Re: Russia today
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2023 3:29 pm
(Pt 4 Continued from previous post.)
5.3. On what basis does the author propose to negotiate
In order to be able to agree on something, it is necessary first of all to solve the problem of bringing the worldviews of different groups of society together. For this I refer to Appendix 1 . If it is not possible to agree on this issue, then further dialogue will not work out in any way.
5.4. Analysis of the Slavophile position
As we found out above, in the worldview of a Slavophile-patriot there are some eternal values that must be followed - and everything will be fine. Such values are professed by Russian civilization.
5.4.1. Progressiveness in the position of a Slavophile
It should be recognized that the Slavophil sincerely cares for the Motherland, sincerely desires justice, sincerely fights against enemies and even, at this stage, correctly understands the destructive role of the West and the authorities of the Russian Federation. The only problem is that the attitudes of the Slavophile, under the influence of religion and the civilizational approach, have too general, non-specific definitions of values, justice and progressiveness. This vagueness does not make it possible to find a way out of the current crisis situation.
5.4.2. Metaphysics and eternal values
The eternal values defined in religious postulates contradict dialectical logic, that is, the principle that everything is in motion and development. Not only are they descended from an unknowable "top", they are also maximally vague and inapplicable to the current situation. They are examples of so-called categorical imperatives.
On this issue, the contradiction between Marxism and Slavophilism is revealed as follows.
Within the framework of dialectical materialism, the principles of the movement of society are fully studied in a scientific way, its contradictions are understood, and a way to overcome them is indicated. Instead, the Slavophile offers some moral principles that everyone must follow in order for society to achieve harmony. Any religion and any nationalism also offers some of its principles to achieve the same goal. And even the famous Immanuel Kant also proposed his categorical imperative - again with the same goal. My favorite example of a Slavophile patriot is Eduard Birov. All values and imperatives are carefully spelled out in him. Based on them, he makes such an analysis of current events and invents such an “image of the future” that it is simply impossible to read them without tears.
Thus, for a Slavophil, like for any other carrier of an idealistic doctrine, say a believer or a nationalist, it turns out that society develops progressively or regressively only due to how “correct” and “benevolent” the filling of the head of each individual person. But where is the reason for this development? Where is the reason for the filling of heads in each specific historical period? Why are some people good and others bad? How is this development taking place? Without an accurate, scientifically verifiable understanding of these issues, it is impossible to find an answer to the question of how to make sure that there are no wars. The answer cannot be found in an idealistic worldview, so all such ideologies assume the presence of absolute evil as opposed to good. They are all fabulous.
Let's say that there is the most enlightened person with humanistic ideals who spreads his teachings. How many such, without sarcasm, ascetics have been throughout history, with all sorts of moral imperatives? There is no number. How long did they fight each other? And what is the result? The result is a ticking clock to nuclear conflict. And the answers are not found just because the moral imperatives are proposed “by themselves”, without being connected with the material causes of the generation of wars.
Not a single most humanistic categorical imperative (that is, a statement about how everything should happen), whether it is derived through teaching or simply postulated by a good person, is capable of shifting the course of history, as it will come into conflict with no less humanistic principles put forward by another person. or teaching. Because none of these teachings recognizes itself as less true and less just.
Examples:
- an example with different branches of Christianity: Catholics against Orthodox, Catholics against Protestants, Old Believers against modern Orthodox;
- an example with different branches of religions: Muslims against Christians, Jews against Christians;
- national examples: the Arab-Israeli conflict (whose land is it after all), the Armenian-Azerbaijani one (I tried to trace this chain “you started it first, you didn’t”) and, in general, any neighboring countries;
- an example of the First World War, when "no one wanted war, war was inevitable";
- an example of civil wars;
- an example of a sudden “change of vector”, when peoples lived peacefully, and then they cut each other out, as after the collapse of the USSR;
- an example of the US war with Afghanistan, a war, in fact, the ideology of democracy with a primitive, but a system of values of the entire Pashtun people.
Let me summarize the contradiction between Marxism and Slavophilism in the most simplified form.
- In the issue of global good-evil, both movements are “for peace against war”.
“We have to fight wars.”
- To fight, you need to understand this phenomenon.
“Merely postulating the moral imperatives “stop fighting” does not help the struggle, as evidenced by the entire history of mankind.
- We still need to return to the issue of scientific understanding of the causes of wars, and hence the causes of the development of society.
- The latter is impossible if there is no clear materialistic base and the understood logic of its cognition.
Slavophilism cannot scientifically answer points 3 and 5.
Conclusion : Slavophilism relies on violations of logic and on idealism, which generally closes the possibility of achieving the set goals, just as ignorance of electricity threatens with certain consequences a person who conducts electricity to a house.
5.4.3. Metaphysics and Russian civilization
For now, I’ll just say that all sorts of geopolitics, civilizational theories, and so on. and so on. do not withstand scientific scrutiny. An example is the civilizational approach. The concept of civilization comes from the word "city", from the emergence of urban culture. Society builds a city out of a wild state, allocates city power, organizes the division of labor and agricultural communities, supplying them with handicraft products. In the process of studying history, scientists have discovered that it also happens that there are states, but no cities: for example, there are complex nomadic societies without cities. Then a theory appeared that civilization is a feature of specific people living in a specific territory. For example, each ethnic society is unique - Russian, Chinese, European, American civilizations. I repeat. Scientists such as Jean Batisto Vico, Godfried Herbert, Simon Balanche, François Guizot, Charles Renovier, Joseph Arthur Gobineau, Nikolai Danilevsky, Oswald Spengler, tried to find signs of civilizations; Arnold Toynbee singled out as many as 30 civilizations, and Lev Gumilyov tried to substantiate the foundation of the emergence and disappearance of civilizations - passionarity. This approach is the brainchild of the colonial policy of the 18th-19th centuries, which the Europeans tried to describe and legitimize. Of course, the CPU was crushed by practice, since German fascism became its extreme form. However, the CPU is still often used by strong countries to justify their dominance, and by weak countries as a defense mechanism against takeovers. The weakness of the CPU is in its idealism. There are no criteria by which civilizations can be convincingly singled out. For example: cultural-religious (what about a mixture of religions), cultural (what about one culture - different languages or one language and different cultures), based on mentality (which is generally a form of objective idealism, when ways of behavior and ways of thinking are arbitrarily attributed to the strata of people). Yu. I. Semyonov studied all civilizers and singled out 22 definitions of civilization that contradict each other. So, for example, inside a large people, country, ethnic society, trying to define its civilization, there are always smaller communities, cultures, peoples that do not fall under this definition. Expansion of the definition will only lead to the fact that other civilizations will also fall under it.
The rottenness and anti-science of the civilizational approach lies in the fact that each representative of such an approach measures social phenomena from the point of view of "one's own shirt is closer to the body." These are prominent representatives of the so-called Hottentot morality: "If a neighbor stole a cow from me, it's bad, if I stole a cow from him, it's good." In fact, this is the philosophy of the eternal war of mankind.
Thus, the concept of Slavophilism is built contrary to logic and violates the dialectical principle of universal interconnections and that the general is higher than the particular. This violation occurs with the help of an antilogical selection of a certain group of people from the whole society on anti-scientific, invented signs like "the gene of our, Russian justice."
Conclusion : And in this matter, Slavophilism again has reliance on violations of logic and on anti-scientific idealism, which again closes the possibility of achieving its goals.
5.4.4. What is really hidden behind Slavophilism
A nation is a historically established community of people based on a common territory, economic structure, system of political ties, language, culture and mental makeup, which is manifested, among other things, in the general civic consciousness and self-awareness. These communities, like everything else, must be studied in development, within the framework of the formational, and therefore class, approach. Modern bourgeois nations are built around capital, are used by it and, within the framework of bourgeois relations, are competitors for each other. In the war of capitals, there is nothing that would not be used - including technology and national cultures. The nation objectively exists and has existed since the formation of the capitalist way of life, but at the same time, everything national is built on parochialism, myths and delusions, that is, subjectively.
It is scientifically impossible to detect any gene of Russianness and a gene of justice in a Russian. Russians go through exactly the same historical formational development as other nations, adjusted for historical and geographical features. And no gene of justice can prevent the Russian nation, like any other, from becoming fascist. You can get and read the philosopher Ilyin on this topic.
