Victor Alexeyevich Vaziulin
Introduction
The brilliant Soviet philosopher Victor Alexeyevich Vaziulin (30-08-1932/08-01-2012) took the development of Marxist-Leninist science to a new level with his work, aiming to lay the theoretical foundations for the subject of the victorious socialist revolutions of the 21st century. Through the theoretical examination of the processes of development of Soviet society and of humanity, together with a critical re-examination and research on Marxism-Leninism, classical Soviet philosophy, and science of the 1950s and 1960s, Vaziulin created a unique direction in Revolutionary Theory, Dialectical Logic and the Methodology of Science.
The main scientific discoveries of V.A. Vaziulin are the following:
1. Revealing the logic of the theoretical part of Marx’s “Capital” through the systematic study of logical categories in its political economic content, in parallel with a comparative/critical analysis of the rational acquis and the limitations of Hegel’s “Science of Logic”. In this way, he fulfilled the research programme set out by V.I. Lenin in the “Philosophical Notebooks”, and he brought to the fore the dialectical logic and methodology of advanced scientific research, of advanced science as an organic whole.
2. The concrete/historical approach of Marxism as a scientific system that develops through the emergence and resolution of law-governed contradictions. A system consisting of components, internally unified in their difference, each of which refers to the study of a specific area of study (the development of society as a whole, the political economy of capitalism and the future communist society) at a certain level of its becoming and development.
The above discoveries are intrinsically linked to the view of scientific knowledge as a natural/historical process governed by laws.
3. The creative development of Marx’s method of scientific research in the study of the development of society as a whole led V.A. Vaziulin to the discovery of the Logic of History: the internal systematic interconnection of the laws and categories of social theory, which represents a mental reconstruction of the development of the structure of (mature) society and its history (theoretical periodisation of human history), the laws of its beginning, its primary emergence, formation and maturity) through the prism of the escalation of the interaction between natural and social factors.
The scientific discoveries of V.A. Vaziulin paved the way for the forthcoming creative development (not revision) of Marxism-Leninism through the dialectical “sublation” of historical materialism and the conception of history through stages (formations).
The theoretical approach of the Logic of History to fundamental questions of social development (“early” socialist revolutions, the law governed connection between extensive and intensive development of the productive forces under socialism, formal and actual socialisation of production, the connection between the necessity of planning and scientific planning, between commodity and monetary relations undergoing socialist transformation according to planning, etc.) provides the key to understanding the objective causes of a number of key historical social phenomena and opens up a wide range of new research directions.
This also touches, for example the question of the law governed causes of the prevalence of the bourgeois counterrevolution and capitalist restoration in the USSR and in the European countries of early socialism (as opposed to the widespread attribution of these causes primarily and/or exclusively to subjective factors), the question of the inevitability of the socialist revolution and the achievement of Unified Humanity, of Communism, as the only scientifically grounded prospect for the survival of humanity & reversing the increasing probability of the decay and total destruction of humanity through “peaceful” means or through war.
The Soviet philosopher V.A. Vaziulin was almost completely blind when he gave this speech. His last handwritten text was published almost a year earlier, in 2006.
He had foreseen the rapid escalation of war (as a result of the war drive of the imperialist axis of aggression against the antiimperialist and socialist forces) in the third decade of the 21st century since the 1990s. He also foresaw the contradictory potential within the Third World War: an existential catastrophe for humanity, but also a new series of successful anti-imperialist uprisings and socialist revolutions. That is why he calls on us to be vigilant, to prepare the people and to develop our theory, because understanding the character of this war, setting our goals and carrying them out is crucial for the survival of humanity. V.A. Vaziulin stresses the necessity of the stage of early socialism according to dialectical law, a stage that cannot be skipped or ignored without grave consequences. This necessity is closely connected with the Leninist concept of the “weak link” of the imperialist chain, according to which revolutionary situations erupt in dependent countries with a medium level of development through a network of internal and international contradictions.
