The more I learn about the history of the communist movement, and see how frequently revolutionary movements have been derailed by their own errors, the more I realize that it can be a life-and-death matter to separate correct ideas (ideas that serve all working people) from wrong ideas (ideas that strengthen the rule of the capitalist class).
I deeply appreciate this instead of the "tankie" idea of death for the greater good or outright denying the realities of the history.
No matter how insulting I became he would not lose his temper. If I were not prepared to talk, he was willing to wait. When I ranted and raved he would ignore me. He kept plodding away with the determination of a small bulldog, only one thing in his mind, to help me reach the root of my trouble.”
The struggle through contradictions and the desire for unity must force one to put aside personal grievances and emotions to allow the most objective and effective truth to some forward.
Dialectical materialism also teaches us to welcome struggle by showing that contradictions are in the nature of reality, and not to be feared– differences push our progress forward! Materialism reminds us that to achieve success, we need to bring our actions into correspondence with the objective world.
This is some opposite action bullshit and I hate that it's true but it really is.
The last principle of dialectics is that everything is connected and mutually influential, that people and things cannot be viewed in isolation.
Even the strongest of liberals Kamala Harris knows this. "You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all around you and before." lol
Her attitude toward writing took a qualitative leap after she successfully completed a lead article for one issue. “I can write,” she thought, “I can really write. All it takes is work.”
All it takes is work.
“’Yes,’ he would say, ’I am convinced that you are right. But I cannot just order it done. You see, we must talk it over. Everyone must know the reason why this is essential.
You cannot expect willingness to change and adjust, even for the greater good, if those doing the adjusting are not told why or given the chance to apply their experience and practicality into the perspective.
When criticizing a comrade, it is crucial to distinguish between her strengths and weaknesses, and to decide which is principal and which secondary. If I fail to “divide her into two,” I am likely to mistake her weaknesses as her dominant aspect and criticize in a way that demoralizes rather than helps. By the same token l need to learn to “divide myself into two.” Before accusing a comrade of being too domineering, for instance, I want to take a critical look at the contradictions inside of me.
Essentially, we must practice empathy with both each other and ourselves. We must recognize the weaker parts of a person are not their majority or whole and can be changed. Just as we must recognize in ourselves the parts that we must change.
Failure to see the world as a place of continuous changes can make me see my comrades as unchanging. Then one of two things happens: either I fail to struggle – why waste the energy on someone who can’t change?– or I struggle badly, trying to change people with a bulldozer approach which is guaranteed to mess up even the best personal and political relationships.
We cannot freeze either ourselves or others into a place of ideological stagnation. When we refuse to believe that an individual can grow, or that our own opinion is objective truth, it is no longer a debate.
The materialist perspective also emphasizes the fact that to change the consciousness of all of us in society, we must change our material reality by completely revolutionizing the way work in society is divided up and carried out.
I have to change the conditions of my mental health and the way I cope with it for the revolution. Comrades I will not kill myself for you.
They often spend most of their time dueling with quotations, and seldom venture into the messy real world. They fail to see that theory is meant to illuminate the problems which spring up in the course of changing the world, and that intellectual work can only be correct and valuable when it is accompanied by the practice necessary for a deep understanding of concrete conditions.
To get so trapped in theory that you do not engage with the people you are fighting for is counterproductive. So often communists, socialist, and leftists are criticized on never being able to agree. We are often ineffectual because we get bogged down in "philosophy bakes no bread" arguments.
Unity and struggle exist in a dialectical relationship: I only bother to struggle for unity with an organization or an individual when my political analysis tells me that we have some initial basis for coming together. But unless we develop and strengthen our unity by struggling through our disagreements and doubts, and constantly reevaluate that unity as conditions change, then we quickly find that it is too superficial to allow us to function together when the chips are down.
"The price of community is inconvenience" taken further. The desire for unity should come from a place greater than the theory you read.
“people are naturally selfish,”
lol
The scientists who work for the rulers of our society would have us believe that oppressive conditions are the result of inevitable and neutral scientific laws. Modern technology, rather than the greed born of capitalism, we are told, is the cause of bureaucracy and pollution. “The law of supply and demand” and “inevitable business cycles” are the reason for inflation, recession, and unemployment. Mystification breeds passivity and obscures the fact that our social problems are rooted in a particular class order, an order that can be overturned.
The pushing of such narratives from the capitalist class is, in my opinion even more significant in the modern day. As late stage capitalism grows in intensity, we are fed the propaganda of natural selfishness. That capitalism is a natural byproduct of human greed that was inevitable.
We decide to do criticism not because it is best or most comfortable for us as individuals or as small groups, but because we think it will advance the whole– the whole group, the whole organization, the whole working class– ourselves included.
Community requires we put ego aside for the greater good. That we approach our work with the understanding that our education and knowledge is not for us alone, not for self-improvement, but for the whole. That we much take what we learn and use it to teach others which would not be possible without the actions of critique and bringing awareness to problems that prevent the goal from being achieved.
Of maybe 40 people who spoke, only two were women, and I got the impression that they were listened to only because of their personal relationships with a couple of the male leaders. A few of the men confidently flexed their intellectual muscles before the crowd, using sarcasm and non-stop rhetoric to bludgeon other people into accepting their ideas. Ironically, these men were able to play such an elitist role precisely because of the anti-leadership tendencies in the room. Since there was no structured presentation of the issues– “We don’t need a lecture,” the line ran, “we need some participation” – only those who already had a grasp of the information could find a way through the chaos.
Multiple problems are presented here. The first and more obvious being the fact that women were overlooked and given little opportunity to speak at the meeting. I find this especially frustrating as often women are the most victimized and targeted during times of war. Acts of rape and violence from both foreign imperialist/colonizers and countrymen are not uncommon. While western women may not be the best representatives to voice such concerns, I do think acknowledging the realities of the patriarchy are vital in such discussions. The secondary problem and slightly more egregious in regards to the goal of such a meeting is the unwillingness to teach and educate, and have no clear structure. Such groups do not have the luxury of not educating, having no structure, and letting few speak. To speak to a large meeting, with no baseline of where the majority of the individuals are in regards to understanding such rhetoric and theory is foolish and egotistical.