Further Notes on Ethics and Revolution

Immediately after posting my thoughts on this topic, some helpful critics gave me rather more to say on it, so here we are, with many thanks to them

What it really means to assert a proletarian revolutionary ethics is to challenge and tear down bourgeois dogma. Marxism, because it is scientific, must be against dogma, any dogma and every dogma; Marxism is against the very notion of an ideal that can be dogmatically adhered to beyond every factor of material context, and for the promulgation of a scientific attitude in every philosophical area, an attitude of practical application of ideas subject to and deriving from material dialectical context. The rejection of bourgeois morality is the rejection of dogma, for bourgeois morality is that set of superstructural dogmas which, operating upon the brains of human beings under the banner of being ethical theories or moral ideals, cause them to act in ways favorable to the exploiting ruler class and to the institution of capital. These dogmas are churned out alike from the offices of ethical philosophers in bourgeois universities, from the podiums of liberal and fascist politicians, and from the mouths of thousands of churches, those last refuges of the archaic ideology of medieval feudalism.

The most obvious group of dogmas in bourgeois morality are deontological ideas about moral behaviour, and the most obvious dogma therein is that of absolute nonviolence, which is the highest law both of many churches and of the insipid liberal pacifists- both groups in whose mouths it is magnificently hypocritical. “Killing is wrong, wrong, wrong,” goes the mantra of the bourgeois moralist- and yet, in chanting this so loudly it covers up the ears of the masses and frightens them away from action, they allow the social murder of millions of people each year. It is a fact that killing major imperialist capitalists and their military operators is good, because it prevents their killing of many more innocents. Every Rondero killed by the PGA/PLA in Peru, every state soldier killed by the NPA in the Philippines, and every militarized police officer killed by the PLGA in India equates to many innocent lives saved. Absolute nonviolence as a moral theory is an idea that can only make sense in complete and utter isolation from material context, in a complete and total idealism that is anathema to scientific attitudes and rational thought and action, for the moment one contemplates the material reality of political-economy it becomes eminently clear that failing to kill one can be in all ethically relevant ways exactly equivalent to actively killing many- of course, the bourgeois moralist can produce many claims as to why it isn’t, but all of them are similarly idealist. We must reject the pacifist dogma in favor of the practical use of violence in the prevention of greater violence.

But the malaise of bourgeois morality has made an idealist and a dogmatist out of utilitarianism, as well. Peter Singer, probably the most hailed utilitarian (or any) ethicist in bourgeois academia, says in his book Practical Ethics “..we weigh interests, considered simply as interests and not as my interests…this provides us with a basic principle of equality: the principle of equal consideration of interests,” and a paragraph later, “…an interest is an interest, whoever’s interest it may be.” Though utilitarianism in principle is materialist and rational, in the mouth of this liberal with his “doctrine of equal consideration of interests,” it has been reinvented with its guiding principle as a dogma, the dogma of absolute fairness. What a fantasy is fairness! It is absurd to suppose that one can equally value the interests of all when, as in any class society, the interests of one social class unavoidably contradict those of another. Singer, in his book, advocates this position precisely because it prevents preferencing one race over another, and it is quite right we should not have such preferences with races or sexes or any other categories in which participants have no choice. But with social classes, categories ultimately of how people act in relation to production, we must explicitly preference that group which is in the first place the majority and in the second place has not actively chosen to act cruelly, the proletariat, for if we were “fair” to the big capitalists we would be unfair to them (for instance, every day that society upholds the “fair” notion of the “right to private property” for big capitalists, workers labouring on those properties die in their toils). Therefore the supposed objectivity of absolute fairness is but another dogma, and furthermore the utilitarianism guided by it is a weak, liberal, bourgeois manifestation thereof- the only strong and just utilitarianism is the revolutionary class-utilitarianism of the proletariat!