Therefore, the antiimperialist struggle becomes a strategic imperative for the revolutionary movement, for the survival of the early socialist revolution, and for preparing the conditions for the late socialist revolutions. Vaziulin underlines the vital importance of supporting early socialism with all our strength, theoretically and practically, because it is linked with the anti-imperialist struggle. He believed that turning our back on antiimperialism and early socialism is a betrayal of the global revolutionary movement.
The following text is a speech given by Victor Alexeyevich Vaziulin to the Revolutionary Theory Groups during a teleconference held on 22 August 2007 with participants from Athens, Thessaloniki, Moscow, Chania, Heraklion, Rethymno, Nicosia. This text is a transcript of the interpretation of the teleconference by Dimitrios Patelis. Translated in English by Spiros Patelis.
On the early and late socialist revolutions and on their subject. On the importance of the Revolutionary Theory Groups
I would like to say to the members of your groups that your groups have a special importance because they are precursors, heralds of the beginning of a new stage of the movement for socialism. We are talking about the fact that in our time the pre-conditions for the transition to the stage of late socialism are being formed.
I think that the movement for socialism has two main stages: there is the stage of early socialist revolutions, early socialism, and the stage of late socialist revolutions and late socialism, which is already beginning to emerge. The fundamental objective condition for the emergence of early socialism was the transition to the development of global production, to mechanised production. The fundamental objective condition for late socialism is the transition to automated production. Mechanised production (i.e. mechanised production that has not yet been automated) was and is the material basis corresponding to the mature capitalist society. As an aside, I would like to point out that the maturation of capitalist society is a lengthy process, and at the present stage it is not yet fully complete. In principle, however, capitalism is in its mature phase, which began at the time of the victorious industrial revolutions. At the same time, the victory of these industrial revolutions also proved to be the material basis for the emergence of early socialism. Of course, early socialism did not emerge in all the capitalist countries where the industrial revolutions were victorious. In England, where we had the earliest victorious industrial revolution, there was no victorious early socialist revolution and, obviously, there was no early socialism. In other words, what I mentioned is one of the objective conditions, but it is not sufficient in itself, neither for the emergence of the socialist revolution and early socialism itself, nor for its victory. Other additional conditions are needed, and they are being formed. I may come back to this later. Without the appropriate material and technical basis, early socialism, which emerges after the victory of the industrial revolution, with the victory of pre-automated, mechanised production, cannot take shape. For late socialism, the objective condition is a sufficiently developed stage of automated production.
Similarly, if the main revolutionary force of the era of the early socialist revolutions could be the industrial working class, the industrial proletariat (the proletariat that worked in the conditions of pre-automated mechanised production), if we refer to the process in its pure form, taking into account only the objective conditions of the formation of late socialism, then the workers of automated production can become such a revolutionary force.
However, since we are examining the process in its pure form here, we are referring to an objective condition that is decisive, but still remains one among the objective conditions for the existence and development of late socialism. However, at the current stage of global industrial production, with all the processes of automating production under way, the dominant role remains generally and overall, with production that is not yet automated. A process of automation has emerged, but has not yet reached maturity. We are living in an era in which the early socialist revolutions and early socialism have not yet exhausted their full potential. There are still processes in the modern phase that either lead to early socialist revolutions or can be described as the initial stages of these new early socialist revolutions. I have Latin America in mind, especially Venezuela and a number of other South American countries.
Although early socialism has a number of essential deficiencies compared with the later stages of its development, it has not yet exhausted its intrinsic potential. Such revolutions will continue to be waged and to prevail in some countries for some time to come. Although in this early socialism, as production develops, the limitations, the inadequacies of this early socialism will increasingly manifest themselves.
In the Soviet Union, it can be said that the early socialist revolution and early socialism triumphed in its classical form, just as in France the great French bourgeois revolution triumphed in its time. That is why, among other things, it was in the Soviet Union, more than anywhere else, that the limitations of early socialism became apparent. These limitations, we can say with some certainty, also manifested themselves in other countries of early socialism. However, in spite of this, and in parallel to these processes which now dominate the socialist movement as a whole, conditions for more developed socialist revolutions and for a more developed socialist society exist and are being developed. As is clear from what has been said above, this is primarily the preparation for the formation of the material base in the form of automated production, although of course it is not limited to this. I am not going to analyse the entire framework of these conditions which are now emerging and which have already emerged in part. That is the subject of another discussion and I hope to write about it in the future. I will try, as far as possible, to examine this process in its entirety. For the moment, I will refer to only one factor, but it is an extremely important one. In order for this transition to take place, it is necessary to develop theory. The point is that the more advanced a society is on the road to socialism, the more advanced a society is on the road to communism, the greater the role of the conscious factor becomes. The importance of consciousness is constantly increasing.
