Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century

by Milan Rai

source: http://ww3.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue46/Rai46.htm

REAL UTOPIA is a wide-ranging book that can deliver for the open-minded reader. It relates ideas and actions that develop naturally out of commonly held values, but that can still bring surprise, the shock of revelation, the rearrangement of familiar territory, and a different framework for us to see ourselves within.
Who is the "us"? People who subscribe to the cry of the World Social Forum: "Another World Is Possible!"

The questions many of us urgently want answers to are: What is this "other world"? What does it look like? And: How will we get there? Real Utopia doesn't pretend to have all the answers to these questions, but it has many more of the answers, and more satisfying answers, than any other single book I know of.

I'm not convinced by every single claim or argument put forward in Real Utopia, but I am convinced that everyone who seriously wants "another world" in the spirit of the World Social
Forum should engage with this readable, remarkable book.

The point of Real Utopia is to counter despair, and to present a credible vision of the future that
can meet the growing desire for a humane social order that eliminates centralized power and oppression. According to the "complementary holistic" theory underlying the book, such a vision should address simultaneously gender, power, race, and class, without giving any one sphere primacy over the others. There are therefore thoughtful and attractive contributions from Cynthia Peters, on a vision for "family, sexuality, and caregiving in a better world"; Stephen Shalom on possible new political structures in such a world; and Justin Podur on race and culture.

The heart of the book, however, and the overwhelming bulk of its 400-odd pages, lies in a proposal as to how our economic lives could be transformed by a new set of structures known as "participatory economics" -- "parecon"-- for short. Even within "complementary holism" (previously known as "totalism"), class is still the central concern.

One possible justification for the greater emphasis on economics is that undoing capitalism would help to undermine other forms of oppression. Cynthia Peters observes: "The principles that guide a pareconish society would do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to addressing gender imbalances outside the home." The elimination of sexist income inequality and women's economic dependence on men, and the creation of workplaces that "ensure equal access to decision-making, so women and men would be equally experienced at taking on empowered roles," would all create systematic pressures towards gender equality (though not guaranteeing it), in her view.

For people sickened by patriarchy and capitalism, this should be very attractive. Similar remarks could be made in relation to other forms of oppression. However, parecon has met with a great deal of hostility in just the circles one would expect it to be welcomed.
There are two strands to Real Utopia: experience and theory. My advice to someone new to parecon would be to first turn to the brief chapters dealing with experience of parecon enterprises, such as Jessica Azulay's essay on The NewStandard, a trail-blazing radical online hard news paper that lit up the U.S. scene for four years. The editors and journalists of The New Standard collective divided the work of the business into four categories: managerial, content, administrative, and a mixed category they called "conmin." (There would have been a janitorial category, if they hadn't all been working in separate physical spaces.)

"Managerial" work included participating in collective meetings and other policy-related decision-making. "Content" work included reporting, editing, and website development. "Administrative" tasks were bookkeeping, answering email, providing technical support for users, taking minutes, and so on. The point of labeling tasks in this way was to ensure that each person in the collective experienced as much empowering work, or as much tedious rote work as everyone else. The "conmin" category was invented to account for the fact that there were tasks which were less desirable than most content work, but more empowering than most administrative work.
Azulay writes: "When we divided up the work, we tried to make sure that each staffer was assigned roughly the same number of hours of each kind of work." In parecon, this is known as a "balanced job complex."

In a parecon society, job complexes should be balanced not just inside a workplace, but across the economy, a point made forcefully by Paul Burrows in his valuable reflections on his five years working in Winnipeg's Mondragòn Bookstore and Coffee House collective.
Together with Lydia Sargent's typically brisk and bold account of the creation of South End Press and Z Magazine (heroic endeavors both), these are inspiring and enriching examples of radical cooperative enterprises surviving -- and upholding anti-capitalist values -- under highly stressful conditions.

On the wider scene, parecon is a proposal for a new way of organizing the economy as a whole, with a new pay system (remunerating for effort and sacrifice rather than the economic contribution made) and a set of structures for collective, participatory economic planning.
LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM IS BASED ON THE claim that a future society can be constructed in which working people directly control their own destinies -- in their own workplaces and neighborhoods -- without the need for any form of external control by state, corporation, party, or other managerial elite. Different proposals have been made over the last 150 years or so as to how these networks of workers' cooperatives and neighborhood assemblies could work.
Parecon contains a rigorous, theoretically consistent, and economically valid model that has been developed for workers' and consumers' councils to engage in participatory planning. This model is not spelled out in Real Utopia, but an intriguing relevant example is sketched out: the development of participatory, bottom-up (upside-down) planning in the Indian state of Kerala between 1996 and 2001, involving over 3 million households in local associations. Other inspiring and fascinating large-scale efforts touched on in Real Utopia include the factory takeovers in Argentina and the extraordinary participatory democratic initiatives in Venezuela.

There is much to learn from these initiatives, from the history of the Russian factory committees in 1917 (discussed by Tom Wetzel), and from the anarchist transformation of much of agricultural and industrial life in Spain during the Civil War (examined by Dave Markland). I personally learned a great deal from these essays -- and even more from Robin Hahnel's extraordinarily rich discussion of social democratic reformism and anarchist purism.

These analytical and historical contributions are worth the price of Real Utopia by themselves. However, the real value of Real Utopia, and of parecon, comes from a rather sharper challenge.
The central value of anti-capitalism is that class is wrong. It is wrong that a small minority who hold power by reason of ownership, by reason of wealth, should dictate the lives of society as a whole, forcing people to rent themselves out as tools used for purposes they do not choose.
Anti-capitalism, if it means anything, means a commitment to classlessness. Yet it is clear from 150 years of revolution that working class people have more to fear than the investing/owning class. As Bakunin foresaw long ago, the educated, intellectual classes can also seize hold of the reins of power, often in the name of the people, so that the people will be beaten with "the people's stick." There are actually three classes at work in industrial societies -- capitalist owners, workers, and an intermediate stratum, which Bakunin called "the new class" and in parecon is known as the "coordinator class."
When I first became aware of parecon, I was fully aware of, and subscribed to, Bakuninist critiques of Leninism and "the new class." Still, I had a number of questions and concerns about parecon (some of which are expressed by Barbara Ehrenreich in her semi-debate with Michael Albert in Real Utopia).

One thing I was not convinced about was the idea of "balanced job complexes," and the suggestion that we should try to implement these now, in our current progressive organizations. I'm a writer, an editor, a speaker, a facilitator. I have specialized skills. It seemed irrational, if not bizarre, to expect me to do a lot of other forms of (disempowering, rote) work as part of my radical "job complex," when this would reduce the amount of time I spent doing the things which I am good at, and which are badly needed.

I carried on feeling this way until the summer of 2006 when, as part of a special ZNet conference, I watched Michael Albert ably and patiently fending off disbelief and fairly hostile criticisms of parecon from radical intellectuals just like me. Unbidden, two ideas rose up inside me. Firstly, I thought: "Michael Albert is a great man." (Now why did I think that?) Secondly, it came upon me that the real reason I was resistant to the idea of the "balanced job complex" was I have a class interest as an intellectual in expecting other people (less educated, confident, articulate, word- skilled people) to do the boring work that has to be done in any movement for social change. I was ashamed of myself.
The value of parecon at this point is, in my view, two-fold. It provides a rigorous model for a future society that "works" theoretically, giving credence to the idea that there is no worked out non- authoritarian alternative to capitalism that is worth pursuing. Much more important, in my view, is that it sharply confronts the class interest of intellectuals working in progressive movements. Such as myself.

Lydia Sargent writes that when she helped to set up South End Press, one (invaluable) radical publishing house was run by three white men; well-educated white women did most of the editing; a black woman was the receptionist; and Latinos packaged and shipped material from the warehouse. It seems safe to assume that class differences aligned with gender and race inequalities.

In the essay I have already referred to, and which I cannot praise too highly, Paul Burrows writes: "We should not tell people anything, unless our movements, our own alternatives, our own institutions embody the values we profess to hold." We need to build the future now, in what we do now.
I believe in classlessness. I've had a revelation about the balanced job complex. I'm a committed activist -- I've been to prison four times (admittedly for the briefest of sentences) for political action. On the British scene, many people who know me see me as near the radical extreme. And yet.

Have I tried to create balanced job complexes at Peace News, where I am a co-editor? At the peace group Justice Not Vengeance, where I am one of three organizers? In Rootstock, the radical social investors' co-operative, or Walden Pond, the radical housing co-operative, I am part of? Have I even raised the subject for discussion?

If we are going to replace capitalism with a decent society, we are going to have to deal with the new class as well as the owning class. I've met the class enemy. It's me. And probably you.
I can't think of a better place to start the new class struggle than by studying Real Utopia .

Heavy rain drenches Valley

By Troy Anderson

A powerful storm slammed Southern California this weekend, bringing high winds, rain and snow and triggering traffic collisions, mudslides and flooding, authorities said.
The storm, which dropped heavy rain on the San Fernando Valley and snow on the mountains above 6,000 feet, was expected to continue bringing showers and thunderstorms throughout this afternoon, National Weather Service meteorologist David Sweet said.

Forecasters issued a flash flood warning for the Station Fire area Saturday afternoon, expressing fears about hills that were denuded in the recent wildfires, making them more vulnerable to mudslides.


"We're asking people to monitor the weather closely and if a warning is issued for their area to immediately get away from the hillside and evacuate the area," Sweet said. "Most of all, people need to listen to the authorities and follow their instructions."
Throughout Los Angeles County, the storm brought strong winds and heavy rain that caused flooding, mudslides and rockslides.


Near Mount Wilson, at least 60 people were stuck in vehicles between landslides on Angeles Crest Highway, according to county fire officials. Multiple landslides were reported on state Route 2 between La Ca ada Flintridge and Mount Wilson, particularly near the Mount Lukens Truck Trail turnoff, said Capt. Frank Reynoso of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The road was deemed "impassable," Reynoso said.


In Sylmar, Los Angeles firefighters went to a home next to a construction site for Mission College where mud and water were ponding because of earthmovers parked in its path, threatening to flood the property in the 13000 block of Cranston Avenue. They smashed a hole in a brick wall to allow the mud to drain to the street. In the Hollywood Hills, a house on a steep hillside was endangered.

Meanwhile, a rockslide and mudslide forced the California Highway Patrol to briefly close Topanga Canyon Boulevard five miles north of the Pacific Coast Highway. Several cars had their tires flattened by sharp rocks.

Nearly 5,000 utility customers in the Los Angeles area went without power at different times Saturday because of tree branches falling on power lines.

The storm contributed to numerous crashes, including several fatalities.

On the Antelope Valley Freeway, a truck went off the road, through a barrier and struck a bridge near the Golden State Freeway in the Santa Clarita area, California Highway Patrol Officer Krystal Carter said.


One person was knocked unconscious when a truck and a small Honda collided on the southbound San Diego Freeway near Nordhoff Street in North Hills, Carter said.
"There has definitely been an increase in weather-related traffic collisions," CHP Officer Monica Posada said. "So we are asking people to stay alert for vehicle hydroplaning, apply brakes more slowly, leave extra distance between your car and the next motorist and drive with your headlights on."


Besides more than an inch of rain that had already fallen since Thursday, Sweet said the storm was expected to bring an additional 1 to 3 inches of rain before it ends. Today, there is a 50 percent chance of showers. Highs in the San Fernando Valley will be near 60, with lows around 40 with light winds.

The rest of the week is expected to be mostly sunny with highs in the low 60s and lows around 40 degrees.

"We've been in a period since Thursday of having many small weather systems with a fairly good amount of rain from each one come through rapid fire one after another," Sweet said. "But the weather pattern is going to readjust (today) and Monday and direct the storm further north to give us a break."

For those who decide to go to the mountains to ski or play in the snow, Sweet advised them to call Caltrans to get the road conditions.

Sweet said he expected 8 to 18 inches of snow in the mountains above 6,000 feet.
"There will be concerns about driving on snow-covered roads," Sweet said. "And after Sunday's system passes through, I don't expect any more storms for the rest of the week."

Global Emergency: The Earth and Humanity Need Revolution!

source: www.revcom.us


World government leaders are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 7-18, 2009 to discuss global warming. This has raised the hopes of many throughout the world. But the dominant players in Copenhagen are more concerned with preserving the capitalist system and gaining competitive advantage—than saving the planet. And what’s not on the summit’s agenda are the real dimensions of the environmental crisis, the underlying causes, and what’s needed to actually solve this problem.

