The theory and practice of communism; Marxism as a Philosophy

He believed that the highest embodiment of that idea on Earth at least was the Prussian monarchy. I hardly know of a creature greater contrast between the sublime idea and our wretched conclusion. But he came at it in this way historically speaking. His thesis was Oriental despotism such as ancient Persia or Egypt and to this is Greek and Roman Democracy. And so that the best of both come together into a Prussian monarchy he was a monarchist he did believe that monarchy was the best form of government and that the Prussian monarchy was the best kind of monarchy because it brought together what was best in monarchy and what was best in a democratic system. Needless to say Marx disagreed with that conclusion as indeed most sensible people do. But more importantly Marx rejected philosophical idealism altogether. He did however except after reinterpretation the third

proposition that the external world develops or moves dialectically. Now here let me go back to this short course. Attributed erroneously to Stalin quote dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental agglomeration of things or phenomena unconnected with isolated from and independent of each other. But is it connected and integral whole in which things phenomenon are or are organically connected with dependent on and determined by each other and on the simpletons. This can be reduced to the simple statement that everything in the world of nature is related to everything else. Secondly and I'm still quoting from the short course. Contrary to metaphysics dialectics holds that nature is not a state of rest or immobility. Stagnation and

immutability but a state of continuous movement and change of continuous renewal and development where something is always a rising and developing and something always disintegrating and dying away and quote. May I interject here that statement made by who you are on TV that scared so many Americans to death and still does. When he said we will bury you. I'm quite certain in my own mind that when Khrushchev bellowed out we will bury you he was not threatening us with the Red Army or with the Rockets or anything of this sorry. But there Khrushchev was speaking from a simple belief in the Marxian philosophy that change is inevitable the change is inevitably going in the direction of socialism and that in so far as we are a capitalist system that socialism will bury capitalism in the sense that that one will die and the other one will take

over. In any case what is involved in this philosophical outlook is a Trinity or a triad. First being then becoming and then ceasing to be while becoming something else. Here I sometimes give a boast homely and personal analogy for my students which I hope you won't mind use Petrovitch as my prime example here starting with myself to being the becoming in ceasing to be that is here I am Michael B Petrovich. I am I exist. Hopefully I am also becoming something all the time with every moment that I live. I am becoming something if nothing else I'm getting fatter all the time there is more to me materially if in no other way. But

even as I am adding to my own development whether materially or spiritually or intellectually in whatever way I've come in closer and closer to the inevitable day of my death. That is why even while I am becoming I am ceasing to be. Or as that wonderful old hymn goes in the Book of Common Prayer in the midst of life we are in debt. So that everything follows this rule according to this philosophical outlook we not only are but we are developing an even while we are developing. We are disappearing in the sense that we are giving way to something else. Hopefully something else that is better. If you want this in religious terms life and to it this is death. Since this is immortality and there are many many other ways that one can play with drop the triads of this sort. But what is important to us

in looking at the communism from a practical standpoint is that this whole philosophical outlook has at its basis the idea of the inevitability of change. And even the joyous acceptance of change. Now please note that this is different from many conservative outlooks. When you've gotten the beef I might use that magic number over 30. And you have made enough of a pile. And you know that you're going to double that pile before you die. And you're very comfortable and you reach the point where it's just a matter of whether you're going to own a second outdoor fireplace or a second motorboat or whatever it is that makes your life comfortable. And if you really would like to live the rest of your life in the comfort that you so richly deserve. Furthermore you don't want to be troubled by any new

ideas especially because you know they're all newfangled and wrong and you were brought up in the right way. Any change becomes an annoyance. Indeed any change to some people becomes an object of deep disturbance and to the degree that any change unsettled one to this kind of person would like to get away from it and not recognize it or put it under the carpet or accuse people that are for change as being simply the UN settlers of Lawn Order or whatever the case may be. And I can well sympathize with this kind of view. I'm over 30 in that though I don't have the riches that permit me to sit back and enjoy the world. That is material riches I do have a yen to sit back and contemplate and read more books and think great thoughts and all the rest of it. But what we have in the philosophical outlook of change here is what more than one person is called The Gadfly.