If the bourgeois revolutions and the radical transformations that preceded capitalism, the transitions to feudalism, the transitions from a classless society to class societies, were carried out spontaneously, the transition to classless society must, in principle, to a greater extent, be carried out more consciously. And in order for this process to be carried out consciously, or more precisely, sufficiently consciously, theory is necessary, it is necessary to propagate this theory, it is necessary to persuade, it is necessary to convince large sections of the population. Today, of course, we are at the beginning of this journey. Much remains to be done, both at the theoretical level and, above all, at the practical level.
Except that the prospect of this movement already exists today. This prospect is, however, notoriously difficult to study, because we are in a transitional period. In addition, it is difficult for this to reach the consciousness of certain sections of the population who are not theoretically prepared. This is even more complicated. So, I see the activities of your [revolutionary theory] groups as a step in this direction, as a step towards theoretical and practical preparation. Of course, these are the first steps of a movement towards this new stage of development on the road to socialism.
In order to prepare ourselves, in order to be theoretically prepared for this stage, we must understand that the previous level of development of Marxism, that the achievements contained in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin are important and necessary, they have not yet been fully utilised, and yet theory of a new level which will correspond to the modern era is necessary. I could say, for example, that in Marx’s legacy we did not have the concept of early and late socialism, there was no such differentiation, there was the differentiation of early and late bourgeois revolutions in his work, but there was no differentiation between early and late socialist revolutions. In “Capital”, for example, he writes about mechanised production, production by means of machines, and describes the height of pre-automated production. But he does not see and cannot see at that time, because of the objective conditions, how long this stage will be, how long this whole process will be, until pre-automated production becomes fully automated production. That’s why automation, to the extent that it existed in Marx’s time, existed in an embryonic form. He could not distinguish the transition from mechanised to automated production. He could not distinguish two different stages, which are essential for the periodisation of this movement towards socialism.
Now, in our time, we can do this. I can give you an example, although I am not going to analyse it in its entirety, I am not going to analyse the differences that need to be identified, that need to be highlighted, the differences between the theoretical level of today and the theoretical level that was characteristic of the time of Marx and Engels, of their work. I will give you just one more example. Now, in our time, we have some peculiar phenomena. In the time of Marx, Engels and Lenin, we did not face a situation in which humanity had the possibility of self-destruction, of suicide. What does the possibility of human suicide mean? It means that humanity has acquired the ability, on a negative level, negatively, apophatically, to manage the totality of all the conditions of its existence on earth. Only this, is manifested in a negative way—in terms of the possibility of humanity’s self-destruction, the destruction of life on the planet, on Earth. But even in a negative way, humanity now has the possibility—it is obvious—of mastering the conditions of its existence. Although we still have a long way to go before we can positively master these possibilities. A lot of work is needed, a lot of hard work, a lot of time will pass, but humanity is not only beginning to master the objective conditions of its existence, it is also entering a completely different era, a space era, so to speak. From its terrestrial existence, humanity is moving into the space era. This was not and could not have been the case in the time of Marx, Engels and Lenin. It was impossible for Marx, Engels and Lenin to draw attention to this fact. Nevertheless, these features of humanity’s transition into its space era, as I believe the research already available shows, have begun to manifest themselves in a series of fundamental theoretical concepts about humanity, society, the laws of nature and biological laws. In short, the conditions are emerging for a radically new conception of the whole world, for a transition to a fundamentally new theoretical paradigm. Here I would like to end this brief introduction. If you have any questions, I am at your disposal.