1
Planet Earth is facing an extreme and urgent emergency. An impending catastrophe looms. The very things life on this planet depend on—the ecosystems of plants, animals, water, soil, and air—are being destroyed, compromised and changed forever.

The atmosphere and oceans are heating up because of the burning of coal, oil and gas, and the destruction of rainforests. Glaciers and polar ice are melting at an accelerating rate. Increased global warming will mean more powerful hurricanes, and shifts in weather patterns. In Africa where huge sections of humanity already suffer from war, poverty, and lack of food—this will mean even more devastating droughts.
The very fate of the planet is at stake. It is a scientific fact: there will be even bigger, dramatic and irreversible destruction of the planet’s ecosystems, unless there are huge and global changes in the way humanity interacts with the environment.


2
Today 50% of the world’s forests are gone. The remaining rainforests contain the richest diversity of species on earth (related organisms that can interbreed). But they are being wiped out at an astonishing rate. The current loss of species is estimated to be 1,000 times the natural or normal rate that species go extinct. Water, air and soil all over the world are severely polluted. Virtually every person on the planet has detectable levels of toxic substances such as pesticides that are known to cause cancer, birth defects and other harmful health effects. In the world’s vast oceans, 75% of fisheries are being fished to capacity or over-fished. The oceans themselves are warming and becoming more acidic from absorbing increasing amounts of carbon dioxide being pumped into the air. This threatens coral reefs which are home to some of the earth’s richest ocean life. Dead zones where life no longer exists are expanding in the oceans.
The U.S. accounts for 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of global carbon emissions. The rich capitalist countries of the world are responsible for the great bulk of environmental destruction. But those who suffer the greatest consequences of this are poor people in the Third World.


3
The planet is being destroyed not because of some "natural process" or "greedy human nature," but because of the nature and workings of a capitalist-imperialist system that treats nature as just one more resource to be exploited and poured into production for profit.
Capitalism cannot deal with the environment in a sustainable or rational way and plan for future generations. Its logic is "profit above all," "expand or die." Its economy is driven by ruthless competition between capitalists constantly trying to gain advantage over other competitors. This is why the capitalist "answer" to the problem of 20% of humanity having no access to clean water is to privatize water and sell it for profit.
The very nature of capitalist production is private and the economy is made up of many competing "capitals," each only concerned with its own expansion. When capitalist interests cut down rainforests for timber and to make palm oil, neither the massive amounts of carbon released into the environment or the destruction of the habitat of the orangutan and Sumatran tiger (and many other species) are even part of the calculations.

4
Tremendous productive forces and technology already exist that could be used to address the environmental crisis. And most importantly, there are billions of people all over the world, with their vast knowledge and potential creativity, who could be mobilized, led and unleashed to figure out how to put a stop to the way the earth is being destroyed.
To save the very fate of the planet we need revolution—to bring into being socialist societies aimed at a communist world. Under socialism, humanity can interact with the environment in a rational and sustainable way, consciously regulate production, and reverse and transform environmental devastation. In a socialist society ownership and control of production is socialized and there is a planned economy aimed at serving the needs of the people, not profit. The preservation of ecosystems would be integrated as a central priority in economic planning and development. And people will be educated and imbued with a sense of appreciation and responsibility for the protection of the environment.

Under socialism, the masses of people are the single greatest resource. And with all of their creative energy, knowledge and concern, the people can be mobilized to struggle out, discuss, argue and debate, and work together to figure out how to build a society that truly safeguards humanity and the very life of the planet itself. In this way, human society can appreciate the wild, wondrous beauty and complexity of nature and consciously act as guardians of the planet.
Socialist societies have made advances in developing the economy in a rational and ecologically more sound way—but much more is needed and also possible. Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has been developing a re-envisioned socialism and communism—a more vibrant and scientific communism that provides a solid basis to go much further and do much better in building a truly emancipating society, including on the environmental front.

If you want a world where people live and flourish…where we act together as caretakers of the globe…where we preserve and enhance the wild and natural world…get with this revolution, and spread it right now. The very fate of the planet and humanity is at stake...and we have a whole world to win.

The environment and human destiny itself is being taken to the brink of disaster.
All this because of the dictates of this system—because of its stranglehold on humanity. All this while technology and wealth exist on a scale and in forms never before imagined—technology and wealth produced by millions, billions, throughout the world who are nameless and faceless to the powers that be—technology and wealth that could and should be a resource belonging to humanity as a whole and used to meet the needs of people everywhere for a decent and ever-enriched material, intellectual and cultural life.

One of the world’s leading climatologists has spoken out about the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit, saying it would be better for the planet and future generations if the summit collapsed.
James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the UK Guardian newspaper that the climate negotiations are so deeply flawed that it would be better to start over. Hansen said, “I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track." He also said, “We don’t have a leader who is able to grasp [the issue] and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual.” Hansen is highly critical of Barack Obama—and even Al Gore—who is promoted as a big savior of the environment.

Keep in mind that Hansen was one of the first scientists to sound the alarm about the danger of global warming in the late 1970s, and has done groundbreaking scientific research on the subject. He has been an outspoken voice, telling people the truth about what is happening to the Earth's climate and the dangers posed by the energy practices of the world's largest economies, not least the U.S. He has stood firm despite attacks from powerful forces. The Bush administration repeatedly tried to suppress Hansen’s views and to prevent his findings and recommendations from reaching the broader public.

Hansen’s characterization of the looming danger of global warming is very important for people to hear:
“This warming has brought us to the precipice of a great ‘tipping point.’ If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to a ‘different planet,’ an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet.” (James Hansen, “State of the Wild: Perspectives of a Climatologist,” 10 April, 2007. )
About the Copenhagen Summit's stated goal of reaching some kind of compromise agreement in dealing with global warming caused by the energy practices of the world's economies, Hansen said this:

"This is analogous to the issue of slavery...On these kinds of issues you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%."

References:
The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, James Gustave Speth, Yale University Press 2008
The End of the Wild, Stephen Meyer, the MIT Press 2006
The Empty Ocean, Richard Ellis, Island Press 2003
“G8 to Earth: Drop Dead,” Revolution #171, August 2, 2009
“Capitalism, the Environment and Ecology Under Socialism,” Raymond Lotta, Revolution #52, June 26, 2006
“How the Palm Oil Industry is Cooking the Climate,” Greenpeace (www.greenpeace.org), November 2007
Reflections, Sketches, and Provocations, Bob Avakian, page 46, Text 9, "The Land Question in the Final Analysis Is a Global Question, or What a Look at a World Map Is Good For"

Obama's War Speech: The Questions It Raises… And The Answer That Must Be Given

By Larry Everest
Source: www.revcom.com

On Tuesday, December 1, at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, President Barack Obama announced that he would send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. He also called for 10,000 more NATO troops, which pushes the total U.S.-led forces to nearly 150,000, and he announced plans to step up the war on a number of fronts including (without being specific) in Pakistan. Obama has now tripled the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan since he took office.
These military forces will not be going to Afghanistan to set up vaccination programs or conduct literacy classes for Afghan girls. They are going there as part of the most destructive military machine on the planet, to wreak violence. The military machine that has bombed wedding parties, that has held thousands of young Afghan men in Bagram prison without charges, that kicks down doors in the middle of the night—this machine is being strengthened and further unleashed.

The West Point speech is being called the "defining moment" of Obama's presidency. Thus far into his term, at least, that is true. So it is important to look deeply at the questions Obama posed and the answers he gave—and in doing so to get into the real underlying causes of the military escalation now being put into effect.

Why is the U.S. Army in Afghanistan?Obama began his speech this way: "It is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers.… As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda…. Al Qaeda's base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban—a ruthless, repressive and radical movement that seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere."
Obama later returned to his explanation of why the Taliban and al Qaeda had taken root in

Afghanistan: "Now, the people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades. They've been confronted with occupation by the Soviet Union, and then by foreign al Qaeda fighters who used Afghan land for their own purposes."

Obama implies that the U.S. had nothing to do with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and that it bears no responsibility for the growth of the Taliban and al Qaeda there, or the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the region. According to Obama, the U.S. itself therefore played no role in the events that lead to the attacks of 9/11.

The facts are different. The U.S. actually helped prompt the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In July 1979, some five months before the Soviet invasion, the U.S. had initiated a covert campaign to destabilize Afghanistan's pro-Soviet government by arming and funding the Islamist opposition. The goal, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, was "to induce a Soviet military intervention." When the Soviets did intervene in December, Brzezinski wrote Carter: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."

The Carter administration undertook this operation because at the time the U.S. was locked in a bitter struggle for global supremacy with what was then the Soviet Union.* After helping trigger the Afghanistan invasion, the U.S. worked behind the scenes with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia throughout the 1980s to make the war much longer, more violent, and more destructive. These forces organized, funded, and armed the Mujahideen ("warriors for Islam"). While many other Afghans took up arms against the Soviet invaders, the U.S. and its partners worked to build up the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist fighters. Over the next decade, the U.S. government funneled more than $3 billion in arms and aid to these fundamentalist forces, and in so doing helped fuel a global Islamist movement. This is where Osama bin Laden got his start. This is where the seeds of al Qaeda and the Taliban were first sown.

During the 1980s there were some Afghans fighting against the Soviet occupation who opposed religious fundamentalism and both U.S. and Soviet imperialism. They stood for an entirely different future—a future free of imperialist domination, free of capitalist exploitation, and free of the backward, traditional feudal social relations and ideology that keep most of the Afghan people in shackles—especially women. These forces were led by Afghanistan's revolutionary Maoists. Yet these forces were targeted—viciously and murderously—by all the reactionary forces involved in the Afghan conflict—the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet imperialists, the Islamic Mujahideen, and the U.S.-backed warlords.

When the Soviets finally pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, more than a million Afghans (along with 15,000 Soviet soldiers) had been killed and one-third of the population—that's over 7 million people—driven into refugee camps. Just two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed. Its defeat in Afghanistan had played a major role.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan was left in a state of civil war between the existing pro-Soviet regime and different groups of Islamist religious fanatics and reactionary warlords who fought each other while repressing the people. Yet the U.S. rulers considered their Afghan gambit a tremendous success. When asked by the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998 (January 15) whether he regretted inducing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and "having supported the Islamic [fighters], having given arms and advice to future terrorists," Brzezinski replied: "Regret what?... What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"

"What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these 'outmodeds,' you end up strengthening both." Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA From the talk, "Why We're in the Situation We’re in Today… And What to Do About It:A Thoroughly Rotten System and the Need for Revolution"
It is easy, of course, to start the movie on September 11, 2001. But if you press the rewind button you find out that the U.S. government had not been innocently minding its business all these years only to find itself the victim of an utterly unprovoked attack. There is a whole history here of arming and utilizing Islamic fundamentalists, and of being party to destroying a million lives. Indeed, it is hard to overstate the level of horror and needless suffering that was visited on the Afghan people through this superpower dance of death. All of this was done in the interests of preserving and defending U.S. imperial domination. None of that justifies what was done on 911—but if we are to understand the actual causes of what is going on, we had best understand the full dimensions of the story.

Is Obama's "Attention Deficit Disorder" Diagnosis True?Obama said that after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, "the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere."

So where was U.S. attention focused in the 1990s in this part of the world? Beginning with the first Bush administration (George H.W. Bush) and continuing through the Clinton administration, the U.S. moved on a number of fronts to consolidate the tremendous advantage it derived from the fall of the Soviet Union. It aimed in particular to deepen and extend its domination of the Middle East and Central Asia. This included the 1991 invasion and destruction of Iraq, which caused what a U.S. Census Bureau international analyst—Beth Osborne Daponte—estimated to be over 200,000 deaths (another 500,000 at least were killed by UN sanctions during the 1990s), and the basing of massive U.S. military forces in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. It also included new overtures to, and increased working through, predominantly Hindu India, which aggravated the rivalry between India and Pakistan—a rivalry which the U.S. has attempted to manipulate and play for its own advantage. All this, along with the continued U.S. support for Israel in the face of the massive rebellion of the Palestinian people in the late '80s and early '90s, involved tremendous and often horrific levels of violence against Arab and Central Asian peoples and the assertion of open U.S. domination.