Any philosophy of change forces us to realize that nothing is permanent in this world least of all ourselves. The things always change and the marksman's come at us with the idea that this change is for the better and that one must work for this better thing. And it's an activist philosophy rather than a conservative just philosophy and not in that very fact alone lies much of the magic of their power. Because even if they're wrong they at least they're doing something. After all Columbus discovered America on a totally erroneous assumption and I'm not even sure one can say that Columbus discovered America because he never really knew what he had discovered. I happen not to be a Muslim and I trust that no one will take it amiss if I say that I have a conviction that

many of the basic ideas of the religion of Islam are wrong. But that doesn't mean the top that I do not have a deep respect for the way they were able to expand so rapidly in so short a time over a great part of the earth. Why. Because their creed was by nature and aggressive one. And an optimistic one. And this is what we are confronted with in Marxism This is why the French sociologist Moen the role strikes home so well when he calls communism the 20th century Islam. Well whatever conclusions you come to here. We need to take stock. Of statements such as angles on nature from the smallest thing to the biggest from a grand of St.. Sand to the sun. From the proto star that is the primary living cell to man is in a constant

flux in a ceaseless state of movement and change. Now how does this change take place. Not accidentally not in any helter skelter fashion but rationally say the Marxists in a pattern. This pattern is not one of repetition. It is not a cycle as we find in some of the thought of the Orient as in India or China. This is not a cycle but it is onward and upward for ever from the lower to the higher. From the simple to the complex. From an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state. Now the next statement I make I think is going to be one of the most important to remember here and that is that this change takes place not harmoniously but in a struggle in a conflict. Changes take place not through the cooperation of thesis and antithesis the very word anti-hero in antithesis shows that there is a struggle.

Between the two propositions. There is a conflict there is an opposition. I believe it was the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said that war or struggle is the father of all things and he meant this in a very profound way that all of human progress all of progress in nature comes from from the working out of the conflict between that thesis and antithesis. I now must trouble you with three laws. Remember that Marxism grew up in the 19th century of scientism in which nothing was respectable unless it could be reduced to scientific law. And so the first law is the law of transformation of quantity into quality. The law of transformation of quantity into quality and vice a versa. Let me read to you from Engels. His description of how this takes

place. He's using physics as his example though in another place chemistry in physics right angles. Every change is a passing of quantity into quality as a result of quantitative change of some form of movement either inherent in a body or imparted to it. For example the temperature of water has a first no effect on its liquid state but as the temperature of liquid water rises or falls a moment arrives when this state of cohesion changes and water is converted in one case into steam and in another case into ice and then he gives other examples of this sort with plant in them and with it still other items. What you have is H2O but H2O has three states as everyone knows H2O is either a liquid and then we call it water or it is a solid. And then we call it ice or it is a vapor or gas. And then we call it steam. Now how

does water become H2O become either liquid or steam or ice. Now here we have I I want to come. To the full set of leaps here but before I do that let me go on to the second. The second law of the unity of opposites and the law of the unity of opposites. That the positive and the negative really make no absolute difference the difference between positive and negative is relative and not absolute because both positive and negative are parts of the same process. Just as the road east is also the road west. At a given point capital and labor are opposites which are interdependent in a given unity in a given epoch of history each needs the other. Capital needs labor and labor needs capital even

though they are a contradiction of one another and it is only when the contradiction can be settled in no other way that the one takes over completely from the other according to Marx in socialist theory. Oh there are many many examples one can give in the material world around us. Electricity is the one that comes easiest to my mind as a layman. The very fact that we are getting light from all of these fixtures over our head is dependent on the fact that there is a unity of negative and positive. And that they work together in struggle with one another in order to give us this light. For every time you push down the gas pedal of your car what's going on inside the Pistons of your motor is a struggle between a positive and a negative and the struggle keeps going back and forth back and forth and what you get out of that conflict between thesis and antithesis in your car motor is movement that goes forward or if you want to get