In essence, modern Slavophilism is ordinary idealistic nationalism. Political nations arose in the course of the formation of capitalism, and they are only as competitive as the capital with which they stand in solidarity. All nations feel disadvantaged and take revenge on their neighbors. The Arab-Israeli and Armenian-Azerbaijani situations, as vivid examples, are on everyone's lips. Poland and Ukraine are burning no less brightly. The democratic hegemon has been waging a holy war with non-democratic "foreigners" for decades. The concept of the most just "world" in the world - "Russian world", "democratic world", "Poland from sea to sea", "great turan" or "great Finland" - is in every ambitious nation, and all these "worlds" are not able to get along with each other on the same planet.
Of course, this does not negate the historical paths of certain nations. Europeans are colonizers, rapists and oppressors. This is how they developed as a nation, which had a certain influence on their mental make-up. The Russians have always had a lot of lands, but they tolerated Germanized and Frenchized tsarism and aristocracy over themselves, therefore they have a mental warehouse that is significantly different from the European one. But it is impossible to explain anything by the difference of mentalities, since it is not decisive. The determining factor is the material life of society, the economic system, and mentality is a derivative of the conditions of this being.
Thus, Slavophilism is, first of all, bourgeois nationalism, and the national color already plays a tenth meaning and is not essential. I recommend considering a similar Belarusian obscurantism - NGO "Belaya Rus": as soon as it comes to worldview foundations, all of them turn out to be grandiloquent categorical imperatives, sucked out of a well-known place, but having a good purpose.
And like any bourgeois nationalism, Slavophilism, in the first place, does not allow itself to touch the sacred right of private property relations. The principle of "do not steal" applies only to stealing from the rich.
If we discard empty wishes, in fact, as all history shows, Slavophilism, together with all its clergy, is nothing more than a tool for serving the ruling class. Its purpose is to support exploitation and competition with other nations.
This service to the ruling class can be illustrated with historical examples.
First. The fact that the God-given authorities, including the entire clergy as a collective feudal lord, 90% of the population was exploited both tail and mane for centuries, until it reached frenzy, did not bother any of the bearers of Slavophile ideas. As now, none of them cares that the existing capitalist system is built on the principle of making a profit based on the consumption of labor, that is, outright theft. I recommend to think and give scientific answers to the following questions. Why did 90% of the country's population live beyond poverty for centuries before the revolution (the so-called key issues: unresolved land, labor and national issues)? Why did a series of bourgeois revolutions and feudal counter-revolutions take place in 1917, and why was the bourgeoisie unable to resolve key issues and was overthrown? Why during the civil war did the bulk of the people not support the whites (essentially the bourgeoisie) and the 14 interventionist countries? How exactly did a small handful of Bolsheviks manage to get the support of the overwhelming majority of the population? What was the "evil" motivation of the Bolsheviks, who solved these key issues by eliminating, first of all, the relations of private property, that is, the opportunity to enrich themselves, including themselves?
Second. On the territory of the USSR (all republics), from the 1950s to the 1990s, violence had homeopathic doses, and now, after the overthrow of the hated CPSU and the establishment of freedom, equality and fraternity, the population is dying out, people are dying both in peacetime and already in wartime. How to explain? Then no Slavophilism and religions were encouraged, but now - with might and main.
Third. Russia waged feudal wars in exactly the same way as all the other surrounding countries. The same applies to the bourgeois Republic of Ingushetia and its participation in the division of China and the Ottoman Empire and in the First World War.
What kind of Slavophile idea and justice can be discussed here is decidedly unclear.
5.4.5. How do you really need to compare the positions of the Slavophiles-Westerners-liberals-whites-reds
In the unscientific and antilogical concept of Slavophilism, such a system of coordinates emerges, where there is a lover of a certain classless Motherland and there are idiots who either do not like it and try to sell it, or for unclear reasons cannot unite against the enemy. The Slavophil in this coordinate system does not see division along the line of private property relations, does not see the devouring of the majority of his compatriots by a small number of parasites of the same nationality, does not understand that in the event of the victory of the Slavophil movement, nothing will change for the majority and the stratification will only grow.
Let's digress to the concept of "homeland". The concept of "homeland" arose simultaneously with the concepts of "nation" and "state". That is, when human societies entered the era of capitalist relations. Before capitalism, there was loyalty only to one's clan, tribe, or later - to the feudal lord (feudal loyalty). An omnivorous patriot will not even understand how the local equivalent of “Sieg Heil” will yell at someone’s personal address, explaining his behavior by loyalty to the Motherland, which anyone must love. Homeland is not just love for your birches, sunflowers, pines or palm trees, it is not just an uncritical attitude to the place where you were born, where your childhood and youth passed. The motherland is the organization of the life of society, it is what class the power in the country belongs to, it is the standard of living and social guarantees for the entire (!) People, taking into account the level of development of the productive forces. The motherland is, first of all, the people among whom you live, with their specific material interests, entering into certain production and economic relations with each other - on which their and your fate, the future of them and your children, the quality of the society in which you live and with whom you are in contact every day. Where yours is not the one who speaks the same language with you, lives in the same house or “honors the ancestors,” such were the Vlasovites with the white bandits. One who denies the principle of “devour your neighbor for the sake of personal profit”, who hates the parasitism of some people on others, respects work, and not appropriation of the results of someone else’s work. Those who consciously or unconsciously try to reduce everything to abstract birches, poplars, pines, the memory of their ancestors - that is, reducing the choice to idealism and mere emotions, but ignoring materialism, ignoring the socio-economic relations between people, and therefore the materialistic future of him, his family, children, his people, the society in which he and his descendants will live, sooner or later he will be on the side of capital, on the side of punishers or WILL NOT LEAVE OTHERS OF ANOTHER CHOICE, except to be in the form of Kappel regiments, in the form of brown attack aircraft of some Einsatz team, in the form of a speculator-dealer who profits from the difficulties of others, or in the form of a "defender" of the Fatherland, thrashing at his own civilians from guns or hiding behind them, like a shield. Total. Homeland is a class concept. Whoever tries, voluntarily or involuntarily, to make it a universal concept that allegedly stands above society, outside society, in isolation from society, and therefore above socio-economic relations,
Let us return to the considered social movements. Which of them really denies the principle of "devour thy neighbor for personal profit"? That is, ready to fight the class of exploiters and abolish private property relations?
Liberals? Funny. Their value is the religion of democracy with subordination to the Western bourgeoisie.
Westerners? Absolutely not. Their value is the religion of democracy in cooperation with the Western bourgeoisie.
White? Absolutely not. They do not exist as an integral group, but their value is the religion of democracy, capitalism, either independent or pro-Western.
Slavophiles? Unscientific and anti-logical dismantled above. In essence, solidarity with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat under beautiful slogans. What will the conditional Maxim Kalashnikov do, organizing horizontal ties and unexpectedly coming to power during a time of troubles? Our prominent futurist has no ideas other than to introduce the best Slavophile wishes through education. At best, it will make socialism in Lukashenka's style, seasoned with nationalism. But at this time, the objective economy, in which the whole country is involved, will work on the principles of private property. And sooner or later, according to the scientific laws of the movement of society, there will be such a degree of monopolization, in which the whole honest, but idealistic bunch of Slavophiles (even if noble people like Vershinin act under the leadership of Kalashnikov, Strelkov, Grubnik and others) will blow you to hell, because it is impossible to fight with general ideas against objective production relations that cover the whole country. Successful struggle, and we are talking about class struggle, requires not just self-sacrifice, but a scientific basis and maximum specificity.
(I’ll note in brackets: here we need very specific answers like “do one, two, three” for each specific circumstances of a specific period of time, which are absent from the Slavophile-patriot, with the justification that they really lead to the goal. If they are not there, then even criticize the most recent Hitler does not make sense, because a simple statement that he acts anti-humanistically is helpless without saying how your humanistic worldview proposes to eradicate this anti-humanism. Also, I cannot help but note that dialectical materialism gives such answers with deadly accuracy, predicting the course of things over the centuries, showing the causes of wars, their inevitability and ways to overcome them.He also tells everyone what to do at this particular moment.Simply for the reasonthat the diamatic approach requires the study of objective reality even more scrupulously and more precisely than physics studies the current).