V.A. Vaziulin’s answers to questions from members of the Revolutionary Theory Groups
Question: You mentioned this dialectical relationship between revolution and counter-revolution, even distinguishing between periods of early and late revolutions and early and late socialism. You even talked about Venezuela, which has characteristics of early…
V.A.V.: In response to your question, I must clarify that we do not yet have a socialist revolution in Venezuela. What I was suggesting is that if there is a revolution there under these conditions, it will be an early socialist revolution.
Question: Given that we have the possibility of globalising the revolutionary process more quickly than in the past, does this possibility of sharing the revolutionary activity and the activity of the working class in the developed capitalist countries make it possible to feed these efforts with the necessary theoretical weapons, but also with internationalist solidarity?
V.A.V.: Allow me to comment a little on what you have said so far. The point is that the preconditions of the late socialist revolutions are in what we could call an embryonic state, although this is a starting point in their development, where the main task, the major task, lies in the theoretical reflection of the new processes in a certain theoretical and ideological preparation. It would be rushed, a hastening of things if we were to think that we could now, on the basis of the concepts of late socialist revolutions and late socialism, take a dominant position in this movement towards socialism. We still need to work in this direction for a long time.
Question: I have touched mainly on two modes of interaction between countries and their respective working classes in mechanised capitalism and automated capitalism. On the one hand, there are possibilities of technological assistance and active solidarity, active internationalism, through the development of technologies in the countries of developed capitalism to help workers where mechanised production is dominant. Ultimately, are these efforts—which are in the pre-revolutionary period and will probably have early characteristics—actually in the process of forming late revolutions, or should we expect late revolutions in the periphery?
V.A.V.: I think that it is already necessary to support the early socialist revolutions and the potential of early socialism that will re-emerge (if it does) in every way and with every available means (if available). With all our strength. Because only by going all the way through these revolutions, through early socialism, will we be able to move on to late socialism. We cannot bypass early socialism, we cannot bypass the early socialist revolutions and go straight to the new, more developed stage. From this point of view, the historical process is law governed, it is objective. And we have to go through this stage, which means that we have to contribute in every possible way so that this stage is overcome as soon as possible.
Question: Can we define the era in which we find ourselves today in time, characterised by the domination of the capitalist system and the defeat of the early socialist revolutions? And more specifically, can we determine, on the basis of the “Logic of History”, how long it will take humanity to analyse the data of the past and present and to chart the course of the future?
V.A.V.: The chronological approach is too complicated to go into. We can only say roughly that it will take at least decades. Qualitatively, however, it will happen on a sufficiently broad scale to exhaust the potential of early socialist revolutions and early socialism. To this extent and under these conditions, if of course we take into account the actual objective historical process, we have today come a long way forward. This forward momentum is absolutely necessary, because even today we should try, as far as possible, to exert the influence that we owe to this process of carrying out the early socialist revolutions and early socialism, [I repeat] to the extent that is currently possible. But we should exercise this influence [through the development of revolutionary theory] now, because theory cannot be formed in a day or a year. The preparation of people does not happen in a year, not even in a decade. It is also a slow, lengthy process, and furthermore, it would of course be desirable, as far as possible, for people today to already consider the ultimate consequences, so that they do not only cling to the immediate perspective, but have in mind the ultimate perspective and in connection with it structure their own immediate activity, the activity which is directed towards the achievement of the short-term objectives, because this is precisely the difference between the person who sees the long term perspective and the person who does not see the long term perspective, and this distance between these two perspectives will increase with time.
Question: Today there are certain achievements of capitalism in the field of production and technology. Is it possible to use these achievements and this technology in the new society? And in what sense, in what context?
V.A.V: I would answer as follows: this is what Marx wrote in Capital. When capitalism advances to the extraction of relative surplus value, by perfecting the technology of production, which it transforms into a means of generating profit, i.e. when capitalism is oriented towards the development of the productive forces under certain social conditions, as a means of generating profit, it develops more and more rapidly and can accelerate its rates of development. But at the same time, it is being driven to its death, because this development is contradictory.
The development of the productive forces under capitalism is subject to the generation of profits and is therefore one-sided and contradictory, a fact which is manifested, among other things, in the ecological situation, which is not far from being catastrophic. All these are facets, manifestations of the capitalist process of extracting profit through the development of the productive forces to the extent and in the direction necessary for capitalism.
