Franz J.T. Lee, November, 2007
Bolivarian Socialism urgently needs a new fighting logic, science and philosophy
In the epoch of the globalization of capitalism, what is necessary to do in order to negate its terrorism and to venture beyond towards creative human emancipation?
This is a decisive question for Bolivarian socialism, for President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela. Faced by the new attack against us, this time from within and without, we have to be very clear about quintessential historic lessons.
One fact is crystal clear: A socialism that is not anti-capitalist is not socialism at all.
The biggest error committed by most of the 'socialist' or 'left' revolutions of the 20th century was that they were not consequently anti-capitalist from the very beginning, no matter what the costs would have bee. In any case, later they were accused of 'Marxism and Communism' and were drowned in innocent blood by imperialism.
In order to approximate the realm of a possible world socialist victory, inter alia, three major tasks have to be attended urgently. Here we can just introduce them. It will take huge projects to bring them into existence. Many emancipatory conditions have been created already by the Bolivarian Revolution. However, our praxical objective and our theoretical analysis are still very much 'ideologized,' affected by the systemic vices of colonialism, capitalism and imperialism. By and large, as revolutionaries, trained by the great bourgeois capitalist democratic revolution, we still use the very terms, morality, religion, thought models, ontological devices, the formal logical languages, arguments, tactics and strategy of our masters; as such we will never leave the spheres of human travail.
Strangely, Marxism has become 'obsolete,' we do not want to associate with it, but the pre-Marxist bourgeois concepts like liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, ideology, practice, peace and justice seem to be evergreen, fascinate us, are still brand new; we never come to a brilliant idea: to modernize and change them, to adapt them to current globalization, by placing them under the critical proletarian magnifying glass of anti-capitalism, socialism, of Marxism. To do this we need new emancipatory instruments, tools and weapons.
Only then our arms of critique (praxis) will also become critique of our arms (theory).
Let us see what was the threefold attack of capitalism on feudalism, and which gave it a smashing victory over princes and emperors, ruling by the grace of God. Precisely this we need to surpass this vale of capitalist terrorism. Could we imagine Napoleon ruling the world by the Grace of God?
In fact, Napoleon did ask a bourgeois natural scientist his opinion about God. Pierre Laplace replied: I do not need this hypothesis. In fact, two and a half millennia ago, already Aristotle complained that the pre-Socratic hylozoist Anaxagoras had introduced nous (God) and thereafter just has cast him aside, and never made use of him again.
We have still a very long way to go in order to liberate ourselves from the cobwebs and phantoms of religious conquest. They block the acquisition of a new logic, of seeing the world with clear natural scientific eyes and completely obliterate revolutionary praxis and theory.
In the epoch of the so-called Renaissance, during the violent defloration of the accumulation of capital, in Europe was launched a new germinating mode of production, enriched by a new logic, a brand new natural science and a fertile materialist philosophy. All these formed the conditio sine qua non for a possible future imperialist hegemony and for final globalized corporatism.
A static, decaying, slave-owning and feudal world outlook and order, an agrarian, boorish, banausic status quo entered in a state of decomposition. As we know, this ancien regime was edified on shaky, limited formal logical grounds, on a Ptolemaic geocentrist, closed, divine system, on obscurantist Dark Age Roman Catholic theology, and on aggressive religious superstition. It tried to defend itself in ferocious class struggles, but it was of no avail, its time was running out, its new productive forces were strangled by the old feudal property relations of production.
Thus, already during the so-called 'Thousand Years War,' which lasted approximately from the fall of Rome till the Renaissance itself (476-1453 A.D.), more and more Europe was bastardizing itself, namely, the Old World was giving birth to a parasitic nobility, a pharisaic clergy, to all pedigrees of absolutist, autocratic kings and decadent, opulent emperors, of white and black popes, of hundreds of Catholic oppressive and repressive dogmas, furthermore, it created a gigantic mental holocaust, the flowering of heroic knighthood, of the Orwellian power of the Dominican order, of the Spanish Inquisition, of the burning of innocent women and critical scientists and philosophers on the stake.
And, today the North and its Latin American lackeys still have the cheek, against President Chavez, to defend an outdated racist king Juan Carlos who was ordained by the fascist dictator Franco of Spain as his legitimate successor to represent European white chosen superiority and Christian civilization.
At the same time, during the Renaissance, the world was witnessing the advent of the bourgeoisie and of its negation, the proletariat, of 'work houses,' of the future industrial factories, of the world market, of colonial rape, Christianization, militarization and conquest, of wage slavery, ... in a nut-shell, of the coming into existence of modern capitalist Europe, of global terrorism, of terrorist globalization.
To accomplish all these, to launch a new, different mode of production, capitalism, a new logic, a new science and a new philosophy was not only necessary, it was urgently imperative.
Without these historic realities, capitalism could not overthrow feudalism and all other modes of production, could not become a dominant mode of world production, could not make its French and Industrial Revolution.
This is an extremely important lesson for the socialist Bolivarian Revolution. Talking about the new, a new man, our new socialism, all this presupposes the creation of a new logic, science and philosophy for the permanent world revolution towards emancipation, towards the annihilation of globalization.
Surely, the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch has taught us that there exists a New, a not yet realized, in the Past, for example, scientific and philosophic socialism, that is, Marxism (we can add Bolivarian Socialism), but there exists also an Obsolete in the Future, a fascist fata morgana, for example, that of the golpista 'Pedro the Short Lived,' who is just waiting for the next coup blow any moment. However, generally the following is true.
* Anything less than the authentic New in Venezuela will be a repetition of the old, a rumination of old straw, will be obsolete ideology and worn out practice.