At the same time, deeper American economic and social penetration of the region modernized certain aspects of the societies there, while undercutting traditional relations. Taken together, all this led to the beginning of open conflict between the U.S. and Islamist forces. The same so-called "holy warriors" whom the U.S. had initially supported and often pulled together on the basis of reactionary opposition to "modernization" now began to oppose the U.S. and to carry out guerrilla operations against it in that region. Meanwhile, by 1996, the Pakistani government had helped install the Taliban in Afghanistan to both stabilize the country under extremely repressive Islamic rule, and to use it as a counterweight to Indian ambitions in Afghanistan and the region. All these developments led the U.S., by the late 1990s, to once again intensify its attention to Afghanistan, in the context of the region as a whole. During this period a consensus emerged (which was solidified by 9/11) among what would become the dominant political forces in the U.S. that Islamic fundamentalism was becoming a prime obstacle to U.S. objectives, that it would need to be defeated, and that a radical restructuring of the whole region was needed to undercut these forces and secure U.S. hegemony.

Much of this history is well-known—certainly to anyone in public office or in the mainstream press. Yet following Obama's speech there was no comment on his "omission" from either.
What Was the U.S. Trying to Accomplish By Invading Afghanistan in 2001?Obama defends the decision to invade Afghanistan and says it brought good results. He notes that Congress "authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them, an authorization that continues to this day"—98-0 in the Senate, 420-1 in the House of Representatives—and that NATO supported the U.S. and that the UN Security Council "endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks. America, our allies, and the world were acting as one to destroy al Qaeda's terrorist network and to protect our common security."
"Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy—and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden—we sent our troops into Afghanistan."
Here we must go deeper into exactly what was done under "this banner of domestic unity and international legitimacy" and why.

The Bush regime had a number of objectives in invading Afghanistan in October 2001. First, to quickly and massively attack and conquer Afghanistan in order to demonstrate to the world that America's will had not been shaken by the September 11 attacks and that it was still willing and able to crush with overwhelming force any who dared challenge it. This is not just macho posturing, but essential to maintaining global "credibility"—i.e., fear—and dominance.
Second, the U.S. wanted to quickly overthrow the Taliban regime and install a loyal client state in Afghanistan as part of an overarching effort to deepen its military control of Central Asia (Afghanistan abuts two of the U.S.'s main potential rivals—Russia and China) and to gain greater access to and control of the region's energy. (During the 1990s the U.S. was attempting to build a pipeline across Afghanistan that would avoid going through Russia or Iran. The U.S. oil giant UNOCAL was the prime contractor—one of its consultants was Hamid Karzai, later installed by the U.S. as President of Afghanistan.) Doing so was also part of an effort to defeat anti-U.S. Islamist forces across the region.

Simply capturing or killing Osama bin Laden was never the central objective. (Obama's claim that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan "only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden" is at least open to serious question. According to the Guardian UK (10/14/01), "President George Bush rejected as ‘non-negotiable' an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan.")
Obama praises the results of the U.S. invasion: "Within a matter of months, al Qaeda was scattered and many of its operatives were killed. The Taliban was driven from power and pushed back on its heels. A place that had known decades of fear now had reason to hope," and points to the formation of a U.S.-created regime with Karzai at the head as a positive development "to help bring a lasting peace to a war-torn country."

It was nothing of the kind. The Karzai regime was a regime of U.S. lackeys, warlords, drug-dealers and war criminals—many as hated as the Taliban they replaced. Warlord Gen. Abdul Dostom, who has served as Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Afghan National Army under Karzai, is responsible for the 2001 Dasht-e-Leili massacre when some 2,000 prisoners of war were forced into boxcars, suffocated to death, and dumped in the desert. And, among other viciously anti-woman policies and laws, the US-installed Afghan government passed a law in February, 2009, which applies to Afghanistan's Shia population (10-15 percent of the Afghan people) that explicitly legalizes rape in marriage by banning women from refusing to have sex with their husbands. That law also prevents women from working, going to school, getting access to health care or other services, or even leaving her home without husband's permission. This replacement of one set of oppressors with another—not surprisingly—did nothing to end oppression there. Rather it reinforced the sources of oppression in Afghanistan—foreign domination, capitalism and feudalism, religious fundamentalism, and patriarchy.
(It is also important to briefly take note of what else was done under "the banner of domestic unity and international legitimacy." In the days directly after 9/11, the Bush Administration introduced the USA-PATRIOT Act, which tremendously heightened the reach and scope of the repressive apparatus in the U.S. Immigrants were rounded up and held for months without charges and often deported in the dead of night. Massive surveillance programs were begun, beyond even what had been authorized by the PATRIOT Act and without the knowledge of most of Congress. "State secrets" was made an excuse to deny all kinds of information that showed the U.S. in a bad light, even when this meant preventing people who had been detained and tortured "by mistake" from having their day in court. The U.S. arrogated to itself the right to kill and capture people anywhere in the world, without trial, if the U.S. suspected these people of being "terrorists." Most dramatically, it instituted a widespread regimen of torture—beginning at Guantánamo (where people were detained indefinitely, in violation of international law and of the U.S. Constitution) and then spreading throughout the military, into Iraq and Afghanistan; and over 100 people were killed as a result of this torture. None of this was even mentioned in Obama's speech—in large part because he has actually continued the great majority of these repressive measures!)

Why is the Taliban Resurgent and the U.S. Occupation in Trouble? “It is a system of capitalism-imperialism…a system in which U.S. imperialism is the most monstrous, most oppressive superpower…a system driven by a relentless chase after profit, which brings horror upon horror, a nightmare seemingly without end, for the vast majority of humanity: poverty and squalor…torture and rape…the wholesale domination and degradation of women everywhere…wars, invasions and occupations…assassinations and massacres…planes, missiles, tanks and troops of the USA bombarding people in faraway lands while they sleep in their homes or go about their daily lives, blasting their little children to pieces, cutting down men and women in the prime of life, or in old age, kicking down their doors and dragging them away in the middle of the night…while here in the USA itself the police harass, brutalize and murder youth in the streets of the inner cities—over and over again—and then they spit out their maddening insults, insisting that this is ‘justified,’ as if these youth are not human beings, have no right to live, deserve no respect and no future.”

From “The Revolution We Need… The Leadership We Have: A Message, And A Call, From The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.” Revolution #170, revcom.us How did things get to the current point—with the Taliban resurgent and the U.S. occupiers in trouble and losing ground?
Obama claims that after starting out well things started going badly (i.e., for the U.S. occupiers) in Afghanistan for two reasons. First, "in early 2003, the decision was made to wage a second war in Iraq... for the next six years, the Iraq war drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national attention..." Second, while the Karzai regime is "a legitimate government ... elected by the Afghan people," according to Obama, "it's been hampered by corruption, the drug trade, an under-developed economy, and insufficient security forces."

What about this explanation? Yes, resources were diverted to the war in Iraq. But without getting into a full analysis of the trajectory of the Afghanistan war, it's important to note that this isn't the essential reason for the Taliban's resurgence and its ability to "control additional swaths of territory in Afghanistan" as Obama put it. There are deeper reasons which have to do with what U.S. capitalism-imperialism brings to the world and countries like Afghanistan.
The first is the brutality of the U.S. occupation. U.S. forces—hailed as heroes by Obama—have committed countless atrocities in Afghanistan—from bombing wedding parties, to murdering civilians, to humiliating Afghans with house-to-house searches, to locking people up in U.S.-controlled dungeons, where torture, illegal detention, and rendition have been in effect.

Here's one example. On August 22, 2008, the people in Azizabad, a small village in western Afghanistan, were asleep when U.S. forces attacked—first with guns, then air strikes. By the next morning, according to UN investigators, over 90 people had been massacred, including 60 children and 15 women. There have been many such massacres during the course of the war—most recently on September 9 of this year when 100-200 were killed in one attack in Kunduz province. While there are no precise figures for the number of Afghan casualties (in part because the U.S. military refuses to release – and perhaps doesn't even count -- them), studies have been done that give a glimpse of the scope of the carnage. Prof. Marc Herold documented 3,000-3,400 civilian deaths, mainly as a result of U.S. bombing, during the first six months of the war alone. The Guardian UK (11/19/09) estimates that 6,584 civilians were killed (by both the U.S. coalition and the Taliban) between 2006-Oct. 2009. Womens' rights activist and former member of the Afghan Parliament Malalai Joya states that 8,000 civilians have been killed in the war. (Democracy Now!, 10/28/2009)

These crimes have strengthened the Taliban. The Taliban for its part has used a combination of strong-arming people combined with playing upon the nationalist sentiments of the masses (particularly the Pashtun nationality in Afghanistan), as well as the appeal of "traditional Islam" in a society that has been deeply shattered, to take advantage of this.
Second, the warlords, landlords, tribal chiefs and pro-U.S. power brokers in Afghanistan are widely hated for preying on, exploiting and brutalizing the Afghan people. A prime example is Karzai's own brother—Ahmad Wali Karzai, who was put in charge of Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city. He's a major warlord and drug trafficker—and also on the CIA payroll.
It was not until 2005 that the Taliban began to mount an offensive against the occupation in earnest; the U.S. occupation forces and their hand-picked lackeys had years to show they could improve life for the Afghan people. But they didn't do it. Why? Because the U.S. imperialists were not in Afghanistan to liberate the people or develop the country; they were in Afghanistan to achieve their global objectives: to defeat al Qaeda and to create a pro-U.S. regime that would not destabilize neighboring countries and would be amenable to U.S. regional objectives.
And there is a deeper reason here. You cannot "improve life" for the Afghan people without uprooting the traditional social relations, and the class forces that benefit from those relations, which have held the masses in subjugation and darkness for centuries. Imperialism introduces great instability into oppressed nations, driving peasants off land and into the cities, and often introducing education to a broader section of masses (in order to modernize some sectors of the society). This is a byproduct of, and a necessity for, the implantation of capitalist relations in predominantly feudal societies. In doing this, imperialism relies on the former ruling forces and new elites to keep a lid on the upheaval ("to manage the transition," in their words)—that is, to prevent masses from raising their heads and rebelling against the exploitation, the dispossession, and the backward relations and ideas that still hold the society and its people in their grip. Imperialism relies on, and must rely on, the very forces, in other words, that benefit from either the old traditional forms of oppression or the new "market-based" ones—and sometimes both.
The kind of revolution that would decisively move to uproot those relations—the kind of revolution that would rely on and unleash the masses to take destiny into their own hands -- would necessarily directly oppose structures of foreign (including U.S.) domination. That's why the U.S. must rely on and further entrench and reinforce very oppressive forces, which do in fact stand in the way of a better life for the people, as a bulwark against any such revolution. A force like the Taliban—which does not actually pose the possibility for a real rupture with those relations of domination and dependence and which represents, often very directly, some of the most backward feudal forces in the country—can "gain traction" in that situation; at least to the point where they win a following among a section of people, and can intimidate the rest into acquiescence.

Third, Obama mentioned that al Qaeda and the Taliban had been able to establish havens in Pakistan. What he did not mention is that the Pakistani state, long backed and funded by the U.S., has actively promoted Islamic fundamentalism as a pillar of its legitimacy, and funded, supported and probably helps direct Jihadist fighters in Afghanistan and in Kashmir as part of its rivalry with India. This has included tolerating, even supporting, the Taliban and al Qaeda. And many in Pakistan are turning to the fundamentalists out of hatred for the dictatorial rule of the military, and the domination of Pakistan by U.S. imperialism, in league with big landlords and capitalists—a domination that has left the vast majority of the population in deep poverty and deprivation.

(While Obama did not spell out his precise plans for Pakistan, a subject we'll be covering in future issues of Revolution, there are widespread reports that he will be escalating the war there too, including through stepped up attacks by drone or unmanned aircraft. The stability of the Pakistani state is of major concern to the imperialists and one of their main reasons for escalating in Afghanistan.)

Again, these are the kinds of relations and regimes the U.S. promotes around the world. And Obama is not breaking from this practice—he's escalating it, as we'll discuss below.
How Can Obama Label One Million Deaths a "Success"?While Obama spoke out against the war in Iraq in 2002, and rode to the White House based in large part on the credibility among the disaffected with which that endowed him, at West Point he hailed this war as a success and job well done: "Today, after extraordinary costs, we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end ... we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are successfully leaving Iraq to its people." And his "surge" in Afghanistan is being justified by, and modeled in important ways on, Bush's "successful" surge in Iraq.

Let's take a closer look at what Obama calls "success." The war in Iraq—a war based on lies—cost the lives of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqis; over 4 million have been driven from their homes; the Sunni population—some 20 percent of Iraq's population—has been decimated by the U.S. occupation and a sectarian war of ethnic cleansing unleashed by the reactionary Shi'a forces the U.S. helped empower—an ethnic cleansing with tacit U.S. support. That slaughter, along with cash payments to the defeated Sunni fighters, is at the heart of the "successful" surge in Iraq. Yet Obama did not utter a word about the Iraqi victims of this U.S. aggression. Apparently the only civilians worth talking about in his view are the 3,000 killed on September 11.