The development of capitalism is contradictory, and the further we go, the more unstable this contradiction becomes. It manifests itself not only in ecology, with ecological disasters, but also, among other things, in the science that studies human beings.
It is a fact that in human biology, on the one hand, many aspects are being studied and, on the other hand, we have an increasing presence of destructive conditions for our existence as biological beings. This can be seen, among other things, in the field of genetic engineering and genetically modified (GM) products, where this process is being rapidly applied for profit without being fully understood, and without studying the effects of genetically modified organisms on human biology. They are therefore using these genetically modified products on a large scale, even though they do not know the effects [they may have]. From this point of view, on the one hand we have a process of development, a process in which humans become the master of their own biology, because they acquire the possibility of influencing their own genome, their overall human biology, but on the other hand it is a contradictory process, because it has by definition been subordinated to the generation of profits and nobody cares about people as human beings. Everyone is concerned with profit, with profitability.
The development of the productive forces, the development of science as a productive force is completely subordinated to profitability. And this development of the productive forces, ultimately, threatens the very biological existence of humanity. For example, if we were to have a socialist revolution and move into the more mature stages of the new society, how would we deal with these genetically modified products? We should not put them on the market until scientific research has reached a sufficient level where scientists can fully, or at least substantially, take into account the ultimate effects of GM products on human beings. They should not be used.
But at the moment they are looking at individual genes, not the biological organism as a whole, the human organism from a biological point of view. Biology has studied this to a very inadequate level in terms of the dialectical method, in terms of dialectics. What biology is doing today consists of primitive steps, primitive approaches to the human organism as a whole, the most primitive steps, the first steps, using primarily not dialectics, which looks at the whole, but the metaphysical method, using strictly empirical methods of investigation.
This means that when people make this transition to the new society, first of all, they should not put into circulation, in productive practice, the results of insufficiently studied research, and secondly, they should use the dialectical method of thinking, which is not used today due to ideological factors, due to the fact that people still do not understand anything in this regard (ideological conditions play a colossal role).
In addition to the above, under capitalism it cannot be used appropriately, because the dialectical method offers the possibility of grasping the essence of processes. But if we use the dialectical method to study the processes that take place within our organism, whether in the organism of animals or in the world of living beings as a whole, then we will inevitably reach society, and the use of dialectics on society is something that is forbidden, it is inadmissible from the point of view of the ideologists of capitalism and capitalist practice, because it will reveal the essence of capitalism. And when the essence of capitalism is revealed, it means that capitalism is now seen in terms of progress, in terms of how to overcome it.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that the whole of bourgeois political economy, from the moment the working class entered the political arena, has rejected the study of the essence of economic processes. All the processes of the capitalist economy and everything that is emphasised by the economists who serve capitalism is done in an instrumental way; we have an instrumental, superficial, empirical economic “theory”. The truth is that we can only conventionally call it a theory, because it is not really a theory. In the same way, bourgeois science has rejected dialectics. The wall it has erected against it, is the inability to overcome the obstacles associated with mastering the essence of processes. Bourgeois science as a whole, even natural science, cannot adopt the dialectical method, precisely because of the broader ideological climate, because of its relation to dialectics, because of its relation to socialism, Marxism, etc., because these are all universal approaches. Where does this lead? It leads to religion, to empiricism, and yet it avoids dialectics like the plague.
Engels had written in the “Dialectics of Nature” that science cannot jump from experience to theory immediately, and therefore we have a crisis that has to be overcome. This is what Engels was saying in his time, except that this crisis was not overcome either in Engels’ time or in Lenin’s time. Lenin identified a crisis in mathematics, physics and other sciences.
What do we have today? If we take Russia, for example, we have an invasion of religion into science, which has deepened the crisis a thousand times and contaminated all of science. With this attitude towards Marx and Engels, what kind of understanding of the dialectical method can we talk about? But if we do not master the dialectical method, if the productive forces are not developed dialectically, consciously and deliberately, then these processes can never succeed. From the capitalist point of view and methodology, they cannot.
