Humans learning to create fire by friction laid the foundations for an entirely new world.  No longer bound (or protected) by the natural laws of the animal kingdom, mankind had to learn to think. The long painful bloody journey from superstition to science is what human history is really all about. The women and men who struggled to understand the social significance of their ever-changing economic environment are the heroes of that history.

As science emerged, outstanding thinkers struggled to apply scientific methodology - so successful in understanding the physical world - to understanding the evolution of society. Once it was understood that humanity's visions and beliefs were essentially the result - rather than the creator - of the real world, it was possible to develop a social science. Belief that the social order of exploiter and exploited was the natural order of things could be and was challenged. On the basis of social science it was possible to think creatively - to project what is possible under what conditions. In this way science transformed socialism from an unattainable dream into an attainable practical goal.

 Creative thinking does not mirror reality. It is abstract from and ahead of reality. No scientific projection can fully account for the millions of objective and subjective factors that shape and determine a future reality. Therefore, there are bound to be errors. As scientific thinkers projected new possibilities or probabilities, a tendency developed to form cults of true believers around their projections to protect them from these millions of factors. This, in turn, inhibited the actual development of the new, since it repressed any further new thinking.

The political revolutionary movement, which is based on vision, must merge with a scientific understanding of the social significance of the constant quantitative and qualitative development of the means of production, since they define the possibilities of that political movement.  Our social and economic conditions are in global revolution. Revolutionary thinking must change and keep up with these changing conditions. However, too many revolutionaries are stuck in the mud of yesteryear and attempt to make new realities fit the theories of a passing period.  This compels them to cling more stubbornly to the written word and defend it against the very thing they are fighting for - that is, change.

The heroic history-determining revolutionary movement based on the industrial worker in the mass industries is dying, because - despite their daily confrontation with a new reality - they cannot move past the scientific projections of yesteryear. This can and will happen to us unless every comrade feels obligated to intellectually contribute to the development of the movement.

When it becomes acceptable to answer questions with a quote from an outstanding thinker rather than a concrete examination of a concrete problem, then that is no longer science. When ideology takes the place of theory as a guide to action, then the political movement has become separated from the practical activity of the class. When organizations are built around and restricted to the thinking of individuals, then the cause is lost.

Global society has begun a leap comparable to the conquest of fire. Somewhere, a Capital for this epoch must be written.  Development does not mean abandoning the old. It means absorbing and moving beyond it. History shows us that even a small organization of intelligent people, who have truly freed their minds of dogma and are willing to contribute their intellectual capital, are capable of using the vast social energy generated by economic revolution to create a new world.

Karl Marx, undoubtedly the world's greatest revolutionary thinker, summed up all of his vast writing with the statement that the only truly revolutionary instrument is the human mind. Without it, nothing is possible. With it there is no force of earth capable of stopping us.

 

May.2007.Vol17.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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