Obama's treatment of Iraq is typical of his approach throughout his speech. He repeatedly refers to Americans who have lost their lives, but not to those America has killed in its "war on terror," whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or other countries. By doing this, he is rendering totally invisible the enormous toll of people killed by the U.S. In sheer numbers, the U.S. has so far killed something like 200 to 300 people for every American killed in the attacks of 9/11! By rendering these victims invisible and not even worth mentioning, he is training people in this country to see the world as if only American lives count. He is training them, in other words, in the mindset of imperialism.

And what of this new Iraq? The U.S. has brought to power an alliance of reactionary, pro-U.S. Kurdish warlords with reactionary Shi'ite religious parties. Iraq's military and police are dominated by sectarian death squads. Religious fundamentalism has been strengthened and the abuse and subjugation of women—including enforced veiling and legal discrimination -- has intensified and is actually worse than it was under Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, Iraq is being gradually opened up to foreign exploitation– including its vast oil sector. And Iraq's ethnic and religious faultlines have not been healed—and remain volatile and potentially explosive.
Whose Interests—and What "Way of Life"—Are Really Served by Obama's New Strategy?The strategy Obama laid out at West Point is not less violent or imperial, nor is it more truthful or humane than Bush's strategy.

The core of Obama's argument for why people should support an escalating and ongoing war in Afghanistan is the same as Bush's: I'm doing it to protect you and your loved ones:
"If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow.... I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here we were attacked on 9/11 and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak."

"This is no idle danger, no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. And this danger will only grow if the region slides backwards and al Qaeda can operate with impunity."

Here's the truth. The system Barack Obama is leading cares nothing for human life—whether those living within its borders or those living outside. It has demonstrated this for the 200-plus years of its existence by its actions in every corner of the globe. Its workings have savaged millions upon millions of lives, whether through outright killing or condemning people to lives of exploitation and destitution. The rulers care about people's safety only to the degree that it impacts on their power, legitimacy, and grip on the population.

"Our security" and "way of life" is based on global exploitation and plunder in the interests of a relative handful of imperialists. Crumbs from this plunder are used to pacify and/or retain the loyalty of a large section of the "home" population. The privileges accorded to a large section of Americans are based on the parasitical exploitation of billions. And this parasitical exploitation, in turn, rests on highly repressive, and widely hated, political structures in oppressed or Third World countries—like the Karzai regime in Afghanistan—imposed by the U.S. to enforce its
strategic interests and meet the needs of global capital.

Our "security" and "way of life" also rests on the grinding exploitation of tens of millions of people within the U.S. itself, with millions of immigrants denied any rights whatsoever and declared outlaws and millions of others living in desperate circumstances, seeking jobs and a way to live and often consigned to a life of crime and punishment. This too is reinforced by both raw force carried out by the repressive institutions of the police, prisons and army—the instruments of dictatorship, to be scientific—and by the ideas promoted through the schools, media, religious institutions, etc. So Obama's talk of "we"—as if everyone living within the borders of the U.S. shares common interests and a common cause, as if "we're all in this together"—covers over the real divisions in the world and within the U.S. It's a framework and way of looking at the world that hides the most fundamental facts about society and how it operates, and instead aims to win people to go against their own most basic interests—which actually consist of a world without one nation dominating another, a world without exploitation, and a world without all the relations and poisonous ideas that flow out of and reinforce those relations-- in short, a communist world.
This "we-have-to-protect-our-way-of-life" outlook is poison—and promoting this outlook among both the most oppressed and more enlightened sectors of society—is Obama's special role, and special talent, for the rulers. If this speech does nothing else, it must serve as a way for those who do know better to break those who should know better out of this outlook.

So people shouldn't join the imperialists in "threat assessments" to their system, much less rally to its defense. But even if you take this selfish and ultimately complicitous standard—the "safety of the American people"—as your own, Obama's strategy—which will greatly increase the violence brought to bear against the people of Afghanistan—will further stoke hatred of the U.S. and support for Islamic fundamentalism.

How Is U.S. Imperial Domination Different From All Other Imperial Domination?Toward the end of his speech, summing things up, Obama said: "We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours." This is double-talk aimed at obscuring how the system operates. First of all, when it suits their needs and interests, the imperialists will massively occupy countries for years, even decades—as they're doing right now with 100,000 troops in Iraq and perhaps even more in Afghanistan! At the same time, modern empires have many other tools for shaping the destinies of countries and entire regions without direct occupations.

And though the U.S. doesn't try to "claim resources" due to differences in "faith and ethnicity"—it does seek to control key resources (and indeed whole economies!) to further its strategic contention with other rivals and to maintain the functioning of U.S. capitalism—no matter the faith or ethnicity of its victims. And imperialism does enforce national oppression—against oppressed peoples (what Obama refers to as "ethnic" groups) right within its borders, and overall by forcibly perpetuating the national oppression and subordination of most countries in the world to imperialism. The history of the U.S. empire—from its genocide against the native peoples, the use of Africa as a hunting ground for the slaves who built its wealth, the theft of huge sections of Mexico, and its numerous invasions of other countries, clearly illustrates this—and clearly contradicts Obama's assertion. And a key element of the entire "war on terror" has been to seize greater access to crucial energy resources: in Afghanistan to further U.S. contention with Russia in particular over oil and gas pipelines; in Iraq to open up the country's vast oil resources to international capital.

Do We Need 9/11-Style "Unity" Again?Obama ended his speech with a stark assessment of the difficulties confronting the empire, and a call for the kind of support the rulers had following 9/11: "[W]e as a country cannot sustain our leadership nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse. It's easy to forget that, when this war began, we were united, bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again."

Unity like we had after 9/11? If you recall, that was a time of a lynch-mob atmosphere of chauvinist hysteria, fear-mongering, and the suppression of any critical thinking about why the 9/11 attacks happened and what should be done about them, and any critical resistance to the crimes the U.S. empire was preparing before our eyes. Wars were launched on the basis of lies. Basic freedoms were severely truncated, and in some cases eliminated. Now, eight years later, after the horrors of what that "unity" and support for America brought to the world—over a million dead in Iraq, legalized torture, and the devastation of Afghanistan—why would anyone with a shred of concern for humanity want to repeat THAT chapter in U.S. history?
But that's precisely what Obama has called on people to do—to blindly get behind the empire as it violently forges ahead in Afghanistan and globally. Obama's course is a criminal course; to fall blindly behind this, or to merely express trepidation or opposition and then impotently shrug your shoulders… especially for those who knew better when Bush did the same… is nothing less than complicity.

The Answer That Must Be GivenPeople need to do just the opposite. We have pointed to the fundamentally antagonistic interests, worldwide and within this country, concealed and obscured by talk of "we the people," and by the chauvinist notion that American lives are more valuable than those of other people. The imperialists are pursuing their interests, and we've had eight years to see where that all leads—whoever the President is. It is time and past time to see that these interests are directly opposed to those of humanity as a whole … and to take up and fight for those larger interests.

Obama spoke the truth when he said America was "passing through a time of great trial," and in the midst of "storms." These storms are due to the workings of imperialism and the whole cauldron of contradictions the U.S. "war on terror" has set roiling in the Middle East and Central Asia in particular, as well as to the most profound financial crisis since the 1930s.
If anything positive for humanity is going to come out of this "time of trial" it will happen because millions of people refuse to heed Obama's call and refuse to choose between supporting either imperialism or Islamic fundamentalism. It will happen—and it will only happen—if people instead can be led to break out of the entire framework set by this current clash. Humanity does need another way, in the interests of the people. This means revolution and it requires the broadest and most determined possible resistance to this criminal escalation.

With the whole world watching, Obama and the U.S. rulers have been openly debating just how much force and violence they should bring to bear against the people of Afghanistan. Now the whole world is going to be watching what the people in the U.S. do when it's decided to escalate and continue this war of conquest and empire. Will they resist? Or will they passively go along? Will they shed their delusions about Obama—or will they face reality and judge him by what he's actually doing, not his false narratives, his empty promises, and his double-talk?
* The Soviet Union had actually been born through a revolution in 1917, and had embarked on building a socialist society and working toward a communist world. But, through a complex series of struggles, new bourgeois forces within the communist party there seized power and capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union by the mid-1950s. By the time we are referring to, it had become a capitalist-imperialist power and leader of its own bloc, which was clashing very sharply with the U.S. for global predominance during the 1960s, '70s and '80s. For more on this see Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, February 2009, available online at revcom.us. [back]
From Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda on the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (documentation and endnotes can be found in the book)
Chapter 4: Double-Dealing Death in the Gulf, pp. 88, 89-90
The Soviet invasion, in turn, was motivated by a combination of Moscow's own imperial ambitions and its concern over stepped-up U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan and possible military action in Iran. In his book Iran Under the Ayatollahs, author Dilip Hiro argues that Moscow feared that following the embassy seizure, Washington was preparing a military assault on Iran, which in turn would "have encouraged President Hafizollah Amin of Afghanistan to loosen his ties with Moscow. Forestalling such a move was one of the main considerations which led Soviet officials to order their troops into Afghanistan."

The Soviet invasion came in the wake of stepped up "competition for influence with the United States throughout the Middle East, Indian Ocean, Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia regions," as the former Reagan NSC staffer Howard Teicher and his wife put it in their book on U.S. policy in the Gulf. Taking over Afghanistan rescued a pro-Soviet government in Kabul, gave Moscow control of a key buffer state between Iran and Pakistan, and put its forces closer to the Persian Gulf. For the U.S., the fertile crescent had become, as Brzezinski labeled it, an "arc of crisis" stretching from Afghanistan through Iran to Saudi Arabia—a label that is once again being applied to this region in the wake of the U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Empire Strikes Back
Intervention in the Iran-Iraq War was one facet of a multi-dimensioned and aggressive U.S. response to the shocking turn of events in 1979. Washington's overarching goals were protecting the Gulf's pro-U.S. oil sheikdoms while preventing the Soviet Union from turning regional turmoil into geopolitical gain.
In July 1979, some five months before the Soviet invasion, the U.S. had initiated a covert campaign to destabilize Afghanistan's pro-Soviet government by arming and funding the Islamist opposition. The goal, according to Brzezinski, was "to induce a Soviet military intervention." When the Soviets did intervene in December, Brzezinski wrote Carter: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."
Over the next decade, the U.S. government funneled more than $3 billion in arms and aid to the Islamic Mujahideen, helping create a global network of Islamist fighters, some of whom would form the core of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda. When the Soviets finally pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, more than a million Afghans (along with 15,000 Soviet soldiers) had been killed and one-third of the population driven into refugee camps.
*****
On U.S. National Security Strategy
Chapter 1: "Go Massive, Sweep It All Up", pp. 19-21
One World, One Empire

Neither mystical links with al Qaeda, invisible weapons of mass destruction, reflexive posturing, electoral politicking, nor diverting attention from corporate scandals and a weak economy explained why the U.S. government was hell-bent on attacking Iraq. But the sweep and enormity of its global agenda did.
"They have ambitions of essentially reshuffling the whole deck, reordering the whole situation—beginning with the strategic areas of Central and South Asia and the Middle East that are more immediately involved now—but, even beyond that, on a world scale," Bob Avakian of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA wrote shortly after Sept. 11. "They've set themselves a very far-reaching agenda with gigantic implications."

This momentous shift in U.S. global strategy was crystalized in a new National Security Strategy (NSS) published on September 20, 2002. This new NSS echoed and codified previous strategy papers, including the 1992 Pentagon Defense Guidance and the Project for a New American Century's 2000 paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," discussed above. Then it went further.
Taking off from the hegemonic vision developed by Reagan and Bush I officials during the 1990s, the NSS argued that the 1991 Soviet collapse had left the U.S. the world's only superpower—with "unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence"—and that U.S. policy should be to "work to translate this moment of influence into decades of peace, prosperity, and liberty."

What does this really mean? The document's mantra is creating "a balance of power that favors freedom." Like terrorism, "freedom" hasn't been defined by the Bush regime, but the substance of the NSS, as well as the voluminous writings of the imperial strategists who have shaped it, make clear that it means the freedom of America's dominant corporate-political elite to impose its values, interests, and economic system on all others. As the NSS baldly put it, "These values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society."