Only the Marxists remain, the so hated "Red Tsar-bearers", suddenly of all groups the only ones who stand on a scientific basis and fight not only with foreign bourgeoisie, but also with their own, as well as with unscientific-minded cadres in their ranks. If this is not done, the progressive life of the whole society cannot be achieved.
5.4.6. The opposite method
Suppose Marxism is a set of sectarian dogmas. Then the Slavophile offers to rally - for what? For the sake of survival, protection from the enemy who is going to dismember the country - and it's hard not to accept. Suppose we rallied and won. But Marxists also offer to fight the enemy, and not only them. Suppose the weak bourgeois state of the Russian Federation cannot cope and the Slavophiles begin to build their "horizontal ties". Why is it necessary to rally around them?
Around the heresy about justice, which is refuted historically?
Around good wishes that do not exclude fascism in any way (white-Slavophiles with their slogans and the philosopher Ilyin)?
Around duplicity about the commandment "do not steal"?
It turns out, I will fight, and then they will rob me again?
It is necessary to separate well-wishes from essence. It is the essence that does not allow the Slavophiles to develop an image of the future. How she did not allow this to be done by the feudal church hierarchs. If you serve the ruling class, robbing the people, you have, in essence, nothing to offer.
Or do the Slavophiles have scientifically developed methods for holding back capital? None found. And if they are not there, then how will the conditional Slavophil differ from the conditional “stoned whites and reds”, from the aforementioned African tribes, as well as from Westerners in their dogmas and axioms? Only by the fact that their dogmas seem more just?
The image of the future and our Marxist path are discussed above in the main text of the article.
5.5.1. Where are you communists, why aren't you there?
First, let's not forget the nearly one and a half billion people living in emerging communist societies.
Secondly, the defeat of communism in the USSR is quite understandable for the historical process of the struggle of opposites: capitalism also advanced over the centuries through numerous revolutions and counter-revolutions. A change of formations is inevitable because of the development of the productive forces, which is increasingly in conflict with the miserable relations of production. Since the collapse of the USSR, a small core of communists (not those ignoramuses who destroyed the USSR) have been developing a theory without which it is impossible to react at the right time. And the moment will come, because the strength of the capitalist crisis is growing, the war is blazing more and more, and the existing forces still cannot offer anything. They have almost 10 years of war, zero understanding of the causes of the crisis and zero vision for the future. There were also few Bolsheviks by the time the February revolution began, but there was a theory and there was a party. By October, the masses had accepted the only working red idea and by the time of the Great Patriotic War they had turned the backward Republic of Ingushetia into a state of a completely different quality - economically strong, but most importantly - with people of a new quality. Now, if everything does not burn in a nuclear fire, it will be the same, because the relations of exploitation at the present level of development have outlived their usefulness and it remains only to forge that subjective factor - a party that will put this into practice and will be able to overcome the scientifically studied mistakes of the past - an unscientific approach to organization that caused disaster.
5.5.2. Conclusion
The main thing in the current moment is preparation for the upcoming battles. The Party will unite around itself people who conscientiously improve the quality of their scientific knowledge through self-education. In order to understand the next steps, you need to know a lot, study, verify the acquired scientific knowledge and help a group of Marxists develop a theory and become a party. These are the objective requirements of the current moment. The bourgeoisie of the Russian Federation is already discrediting itself, and it has little chance of coping with the much stronger Western capital. Tomorrow - when the population goes berserk, when it wakes up from the petty-bourgeois dope of endless consumption, in which it has lived for the past 30 years, and when conditions are created for an open struggle for Soviet power in the context of the fight against external intervention. By that time there should be a working party, and tens of thousands of competent communists under her leadership, to replenish the army as a cementing force already in the form of the Red Army. Communism was able to win in the civil, during the "peaceful" 20-30s and during the Second World War thanks toSCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION . (And this, let me remind you, is the main thing at the moment of moving away from private property relations - organization and a planned economy). Not by abstract courage, not by abstract love - since both courage and love for the Motherland were in abundance on the opposite sides, from the White Guard to the Nazis - namely, thanks to the SYSTEM OF THE DICTATORY OF THE WORKING CLASS !
Only UNDER SUCH CONDITION, the people with their "courage" and "love for the Motherland" can win, and nothing else.
Appendix 1. Problems of bringing worldviews of different groups of society together
I think not a single person will object that conflicts can stop when the public outlook is unified, at least in a number of basic questions about justice and the progress of society. Let's call it the general coordinate system.
The problem of reducing different worldviews to one is the key problem at this stage. Now all participants in absolutely all conflicts consider themselves fair and progressive within the framework of their worldview. The problem is in the subjective interpretation of what is justice. "This is different" is the slogan of our time, the slogan of Hottentot morality.
Simplifying to the extreme, we need to understand how to know that someone's point of view is correct. Why, for example, a Slavophile or any other national patriot is right, but Westerners, liberals, hataskrainiki, whites, greens and reds are not?
In order to come to unanimity, one must first of all realize that a certain complexity is inherent in the system of views (worldview) of any individual, even if he has the most philistine kitchen. Such complexity stems from the fact that the content of this system is an infinite world moving in time, in all its diversity, and the ability of individual thinking to reflect it is very limited. “Inventing” from scratch a system of cognition of the infinite is an occupation beyond the control of one person, and therefore, often without realizing it, he relies on one or another social theory, philosophy, the quality of which directly depends on the methods of thinking on the basis of which it is constructed.
In order to reach unanimity, it is necessary secondarily to agree on a number of issues, and simple "common sense" will not help here: it is different for everyone according to education and is often very superficial.
Clause 1.1. Knowability
The first and most difficult is the question of knowability. The universe must be fundamentally knowable and accessible for rational, that is, scientific, explanation. The question of unanimity ends where "unknowable" places begin. Because each person invents them himself, he believes in them, they cannot be understood rationally, which means that it is impossible to convince another that your "unknowable" is more correct than someone else's.
If something cannot be known, then it must be taken on faith as a dogma. There are an infinite number of such dogmas in the world. Supporters of different dogmas cannot agree with each other even within the same current, a striking example of which is the history of Christianity (one dispute about the Filioque is worth something).
When applied to the whole of society (and this is what we are interested in, and not the individual manifestations of the teachings), any unknowable dogma means that it is impossible to agree on two most important questions:
• what is good and evil on the scale of society?
• what drives the development of society?
Lack of unanimity on these issues means eternal conflict.
For example, if I am a solipsist, then the whole world is created by my consciousness. It is impossible to convince me that it is impossible to burn people in another country, because they exist only in my mind; in the same way yoga, Christianity, Buddhism, the sect of witnesses of Darth Vader - I invented them all, for fun. Some teachings even justify this conflict (claiming that "this is the way"). Other modern philosophical concepts even try to explain this state of affairs, arguing that the truth of a particular doctrine is determined by the number of its bearers (for example, "whoever is stronger is right"). But this does not bring peace to the world, as we see, but for many this is not the goal.
Therefore, for our case, it is necessary to set aside any unknowable dogma, in particular any religion, from further discussion, otherwise we will remain on the positions of the dispute “God exists” - “God does not exist”, which will not lead us to a common understanding of the “image of the future”.
I would like to clarify: no one forbids anyone to believe in anything. We have a common recognition of the ultimate goal, at this stage simply understood as “building a conflict-free society where the life of every person is important”, and we need to come to some kind of rational common foundation that will help us reach this goal together with the whole society.
If a religious person persists precisely on his dogmatics, then we will never reach the goal, because we will run into no less stubborn carriers of other dogmatists. If he decides that it is enough to build a just society in a limited area of influence of his religion, then further dialogue can be stopped, because then how will the bearer of some dogmas differ from the bearers of other dogmas? How, for example, will the conditional Slavophile differ from the conditional “stoned whites and reds”, from the Westerners in their dogmas? Only by the fact that their dogmas seem more just?
Clause 1.2. Scientific
If we agree on knowability, we automatically arrive at the concept of scientificity. It is important. Scientific understanding means that we can cognize objective reality in such a way that, firstly, it is verifiable by each person, and secondly, it is confirmed in practice.