That is why they direct things towards the fragmentation of the sciences into ever narrower subjects. Each scientist deals with his own little problem, his own little thing. But that leads to a crisis. A crisis not only of science. It will also have consequences for industry itself, for industrial production. In fact, today, in the so-called Silicon Valley, there are many scientists, workers, who have a university education that they received in the Soviet Union. And not only in this field, but also in NASA, in biological research, and not only from the Soviet Union, but also from China, from India, because that is how they try to escape the crisis. They have been quite consistent in following the path that I mentioned methodologically, the path that they have been following for a long time and the path that the “Bologna process” is pushing us towards. This will lead to a deepening of the crisis of science, and not only of science. It will also lead to a delay in the development of the productive forces of capitalism itself. If nothing else happens, of course. It’s no coincidence that they have recruited so many scientists who have graduated from Soviet universities. It is no coincidence at all. In this way they are trying, to some extent, to mitigate these processes of degeneration of science. Look at what is happening with the Nobel Prizes. What do they give Nobel Prizes for, have you noticed? For trivialities. For the most fragmented subjects. I’m not talking about some Nobel laureates like Gorbachev or Reagan, I’m talking about people in science, in the natural sciences.
In this way, in the transition to socialism, especially in late socialism and communism, the relationship to the method of thinking changes, the very way of thinking about the productive forces and the use of the productive forces changes, and indeed, in principle, we will then be able to discover completely new possibilities, including in biology. Then, for example, we will be able to study not only the genetic mechanism, but the whole organism in terms of dialectics, a thousand times more deeply than the global medical science of today. I think, and I have mentioned this in various seminars and elsewhere, that there are enormous possibilities in this field, in healing people, in prolonging human life, in extending the human lifespan. Truly enormous possibilities that capitalism cannot even remotely imagine and deliver. Of course, in general there will be something that we will take [from capitalism] and use in socialism, but fundamentally there will be radical changes.
I would like to add, in answer to your question, that the real conquest of space, since it has already begun in earnest, although we are only talking about the first steps of the new space era, can only be carried out by a unified humanity. Can capitalism, through its own globalisation, achieve the conquest of space? In principle it cannot, because it divides humanity, it divides people, it divides states, regions, people, religions. But again, we have a contradictory process here. At the same time, it is also a process of unification, of strengthening the unifying processes of production, the unification of production processes. This is happening simultaneously. But on a large scale, capitalism will not allow this kind of freedom. There are insurmountable obstacles, such as ecology, which we have already mentioned. As long as capitalism exists, the ecological problem cannot be solved in its entirety. In fact, the disastrous effects of human intervention on nature cannot be fully avoided under capitalism. That is why a sufficient degree of unification of humanity and enormous resources are needed to overcome these problems.
Question: Is it possible for late socialist revolutions to take place today?
V.A.V.: At present, such a possibility is unlikely in the near future. The process of the early socialist revolutions has not yet been completed. So, there are certain objective preconditions, objective factors, such as, for example, the automation of production, which, despite all its successes, is in an immature state, which means that the force that can carry out the late socialist revolutions, late socialism, is also in a transitional state. And only people who are sufficiently developed, who are few in number, unfortunately they are not created on a mass scale, only these people can become the force that will carry out these processes. At the moment, however, these forces are not sufficient. This is unfortunate, but we have to be realistic. However, I do not think that this is a reason for disappointment, because we are living in such an interesting era. It seems as if we are in an intermediate state, where we’re out of time, where we cannot set goals. But this only seems this way, because we have such underlying processes, such underlying processes of radical, fundamental changes in the life of human society, which are being formed and which should be the subject of reflection. It is a complex and long process.
If we do not start thinking about these processes now, if we wait until the conditions for later socialist revolutions are supposedly fully ripe, what will happen? We will have a situation where nothing can be done consciously. This is what we need to work on now. Right now. And work hard, because these processes are complicated. There are a lot of problems that we have to start solving as of right now.
Question: Can we predict the possibility of coexistence between early and late socialist revolutions?