The new National Security Strategy claims that the U.S. will not seek "unilateral advantage," yet it is a doctrine for just that—militarily, politically and economically. It amounts to an audacious declaration that the U.S. aims to remain the world's sole superpower for decades to come. The practical implementation of this new Bush doctrine will no doubt be shaped by internal debates and external events, including the growing unrest and resistance in now-occupied Iraq. Nonetheless, its implications are clearly enormous.

A core thesis, which has been a central theme in neo-conservative theorizing for over a decade, is preventing the rise of rival powers which could challenge the U.S. regionally or globally. The NSS envisions accomplishing this objective by first maintaining overwhelming military superiority over all other countries and combinations of countries, and second by no longer containing possible opponents, but eliminating them before they can emerge: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld elaborates that the U.S. would deter "potential adversaries not only from using existing weapons but also from building dangerous new ones in the first place," and the U.S. would no longer judge states by their actions or intentions, but by their potential "capabilities."

To achieve this staggering goal, the U.S. power structure envisions staggering methods, including disarming various countries, toppling defiant regimes, occupying strategic regions, and waging counter-insurgency wars against a variety of political forces standing in the way of U.S. control.
Marine General Peter Pace, the Joint Chiefs vice chairman, has stated that "the scope for potential anti-terrorist action included—at a minimum—Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Georgia, Colombia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and North Korea." Pace knew of what he spoke: The New York Times reported that by January 2003, the Pentagon had drafted a "National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism" which called for 20 to 30 years of war on a variety of states and anti-U.S. groups.

Chinese migrant workers fall victims of unfavorable U.S. trade policies

source: www.chinaview.cn

by Xinhua writer Lin Jianyang
BEIJING, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- In the last decade, Chinese migrant workers had worked hard to produce goods for global consumers including Americans, yet an increasing number of them has unfortunately become victims of unfavorable U.S. trade policies.

The latest example involved a possible U.S. restriction of importing made-in-China seamless carbon and alloy steel standard pipes.

Washington said last Wednesday that it had started anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probes into Chinese steel pipes at the request of the United Steelworkers and three other U.S. petitioners, which requested a 98.37-percent duty against Chinese pipes.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said the plight facing the U.S. steel sector fundamentally resulted from serious decline of consumer strength and demand after the economic crisis rather than Chinese imports.

The probe could probably cause no major impact on China's steel industry since the to-be-affected pipe exports accounted for less than 1 percent of China's total steel exports in the first eight months, according to a research released by the Ever bright Securities.

But, of significance was that it was the third case of its kind launched by Washington since last month. These cases indicated that the U.S. government could increasingly resort to similar policies, which smell of strong protectionism, despite its repeated pledges on free trade given U.S. record high of unemployment rate in September.

In September, the U.S. administration said it had imposed preliminary duties up to 31 percent on Chinese steel pipes used in oil and gas wells. In another action, Washington approved punitive tariffs of as much as 35 percent on imported Chinese tyres.

In the last few years, owing to hefty labor cost and a notable drop of consumer demand in the U.S., American manufacturers were facing increasingly fierce competition and some of them were forced to shut down their American factories and move jobs to other lower-cost labor markets, including India and China.

According to the pro-labor Alliance for American Manufacturing, the U.S. tyre manufacturing industry had lost a total of 5,100 jobs in the last eight years since 2000.

Currently, regardless of evidences of a recovery, the U.S. economy was still losing jobs.
"Keeping the jobs is the most important aim of (U.S.) trade protection," Luo Chuanyin, a long-time observer on the employment issue, wrote in her blog.

Luo and other analysts said it was morally unacceptable that Chinese workers should become victims of the U.S. economic failure as the U.S. raised import tariffs and cut Chinese imports.
The tyre case alone, according to China Rubber Industry Association, could affect the employment of 100,000 Chinese tire workers.

Compared to U.S. tire workers, who earned more than 20 U.S. dollars per hour, Chinese tire workers, many of whom are migrant workers from the vast poor countryside, earned less than two U.S. dollars per hour. And often, the salaries were major income of their families.
Luo said it was unclear how many Chinese workers might lose jobs if the U.S. finally restricted import of steel pipes.

"In the market economy, every individual has dual nature - one is to pursue maximum economic interest while the other is to follow moral code. So does every nation," Luo said.
That's why Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has repeatedly recommended a book by Adam Smith -- The Theory of the Moral Sentiments, she added.

The Doctrine of Essence

source: marxists.org

ESSENCE IS A MOVEMENT OF NEGATION
Here goes then, right into the heart of it, and take the worst first. Brace yourself:
Becoming in Essence – its reflective movement – is hence the movement from Nothing to Nothing and through Nothing back to itself. The transition or Becoming transcends itself in its transition: that Other which arises in the course of this transition is not the Not-being of a Being, but the Nothing of a Nothing – which constitutes Being – Being exists only as the movement of Nothing to Nothing, and thus is Essence; and Essence does not contain this movement in itself but is this movement, an absolute Show and pure negativity, which has nothing without it that could negate it, but negates only its own negativity, which is only in this negation.

It is as tough a passage as you can have. Yet we can break its back. Just try to remember. Hegel must write this way. If he said, as we do, the labour movement this and that, or atomic energy, or the theory of the state, he would at once limit himself. The reader would think of this as politics or whatever it was Hegel had chosen. The movement would be from politics to something else, then to something else, and so on ad infinitum. Besides it would, I feel sure, limit his freedom of analysis. He examines instead an infinite number of processes, studies the relation between stages, and extracts, abstracts the essential movement. Besides, as I read him, I get the impression that from the study of phenomena and the methods of other philosophers he had learnt to handle these abstractions by themselves, and as a man does in mathematics, push them further by their own movement. So they have to be accepted as valid.

We are to take this passage all ways, worry it like a dog. What is the central idea? The thing that I want you to notice is where he says Essence does not contain a movement, but is that movement.

Imagine a spirit, a genie Ariel, a disembodied being flitting around in the spiritual void. He does not know who he is or what he is. But he wants to find out and he has been told that inside his spiritual constellation are a number of elements which periodically explode into an object, stone, flower, horse, ape, man, etc. He gets a chance in these to see what he really is. But he will know whether this is the real thing or not. If after a while he feels that this is not the real thing he dissolves it and he steps back again into a pure spirit. His only way of knowing anything about himself is to become one of the things that is in him. The day he becomes something and knows, feels, that this is it, then he is something new at last. He has we may say a notion of his true self at last. But, except as something that has become something for a while, he himself is a pure spirit, abstract, waiting in those cold regions.

The essence is the fact that something continually becomes something else and negates it because it isn't what the thing that is becoming wants to be. This “being” that it becomes, we know from the Doctrine of Being has “become” out of Nothing. All immediate being comes out of Nothing and can go back to nothing. The difference with Essence is that it creates a lot of different beings; they go back to nothing, but essence keeps on trying, for poor Essence is the fact that he has to keep on trying. He is a kind of being that does not rest at becoming nothing but from his very nature must keep on trying and trying again. We can now go back to the passage and concentrate on certain things.

Now we can do a loose paraphrase. (As far as Essence is concerned, the process of becoming is being, that is to say it comes from nothing, stays as being for a while and goes back to nothing, but thereby gets back to itself, which is the imperative necessity to “become” once more.) Ordinary being is the movement of nothing to being-for-other and going on, or maybe, just becoming and disappearing, and that's that. But Essence tries again. So that the being in which Essence tries to find itself is pure Show; it does not become a quality, which becomes a quantity, which becomes a Measure, etc. No, sir. Pure Show. Absolute Negativity. Show No. 1. No good. Negated. Show No. 2. Not what I am looking for – out with it into limbo. Show No. 3. No good. Negate it. Negate them all. One day we'll get to it (and we'll see a lot of things which we could not see before). But for the time being Essence can truly say, “Me! I know what I am by now. I am just Negativity, becoming something and negating it. I am a movement, me. Yes, that's it. I am movement of negation. But that isn't all of me. One day I'll find out.” Essence of course does not know that there is a logic to his negativity. A philosopher, a Hegelian philosopher, who was watching him through an atomic microscope would say: first he was a stone, then he was a flower, then he was a horse, then he was an ape, then he was a man. The poor abstraction doesn't know it, but I think one day he will be an angel. That's what all this restlessness and negativity must mean. But that of course does not concern us here.

Now from there into the labour movement.
We know what the labour movement is. It was at one time the 1848 revolutions, including Chartism, 1839-48. It took the form of the First International. It took the form of the Second International at its highest peak. The unions were also organised. There are asses who would say: the Commune, for example, took place in one city, how can you say that was a form of the whole labour movement? Think of all the millions and millions who had no connection with the Commune. Fools. Since 1917 the labour movement in country after country has repeatedly tried to imitate the Commune. Europe and Asia seethe with would-be Communards. So it is obvious that the Commune (in a single city) showed the pattern of the future – to the millions and millions in the hundreds and thousands of cities who perhaps paid little attention to the Commune – which was a form of nothing in particular. The Commune represented them.

So these forms show the labour movement going somewhere. But the 1848 revolutions, they came and went, the Commune came and went. The First International came and went. The Second International remains, but is a relic. Look at it in France – the Third Force. It is a joke. In France the two forces are De Gaulle and the Third International. Who chooses to bother himself about the Second International and Catholic workers is in the same position as those who did not understand that it was the Commune and not the apparently inert millions that was decisive for the future of Europe. Marx pounced on it.

But, as I say, these forms disappear. But the proletarian movement continues. They have an external being, and these vanish, the new external forms appear. We can always, if we are Marxists, see the form and what for the moment we will call the Essence. But the Essence is not one thing that changes. No, the form was the First International; the essence was the labour, the proletarian, the revolutionary movement of 1871, which was different from that of 1848. And we have established that the revolutionary movement today, the workers that follow Stalinism, are not the same workers who followed Menshevism. They are further advanced qualitatively, further advanced along the road of their ultimate goal.

The Commune, therefore, the First International, the 1905 struggles were just Being, they were Nothing. They did not exist, they existed, they did not exist any more. They were from nothing and went back to nothing. But their experience, what they represented was stored up. It was not lost. Essence is a movement but a movement of stored up Being. The workers under Stalinism have the experience of Leninism. “Essence we may certainly regard as past Being, remembering however meanwhile that the past is not utterly denied, but only laid aside and thus at the same time preserved.”

The reactionary Third International has, stored up in it, the past being of Leninism which is gone – it exists no longer. Philosophers, Marxists, have to trace this.
The thing that continues to move, however, is the labour movement, the revolutionary movement itself. It stored up the experience of the follies and weaknesses of Proudhonism and Bakuninism. It learnt the value of organisation. It stored up the experience of parliamentarianism, national defence, etc. It became richer and richer. (It organised the ideas too, but always as a result of the objective movement, changing, developing capitalism.)
At a given moment, this proletarian movement looks like the First International or the Commune or 1917-20. And if you stop, look at it, and be precise about it, as you have to do (remember you cannot think unless you have fixed and precise determinations), then you see that the essential movement is reflected in the form. The First International reflected it, 1915 reflected it, etc. The reflections disappear. What they reflected is stored up and becomes part of the new proletariat. This process, the disappearance of the reflection, and the new proletariat with its experience of the reflection stored up in it, starting off again, this process is Essence. The essence of a thing is the fact that it must move, reflect itself, negate the reflection, which was nothing, become being, and then become nothing again, while the thing itself must move on because it is its nature to do so. That it must move, the consistent direction in which it moves, its necessity to negate its reflections, store them up, and go on to some ultimate goal, this is its Essence. The essence of the proletariat is its movement to incorporate in itself experience of the evils of capitalism until it overcomes capitalism itself. The essence of the proletariat is not that it is revolutionary and tries a lot of different parties and rejects them because they fail. It is not “an existent substratum”. It negates not only its reflection, it does more than that, it further negates its own experiences and stores them up, so it is always further than it was before in its own special purpose. Nor does it negate in general. (The quote will show.) Its negation is a specific negation of its own contradictions, inherent in capitalism and therefore inherent in it as inseparable from and in fact unthinkable except as an opposite to capitalism. And now, sentence by sentence.

Becoming in Essence – its reflective moment – is hence the movement from Nothing to Nothing and through Nothing back to itself.

Obvious. Commune, First International, Leninism, all, as existing entities, all pure being. The proletariat had a being, a certain feeling, ideas, impulses, desires, will. It gained these in its experience, objective experience with capitalism, with its past stored-up being. This was abstract being, abstract proletarian being. But abstract being is Nothing. The Nature of being is to become determinate. Just as thought organises impulses, desire, will, etc., the proletarian party organises itself, becomes determinate in Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky, Rakovsky, the Bolshevik Party, the Third International, determinate being.