biological. The difference between my wife and myself is that I am male and she is female and out of this relative not absolute difference comes the fact that we produce children and like one another. The difference is relative. Even the Bible tell us that we. Tells us that we aren't one flesh and yet we are opposites sexually. And this is why we can produce. I say one can give a whole variety of homely examples of this but let me go on not to the law. The law of the negation of the negation. That is the thesis breaks down due to internal contradictions and gives way to an antithesis and the Geishas of the thesis which attempts to remove these contradictions and this also breaks down and synthesis follows including valid elements of both thesis and

antithesis. But at the same time negating the antithesis and so is the negation of the negation illustrations. Feudalism. Let's take feudalism as a thesis. That period of history known as feudalism. This breaks down due to contradictions within itself. What is the contradiction to feudalism capitalism. But capitalism has within itself a contradiction and so the synthesis to the Marxist mind at least is socialism embracing what is of value in capitalism. And as I pointed out socialism does not simply negate capitalism. Socialism excepts from capitalism everything that it can. While yet being something else. Socialism. Now as to this leap that I was talking about. Many of us have heard the phrase that in nature there are no leaps that nature makes no leaps.

Marxism Marxism came about at the time of the theory of evolution of Darwin and others was coming to the fore. Marx accepted the theory of evolution in every phase of life and in thought. But he did not quite see it the way Darwin did. This is one reason why Darwin would not allow his name to be used by Marx or in any way that occasions of his books. But one can conceive of evolution in the material universe as being a long and never ending process which is so gradual that at no point can you say that anything different is happening it is just that something is going on in the Continuum in a continuous process. Not without wanting to go into

a field in which I'm willfully ignorant. Too far let me say simply this to the degree that the theory of evolution is right when it says that both men and apes had common ancestors at one time. Man through the yawns and EON's developed into what we call man today. Presumably this development has not started with us. Can it be said at any point. Now this is not simply a primate and an animal but this is something we can call a man and a human. At what point does this happen. Well I have yet to find any scientist that is willing even to guess at what particular point in what particular year in past eons something of this sort happened. This would assume then the validity of the theory that nature makes no

leaps but it isn't quite as simple as all that. Because let's go back to this homely example that Engels gives us of H2O that is water or ice or steam. See if I can remember my physics is it to 12 degrees Fahrenheit at which water turns in this thing. All right let's say that you have to get it's liquid form in the pan and you put this pan of water which is at 60 or 70 or 80 degrees temperature. On the spill and you apply heat to this water well the water temperature rises from 80 to 81 and this is being very crude because there are lots of degrees of heat between 80 and 81 points U.S.. Then there are 8 to 83 and so forth and so on. And then it gets to

210 and then it gets to two leavened and then should come the magic moment when this water will change into steam. But is and it does. But is the change a gradual one one of imperceptible evolutions from 211 to 212. And the answer there is no that it takes an extra push. In order to achieve this transformation of quantity into quality it is the quantity of water is changed into the quantity of steam and that any such transformation requires an extra push. Now may I say that being woefully ignorant of physics and chemistry and other such matters I had no idea as to the validity of this but it doesn't matter. What matters is that the Marxian philosophy definitely believes that under the

law of transformation of quantity into quality there is a leap inherent. There is an extra push. There is a jump. And in the world of history to Marks this jump was known as Revolution. That is as one socio economic system develops. It seems to develop gradually until it reaches that magic moment when it can no longer develop further. The principles which itself has established. And therefore there has to be a change. A transformation from the quality of feudalism into the quality of capitalism or from capitalism into socialism. And whenever that happens a jump a leap is necessary and in human terms this leap is a revolution. Whether it's the French Revolution or some other kind of revolution and Marx saw this as a physical catastrophe.

This is why the revisionists are so important all of this because they redefined Edward benched and refuses to regard this leap as a necessarily Byler revolution. These people are a gradualist a bench Tang revisionist is an evolutionist in this sense that refuses to see any such leaps or jumps as being necessary. But it's interesting to me that you. Belong to the one side or the other in the application of these things to human affairs. May I point out is that the basis of all of this is the terrible problem. To what degree can one draw analogies between physical laws and human behavior. This is a very very touchy and very grave problem. I don't want to go on troubling you with Marx in philosophy I think that I have said enough at this point to give you an insight into the kind of thought processes in which they engage. Let me sum up in a few simple propositions.