Yet even as dogmatism is denounced and stomped upon with all fury as it deserves, we must also avoid the opposite extreme, the subjectivism that underlies amoralism and postmodern thought: the idea that there are no universal truths and no objective facts, which applied to ethical questions results in the view that there are no objectively right or wrong ethical choices. Reflecting Marx’s statement that scientific facts can sometimes seem like paradoxes when not fully understood, this over-extension of opposition to dogmatic universal ideals is itself a nonsensical dogma, idealist in being plainly divorced from human material interests: would one tell a hungry person it is not an objective fact they ought to be given food? Communist ethics must tear down dogmas that ignore material reality and replace them with judgements relevant to material context, but these judgements must draw on the universal law of dialectical materialism and its application to social questions (for that law is itself shown true in its accurate description of material facts), and their truth and objectivity must be upheld with all fervor.

Now, some quotations from Lenin’s “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues,” a speech delivered to the Young Communist League in the RSFSR in 1920:

…is there such a thing as communist ethics? Is there such a thing as communist morality? Of course, there is. It is often suggested that we have no ethics of our own; very often the bourgeoisie accuse us Communists of rejecting all morality… In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality? In the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie, who based ethics on God’s commandments…We reject any morality based on extra-human and extra-class concepts. [emphasis added]

It is obvious, I think, how this shows historical precedent in the revolution of Russia and the surrounding countries for my present thesis: the assertion of communist ethics is the destruction of the dogmas of bourgeois morality; religious dogmas, but also liberal and postmodern academic dogmas, for all these things are alike in their role in the cultural superstructure of the bourgeois social order that grows around and out of capitalist economics; that role being: philosophical ruses by which capitalist class dictatorship is maintained.

There is one final point to address, and its importance encircles all said above: the struggle against dogma is undone if proletarian ideology is itself degenerated into a dogma. Communist philosophy, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought, is a scientific set of tools for analyzing our material social reality and, having analyzed it, changing it; if these tools are bent and twisted from science into dogma then they cease to be proletarian ideology and become revisionism, which is just another ideological tool of the bourgeoisie. Indeed, whenever revisionism takes root in a country it takes root through the dogmatic insistence that it is pure and glorious socialism. The Khrushchevite coup destroyed the socialist republic in the USSR while swearing up and down that all its actions were in the name of “actually existing socialism”- a bourgeois dogma with a red coat of paint. The class in charge of a society can only change by violence; the state power of one class must violently replace that of another: in socialist or New Democratic revolution, the proletariat and other progressive classes under its leadership violently assert their democratic rule; but, if revisionism takes root, then through a new set of counterrevolutionary violent motions, the remnants of the bourgeois class reconsolidate their rule and replace the socialist republic with a new bourgeois one, all while maintaining a pretense that socialism continues- so it happened with Khrushchev’s violent “de-Stalinization” and Brezhnev’s imperialist capitalist policies, so also with Deng Xiaoping’s violent coup against Jiang Qing and other genuine communists in China, leading in both cases to a wholly new government (a bourgeois one) being constructed that maintained it was still the old socialist one.

Let us say this, then. Ethical philosophizing from the communist perspective is a practical and scientific discipline, done in service to the class struggle and the interests of the proletarian class. Ethical judgements must be made on the basis of Proletarian Revolutionary Utilitarianism, and made on this basis with a practical and scientific mind to the real needs of the People in a given material context. Dogma must be banished forever from the halls of ethical thought, and in its place raised up proletarian science- this is a task for communists at all times, but especially in the cultural revolution that will become necessary in each country as socialism is constructed and maintained.