Leninism, therefore, the Third International, is a crystallisation of abstract being, which is Nothing. Leninism negates this nothing by becoming something. Then it is superseded by Stalinism. But the fact that this takes place is the essence of the proletariat. Its desires, will, impulses, needs (basically implanted in it by its position vis-a-vis capitalism) are always first abstract being, i.e., nothing, then take determinate form, then these vanish back into nothing, but their essence is stored up. The proletariat, in essence, has an Other, its reflection, but this just comes and goes.

The transition or Becoming transcends itself in its transition: that Other which arises in the course of this transition is not the Not being of a Being, but the Nothing of a Nothing; and it is this – the fact that it is the negation of a Nothing – which constitutes being.
This is an exercise in the development of the ideas of the Doctrine of Being. This passage contains the key. Read it slowly and get it:

Being exists only as the movement of Nothing to Nothing, and thus is Essence- and Essence does not contain this movement in itself but is this movement, an absolute Show and pure negativity, which has nothing without it that could negate it, but negates only its own negativity, which is only in this negation.

So that looking back we can see that we had one kind of being in quality, immediate being, which went its own way. Now we have another kind of being, Essence, which has its way, constant negativity of the Show, in which it must find itself. The rest of Essence is to trace the dialectical development of this Show, and the movement that constantly negates it. (I do not guarantee these interpretations. The point is once they are down we begin to Bet somewhere. I am not afraid of mistakes.)

So now we have Essence. It is a form of Reflection. As Hegel describes it in the smaller Logic:
This word “reflection” is originally applied when a ray of light in a straight line impinging upon the surface of a mirror is thrown back from it. In this phenomenon we have two things, first an immediate fact which is, and secondly the deputed, derivated, or transmitted phase of the same. Something of this sort takes place when we reflect, or think upon an object; for here we want to know the object, not in its immediacy, but as derivative or mediated.

Mediated. A lovely word. Hug it to your bosom. I say, we say that people's consciousness is one thing, immediacy, an entity that we can say has “quality”. But as Marxists we know that consciousness is in essence the reflection of economic and political, i.e. social environment. The social background, therefore, is mediated through consciousness. In the doctrine of Being, quality was, if you like, mediated into quantity. In the Doctrine of Essence quality is, or rather would be a Show of something which is reflecting itself through quality. Hegel goes on:

The problem or aim of philosophy is often represented as the ascertainment of the essence of things: a phrase which only means that things instead of being left in their immediacy, must be shown to be mediated by, or based upon, something else. The immediate Being of things is thus conceived under the image of a rind or curtain behind which the Essence lies hidden.
The maestro is taking it easy. “Everything, it is said, has an Essence; that is, things really are not what they immediately show themselves. There is something more to be done than merely rove from one quality to another, and merely to advance from qualitative to quantitative and vice versa: there is a permanent in things and that permanent is in the first instance their Essence.”
That is simple enough. Why didn't I begin with it? No. Because that simple phrase “in the first instance” covers a lot and it would have given us a lot of trouble. You would have believed you understood something which you did not. The essence of consciousness is social environment. But you get there an impression that is static. It is only because consciousness is a kind of show, which must reflect environment, and environment must go on expressing itself, forever seeking, can we call it Essence. The importance of this cannot be overestimated. If you do not see that clearly, you get the conception of trying this, trying that, trying the other. You soon say: it never seems to learn, because “it” is static. Then your essence becomes a thing. But when you see Essence as the movement, and the movement which stores up the superseded being, but yet is impelled to go on, then you have Essence in truth and in fact.

Now to know that Essence is a movement which reflects into a Show (which is dismissed) and then goes off again, to know this is only to know Essence in general. This is the beginning of Essence. Essence, a movement, moves on dialectically. The reflection and the thing reflected have their own life; they develop into different things and we trace them, and see how at each stage they change into something else. Hegel calls their most important form the Reflections of Determinations. Remember that for a long time they are creations of thought. For example, when you look at consciousness, you do not see it divided into consciousness and existence, to use Marx's word. Consciousness is consciousness. Thought, however, makes this separation, these determinations of the object, into its component parts.

We see Leninism as a determination which reflects a certain stage of development of the perpetual movement. But Leninism is a thought-determination. There is the proletariat, in capitalist society, at a certain stage of development. To isolate what we call Leninism is a determination of thought. To isolate it as a fact and give it an independent life of its own, ah! Jesus, that is something that brings a terrible retribution. Listen to Hegel even before he begins to develop the Determinations of Reflection, telling us how certain people get stuck:

. . . the reflected determinations are of a kind different from the merely immediate determinations of Being. Of the latter it is easily admitted that they are transitory and merely relative, related to something other, while the reflected determinations have the form of Being-in-and-for-Self. They accordingly assert themselves as essential, and instead of passing over into their opposites, they appear rather as absolute, free, and indifferent to one another. They therefore stubbornly resist their movement: their Being is their selfidentity in their determinateness, according to which, while presupposing one another, they yet preserve themselves as absolutely separate in this relation.

Leninism is Leninism and Stalinism is Stalinism; the Fourth International is the Fourth International. This is giving them the form of Being-in-and-for-Self. The above extract poses the problem. There is no need to take everything sentence by sentence. A looser interpretation is here indicated. (And Hegel will sing this song for nearly five hundred pages .) If you look at the “immediate” determinations of being, you see Leninism, and you say: it will pass; things come and go. l remember the French consul in an island where I stayed who told me that the French politician Briand was a socialist in his youth, but there always arise people more to the left than you, which pushes you to the right. That idea appears to have movement, but it takes Briand and those “more left” than he as “immediates”- The reflection is external.

And Hegel (in the complete extract – I have left out some of the paragraph) says it is easy for serious thinkers to throw these external determinations aside. But when you think seriously, see the apparent being as merely reflections of essence, then these determinations become themselves essential. The Commune, the Second International, Leninism, Stalinism, etc., become “free”. They become independent of life. They live on after they are dead, and what does live on is dead – for Understanding. You see, you know you are a superior thinker. These determinations you have traced to their roots. They “presuppose” one another “of course”. Leninism is “in a way” connected with Menshevism, and Stalinism comes from Leninism. They are in inseparable connection with developing capitalism and the developing proletariat. “Of course, of course”, but yet they are kept “separate”. The individual thinker, having worked hard, overcome vulgar common sense, and established these, holds tight on to them. His creative energy is exhausted. Or his energy for organisation of concrete things is such that he throws himself into organisation within these categories. He would ordinarily do little harm. But when these marvellous, new categories were established, they came from the impulses, will, desire, etc., of people. And there are always some people who, for objective reasons, wish to stay right there. They catch hold of this individual and make him a hero. The Logic of Understanding has a base.

But there are some even more pathetic cases, and as I think of this, I am moved to tears. There is the powerful intellect and spirit which moves in categories that, once powerful in their day, now have no objective base. What wasted effort! What vain sacrifices! Hegel knew. All the time he keeps saying: “That is the enemy, thinking in the categories which were precise, but acquire independent life and do not move.” He is going to tell us about opposites and transition. That is the main content of Essence. But before he begins he says that this Understanding type of thought can strangle us before we can get started.

Identity, Difference and Contradiction, especially Contradiction
We now approach the core of Hegel's system, in the three noted above. It must not, however, be forgotten that the larger Logic is nine hundred pages in all. Take for example the question of Ground which follows these three. Ground, says Hegel, is the real self-mediation of Essence. OK. And then he is off. Absolute Ground which is further determined into Determined Ground, which he further analyses into Formal Ground and Real Ground, which finally ends up as Complete Ground. But the sub-divisions of Absolute Ground alone are (a) Form and Essence, (b) Form and Matter, (c) Form and Content. It is thirty-four pages in all. What the hell can we do with that? And yet it contains such crucial things as Form and Content, Existence, Appearance, Substance, and so on and on. You will read it for yourselves. My selections are arbitrary. We take bits. But in reality there are no arbitrary selections. My purpose, my knowledge of the Logic, my knowledge of the labour movement, my knowledge of my probable readers, are all at work deciding which bits I shall take. If my knowledge is not too superficial and my purpose not too narrow, a real insight into the Logic will be given and a real insight into the labour movement too. But we must know the limits of what we are doing. We are getting an idea of the thing, that's all. However, when it comes to Identity and Difference and Contradiction, I think we should make some attempt to follow his abstract method, as we did to some degree in the Doctrine of Being. They are, as I say, the core.

The treatment of Identity in the smaller Logic is one of the most baffling and most irritating things in Hegel. I suspect that a thorough knowledge of the old-fashioned logic would help. In any case Hegel seems to be saying something like this: “You see that tablecloth? It is more than a tablecloth; a thorough knowledge now of a tablecloth is absolutely necessary to understand logic; let us now go on to the next section.”

My explanation, as many of my explanations, undoubtedly will commit violations. But you will probably learn something from it. I have read numbers of brief explanations of Hegel and the Logic in particular, which explained nothing. That is why I am using my own method. As the translators of the larger Logic say quite frankly: “We have no doubt that we have failed to understand the thought in many places. “ I too know how easy it is to misinterpret. But that need not deter us. Now –

I look at something and in my view I get a picture of it (how I could tear that formulation to pieces!) – book, stone, horse, house, labour movement, scientific theory, dish of ice-cream. I define it to myself: I establish its identity. I can be quite precise. I say: that house, I designed it. I built it. I live in it. I know all about it. I can describe it, maybe make an inventory. That house is that house. What I write on the paper, the plans, the photographs, the memories, etc., all correspond to that house. But the conception – that house, which I think I have established so clearly, eludes me even as I establish it. The house is changing. (I am changing too, but forget that, or rather put it aside for the moment.) In two years that house will be another house: paint gone, holes in the roof, furniture waterlogged, grass growing in the patio. Instead of that house being in Class A that house has degenerated into Class C. It happened in two years, but it was in reality happening all the time. The whole existence of the house is a struggle against precisely such a degeneration. Now Hegel says, and this is the first (broad) statement of his particular Hegelian method, he says: I who know this, when I look at the house, l must say – this house is, but at the same time it is not, or to be more precise, it is and it is not what it is, it is also something else. You find it in the books as A is not equal to A. That formula is the most misleading formula that could be. Any fool can agree with it, and any fool can disagree. Simply because by itself it proves nothing. You have to take the whole of the Hegelian argument or you had better leave it alone.

For Hegel, having established the uncertain character of Identity, moves on at once to Difference. And here he is equally bold but a little easier to follow. He says that if identity implies difference, then equally difference implies identity. I do not compare a camel to a French dictionary. Those are merely things which are unlike; there is no “difference” between them. Sure they are “different”, but that is a vulgar difference, as vulgar in its way as the identity that house is house. I can seriously compare the differences of two books, two novels, two novels of the same period, two novels of the same author. Difference, difference worth talking about, can only exist on the basis of some identity. And identity conversely can only exist on the basis of difference, this house is and is not that house. And this house today is not this house tomorrow or in two years' time.

In fact Hegel says at the moment you think, whether you know it or not, you negate the existent. “This house is worth $5,000” means it was worth more and that tomorrow it will be worth only $4000, or if the inflation goes on, $10,000, Negroes and all. If I am saying that this house is worth $5,000, was always worth $5,000 and will always be worth $5,000, for ever and ever, 1 am saying nothing, at least I am not seriously thinking. Thought has significance only when the house has relation to other houses which do not possess this priceless attribute of constantly maintaining the price.

Identity means difference. Difference means identity. And now with a leap we can get into it. Hegel says that this principle becomes important, in fact decisive, when you watch, make a philosophical cognition, about a single object. Within the identity of an object, you have to establish the specific difference, and within its specific difference, you have to establish the identity. If you have established the specific difference, the difference which belongs to the object, which distinguishes it from all other objects and their differences, then you have the Other of the object. The other is the difference that matters, the essential difference. But as it is special (essential) difference to no other object, then Other is therefore identical with its object. To find that out is to find out what makes the object move. l look at bourgeois society and I see capital, but labour is its other. In capital is essential difference, but both capital and labour are one identity.