* This is deepening the world revolution, this is permanent human emancipation.
* This is what capitalism and imperialism fear most, this is the real danger of Chavez the 'dictator.'
Let us not doubt the above, with all the love in the world for the past, for our glorified saints and our own glorious heroes, who deserve all our adoration and respect, historically our class enemies, the very bourgeois logicians, scientists, philosophers, democrats and terrorists have demonstrated to us that in the final analysis, in any social revolution, in global class struggle, we do not have a minimum chance of success if we only use the arms of our enemies.
We cannot poison the black mamba with its own self-produced venom, with capitalist business, reformist nationalization, imperialist internationalization, joint capitalist ventures and industrialization.
* Every single one of them is based on the current capitalist exploitation of physical and/or intellectual labor forces. There does not exist anything that could be called a 'good exploitation,' a 'bad socialism,' or 'socialist exploitation' for the benefit of the common good of workers.
This is why Stalinism is not Marxism, it cannot qualify for anything that concerns socialism.
Let us see what history still tells us.
Only after slave-owning and feudal, evolutionist, formal logics were replaced by philosophic dialectics, by the dialectic between Labor and Capital, only after the feudal absolutist God was replaced by industrial, revolutionary Reason, the synonym for Capital, only after natural science had replaced Roman Catholic dogmas, revelations, prophecies and superstition, could bourgeois liberty, equality and fraternity triumph.
Also, only after helio-centrism had devastated geo-centrism, after bourgeois materialism detonated feudal, theological idealism, was it possible to dance around the Maypole and to sing the Masseuse.
This should be a very serious revolutionary lesson for all of us, a truth that can still save millions of innocent lives, destined to be nipped in the bud by ignorance concerning historical reality and the savage military modus operandi of imperialist ruling classes. They live and die for power, profits, privileges and capital. They have no problems with religions and gods, they are their creators. They do not care about heaven or hell, devils and saints, they fabricated them. They know one thing for sure, that they were born, live on earth and will die in the solar system. Nobody and nothing will terrorize them after death, they created sins, they do not fear hell fire. Life on earth, all forms of life is irrelevant to them.
This is why they, the corporate moguls and oil mongrels, can make a billion dollar profit a week, at random can attack Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Bolivia, Venezuela, Syria, Lebanon or Palestine. This is why they can just as they please, left and right massacre a million Arabs in the Mideast, murder a million Indonesian communists, enslave millions of Africans, can threaten the lives of President Chavez or Fidel Castro and just kill anything and anybody for the pleasure of it.
These are the things to know, to understand, to enlighten billions of workers and peasants about, before the USA and Europe 'nuke' themselves and all of us to eternal blazes.
This the international, transhistoric context of the current national and international reform of Venezuela's Constitution.
It is time logically, scientifically and philosophically to awake, to become conscious of capitalist reality, to see what is awaiting billions, and to reason, do and think what is still possible, to be our own Creators and Emancipators.
All the campaigns of colonial pacification, peace treaties, gentlemen agreements, class alliances, peaceful 'revolutions,' Ghandhism, truth commissions, workers' forgiveness of capitalist crimes, class tolerance and opportunism, all led to massacres and genocide of colonial and neocolonial peoples. Who always paid the mortal price for all these ruling class machinations, lies, hoaxes and tricks within the framework of exploitation, domination, racism, genocide and alienation, were the poor, the toiling slaves, gypsies, Blacks, indigenous peoples, Jews, peasants and workers ... millions of them died in the construction of the world market, in filling the flesh pots of Europe and North America, in intra-imperialist world wars, in the plantations and factories, in pestilence, misery and poverty.
Well, the transhistoric emancipatory task is clear: billions have to be saved, have to save themselves, from the fangs of globalization, from coming nuclear wars, and they, as socialists, in a future socialist society, have to live as free human beings, every single one of us.
* Is this a sweet pipe-dream, an utopia?
* Within the context of our current modes of thought, our present behavior patterns (practice), our scientific knowledge and our 'ideology,' is this possible, is this really still possible?
* Are we just kidding, fooling ourselves?
If we know what is capitalism, its logics, its dialectics, its scientific discoveries and weapons of mass destruction and its global, globalized ideology, its lies, hoaxes, massive mind and thought control and the levels of brutality on which this world order defend itself, then, we will know what really is socialism, the exact, precise opposite of all this.
Socialism is not a future pipe-dream to liberate billions, it is negating and surpassing capitalism hic et nunc, here and now.
By definition, every single exploited, dominated, discriminated, terrorized and alienated toiling worker and peasant is objectively participating in the transhistoric global, globalized struggle against apocalyptic globalization. Every conscious, class conscious act is a nail in the global coffin of corporate imperialism. Currently nature and society, history itself, the process of production, of labor, all are facing death agony.
Who currently in any way does not fight against corporate death, against the bellicose megalomania of the White House, is practically dead already or is marked for the butchery. The best example of massive scientific praxis and social theory, of principled resistance against imperialist terrorism currently in embryo happens in Venezuela.
This the wild bush fire of world imperialism wants to eliminate and annihilate as soon as possible. It would be extremely dangerous for corporate imperialism should we in Venezuela, in all South America and the Caribbean acquire a class consciousness, should enter into world class struggle, become real, true socialists, the total negation of capitalists: that is, Marxists.
At this moment, the Bolivarian socialist revolution is seriously threatened, from within, aided from without. In fact, it is a more dangerous situation than in 2002.
Finally, in the next weeks and months, let us see how we will verify what has been explained above: the logical, scientific and philosophic revolutionary highway towards praxical, theoretical sublime cliffs of creative emancipation.