V.A.V.: It is possible that, if the first socialist revolutions prove to be so powerful, they will lead to a rupture, to the destruction of the “golden billion”, of this global system of which we speak. Then the conditions can be created in these countries for a more rapid progress of society. Then we can have parallel coexistence. But that also depends on how long this process will take. What level of development will the countries of early socialism achieve, what level of development will they reach. So, if there is parallel coexistence, the following is most likely to happen: the destruction of the parasitic bases of the developed capitalist countries, of the imperialist countries, will happen quite rapidly, and this will be on the condition that there are early socialist revolutions erupting in the undeveloped capitalist countries. The destruction of capitalism today is already taking place before our eyes in Latin America and to some extent in Asia. This destruction is not coming from the countries of developed capitalism, but from the countries of the so-called Third World, from the less developed countries. Primarily from those countries where today we have either low or medium levels of capitalist development, but not from those countries which are at the level of clans and tribes as in some African countries, for example. There we will not have early socialist revolutions. Early socialist revolutions, I repeat, we have early socialist revolutions in those countries where there is an average or near average level of capitalist development. That’s where the destruction comes from. That, for example, is the level of Latin America. That is to say, in Latin America today, for better or worse is a secondary question, we have a centre of revolutionary change in the world, but at the limits of these early socialist transformations, together with some primitive elements in the ways of conducting social transformations, more primitive, we would say, than [those of the known] early socialist ones.
Question: Given that the internationalisation of production will never mature under capitalist conditions, because of the existence of classes in society and inequalities between countries, how is it possible that it will form developed people, the workers of automation, who will be the subject of the later socialist revolutions, and not instead a layer of highly skilled people, as we see happening now with the existing automation, something like a petty bourgeoisie, a workers’ aristocracy, while at the same time there will exist the proletariat of mechanised production or even of manual labour? In short, is it possible to have a late socialist revolution without an early one having preceded it in some part of the planet, so that it has tightened the grip over imperialism?
V.A.V.: I have mentioned this briefly. According to dialectical law, late socialist revolutions, late socialism, can only arise on the basis of the early socialist revolutions, early socialism. This period must exist. Otherwise, there will be no other period. That is why I said that we must help this process in every possible way, because, of course, to the extent that we do not have early socialist revolutions, to the extent that early socialism has not prepared the ground, late socialist revolutions will not win, late socialism will not win. As far as the working class aristocracy is concerned, of course you are right. We know that the working class aristocracy arises, firstly, as a small layer of the population and, secondly and more importantly, the fact that the working class aristocracy arises when the capitalists, for example in England, were able to buy off some of the workers through their colonies, their semi-colonies. Even though there is no formal colonial system today, the old institutions have remained in the metropolises. The old division of labour still exists to a large extent, so the features of the colonial and semi-colonial system have not completely disappeared. They are therefore still able to buy off their working class.
In Sweden, for example, they feed the whole country precisely because the multinational corporations, the transnational monopolies, exploit different countries of the world from their headquarters in Sweden. And of course, the places where they have their headquarters are well fed and well supplied. On this basis there is the so-called “Swedish socialism”. In reality it is not really socialism at all. It is people who live by exploiting other people and other countries. That is not socialism.
Furthermore, I would like to point out the following: when we have a sufficiently developed and mature stage of automation of production, the workers in automated production become mass workers and not some skilled craftsmen who are noticeably and statistically different from the rest and can be bought off. It is only when we reach mass scale in dealing with automation that we get such results, when a form of production reaches mass scale it starts to pay less.
Most importantly, late socialism is a law governed stage which follows early socialism, it does not precede it. It is impossible to jump to a higher historical stage, because this would also have many negative consequences. The attempt to speed up by such leaps leads to imposition. It is imposed on people that are not ready, on a society that is not ready, it is imposed through the use of violence on a large scale, certain measures are imposed, as happened in Cambodia and other countries. Socialism must move according to its own laws. We cannot abolish the laws of history. We can speed up their unfolding (if we can); we can slow down their pace, but we cannot replace the laws of history.