I think myself that all this is thrilling. Let us now take this principle a little further, letting Hegel himself do most of the talking, if even I do not always use quotes. He says that this question of essential difference within every identity is the indispensable necessity for philosophic cognition. Later he will tell us when you say father, you have in mind son. Son is interpenetrated with father. Father has no meaning except in relation to son. Above has no meaning except in relation to below. If I did not mean father in relation to son I would not say father, I would say: man or baseball-player or something, but then I am looking at another object or objects. So that simple, abstract identity is a fiction, a deadly trap for thinkers.

It is of the greatest importance to recognise this quality of the Determinations of Reflection which have been considered here, that their truth consists only in their relation to each other, and therefore in the fact that each contains the other in its own concept. This must be understood and remembered, for without this understanding not a step can really be taken in philosophy.

That is how house is not merely house. House is essentially a protection against Nature. So that identical with house is its Other, destruction by Nature. House can be a fort containing soldiers. So identical with house in that connection is its destruction by artillery, etc. House can be also a source of income. So that identical with it is decline in rent. Everything has its own specific complex of relations, and the something has different complexes of relations which continue to give it a specific Other, in other words, control its movement. That is a very important aspect of dialectic. And as Hegel loves to say, dialectic is not practised only by philosophers. The real-estate merchant, the architect, all these people know the particular Other of their house very well. It is always in their concept. True the dialectic of the house is as a rule on a very low level, except in case of Florida hurricanes, fire, or runaway inflation. But that Hegel knows too. And he knows too that where you examine great social and intellectual forms in society, then you have got to remember that every object contains its Other in its own concept and every determination of thought has its other in its concept too. Labour always has capital in its concept. That is why labour in 1864 had the capital of 1864 in its concept, labour in 1948 has the capital of 1948 in its concept. Menshevism had Leninism in its concept, and Leninism had Stalinism in its concept. How Stalinism? Because as long as the new organism, socialism, had not been achieved, the revolutionary determination, Leninism, would be attacked by the reflection within it of the fundamental enemy of the proletariat, capital, and state capital within the labour movement is precisely Stalinism, as Menshevism was monopoly capital (in its stage of super-profits from imperialism) within the labour movement. You don't know this? You cannot move a foot. It is
worse. You can move but in the wrong direction.

Their truth consists only in their relation to each other. Each contains the other in its own concept. Know this. Read it in the two Logics. Reflect on it. For if you don't, you cannot think. Their truth consists only in their relation to each other. The truth of the labour movement consists only in its relation to capital. How we have sweated to show that the truth of the First International can only be grasped in relation to the specific capital of the day, that the Second International had a similar relation, that the truth of the Third International, in relation to the Fourth International, must be the same. Understand it and remember it. Remember it. Remember that Menshevism as a political tendency in the labour movement had its precise opposite, Leninism. That is the history of the Second International, of the Second International and no other. When Menshevism reached its peak it perished and Leninism took its place. That is the way it went, and it could move no other way. The Labour movement could move from the revolutionary ideas of 1889 to 1917 only by way of an opposition, a transition through the growth of Menshevism, and by overcoming it. (We know but we have to repeat that these represented objective forces. But for the time being, let us concentrate on the process of thought.) I don't know if you have it. A determination of reflection is identity and difference. And the difference, the Other, emerges, becomes strong, and the Identity has to overcome it, for identity is the beginning of Essence, the movement forward.

The history of the Third International is the history of the supersession of Leninism by Stalinism. Hold the movement tight. You see what was show is now more than show. It is Other which forms the heartbreaking mountain that Identity has to create and climb before it can reach the height to re-establish itself as Identity once more on a higher plane. Thus the reflections of determination must be viewed. Do not give them a free, independent life of their own. They will murder you. Look into them. See their Other, and see if when something serious appears it is not Other which is coming out. Then you know it, you can trace it, you know why it is there, and you can mobilise forces to overcome it. But if you do not see it as Difference in identity, cruel, murderous, but (given the objective forces) necessary transition, then you rush off into fantastic explanations such as “tools of the Kremlin” or the incapacity of the workers to understand politics and such like. Once more. That which ultimately becomes the obstacle over which you must climb is an Other which was inside it, identical with it and yet essential difference.

If the Fourth International is to supersede Stalinism then it must “contain” Stalinism in its concept of itself. It begins from all the things that Stalinism took over from Leninism and kept (objective forces bring out Other – different objective forces would bring out a different Other). The moment you think, or allow it to lurk in your mind that the workers are backward or deceived, you repudiate two or three decades of history and your concept contains as its opposite, Menshevism. You then fight a ghost. The British workers, the American workers are not Menshevik, neither are the workers in Norway and Sweden. A poll taken a few months ago in all the European countries showed that over sixty per cent of the populations were ready to abolish customs duties, integrate economies, etc. What was vanguardism in Lenin's day is now an essential part of the whole populations. The Other of Menshevism was Leninism. The Other of Stalinism is an international socialist economic order, embracing from the start whole continents. Their truth consists only in relation to each other. Each contains the other in its own concept. It goes forward by overcoming this specific opposite. We have not laboured in vain. We have now (I hope) grasped without knowing what Hegel means by his great principle of contradiction.
Contradiction

The most important pages in the Doctrine of Essence I have found to be Observation 3 of the larger Logic. I think when we have finished with this the hump will be behind us, though much will remain to be done.

Hegel in his tantalising way begins by talking calmly about Identity, Variety and Opposition, which he calls the primary determinations of Reflection. I preferred to talk about Identity Difference and Contradiction. Go look them up yourself if you want to. Then he says that contradiction is the root of all movement and life and only through it anything moves and has impulse and activity. Everybody, every Marxist, knows those statements.
Then Hegel does something very characteristic. He says that in regard to the assertion of some people that contradiction does not exist, “we may disregard this statement”. Just leave it. First of all he is, blessed man, not a politician. In politics you cannot disregard opponents. Secondly he cannot begin by proving such a statement. To ask him to do this is, he considers, unscientific. The proof is all that he will say and the conclusions that he will reach. If you don't like it go your way. Then after a lot of the same panegyric to contradiction, he ends:

Speculative thought consists only in this, that thought holds fast Contradiction, and, in Contradiction, itself, and not in that it allows itself to be dominated by it – as happens to imagination – or suffers its determinations to be resolved into other, or into Nothing .

You have not got “quite simple insight” into what this means, I am quite sure when you do you understand dialectic. Until you have that simple insight you do not understand it. To get that simple insight is going to be a job. Let us get down to it.
You remember that each contains the other in its own concept. I talked about organisation and spontaneity, party and mass, politics and economics. To say that each of these concepts must contain the other is to make a profound but general statement. Much work has been done in Bolshevism to show that politics contains economics in its concept. No work, absolutely none, has been done on the others, except for some marvellous beginnings by Lenin. (The subjects of organisation and spontaneity, party and mass, were not urgent in Marx's day.)

As I said: to say that the truth of party consists in its relation with mass, the truth of organisation consists in its relation to spontaneity, is to say an abstract truth, but still important truth, a beginning. The one concept has life and movement because of the opposition of the other. It moves because of the other, because the other moves. It cannot move otherwise. And thought must know this and hold it. Look at Hegel's actual procedure in the Logic.
We begin with Identity. That became difference. He has now carried it to contradiction. Each is carried to its limit and so becomes a point of transition for its opposite. That is how quality becomes quantity. That is how quantity became measure.

That, then, is what Hegel is getting at by his treatment of identity, Difference, Contradiction, Variety, Opposition and his statement that contradiction is the source of all movement. When you observe what is an apparent identity, know that within it the contradictions exist, the essential differences. How will you know? In that annoying section in the smaller Logic dealing with Identity he uses a superb phrase, “Identity is the ideality of Being”. The difference is first in your head, the Idea. (I asked you, remember, not to forget this, but to put it aside.) What happens in your head when you look at something can never be a simple reflection, an ordinary identity with it. You know where it is going, what it is aiming at. It has its being, the being is concrete, but its essence is that, because of its Other, it will move in a certain direction and your Idea tells you how to search for the Contradiction. Without that you cannot think. Look at what passes in the Marxist movement today as analysis of organisation.

Trotsky, we repeat, having failed for years to understand Lenin on “organisation”, in 1917 was converted; and this is what is true, forthwith converted it into a fetish, i.e. a persistent Understanding. For that is what fetishism is. (The Stalinists did the same.) Lenin's “principles of organisation” are today on all lips. They have become a complete abstraction, Understanding. That you can think of organisation only in relation to its opposite, spontaneity, this nobody, not a single soul, ever says a word about. I shall take this up concretely before long, but for the time being let us listen to Hegel and understand him.
He tells us first the way Imagination thinks and by Imagination (we had it a few minutes ago) Hegel means the kind of thought that deals only with what is familiar. Note what he calls it – Imagination. At first sight it seems incongruous. But I think he wants to contrast it with scientific method, analysis. In any case:

Thus although imagination everywhere has Contradiction for content, it never becomes aware of it, it remains an external reflection, which passes from Likeness to Unlikeness . . . It keeps these two determinations external to each other, and has in mind only these, not their transition, which is the essential matter and contains the Contradiction.

Note their transition. That is the essential matter. The transition shows the contradiction. Remember the growth of Bernsteinism within the revolutionary Second International in contradiction to the whole essential aim and purpose of the organisation; and after this growth the break of 1914-21, the point of the transition, when the revolutionary proletariat overcomes this and reasserts its essential purpose on a higher plane.

You nod your head and say: yes, yes, OK. I have it, I have it. Baloney. You will be a little more chastened, you will be much more chastened later, but you will be a little chastened now when you reflect that Lenin never saw this, until after, and Trotsky it can truly be said never saw it – up to 1923 at least he was singing the same old tune. So a little modesty please while we go on.
Imagination, in so far as it is revolutionary, sees Stalinism here, and “democratic socialism” over there; and never sees them, their identity or their unity as opposites. It does not see that the labour movement, being what it is in essence, the bureaucratic, criminal, organisational domination of Stalinism, will form inevitably the point of transition for another stage higher. It sees the degrading organisation and in despair (or hope) scans the horizon looking for salvation. The Hegelian dialectic keeps its eyes glued on the Stalinist organisation for it knows that the Other of it is there. Now see Hegel's chief enemy Understanding make its bow:

On the other hand intelligent reflection, if we may mention this here, consists in the understanding and enunciating of Contradiction. It does not express the concept of things and their relations and has only determinations of imagination for material and content; but still it relates them, and the relation contains their contradiction, allowing their concept to show through the contradiction.

Understanding is the same as intelligent reflection. Understanding cannot, does not express the concept of things and their relations. Its determinations are what is familiar to it, not what is familiar in general but what is familiar to it, what once it worked out. It operates with bureaucracies which are unalterably tied to private property, and reformist internationals which always in crisis defend private property and the national state, things familiar to it. But Understanding relates these determinations – it thinks, it has perspectives. It says, “this is what it is, and this is what it ought to be.” You are able to glimpse the genuine concept. It shows through the contradiction. It is possible to have a more just, a more precise appraisal of the nature of Trotsky's writings? And now to see what they are, by seeing still more clearly what they are not. Let us see how the true Dialectic, Thinking Reason, handles these things. This is a clause by clause section. I hope you get it the first time. We worked hard enough.

Thinking Reason, on the other hand, sharpens (so to speak) the blunt difference of Variety, the mere manifold of imagination, into essential difference, that is, Opposition.

Magnificent. MAG-nificent. Imagination sees a lot of various things, and sees them as Like and Unlike, a manifold variety. Reflection, Understanding, relates them and shows how they contradict each other. See how Stalinism contradicts a true revolutionary organisation. But Reason, Reason, catches hold of the variety and seeks out the Opposition, the Contradiction, and drives them together, ties them together, makes one the Other of the other. Then things happen.
The manifold entities acquire activity and liveliness in relation to one another only when driven on the sharp point of Contradiction.
That is it. When they are both jammed together, locked together, each in the other, that is the guarantee of their movement. When you concentrate all attention on the contradiction between Stalinist bureaucratism and the necessity of the proletariat for free creative activity, then all the phenomena begin to move. They do this only when the contradiction is at its sharpest. Hegel means that we can see the movement, only when we have clarified the contradiction – “thence they draw negativity” .

Quite so. The negativity of the free creative activity of the proletariat can only come completely
into play when it is in contradiction with a concrete obstacle, something which, to release its own nature, it must overcome. It is the unbearable nature of the contradiction that creates negativity, “which is the inherent pulsation of self-movement and liveliness”.
Thus it is not a blemish, a fault, a deficiency in a thing if a Contradiction is to be found in it. That is its life.

On the contrary, every determination, every concrete, every concept is essentially a union of distinguished and distinguishable moments, which pass over through determinate and essential difference into contradictory moments.