In our case, we are talking about scientific social science.
Next, we will give some definitions of scientificity, the logic of thinking, we will reveal some social science truths and indicate the sources on which such an understanding is built. It is very important in the dialogue that anyone who does not agree with the following can provide their scientifically cognizable sources that can be discussed. If unknowable dogmas are opposed, then - as mentioned above - we will run into dogmatism, which blocks any opportunity to build an “image of the future” and achieve the goal that we discussed above.
So, science.
In science, the truth is always one for every question, and it is knowable and verifiable.
The criterion of truth is the entire socio-historical practice of mankind, including industry, scientific achievements and the consistent development of society itself.
Scientific knowledge proceeds from general questions to particular ones, and not vice versa, as is done in the modern positivist so-called. "science", where a random texture is wound on a set of hypotheses.
The living and non-living world moves according to objective laws, and these laws are fully cognizable. The task of a person is to reflect them as accurately as possible so that individual practice does not conflict with these laws and is progressive in accordance with these laws.
Thus:
- The world exists objectively and moves according to laws that are completely and completely amenable to knowledge.
Man and mankind are part of the world, and they are fully cognizable, like the whole world. Man is endowed with the ability to reflect in consciousness and thereby cognize the surrounding material world.
Remarque about science. The repetition of the word "scientific" does not make the approach scientific. To think scientifically is to think in terms of concepts whose content is adequate to objective reality. The highest type of concepts is the category. The philosophical category is, firstly, an extremely general and extremely specific scientific abstraction, the richness of the content of which guarantees the systematization and coordinated inclusion of any particular fact or series of facts. Secondly, this is the concept of a phenomenon that does not allow arbitrary interpretation. Thirdly, it is a concept that reflects the objective laws, forms or aspects of objective material reality, the key points of knowledge. The philosophical category always presupposes its full compliance with the entire socio-historical practice of mankind. Thus, you can’t just pull on textures without understanding the essence of the phenomenon and declare it a science. Science must explain all known texture - this principle is known as "practice is the criterion of truth."
If we agree on this, then it means that there is a single truly reflected picture of the world (it is not static and not perfect - these are incorrect characteristics, there is no static; it is precisely true), and all the rest are untrue.
Clause 1.3. Logic of thinking
As stated above, "common sense" is a subjective phenomenon. What is logic? Any worldview can be reached only as a result of some work of thought, which, in turn, is based on certain methods of thinking. It is the mistakes in the latter that lead to the emergence of philosophies of varying degrees of inferiority, the application of which leads to the same quality practice, the results of which we clearly observe outside the window. It is easy to illustrate the method of thinking and the consequences of errors in it with the example of a causal relationship. In children, this is just being formed, which leads to funny situations when the child, closing his eyes with his hands, believes that it has become dark for his parents. The fact that he can’t hide like that makes him sincerely surprised. But cause and effect is only a small part of the logic.
Who determines the correctness of a certain method of thinking and who determines the correctness of the philosophy that arises on the basis of this method of thinking (after all, hypothetically, there may be several of them on the same basis)? Here it is necessary to turn to the historically accumulated wisdom of mankind and realize that people have been dealing with the issue of the structure of the world in general and the mechanisms of its knowledge in particular since the beginning of time. And the smartest scientists of their time built entire philosophical systems, arguing with each other through the centuries. Step by step, Zeno, Parmenides, Leucippus, Democritus and their followers deduced the concepts of being, continuity, inexhaustibility, and many others. Thus, on the basis of comprehension of practice, an apparatus with verified categories was formed, which makes it possible to describe the principle of the existence and movement of everything that surrounds us, including the very work of thought. By the way, this is why philosophical kitchen talks are so viscous: in a few hours, their participants are trying to form the basis on which entire human lives were laid. The pinnacle of pre-scientific philosophical thought was the “Science of Logic” by G.V.F. Hegel, with which humanity acquired a more or less developed dialectical method. With the advent of the “Science of Logic”, any philosophy based on a metaphysical method of thinking, that is, containing unknowable entities, considering particulars without a general picture, exploring any “separateness” without their general connection, can be considered irrevocably outdated. Unless, of course, we discard the idealistic scholasticism of Hegel himself.
This is how we can see the limitation of formal logic and rely on the principles of logic: the need to see everything in development, in interconnection; the need to understand the principles of development of any phenomenon in the identity and struggle of its constituent opposites, in the spasmodic changes. One of the consequences of such a system is the principle of "the general over the particular." It is important to remember this moment.
This is scientific logic, dialectics, and it needs to be studied. If it is neglected, there will be the same consequences as from the neglect of cause-and-effect relationships. Its opposite is metaphysics, which loses the relationship between phenomena and their development. It is important to remember this moment too.
Clause 1.4. Scientific social science
Let's apply the above principles to social science.
Human. The first thing that will have to be recognized within the framework of scientific logic is that a person is shaped by society. The mental properties of a person are formed in the course of activity. A person's abilities are manifested, formed and developed in one or another social activity; it is the relationship with society in the process of its implementation that develops the personality, and it is as a result of the activity of the individual with the most diverse properties that they unite into social groups. It is worth recalling that Mowgli children never became people if they were placed in society after a certain age. So we come to the need in further research to consider a social person, that is, an individual as a manifestation of society. Moreover, society cannot be regarded as a collection of individuals, if only because there can be no individual without society. So the individual personality is a manifestation of society, its singular expression. Each unique person is the way he is, only because he has been formed socially, within society.
Society. For a long time, scientists tried to answer questions like: how to explain wars, states, religion, philosophy, morality, etc.? But such a formulation of the question has no answer because of its vagueness and far-fetchedness, openness to an infinite number of idealistic concepts. Instead, as a foundation for discovering regularities, let us put the question: what are the conditions for the existence of a society of any type? That is, what do all human societies throughout history have in common? The answer is unequivocal: the unification of people for the production of material means of life is a way of obtaining the means of life necessary for the existence of people, a way of producing material goods (food, clothing, footwear, housing, fuel, tools of production, etc.) necessary for so that society can reproduce, live and develop. The individual person accepts the rules of the game of social relations if he wants to live. Animals also adapt themselves to the environment, but only man does this by constantly complicating the means of influencing the surrounding matter, transforming it collectively.
History as a science then becomes a study of the course of social development, a science of studying the laws of development of society for practical application to building the future. And it is possible to study the course of social development only on the basis of this very interaction with nature regarding the acquisition of means of subsistence for subsistence.
The above definition of society leads to the fact that society moves according to the dialectic of the development of the means of production, productive forces and production relations. Such an objective development of society is given in the theory of formations. On the scale of humanity, we will see that social ideas, thoughts, views, theories and social institutions must correspond to production relations and, therefore, that most (but not all) modern ideas correspond to the prevailing (but there are others) production relations.
Dialectics requires finding the source of society's movement in the identity and unity of opposites. What? Productive forces and production relations. Such an objectively existing source of the development of society is described in class theory, since only through the class struggle can the contradiction that has arisen be eliminated. K. Marx's "Capital" is a scientific work that reveals the essence of bourgeois economics. K. Marx explores the principle of operation of commodity relations, derives the law of value, the causes and principles of the functioning of money and capital, and also discovers the source of exploitation, the source of profit from human labor. He wrote primarily about people (the development of commodity relations, money, capital), and not about resources and property. This can be studied and verified
It is Marxism that gives a complete picture of what fascism is as an extreme expression of competitive relations of unlimited profit in relations of private property. It also becomes clear that no group of society, no modern nation can escape fascism within the framework of capitalist relations.
As a source, all volumes of F. Engels, K. Marx, V. I. Lenin and I. Stalin are attached, which exhaustively explore these issues on the basis of dialectics.
Clause 1.5. Outcome
The diamatic understanding of the laws of history, the formational approach, the laws of capitalist society, the class approach, and much more - this is a scientific theory that reveals the objective laws of the development of society, fully confirmed by practice. This basis is revealed in powerful scientific works, which again are the result of the development of the entire science of mankind, rely on it.
Ya. Dubov
24/04/2023
https://prorivists.org/80_nationalism/
Google Translator
It is clear that these folks do not ascribe to the 'civilizational' clap-trap promoted by some Russians. Good for them.
