in this country and around the world.
(See for example the entry on BILLIONAIRES
for one set of statistics about this.)
For those who are not at present consciously
victimized by the capitalist system, we will do what we can to raise their consciousness, but
mostly we will just have to wait for the system which they do not yet recognize as their enemy
to turn against them personally in a much more vicious way. And that day is rather quickly
approaching. In the meanwhile we have to focus our attention on organizing and further politically
educating the sections of the population who are already under attack economically, or because of
national, racial, sexual or gender discrimination, or in the many other possible ways.
It is true that bourgeois society does try, with
considerable success, to get people to focus only on their own individual interests and to be
concerned only with their own private lives. It tries to get them to push out of their minds the
misery of other people in this country and around the world, to forget about U.S. imperialist
wars, global warming and the growing environmental problems, the fact that the working class is
being driven down with declining real wages and benefits and disappearing jobs. But people can
no longer push these things out of their minds when it hits home to them personally, their family
or their friends. And that is what is beginning to happen more and more at the present time.
With regard to the youth specifically, there
are already many youth who are starting to become politically concerned and active. Black and
other minority youth cannot avoid racial discrimination or stop thinking about it even if they
would like to. Still, it is true that many youth in this society at present—including quite
a few who are out of school—are in a situation where they do not yet have to be concerned
about finding a good job and supporting themselves, and who at present have little personal
reason to be concerned about U.S. imperialist wars, environmental destruction, and other major
problems of capitalist society. But most of them will soon be on their own and wondering what
hit them as the current crises of the system intensify. At that point they will no longer be
saying “nobody cares” about those problems, but rather “what in the hell can we do about all of
these problems and disasters?” —S.H.
“When Guatemalan guerrillas enter a village, they don’t hand out tracts
by Marx or Mao; instead they talk to the villagers about their own lives: about how they
see themselves and how they came to be who they are, about their deepest longings and the
things they’ve striven for and hope for, about the way in which their deepest longings
were frustrated by the society in which they lived. Then the guerrillas encourage the
villagers to talk about their lives. And then a marvelous thing begins to happen. People
who thought that their deepest problems and frustrations were their individual problems
discover that their problems and longings are all the same.... and, finally, that out of
the discovery of their common humanity comes the decision that men must unite together
in the struggle to destroy the conditions of their common oppression. That, it seems to
me, is what we are about.” —Greg Calvert, National Secretary of SDS, in a 1967 speech,
quoted in Steward Burns, Social Movements of the 1960s: Searching for Democracy
(1990), p. 77.
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION (NGO)
Local, national, or international organizations or associations which are not set up
by governments. They may have been established for, and pursue, any sort of purpose or agenda,
from health and charitable work, environmental causes, cultural pursuits, or more overtly
political sorts of agendas. While these are not government organizations, it must not be
forgotten that we live in a bourgeois world, and therefore most of these organizations are
still financed and run primarily by the rich ruling bourgeois classes of the world, and serve
the interests of the bourgeoisie of one or another country first of all. There are indeed
health NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders, environmental NGOs such as the World Wildlife
Fund, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth, and charitable NGOs such as Oxfam, which all do a
lot of work for the benefit of the people. However, few if any of these sorts of NGOs make any
real effort to change this capitalist-imperialist world which gives rise to the awful
problems in the first place, the prolems which they are only attempting to ameliorate. But
besides these well-intentioned (but largely ineffective) reformist NGOs, there are also much
richer and far more influential NGOs such as the Ford Foundation, which in words support
some of these same good causes, but whose actual primary focus and purpose is to keep
the world pacified and under control of U.S. imperialism and their local agents. Because this
is the real central core of contemporary NGOs in general, we revolutionary Marxists tend to be
suspicious of NGOs, and even downright hostile and totally opposed to the most sinister of
them like the Ford Foundation.
“The contemporary Indian economy is unduly influenced by the activities
of carpetbaggers, a ruthless mafia, rapacious mining interests and giant speculators, all
linked to the politics of criminality. The degeneration is so deep, the rot so acute that
these same moneybags are floating thousands of non-government organizations (NGOs) in
order to trivialise the ills of the system so that people are diverted from seeing that
these are endemic to the very system itself and not due to just some bad individuals or
policies.” —Azad, spokesperson for the Communist Party of India (Maoist), “Maoists in
India: A Rejoinder”, Economic and Political Weekly, October 14, 2006.