I wonder if you have got the extreme, the unparalleled boldness of that statement. I can well imagine so many of the people we know saying, “Hegel, there is something in what you say. But as usual you exaggerate.” Every determination. Every concrete. Every concept. That is his way of saying everything has these moments, these oppositions; one of them is the opposite of what is the real, the essential nature of the organism. By its struggle against this the organism finds more of its real, its genuine nature. Writers on American political economy, writers on American history, students of Greek drama, writers on the development of unions, all of you, get this into your bones. It is not simple. Strive to see it, to see it “simply”, as Hegel said in the Introduction. If there is no sharp contradiction, then there is no movement to speak of and there is stagnation, a compromise. That is the only reason why there is compromise and stagnation – because the contradiction is not sharp enough.

The paragraph isn't concluded yet, but I propose to stay here for a while. First of all, listen to Hegel again, in the smaller Logic. Just as he approaches the climax of his work, his exposition of the Absolute Idea.

In the course of its process the Idea creates that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it; and its action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created. Only out of this error does the truth arise. In this fact lies the reconciliation with error and with finitude. Error or other-being, when superseded, is still a necessary dynamic element of truth: for truth can only be where it makes itself its own result.

If you had to write this, you would know the bowed admiration with which I read phrases like “necessary dynamic element of truth” to describe error; and the majesty, the completeness of the phrase “truth can only be where it makes itself its own result”. The proletariat itself will smash Stalinism to pieces. This experience will teach it its final lesson, that the future lies in itself, and not in anything which claims to represent it or direct it.

This is the thing that people glibly write as thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Who ever understood that? Maybe a lot of other people understood it well and I was just dumb. But it took me a long, long time to see it, to get it in my bones, to get “simple insight” into it everywhere, in everything. What am I saying? The thing constantly evades me, but I chase it. A few things of great importance can be said at once, one general, and one particular.
By this doctrine, Hegel gets rid of that tendency to ignore reality or to be overwhelmed by it, which is always lurking around to hold our movement by the throat. He had the utmost contempt for people who tried to brush away the harsh, the cruel, the bitter concrete, the apparently unadulterated evil. This is the way, and the only way that truth and the good come. Thus he could say that the real was rational. However evil reality might be, it had its place, its function in the scheme of development.


The great idealist, the man of World-Spirit, etc., did not depend on World-Spirit concretely to teach people anything. Therefore he was the last man to expect people to be inspired, to see the light, to “recognise” that “we” were right all the time, or worst of all to be “educated” by a few gifted people. In fact he believed that Spirit, conscious knowledge, was only the province of a few philosophers. As far as great masses or classes of people learnt anything, they learnt it concretely in struggle against some concrete thing. Hegel's doctrine was reactionary but that isn't what concerns us here. What does concern us is this. He would have laughed to scorn the idea that any party would teach the masses free creative activity. He would have said instead: they will find themselves inevitably up against such a system of oppression, bureaucracy, manipulation and corruption within their own arena, their own existence, that they will have to overcome it to live, and free creative activity can only come into existence when it is faced with something that only free activity and free activity alone can overcome. That is the point of transition to a higher stage of existence. There is no other. The Stalinist bureaucracies thus become a stage of development. Free creative activity becomes immeasurably more concrete in our heads. Our notion of socialism changes and we see the harsh reality differently.

And finally, note that the Logic itself moves by just this method of opposition, transition, timeliness. His analysis of identity, variety, opposition, ground, actuality, etc., particularly in the Doctrine of Essence, always represents, as he tells us, pairs of correlatives. One of them becomes overwhelming, it threatens to disrupt the whole process, the other overcomes it, and we find ourselves further on. That is how identity splits into difference; difference appears just as variety, but variety, variety, variety all over the place makes no sense; the manifold variety either disintegrates into craziness (and this happens; it means only that the object as such comes to an end) or this manifold variety crystallises into opposition. And so on. I think we got some place. Back now to the rest of the page. I attach great methodological importance to this page. Among other reasons I have it on my conscience for the way I am jumping from place to place and the still bigger jumps I am going to make. (Hegel would not be too angry. He would say: This impertinence of James, this undoubted evil is a necessary point of transition to some people so that they will read the whole book.) The thirty pages of Ground which I shall probably skip are on my conscience. But this page happens to say a great deal which will cover Ground (I hope). So here goes. I think I shall write freely and then quote lengthily.

Every concept there has these opposing movements. One becomes objectionable, evil, and this forms the bridge, the transition, for the real nature of the concept, to show itself. But when this overcoming does take place, what happens? The new thing is a resolved contradiction. It is, isn't it? Bernsteinism has been overcome. That contradiction is resolved. But inasmuch as the complete nature of the organism has not been revealed, i.e. socialism has not been achieved as yet, Leninism contains a new contradiction. Now this thing (forgive me, philosophical friends – for Christ's sake, I need no forgiveness, I have just seen that Hegel himself calls it “thing”) . . . now this thing that is always producing contradictions, resolving them, and then finding new contradictions, this is the subject or the concept. It is not yet the complete, the concrete Absolute, i.e. the proletariat, self-conscious, self-acting, beginning the real history of humanity. The Russian workers were not that in 1917. It is therefore finite, as yet limited. Therefore contradictory. It still has negation before it. The finite, limited multiplicity, the manifold of which it consists, has a certain identity, a unity. But it constitutes a variety, and this variety can be seen to form itself into an opposition; we have a contradiction. But at any rate it is unified once more ready for the business of further splitting up and further negation. (You remember the last extract from the Phenomenology?) These stages of unification of resolved contradiction when Essence prepares for negation show us what is the real nature of the thing – its Ground. The fact that it keeps on finding higher and richer Grounds, that is its Essence. Whenever it sets up a good strong concrete stage of resolved contradiction we can see what is its Ground.

On the contrary, every determination, every concrete, every concept is essentially a union of distinguished and distinguishable moments, which pass over through determinate and essential difference into contradictory moments.

It is true that this contradictory concretion resolves itself into nothing – it passes back into its negative unity. Now the thing, the subject, or the concept is itself just this negative unity: it is contradictory in itself, but also it is resolved Contradiction; it is the Ground which contains and supports its determinations. The thing, subject, or concept, as intro-refracted in its sphere, is its resolved Contradiction; but its whole sphere again is determinate and various; it is therefore finite, and this means contradictory. Itself it is not the resolution of this higher Contradiction; but it has a higher sphere for its negative unity or Ground. Accordingly, finite things in the indifferent multiplicity are simply this fact, that, contradictory in themselves, they are intro-refracted and pass back into their Ground.

Here comes now a superb piece of analysis, the maestro at his best. I shall again refrain from clause-by-clause analysis, difficult as it is. I shall interpret freely and you will have the passage. Matthew Arnold in a famous piece of criticism says that you should know certain passages in poetry by heart and let them act as a test and touchstone of other poetry. The method has its dangers, but on the whole it is good. With the Logic it is even more so. You must have some passages that you will read and re-read. They are more than a test. They are a handrail. With the more intricate passages, being busy with other things, I forget what I know. I patiently have to re-educate myself. These long quotations, in a context, with examples of familiar material serve this purpose too. You begin to understand and to use the Logic when you read these and begin to dig with them into material of your own.

Ground: the Proof of the Absolute
We have been (continues Hegel) inferring the necessity of an essential, continuous, infinite movement from watching and analysing a fixed, limited series of determinations. We shall have to examine this procedure later. But we must remember that we do not make this inference because the being, the determination, persists, becomes a Ground, breaks up, becomes another Ground, being much the same all the time. Not at all. It is because the limited, finite, determination constantly collapses and transcends itself that we can infer continuous motion.
Let us stop here a minute. It is not one International that tries a certain form, and when this fails, tries another form, and when this fails, tries another form (not the same people of course, but the same organisation). No. We could not draw any conclusions from that. The First International is one entity. It collapses. A new one is formed, and this shows us the Ground of these formations. It has the same aim and purpose as the first, though now enriched, developed, concretised. That collapses. A new one is formed. Thus whatever form it may accidentally take (contingency) we can see that it posits something fundamental to it, i.e. shows that this something will appear in the course of negation of the finite.

In ordinary thinking the Form, the constantly appearing Internationals, seem to be the Ground of our idea of a fully developed, concrete, international socialism some day. The Absolute Idea exists because the finite concretions keep appearing. No, says Hegel (and he is right as I shall demonstrate in a moment). The Absolute conception exists precisely because the finite Internationals are always collapsing. The first commonsense thinking says: the continued appearance of Internationals shows that there is an Absolute. The Hegelian dialectic says: the fact that all these Internationals lack so much, struggle and collapse, this is the proof of the existence of an absolute. We do not add the different ones and come to a conclusion. No. As we watch them striving, failing but always incorporating, we recognise that they are expressing a movement to something prior to their contingent appearance.

I have a suspicion that I have vulgarised this somewhat: you will read for yourself. Hegel is dealing here with a strictly philosophical problem and what I have written is horatory. I don't mind really because he is going to come back to this and by the time he is finished with it, all our opponents will shrink from argument. I feel confident that the truth of the philosophical problem posed is contained in my vulgarisation, and that Hegel has this at the back of his head. You cannot prove inevitability or certainty merely from repetition of the concrete.
You cannot prove inevitability or certainty from a constant series of empirical facts, however often repeated. That the sun has risen every day for a million years is no proof that it will rise tomorrow. For absolute certainty you must have a philosophical conception, which has its own unshakeable basis. Hegel sought logical tightness in the World-Spirit. Marx found it in his philosophical concept of the nature of man-activity. I take Hegel to be saying here that Essence is a movement and we can be sure it is seeking an Absolute because every form is finite, seeking something further. But if your proof of the Absolute is the merely finite appearance, then every limitation, every collapse that is not an immediate and obvious resolution of contradiction into Ground is a terrible blow. But to jump a little, if you have Absolute in your head, for this is what it amounts to, then the

finitude, limitations, etc., become stages of advance, and above all advance in thought. It is obvious that involved here is the inevitability of socialism. We have seen this weakness which Hegel is warning against in the last few years so near home and in such high places that we can spend a little more time on this.

Hegel knew that you had to have a certainty that did not depend upon limited fixed determinations and categories. It had to depend on something else, and this, in the last analysis, is what drove him to World-Spirit. Elsewhere '¡ we have treated the inevitability of socialism as a necessity of logical thinking in dialectical terms. But it is wise to recall here that this necessity of having some ultimate goal between your present stage as the twin poles between which your thoughts must move, this also is the product of experience. Philosophers and great men of action have always thought in that manner. Few things are more amusing that the passage from Corinthians, I.15, which is read at Episcopalian burial services. St Paul's “inevitability of socialism” was that the dead rise again. It seems that some tired radicals in Corinth had sneered at the comrades there, asking them: You believe in the resurrection of the dead? How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come? Paul unloosed all his forces and it is a tour de force of gorgeous rhetoric, sophistry and passionate conviction. He said point-blank: Let this go and everything else goes.

The Puritans were the same. It was ordained, they said. Same with the philosophers of the eighteenth century. Just get rid of the reaction and the reason inherent in all things will take over. It is the merit, not the weakness of Hegel, that he saw the necessity of giving this a solid logical foundation. The empiricists call it teleology, religion and all sorts of abusive names. I have dealt with them in Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity, and shown the contradictions in which they find themselves.
Here is the final extract.

The nature of the true inference of an absolutely necessary Essence from a finite and contingent entity will be considered below. Such an essence is not inferred from the finite and contingent entity as from a Being which both is and remains Ground, but, as is also implied immediately in contingency, this absolute necessity is inferred from a merely collapsing and self-contradicting Being- or rather it is demonstrated that contingent Being passes automatically back into its Ground, where it transcends itself – and, further, in this retrogression it posits Ground in such a manner only that it makes itself into the posited element. In an ordinary inference the Being of the finite appears as the Ground of the absolute: the absolute is because the finite is. The truth, however, is that the absolute is just because the finite is self-contradictory opposition – just because it is not. In the former meaning an inference runs thus: The Being of the finite is the Being of the absolute; – but in the latter: The Not-being of the finite is the Being of the absolute.

I hope you get it. I think it is a beautiful example of Hegel's method. This is all we can do: give some idea of what Ground is and why it is necessary. Essence is a movement. It is the analysis of Ground which tells us exactly what that movement is: Our abstract little spirit who didn't know what he was by his futile becomings was by degrees establishing some Ground. If you want more Ground, there it is.