5.3. On what basis does the author propose to negotiate
In order to be able to agree on something, it is necessary first of all to solve the problem of bringing the worldviews of different groups of society together. For this I refer to Appendix 1 . If it is not possible to agree on this issue, then further dialogue will not work out in any way.
5.4. Analysis of the Slavophile position
As we found out above, in the worldview of a Slavophile-patriot there are some eternal values that must be followed - and everything will be fine. Such values are professed by Russian civilization.
5.4.1. Progressiveness in the position of a Slavophile
It should be recognized that the Slavophil sincerely cares for the Motherland, sincerely desires justice, sincerely fights against enemies and even, at this stage, correctly understands the destructive role of the West and the authorities of the Russian Federation. The only problem is that the attitudes of the Slavophile, under the influence of religion and the civilizational approach, have too general, non-specific definitions of values, justice and progressiveness. This vagueness does not make it possible to find a way out of the current crisis situation.
5.4.2. Metaphysics and eternal values
The eternal values defined in religious postulates contradict dialectical logic, that is, the principle that everything is in motion and development. Not only are they descended from an unknowable "top", they are also maximally vague and inapplicable to the current situation. They are examples of so-called categorical imperatives.
On this issue, the contradiction between Marxism and Slavophilism is revealed as follows.
Within the framework of dialectical materialism, the principles of the movement of society are fully studied in a scientific way, its contradictions are understood, and a way to overcome them is indicated. Instead, the Slavophile offers some moral principles that everyone must follow in order for society to achieve harmony. Any religion and any nationalism also offers some of its principles to achieve the same goal. And even the famous Immanuel Kant also proposed his categorical imperative - again with the same goal. My favorite example of a Slavophile patriot is Eduard Birov. All values and imperatives are carefully spelled out in him. Based on them, he makes such an analysis of current events and invents such an “image of the future” that it is simply impossible to read them without tears.
Thus, for a Slavophil, like for any other carrier of an idealistic doctrine, say a believer or a nationalist, it turns out that society develops progressively or regressively only due to how “correct” and “benevolent” the filling of the head of each individual person. But where is the reason for this development? Where is the reason for the filling of heads in each specific historical period? Why are some people good and others bad? How is this development taking place? Without an accurate, scientifically verifiable understanding of these issues, it is impossible to find an answer to the question of how to make sure that there are no wars. The answer cannot be found in an idealistic worldview, so all such ideologies assume the presence of absolute evil as opposed to good. They are all fabulous.
Let's say that there is the most enlightened person with humanistic ideals who spreads his teachings. How many such, without sarcasm, ascetics have been throughout history, with all sorts of moral imperatives? There is no number. How long did they fight each other? And what is the result? The result is a ticking clock to nuclear conflict. And the answers are not found just because the moral imperatives are proposed “by themselves”, without being connected with the material causes of the generation of wars.
Not a single most humanistic categorical imperative (that is, a statement about how everything should happen), whether it is derived through teaching or simply postulated by a good person, is capable of shifting the course of history, as it will come into conflict with no less humanistic principles put forward by another person. or teaching. Because none of these teachings recognizes itself as less true and less just.
Examples:
- an example with different branches of Christianity: Catholics against Orthodox, Catholics against Protestants, Old Believers against modern Orthodox;
- an example with different branches of religions: Muslims against Christians, Jews against Christians;
- national examples: the Arab-Israeli conflict (whose land is it after all), the Armenian-Azerbaijani one (I tried to trace this chain “you started it first, you didn’t”) and, in general, any neighboring countries;
- an example of the First World War, when "no one wanted war, war was inevitable";
- an example of civil wars;
- an example of a sudden “change of vector”, when peoples lived peacefully, and then they cut each other out, as after the collapse of the USSR;
- an example of the US war with Afghanistan, a war, in fact, the ideology of democracy with a primitive, but a system of values of the entire Pashtun people.
Let me summarize the contradiction between Marxism and Slavophilism in the most simplified form.
- In the issue of global good-evil, both movements are “for peace against war”.
“We have to fight wars.”
- To fight, you need to understand this phenomenon.
“Merely postulating the moral imperatives “stop fighting” does not help the struggle, as evidenced by the entire history of mankind.
- We still need to return to the issue of scientific understanding of the causes of wars, and hence the causes of the development of society.
- The latter is impossible if there is no clear materialistic base and the understood logic of its cognition.
Slavophilism cannot scientifically answer points 3 and 5.
Conclusion : Slavophilism relies on violations of logic and on idealism, which generally closes the possibility of achieving the set goals, just as ignorance of electricity threatens with certain consequences a person who conducts electricity to a house.
5.4.3. Metaphysics and Russian civilization
For now, I’ll just say that all sorts of geopolitics, civilizational theories, and so on. and so on. do not withstand scientific scrutiny. An example is the civilizational approach. The concept of civilization comes from the word "city", from the emergence of urban culture. Society builds a city out of a wild state, allocates city power, organizes the division of labor and agricultural communities, supplying them with handicraft products. In the process of studying history, scientists have discovered that it also happens that there are states, but no cities: for example, there are complex nomadic societies without cities. Then a theory appeared that civilization is a feature of specific people living in a specific territory. For example, each ethnic society is unique - Russian, Chinese, European, American civilizations. I repeat. Scientists such as Jean Batisto Vico, Godfried Herbert, Simon Balanche, François Guizot, Charles Renovier, Joseph Arthur Gobineau, Nikolai Danilevsky, Oswald Spengler, tried to find signs of civilizations; Arnold Toynbee singled out as many as 30 civilizations, and Lev Gumilyov tried to substantiate the foundation of the emergence and disappearance of civilizations - passionarity. This approach is the brainchild of the colonial policy of the 18th-19th centuries, which the Europeans tried to describe and legitimize. Of course, the CPU was crushed by practice, since German fascism became its extreme form. However, the CPU is still often used by strong countries to justify their dominance, and by weak countries as a defense mechanism against takeovers. The weakness of the CPU is in its idealism. There are no criteria by which civilizations can be convincingly singled out. For example: cultural-religious (what about a mixture of religions), cultural (what about one culture - different languages or one language and different cultures), based on mentality (which is generally a form of objective idealism, when ways of behavior and ways of thinking are arbitrarily attributed to the strata of people). Yu. I. Semyonov studied all civilizers and singled out 22 definitions of civilization that contradict each other. So, for example, inside a large people, country, ethnic society, trying to define its civilization, there are always smaller communities, cultures, peoples that do not fall under this definition. Expansion of the definition will only lead to the fact that other civilizations will also fall under it.
The rottenness and anti-science of the civilizational approach lies in the fact that each representative of such an approach measures social phenomena from the point of view of "one's own shirt is closer to the body." These are prominent representatives of the so-called Hottentot morality: "If a neighbor stole a cow from me, it's bad, if I stole a cow from him, it's good." In fact, this is the philosophy of the eternal war of mankind.
Thus, the concept of Slavophilism is built contrary to logic and violates the dialectical principle of universal interconnections and that the general is higher than the particular. This violation occurs with the help of an antilogical selection of a certain group of people from the whole society on anti-scientific, invented signs like "the gene of our, Russian justice."
Conclusion : And in this matter, Slavophilism again has reliance on violations of logic and on anti-scientific idealism, which again closes the possibility of achieving its goals.
5.4.4. What is really hidden behind Slavophilism
A nation is a historically established community of people based on a common territory, economic structure, system of political ties, language, culture and mental makeup, which is manifested, among other things, in the general civic consciousness and self-awareness. These communities, like everything else, must be studied in development, within the framework of the formational, and therefore class, approach. Modern bourgeois nations are built around capital, are used by it and, within the framework of bourgeois relations, are competitors for each other. In the war of capitals, there is nothing that would not be used - including technology and national cultures. The nation objectively exists and has existed since the formation of the capitalist way of life, but at the same time, everything national is built on parochialism, myths and delusions, that is, subjectively.
It is scientifically impossible to detect any gene of Russianness and a gene of justice in a Russian. Russians go through exactly the same historical formational development as other nations, adjusted for historical and geographical features. And no gene of justice can prevent the Russian nation, like any other, from becoming fascist. You can get and read the philosopher Ilyin on this topic.