NONPROFIT SECTOR (Of the U.S. Economy)
The nonprofit sector of the economy includes all sorts of organizations and bodies of many
different types, including religious organizations, charitable groups, professional
associations, business associations, lobbying associations, political pressure groups,
political parties, organizations concerned with certain health issues, environmental (and
anti-environmental!) groups, reactionary indoctrination groups, educational and
scientific associations and many educational institutions themselves,
think tanks, and on and on. And some nominally non-government
organizations (NGOs) are actually de facto agencies of the
U.S. government (and are largely funded by the government); some officially “nonprofit”
health, insurance or other organizations are actually for-profit business organizations.
(Their profits are distributed in the form of high salaries and perks for their top
management, for example.)
In an advanced capitalist-imperialist
country such as the United States, the nonprofit sector is actually quite large. Many
former governmental services are now left to be handled (often very inadequately) by
nonprofits, for example. In 2009 the greatest portion of nonprofit expenditures (which are
improperly included in the GDP statistical sub-category known as “Personal Consumption
Expenditures”) came to about 2% of total GDP. However, a much
larger section of the workforce is employed in the non-profit sector, around 10%. (See the
quotation below.) This large nonprofit workforce is necessary to both further
indoctrinate the population in views acceptable to the ruling bourgeoisie, and also to
co-opt and buy-off a large number of those who would otherwise be dissidents and “trouble
makers” agitating against the bourgeoisie. And this great expenditure on nonprofits is
possible because of all the wealth being ripped off from both exploited American
and foreign workers.
“According to a 2012 report by the Center for Civil Society Studies
at Johns Hopkins University, nonprofit employment represents 10.1 percent of total
employment in the United States in 2010, with total employees numbering 10.7 million.
The nonprofit workforce is the third largest of all U.S. industries behind retail
trade and manufacturing.
“During the Great Recession
(2007 to 2009), the nonprofit sector gained jobs at an average rate of 1.9 percent
per year, while the private sector lost jobs at a rate of 3.7 percent per year.
“The average annual growth rate
for employment has been higher for nonprofits during the 2000-2010 period at 2.1%
whereas the for-profit sector shrank by -0.6%.
“Nonprofit employment by sector
is approximately 57% for health services, 15% for education, 13% for social assistance,
7% for civic associations, 4% for other, 3% for arts and culture, and 2% for
professional services.” —From a posting on Grant Space/The Foundation Center, at
http://www.grantspace.org (accessed April 23, 2013).
NUCLEAR WEAPONS — America’s Use of in World War II
“Truman listened carefully to [Secretary of State James F.] Byrnes’s
advice. At about the date of Byrnes’s appointment, the new secretary told Truman that
(these are Truman’s words) ‘in his belief the atomic bomb might well put us in a position
to dictate our own terms at the end of the war.’ Later, in May 1945, during a White House
meeting at which the nuclear physicist Leo Szilard was present, Byrnes, according to
Szilard, ‘did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan
in order to win the war. Mr. Byrnes’ view [was] that our possessing and demonstrating the
bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.’” —Robert Smith Thompson, The Eagle
Triumphant: How America Took Over the British Empire (2004), p. 311.
“Particularly important is the light shed on the American decision to drop
two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. At the time, the justifications were murky: some hoped
the terrifying display would avoid what they feared would have been a bloody invasion. Others
wanted to test the bombs on which so many billions of dollars had been spent. Still others
had their eye on post-war diplomacy, seeking to intimidate the Soviet Union and secure
American dominance. Newly declassified files show unambiguously that America was aware of
Japanese attempts to sue for peace before the bombs were dropped, undermining the military
reasoning for using the weapons.” —The Economist, “A Rush of Energy”, Aug. 27, 2009.
[Even a reactionary publication like The Economist now implicitly agrees that this
episode of imperialist mass murder and genocide must have been done primarily as a warning
to the Soviet Union that U.S. imperialism would be the top dog in the post-World War II
world. —S.H.]
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A disastrous military campaign by Napoleon against Russia during which most of his invading
army was destroyed.