Hegel, Part 10
Polynodal semi-chaotic social-system diagram
New
Tools for Marxists
This is the last part, and
the second last item, in our series on Hegel’s Logic. It is the late SACP
stalwart Ron Press’s article “New Tools for Marxists” (see
the download linked below) on the application of Chaos Theory to revolution, written
in the heat of the post-1994 election moment.
History has not actually
ended. Closure of this course is therefore not appropriate.
Hegel’s theories have served
us well and will continue to serve. There are not two branches of philosophy.
We live in a Hegelian world, no matter what the reactionaries and the
post-modernists may wish to think. The unity of human history is a hegemonic
idea. Science is well established and universally revered, if not always for
the right reasons.
If, because of the collapse
of the Soviet Union a generation ago, we are forced to conclude that the
Bolsheviks failed in their revolution three generations earlier, then it is
more than likely that the reason they failed was lack of philosophy.
Philosophy and the withering away of the State
The revolutionaries must have
a clear philosophical theory of how the coming classless society is going to
work without a state.
In “New Tools for Marxists”,
Ron Press wrote:
‘“…the
standard Marxist idea that society passes in a linear manner from primitive
communism via class struggle to the ultimate victory when the working class
replaces capitalism with a classless society is an unattainable myth. Especially when a classless society was taken
to mean the establishment of order and stability, in fact stasis. The theories outlined above indicate that stasis means the inevitable sudden
crossover into chaos and collapse.’
Ron Press is saying that the
theory of the State, and of the “withering away” of the State, in Marx, Engels
and Lenin is not wrong, yet these three did not have the full theoretical means
to appreciate in full how “stateless” systems can, and already do, work in
nature and in human society.
The revolutionaries of today
need a Hegel for today: a Hegel up-to-date.
Let’s finish this
introduction with two short quotes from our late comrade Ron Press:
“In the
Soviet Union the “Soviet” i.e. committee system was destroyed by restricting
the bandwidth of communication, and making one node all powerful.
“But if there
is a lesson to be drawn from the study of complexity it is that a complex
system given a very “simple” goal (in our case the well being of humankind)
develops its own best methods of operation and organisation. Solutions emerge
from the system itself.”
Solutions emerge from the
system itself.
Hegel could have said that.
The diagram represents a
system in which no single node is all-powerful.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: New tools for Marxists, 1995, Ron
Press.