In essence, modern Slavophilism is ordinary idealistic nationalism. Political nations arose in the course of the formation of capitalism, and they are only as competitive as the capital with which they stand in solidarity. All nations feel disadvantaged and take revenge on their neighbors. The Arab-Israeli and Armenian-Azerbaijani situations, as vivid examples, are on everyone's lips. Poland and Ukraine are burning no less brightly. The democratic hegemon has been waging a holy war with non-democratic "foreigners" for decades. The concept of the most just "world" in the world - "Russian world", "democratic world", "Poland from sea to sea", "great turan" or "great Finland" - is in every ambitious nation, and all these "worlds" are not able to get along with each other on the same planet.
Of course, this does not negate the historical paths of certain nations. Europeans are colonizers, rapists and oppressors. This is how they developed as a nation, which had a certain influence on their mental make-up. The Russians have always had a lot of lands, but they tolerated Germanized and Frenchized tsarism and aristocracy over themselves, therefore they have a mental warehouse that is significantly different from the European one. But it is impossible to explain anything by the difference of mentalities, since it is not decisive. The determining factor is the material life of society, the economic system, and mentality is a derivative of the conditions of this being.
Thus, Slavophilism is, first of all, bourgeois nationalism, and the national color already plays a tenth meaning and is not essential. I recommend considering a similar Belarusian obscurantism - NGO "Belaya Rus": as soon as it comes to worldview foundations, all of them turn out to be grandiloquent categorical imperatives, sucked out of a well-known place, but having a good purpose.
And like any bourgeois nationalism, Slavophilism, in the first place, does not allow itself to touch the sacred right of private property relations. The principle of "do not steal" applies only to stealing from the rich.
If we discard empty wishes, in fact, as all history shows, Slavophilism, together with all its clergy, is nothing more than a tool for serving the ruling class. Its purpose is to support exploitation and competition with other nations.
This service to the ruling class can be illustrated with historical examples.
First. The fact that the God-given authorities, including the entire clergy as a collective feudal lord, 90% of the population was exploited both tail and mane for centuries, until it reached frenzy, did not bother any of the bearers of Slavophile ideas. As now, none of them cares that the existing capitalist system is built on the principle of making a profit based on the consumption of labor, that is, outright theft. I recommend to think and give scientific answers to the following questions. Why did 90% of the country's population live beyond poverty for centuries before the revolution (the so-called key issues: unresolved land, labor and national issues)? Why did a series of bourgeois revolutions and feudal counter-revolutions take place in 1917, and why was the bourgeoisie unable to resolve key issues and was overthrown? Why during the civil war did the bulk of the people not support the whites (essentially the bourgeoisie) and the 14 interventionist countries? How exactly did a small handful of Bolsheviks manage to get the support of the overwhelming majority of the population? What was the "evil" motivation of the Bolsheviks, who solved these key issues by eliminating, first of all, the relations of private property, that is, the opportunity to enrich themselves, including themselves?
Second. On the territory of the USSR (all republics), from the 1950s to the 1990s, violence had homeopathic doses, and now, after the overthrow of the hated CPSU and the establishment of freedom, equality and fraternity, the population is dying out, people are dying both in peacetime and already in wartime. How to explain? Then no Slavophilism and religions were encouraged, but now - with might and main.
Third. Russia waged feudal wars in exactly the same way as all the other surrounding countries. The same applies to the bourgeois Republic of Ingushetia and its participation in the division of China and the Ottoman Empire and in the First World War.
What kind of Slavophile idea and justice can be discussed here is decidedly unclear.
5.4.5. How do you really need to compare the positions of the Slavophiles-Westerners-liberals-whites-reds
In the unscientific and antilogical concept of Slavophilism, such a system of coordinates emerges, where there is a lover of a certain classless Motherland and there are idiots who either do not like it and try to sell it, or for unclear reasons cannot unite against the enemy. The Slavophil in this coordinate system does not see division along the line of private property relations, does not see the devouring of the majority of his compatriots by a small number of parasites of the same nationality, does not understand that in the event of the victory of the Slavophil movement, nothing will change for the majority and the stratification will only grow.
Let's digress to the concept of "homeland". The concept of "homeland" arose simultaneously with the concepts of "nation" and "state". That is, when human societies entered the era of capitalist relations. Before capitalism, there was loyalty only to one's clan, tribe, or later - to the feudal lord (feudal loyalty). An omnivorous patriot will not even understand how the local equivalent of “Sieg Heil” will yell at someone’s personal address, explaining his behavior by loyalty to the Motherland, which anyone must love. Homeland is not just love for your birches, sunflowers, pines or palm trees, it is not just an uncritical attitude to the place where you were born, where your childhood and youth passed. The motherland is the organization of the life of society, it is what class the power in the country belongs to, it is the standard of living and social guarantees for the entire (!) People, taking into account the level of development of the productive forces. The motherland is, first of all, the people among whom you live, with their specific material interests, entering into certain production and economic relations with each other - on which their and your fate, the future of them and your children, the quality of the society in which you live and with whom you are in contact every day. Where yours is not the one who speaks the same language with you, lives in the same house or “honors the ancestors,” such were the Vlasovites with the white bandits. One who denies the principle of “devour your neighbor for the sake of personal profit”, who hates the parasitism of some people on others, respects work, and not appropriation of the results of someone else’s work. Those who consciously or unconsciously try to reduce everything to abstract birches, poplars, pines, the memory of their ancestors - that is, reducing the choice to idealism and mere emotions, but ignoring materialism, ignoring the socio-economic relations between people, and therefore the materialistic future of him, his family, children, his people, the society in which he and his descendants will live, sooner or later he will be on the side of capital, on the side of punishers or WILL NOT LEAVE OTHERS OF ANOTHER CHOICE, except to be in the form of Kappel regiments, in the form of brown attack aircraft of some Einsatz team, in the form of a speculator-dealer who profits from the difficulties of others, or in the form of a "defender" of the Fatherland, thrashing at his own civilians from guns or hiding behind them, like a shield. Total. Homeland is a class concept. Whoever tries, voluntarily or involuntarily, to make it a universal concept that allegedly stands above society, outside society, in isolation from society, and therefore above socio-economic relations,
Let us return to the considered social movements. Which of them really denies the principle of "devour thy neighbor for personal profit"? That is, ready to fight the class of exploiters and abolish private property relations?
Liberals? Funny. Their value is the religion of democracy with subordination to the Western bourgeoisie.
Westerners? Absolutely not. Their value is the religion of democracy in cooperation with the Western bourgeoisie.
White? Absolutely not. They do not exist as an integral group, but their value is the religion of democracy, capitalism, either independent or pro-Western.
Slavophiles? Unscientific and anti-logical dismantled above. In essence, solidarity with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat under beautiful slogans. What will the conditional Maxim Kalashnikov do, organizing horizontal ties and unexpectedly coming to power during a time of troubles? Our prominent futurist has no ideas other than to introduce the best Slavophile wishes through education. At best, it will make socialism in Lukashenka's style, seasoned with nationalism. But at this time, the objective economy, in which the whole country is involved, will work on the principles of private property. And sooner or later, according to the scientific laws of the movement of society, there will be such a degree of monopolization, in which the whole honest, but idealistic bunch of Slavophiles (even if noble people like Vershinin act under the leadership of Kalashnikov, Strelkov, Grubnik and others) will blow you to hell, because it is impossible to fight with general ideas against objective production relations that cover the whole country. Successful struggle, and we are talking about class struggle, requires not just self-sacrifice, but a scientific basis and maximum specificity.
(I’ll note in brackets: here we need very specific answers like “do one, two, three” for each specific circumstances of a specific period of time, which are absent from the Slavophile-patriot, with the justification that they really lead to the goal. If they are not there, then even criticize the most recent Hitler does not make sense, because a simple statement that he acts anti-humanistically is helpless without saying how your humanistic worldview proposes to eradicate this anti-humanism. Also, I cannot help but note that dialectical materialism gives such answers with deadly accuracy, predicting the course of things over the centuries, showing the causes of wars, their inevitability and ways to overcome them.He also tells everyone what to do at this particular moment.Simply for the reasonthat the diamatic approach requires the study of objective reality even more scrupulously and more precisely than physics studies the current).