Some people speak of predetermination in history. There is no predetermination, but all of history is going in a certain direction, which is not predetermined by God or any predetermined plan. These would all be forms of religious belief. It is predetermined by the initial conditions in which the organism of our ancestors existed, and the initial conditions from which our ancestor emerged. It is these conditions that have essentially determined the whole course of prehistory. As far as actual history is concerned, there are in principle completely different laws of historical development, the preconditions of which are already in existence to some extent today. However, only their preconditions, which can already be observed, can be perceived. These are, in principle, different laws of a fundamentally different history. However, the whole of prehistory was predetermined by the initial conditions in which our ancestor existed, the earthly conditions and the structure of that organism which entered into the mode of existence which required bipedal walking and standing, the freeing of the upper limbs, and so on. Human beings do not really become human, even from the point of view of the laws of history, until we move into this authentic history, until we free ourselves from dependence, until we begin to conquer the earthly conditions of our existence and become capable of satisfying our rational needs, until we become capable of doing so.
They say that people can do this even today. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we cannot fully do this today. That is why the struggle for human survival continues. The most progressive people are not involved in this struggle. These mature, progressive people are guided by other behavioural principles which are on a higher level than the conditions of their development. I would like to emphasise once again that the space era, the transition to the authentic history of humanity, means that essential changes will also take place in the laws of the development of history.
Question: You mentioned the need to develop theory and the need to engage in the development of that theory. In your brief introduction you focused mainly on the issues of labour, automated labour, automated production, early and late revolutions, etc. I wanted to ask you if you could identify some areas of research that are necessary, and indeed in relation to the development of the dialectical method in particular, taking into account your contribution to it, that could give new impetus to various research activities.
V.A.V.: I would say that this is a much more specific question, perhaps we should be patient on this question, postpone it a little bit for the future, perhaps we need to have a conference on it. If we raise this particular issue now, we will have to go from the general issues that we have raised to the specificity of each of them, if not all of them, to a number of issues that we have raised in the previous debate. Therefore, with your permission, I would prefer not to answer this question now.
Question: The question is about the disastrous effects on the development of science under capitalism and on the development of the productive forces in the technological applications of science, precisely because of the one sided nature of science. Specifically, what do you see in addition to the fragmentation of disciplines and the large scale application of insufficiently researched technologies in production?
V.A.V.: The first thing I want to point out again is the contradiction with dialectics. It is the opposite of dialectics, it is a metaphysical approach, and all the peculiarities of the metaphysical method dominate in our time, in the cognition of people, in the cognition of scientists. That is the first thing. Secondly, the metaphysical method, the non dialectical method, is necessarily connected with the religious approach, because as long as it moves on the level of metaphysics, science cannot be freed from religion. And as long as the capitalist state is inclined towards religion, and as long as the people of that society are inclined towards religion, they will fall into ever cruder forms of religiosity. I would say that we have a clericalisation of consciousness. Religious consciousness is not being eliminated in these cases, on the contrary, it is being strengthened. So, this has a negative effect on the development of science. As far as metaphysics is concerned, we are led to a pure creeping empiricism, which dominates practically all areas of science today.
The basic factor that leads science to destruction is the pursuit of profit, the pursuit of money. These are the fundamental destructive forces of science. Ultimately, these are the basic processes that lead to the destruction of science. Of course, it is impossible to destroy science completely under capitalism, because it is also impossible to make profit without science. To some extent, somehow, they will maintain a certain kind of science. Today, for example, in order to preserve science and technology, they are trying to solve some of their problems by employing scientists from the Soviet Union, and not only from the Soviet Union, but from everywhere where they see that there is a basic, fundamental approach to questions of science, to the study of knowledge as a whole, to the cognitive process.
The “Bologna process” is a case study of how the capitalist way leads to the undermining of science. It is very good that students in Greece are resisting these processes. And I have to say here that Greece is the only country in the world where we have a conscious struggle against the “Bologna process” in this way.
Closing words: It was a great pleasure and honour to have the opportunity to communicate with a part of the International School of the Logic of History from the former Soviet Union and especially with you. […] Thank you, Viktor Alexeyevich.
V.A.V.: In this case, allow me to tell you […] that your groups are a completely new phenomenon. And I hope that this phenomenon will not fade away, but on the contrary, it will be strengthened and developed, because it is very important. And because I deal with the logic of history, it is very important from a global historical point of view.