First of all that nature is the sum total of matter in the universe. Nature is the sum total of the matter in the universe. Second that there is nothing but matter. The material universe is self-sufficient and needs no spirit or idea to guide it from above or without. There is no self-existent realm of being independent of nature that is of matter. Somebody once called this wittily the Divine Right of things. The third some ation is that the universe is matter in motion that no matter is still. Nothing is ever at rest. What we call being still or at rest is simply in relationship to something

else if I put this 10 down on the table and say it is still. It is still only in relationship to this table let us say to the rest of us. But are we not all hurtling through space space of the universe. There is always motion at the end besides as any physicist will tell us there is nothing at rest within this plant all its atoms everything is whirling around constantly. The universe every part of matter is in motion. Fifth. That whereas philosophical idealism asserts that all of the material being. That is the nature of world matter around us exists in our minds in our sensations and ideas and perceptions. Philosophical materialism establishes the primacy of matter and asserts that our minds our sensations our ideas our perceptions are but the reflection of matter in motion and arise from material being. The brain itself the seat of thought is a physical material.

Now the reason I need to stress this idea of Marx's so much is that time and time again those who would do battle with the ideas of Marx will come out with the argument. But man is not subject to these laws. Man is himself a creator an agent he has thoughts which are independent of these things and he can change them. And Marx while not demeaning the dignity of man are not wishing to in any way always point out that man has no ideas independent of the material environment around him and that therefore those ideas are determined and I underline that word determined by the material and bearing that. Finally while my mind is a reflection of matter. Matter has an objective existence of its own independent of the mind's cognition or sensation. The contradictions in thought are merely

reflections of contradictions in the material being. I have no desire even to try to poke holes in such a philosophy. I've already pointed out what troubles professional philosophers about it. That it is a far too great a simplification for many of them that not everything can be divided up into the philosophies of idealism and materialism. Professional philosophy and worries about Marx is a whole inadequate system ology. Too many philosophers he seems very muddled about how men really priests perceive reality. Furthermore the dialectic is itself rather ambiguous after all. If I might put it in vulgar terms one man's thesis is another man's antithesis and who is to say which is which. Furthermore let's simply agree in a commonsense way that not all differences are necessarily contradictions. Why assume that just because two

things are different that they oppose one another there is something to be said for the cooperation of differences as well as their contradictions. Further mark one thesis may after all have several antitheses. There is nothing to show that the dialectic is in itself a true description of nature says Professor mail. Furthermore the opposite of something false is not necessarily true. The opposite of something fast may be something else that is equally felt. Opposites do not necessarily result in a synthesis. I point this out as merely some of the philosophical problems that we might discuss here if this were a course in philosophy and I knew enough about the subject. But as I say this is not necessary to our purpose. I hope that so far I have demonstrated first that the Marxists have a total encompassing world outlook. It is

not just another theory. They really believe that they have something that has an explanation to every phenomenon in the universe. Furthermore they have this feeling of certainty that this explanation of theirs is not only total but true in the sense that it is scientifically demonstrably and if anyone has ever argued with the communists as I have many wee hours of the night one realizes what a feeling of certainty there is in their arguments. Another conclusion to be drawn from this and I shall elaborate it when I talk about Marxist theories of history is that just as there are laws in nature the same laws govern man and man's behavior because man is himself a part of nature and even man's thought processes are but a reflection of matter around him. And this too gives them a certain certitude about many of the things they are

saying is certitude which produced the statement we will bury you. You have been listening to Professor Michael B Petrovich of the University of Wisconsin as he discussed Marxism as a philosophy. Next week the first of a two part discussion of Marxism as a theory of history. These like yours are drawn from the 1967 Wisconsin Alumni seminar and the theory and practice of communism. They are arranged for radio by W.H. at the University of Wisconsin. Again almost speaking this is the national educational radio network.