Only the Marxists remain, the so hated "Red Tsar-bearers", suddenly of all groups the only ones who stand on a scientific basis and fight not only with foreign bourgeoisie, but also with their own, as well as with unscientific-minded cadres in their ranks. If this is not done, the progressive life of the whole society cannot be achieved.
5.4.6. The opposite method
Suppose Marxism is a set of sectarian dogmas. Then the Slavophile offers to rally - for what? For the sake of survival, protection from the enemy who is going to dismember the country - and it's hard not to accept. Suppose we rallied and won. But Marxists also offer to fight the enemy, and not only them. Suppose the weak bourgeois state of the Russian Federation cannot cope and the Slavophiles begin to build their "horizontal ties". Why is it necessary to rally around them?
Around the heresy about justice, which is refuted historically?
Around good wishes that do not exclude fascism in any way (white-Slavophiles with their slogans and the philosopher Ilyin)?
Around duplicity about the commandment "do not steal"?
It turns out, I will fight, and then they will rob me again?
It is necessary to separate well-wishes from essence. It is the essence that does not allow the Slavophiles to develop an image of the future. How she did not allow this to be done by the feudal church hierarchs. If you serve the ruling class, robbing the people, you have, in essence, nothing to offer.
Or do the Slavophiles have scientifically developed methods for holding back capital? None found. And if they are not there, then how will the conditional Slavophil differ from the conditional “stoned whites and reds”, from the aforementioned African tribes, as well as from Westerners in their dogmas and axioms? Only by the fact that their dogmas seem more just?
The image of the future and our Marxist path are discussed above in the main text of the article.
5.5.1. Where are you communists, why aren't you there?
First, let's not forget the nearly one and a half billion people living in emerging communist societies.
Secondly, the defeat of communism in the USSR is quite understandable for the historical process of the struggle of opposites: capitalism also advanced over the centuries through numerous revolutions and counter-revolutions. A change of formations is inevitable because of the development of the productive forces, which is increasingly in conflict with the miserable relations of production. Since the collapse of the USSR, a small core of communists (not those ignoramuses who destroyed the USSR) have been developing a theory without which it is impossible to react at the right time. And the moment will come, because the strength of the capitalist crisis is growing, the war is blazing more and more, and the existing forces still cannot offer anything. They have almost 10 years of war, zero understanding of the causes of the crisis and zero vision for the future. There were also few Bolsheviks by the time the February revolution began, but there was a theory and there was a party. By October, the masses had accepted the only working red idea and by the time of the Great Patriotic War they had turned the backward Republic of Ingushetia into a state of a completely different quality - economically strong, but most importantly - with people of a new quality. Now, if everything does not burn in a nuclear fire, it will be the same, because the relations of exploitation at the present level of development have outlived their usefulness and it remains only to forge that subjective factor - a party that will put this into practice and will be able to overcome the scientifically studied mistakes of the past - an unscientific approach to organization that caused disaster.
5.5.2. Conclusion
The main thing in the current moment is preparation for the upcoming battles. The Party will unite around itself people who conscientiously improve the quality of their scientific knowledge through self-education. In order to understand the next steps, you need to know a lot, study, verify the acquired scientific knowledge and help a group of Marxists develop a theory and become a party. These are the objective requirements of the current moment. The bourgeoisie of the Russian Federation is already discrediting itself, and it has little chance of coping with the much stronger Western capital. Tomorrow - when the population goes berserk, when it wakes up from the petty-bourgeois dope of endless consumption, in which it has lived for the past 30 years, and when conditions are created for an open struggle for Soviet power in the context of the fight against external intervention. By that time there should be a working party, and tens of thousands of competent communists under her leadership, to replenish the army as a cementing force already in the form of the Red Army. Communism was able to win in the civil, during the "peaceful" 20-30s and during the Second World War thanks toSCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION . (And this, let me remind you, is the main thing at the moment of moving away from private property relations - organization and a planned economy). Not by abstract courage, not by abstract love - since both courage and love for the Motherland were in abundance on the opposite sides, from the White Guard to the Nazis - namely, thanks to the SYSTEM OF THE DICTATORY OF THE WORKING CLASS !
Only UNDER SUCH CONDITION, the people with their "courage" and "love for the Motherland" can win, and nothing else.
Appendix 1. Problems of bringing worldviews of different groups of society together
I think not a single person will object that conflicts can stop when the public outlook is unified, at least in a number of basic questions about justice and the progress of society. Let's call it the general coordinate system.
The problem of reducing different worldviews to one is the key problem at this stage. Now all participants in absolutely all conflicts consider themselves fair and progressive within the framework of their worldview. The problem is in the subjective interpretation of what is justice. "This is different" is the slogan of our time, the slogan of Hottentot morality.
Simplifying to the extreme, we need to understand how to know that someone's point of view is correct. Why, for example, a Slavophile or any other national patriot is right, but Westerners, liberals, hataskrainiki, whites, greens and reds are not?
In order to come to unanimity, one must first of all realize that a certain complexity is inherent in the system of views (worldview) of any individual, even if he has the most philistine kitchen. Such complexity stems from the fact that the content of this system is an infinite world moving in time, in all its diversity, and the ability of individual thinking to reflect it is very limited. “Inventing” from scratch a system of cognition of the infinite is an occupation beyond the control of one person, and therefore, often without realizing it, he relies on one or another social theory, philosophy, the quality of which directly depends on the methods of thinking on the basis of which it is constructed.
In order to reach unanimity, it is necessary secondarily to agree on a number of issues, and simple "common sense" will not help here: it is different for everyone according to education and is often very superficial.
Clause 1.1. Knowability
The first and most difficult is the question of knowability. The universe must be fundamentally knowable and accessible for rational, that is, scientific, explanation. The question of unanimity ends where "unknowable" places begin. Because each person invents them himself, he believes in them, they cannot be understood rationally, which means that it is impossible to convince another that your "unknowable" is more correct than someone else's.
If something cannot be known, then it must be taken on faith as a dogma. There are an infinite number of such dogmas in the world. Supporters of different dogmas cannot agree with each other even within the same current, a striking example of which is the history of Christianity (one dispute about the Filioque is worth something).
When applied to the whole of society (and this is what we are interested in, and not the individual manifestations of the teachings), any unknowable dogma means that it is impossible to agree on two most important questions:
• what is good and evil on the scale of society?
• what drives the development of society?
Lack of unanimity on these issues means eternal conflict.
For example, if I am a solipsist, then the whole world is created by my consciousness. It is impossible to convince me that it is impossible to burn people in another country, because they exist only in my mind; in the same way yoga, Christianity, Buddhism, the sect of witnesses of Darth Vader - I invented them all, for fun. Some teachings even justify this conflict (claiming that "this is the way"). Other modern philosophical concepts even try to explain this state of affairs, arguing that the truth of a particular doctrine is determined by the number of its bearers (for example, "whoever is stronger is right"). But this does not bring peace to the world, as we see, but for many this is not the goal.
Therefore, for our case, it is necessary to set aside any unknowable dogma, in particular any religion, from further discussion, otherwise we will remain on the positions of the dispute “God exists” - “God does not exist”, which will not lead us to a common understanding of the “image of the future”.
I would like to clarify: no one forbids anyone to believe in anything. We have a common recognition of the ultimate goal, at this stage simply understood as “building a conflict-free society where the life of every person is important”, and we need to come to some kind of rational common foundation that will help us reach this goal together with the whole society.
If a religious person persists precisely on his dogmatics, then we will never reach the goal, because we will run into no less stubborn carriers of other dogmatists. If he decides that it is enough to build a just society in a limited area of influence of his religion, then further dialogue can be stopped, because then how will the bearer of some dogmas differ from the bearers of other dogmas? How, for example, will the conditional Slavophile differ from the conditional “stoned whites and reds”, from the Westerners in their dogmas? Only by the fact that their dogmas seem more just?
Clause 1.2. Scientific
If we agree on knowability, we automatically arrive at the concept of scientificity. It is important. Scientific understanding means that we can cognize objective reality in such a way that, firstly, it is verifiable by each person, and secondly, it is confirmed in practice.