Of course, all of this talk of what “must be done” in the field of ethical philosophy is too abstract; one must ask who must do it and how? The who answer is easy: the revolutionary masses in each country, especially revolutionary intellectuals, who will play a key role in cultural revolution. As to the how, the answer is under the guidance of a revolutionary programme determined by the central leadership of a militant communist Party, democratically and in constant concentric and democratic communication with the masses in accordance with MLMism-Gonzalo Thought and the Maoist Mass Line style of leadership. It is thus a vital mission, and by the theory of proletarian class-utilitarianism outlined in my last set of notes an ethically imperative mission for communists, that in every country such a Party must be constituted, must emerge from the roiling mass of antagonistic contradiction and class rebellion that boils at the heart of every capitalist economy. In this country we have, and have moreso all the time, the real roots for a great revolutionary campaign, a tree that will grow from those roots to touch the sky. What this movement does not have, not yet, is a central leadership in a militarized Party capable of launching and leading People’s War. This is what we need, and what all communists must be committed to building. Thus we must support the central unity of the movement: support collaboration between different mass organizations that will one day join together in this Party’s surrounding United Front, support publications like the Tribune of the People that unite these organizations and disparate supporters around the country together, support contact between our country’s communists and others around the world who can teach us vital lessons. As discussed in the last set of notes, and for the reasons said therein, history is not perfectly predictable and we cannot rely on it to progress efficiently on its own; individuals must make conscious acts to push it forward. In this vein, Gramsci and Mariátegui were quite correct to emphasize that the historical-dialectical materialism is not absolutely determinist, indeed it ultimately promotes the free will of classes in making history. Mariátegui said, in the somewhat misleadingly titled “Marxist Determinism”, “Marxism has never obeyed a passive and rigid determinism in those moments where it has been revolutionary — that is, in those moments where it has been Marxism” and “The voluntarist character of socialism is not, in truth, less discernible than its determinist foundation, although it is less understood by critics.” So, if we want revolution in this country we need a Party, and if we want a Party we must work to create the soil in which it will grow so that it may unite behind its leadership all our disparate islands of revolutionary action and mold them into a cohesive militant campaign. This is, by the science of the proletarian ethics, our duty as communists and students of communism.

At the same time, it is not enough to say “the Party is here!” and so declare it to be constituted when the group so declaring has not done any work to actually take its place at the center of the cause and the coming D. of the P., has not in any way made the vital Mass Line democratic connection to the masses- this is the mistake of opportunists and adventurists, like the revisionist RCPUSA and the defunct MCP(OC). When I say we must reconstitute the Party, I do not mean that some random group of would-be communists should declare themselves the Party- this would not accomplish much. What I mean is that we must work to support the movement as a whole and its unity, unity around things like publications and common causes, so that when the time comes the people who are actually building these Mass Line connections can emerge as the Great Leadership of a new Party, a Party militarized, revolutionary, and guided ideologically by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism with the universal contributions of Gonzalo Thought, or MLMism-Gonzalo Thought. It is only at this moment, in the proper material context of a revolutionary situation, that the Party can emerge to launch the military campaign of the revolution and thus the ascension of the proletarian ethical theory. All our physical and intellectual work for revolution at this stage should be done with the goal of bringing this moment- for, as is elucidated in the PCP’s General Political Line, a seminal document of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the People’s War is in the present era of imperialist capitalism the essential manifestation of the proletarian struggle for liberation and the resolution of social injustices, and prior to its beginning in a country all revolutionary activities must be done in the interest of preparing for and bringing about that beginning, which can only come once there is a Party around which the armed sea of the masses can be organized and from which can come central strategic commands and the constitutional principles for building a new government, a socialist republic of soviet democracy and working people’s power.

Lastly: the most extreme and nakedly explicit elucidation of the communist ethical theory I have tried to roughly draft goes like so: that which is ethically right and that which serves the cause of communism are one and the same. To the liberals and bourgeois dogmatists, this notion will be terrifying; it is the utter refutation of their beloved pretensions of apolitical “decency” and “civility,” their delusions that one can ever be “a good person with bad politics.” But to anyone who has seen the material reality of human society this notion is obviously self-evident: all of history courses toward communism, toward the real liberation of our species, and all must be judged first and foremost based upon how it affects this course.

LONG LIVE THE ETHICS OF THE PROLETARIAT, PROLETARIAN REVOLUTIONARY UTILITARIANISM!

ORGANIZE REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES WITH THE PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE TO UNITE THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AND PREPARE FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE PARTY!