In our case, we are talking about scientific social science.
Next, we will give some definitions of scientificity, the logic of thinking, we will reveal some social science truths and indicate the sources on which such an understanding is built. It is very important in the dialogue that anyone who does not agree with the following can provide their scientifically cognizable sources that can be discussed. If unknowable dogmas are opposed, then - as mentioned above - we will run into dogmatism, which blocks any opportunity to build an “image of the future” and achieve the goal that we discussed above.
So, science.
In science, the truth is always one for every question, and it is knowable and verifiable.
The criterion of truth is the entire socio-historical practice of mankind, including industry, scientific achievements and the consistent development of society itself.
Scientific knowledge proceeds from general questions to particular ones, and not vice versa, as is done in the modern positivist so-called. "science", where a random texture is wound on a set of hypotheses.
The living and non-living world moves according to objective laws, and these laws are fully cognizable. The task of a person is to reflect them as accurately as possible so that individual practice does not conflict with these laws and is progressive in accordance with these laws.
Thus:
- The world exists objectively and moves according to laws that are completely and completely amenable to knowledge.
Man and mankind are part of the world, and they are fully cognizable, like the whole world. Man is endowed with the ability to reflect in consciousness and thereby cognize the surrounding material world.
Remarque about science. The repetition of the word "scientific" does not make the approach scientific. To think scientifically is to think in terms of concepts whose content is adequate to objective reality. The highest type of concepts is the category. The philosophical category is, firstly, an extremely general and extremely specific scientific abstraction, the richness of the content of which guarantees the systematization and coordinated inclusion of any particular fact or series of facts. Secondly, this is the concept of a phenomenon that does not allow arbitrary interpretation. Thirdly, it is a concept that reflects the objective laws, forms or aspects of objective material reality, the key points of knowledge. The philosophical category always presupposes its full compliance with the entire socio-historical practice of mankind. Thus, you can’t just pull on textures without understanding the essence of the phenomenon and declare it a science. Science must explain all known texture - this principle is known as "practice is the criterion of truth."
If we agree on this, then it means that there is a single truly reflected picture of the world (it is not static and not perfect - these are incorrect characteristics, there is no static; it is precisely true), and all the rest are untrue.
Clause 1.3. Logic of thinking
As stated above, "common sense" is a subjective phenomenon. What is logic? Any worldview can be reached only as a result of some work of thought, which, in turn, is based on certain methods of thinking. It is the mistakes in the latter that lead to the emergence of philosophies of varying degrees of inferiority, the application of which leads to the same quality practice, the results of which we clearly observe outside the window. It is easy to illustrate the method of thinking and the consequences of errors in it with the example of a causal relationship. In children, this is just being formed, which leads to funny situations when the child, closing his eyes with his hands, believes that it has become dark for his parents. The fact that he can’t hide like that makes him sincerely surprised. But cause and effect is only a small part of the logic.
Who determines the correctness of a certain method of thinking and who determines the correctness of the philosophy that arises on the basis of this method of thinking (after all, hypothetically, there may be several of them on the same basis)? Here it is necessary to turn to the historically accumulated wisdom of mankind and realize that people have been dealing with the issue of the structure of the world in general and the mechanisms of its knowledge in particular since the beginning of time. And the smartest scientists of their time built entire philosophical systems, arguing with each other through the centuries. Step by step, Zeno, Parmenides, Leucippus, Democritus and their followers deduced the concepts of being, continuity, inexhaustibility, and many others. Thus, on the basis of comprehension of practice, an apparatus with verified categories was formed, which makes it possible to describe the principle of the existence and movement of everything that surrounds us, including the very work of thought. By the way, this is why philosophical kitchen talks are so viscous: in a few hours, their participants are trying to form the basis on which entire human lives were laid. The pinnacle of pre-scientific philosophical thought was the “Science of Logic” by G.V.F. Hegel, with which humanity acquired a more or less developed dialectical method. With the advent of the “Science of Logic”, any philosophy based on a metaphysical method of thinking, that is, containing unknowable entities, considering particulars without a general picture, exploring any “separateness” without their general connection, can be considered irrevocably outdated. Unless, of course, we discard the idealistic scholasticism of Hegel himself.
This is how we can see the limitation of formal logic and rely on the principles of logic: the need to see everything in development, in interconnection; the need to understand the principles of development of any phenomenon in the identity and struggle of its constituent opposites, in the spasmodic changes. One of the consequences of such a system is the principle of "the general over the particular." It is important to remember this moment.
This is scientific logic, dialectics, and it needs to be studied. If it is neglected, there will be the same consequences as from the neglect of cause-and-effect relationships. Its opposite is metaphysics, which loses the relationship between phenomena and their development. It is important to remember this moment too.
Clause 1.4. Scientific social science
Let's apply the above principles to social science.
Human. The first thing that will have to be recognized within the framework of scientific logic is that a person is shaped by society. The mental properties of a person are formed in the course of activity. A person's abilities are manifested, formed and developed in one or another social activity; it is the relationship with society in the process of its implementation that develops the personality, and it is as a result of the activity of the individual with the most diverse properties that they unite into social groups. It is worth recalling that Mowgli children never became people if they were placed in society after a certain age. So we come to the need in further research to consider a social person, that is, an individual as a manifestation of society. Moreover, society cannot be regarded as a collection of individuals, if only because there can be no individual without society. So the individual personality is a manifestation of society, its singular expression. Each unique person is the way he is, only because he has been formed socially, within society.
Society. For a long time, scientists tried to answer questions like: how to explain wars, states, religion, philosophy, morality, etc.? But such a formulation of the question has no answer because of its vagueness and far-fetchedness, openness to an infinite number of idealistic concepts. Instead, as a foundation for discovering regularities, let us put the question: what are the conditions for the existence of a society of any type? That is, what do all human societies throughout history have in common? The answer is unequivocal: the unification of people for the production of material means of life is a way of obtaining the means of life necessary for the existence of people, a way of producing material goods (food, clothing, footwear, housing, fuel, tools of production, etc.) necessary for so that society can reproduce, live and develop. The individual person accepts the rules of the game of social relations if he wants to live. Animals also adapt themselves to the environment, but only man does this by constantly complicating the means of influencing the surrounding matter, transforming it collectively.
History as a science then becomes a study of the course of social development, a science of studying the laws of development of society for practical application to building the future. And it is possible to study the course of social development only on the basis of this very interaction with nature regarding the acquisition of means of subsistence for subsistence.
The above definition of society leads to the fact that society moves according to the dialectic of the development of the means of production, productive forces and production relations. Such an objective development of society is given in the theory of formations. On the scale of humanity, we will see that social ideas, thoughts, views, theories and social institutions must correspond to production relations and, therefore, that most (but not all) modern ideas correspond to the prevailing (but there are others) production relations.
Dialectics requires finding the source of society's movement in the identity and unity of opposites. What? Productive forces and production relations. Such an objectively existing source of the development of society is described in class theory, since only through the class struggle can the contradiction that has arisen be eliminated. K. Marx's "Capital" is a scientific work that reveals the essence of bourgeois economics. K. Marx explores the principle of operation of commodity relations, derives the law of value, the causes and principles of the functioning of money and capital, and also discovers the source of exploitation, the source of profit from human labor. He wrote primarily about people (the development of commodity relations, money, capital), and not about resources and property. This can be studied and verified
It is Marxism that gives a complete picture of what fascism is as an extreme expression of competitive relations of unlimited profit in relations of private property. It also becomes clear that no group of society, no modern nation can escape fascism within the framework of capitalist relations.
As a source, all volumes of F. Engels, K. Marx, V. I. Lenin and I. Stalin are attached, which exhaustively explore these issues on the basis of dialectics.
Clause 1.5. Outcome
The diamatic understanding of the laws of history, the formational approach, the laws of capitalist society, the class approach, and much more - this is a scientific theory that reveals the objective laws of the development of society, fully confirmed by practice. This basis is revealed in powerful scientific works, which again are the result of the development of the entire science of mankind, rely on it.
Ya. Dubov
24/04/2023
https://prorivists.org/80_nationalism/
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It is clear that these folks do not ascribe to the 'civilizational' clap-trap promoted by some Russians. Good for them.