We see signs of the crisis of world capitalism everywhere. Workers, students, soldiers and farmers are joining mass protests from Venezuela to France to New Delhi and more. The bosses are losing their ideological control of the masses. Important politicians like Trump, Modi and Bolsonaro are allying with open fascists or embracing fascism themselves.
In times like these, it is more important than ever to build a mass International Communist Workers’ Party – ICWP.
Political and economic crises are part of the nature of the capitalist system. But that system cannot last forever.
Workers can bring down the capitalists and create communism, the system where the international working class rules, without any bosses. Everyone will contribute their work and everyone will share the products of our labor, without wages or money.
Communist philosophy, dialectical materialism, helps us understand how the masses can make this change. That is the theme of the upcoming conferences to mark ICWP’s tenth anniversary (see announcement below).
Philosophies describes reality: they say what they think is real and what isn’t. Philosophies tells us how to learn about reality and how to change it.
Different points of view in philosophy are part of the struggle between capitalists who are trying to continue ruling us, and the masses who are trying to survive and throw off capitalist rule. Philosophy is part of that class struggle.
Dialectical materialism teaches that reality is always changing, and we can understand how it changes.
We can use the knowledge learned from work and practical activity to reveal the weaknesses of capitalism and overthrow it. The ICWP uses dialectical materialism to analyze and improve our work. We will use it in building communist society.
One basic idea of dialectical materialism is that different parts of reality are connected.
To say that two things are connected means that one affects the other or both affect each other. The weather in the south Pacific (“El Nino”) affects the weather in faraway parts of the earth. Protests and rebellions in one place inspire people in other places. Past events like slavery, apartheid, revolutions and wars have long-lasting effects.
One of the most important kinds of connections is the connection between things that are in conflict with each other.
The heart of dialectics, the communist philosophy of change, is this simple idea: Things change mainly because of the conflicts that go on inside of them. For us, a very important example of this dialectical principle is the connection between capitalists and workers.
Although capitalists exploit workers, workers need to work for them in order to live. Capitalists also need workers or they can’t make profits. Within capitalism, workers and capitalists need each other and influence each other, but they are in conflict and often fight.
The capitalist-worker connection is a basic example of a dialectical contradiction. A dialectical contradiction is a pair of connected things with two characteristics. First, the two things are at least partly made what they are by that connection. Second, the two things interfere with each other, hold each other back or actually fight with each other.
This kind of “contradiction” is different from the ordinary sense of the word. “Contradiction” usually means saying something and then denying it, like “it is raining” and “it is not raining.”
Dialectical contradictions happen between and within things or activities everywhere in the real world. There are contradictions inside a person who has conflicting goals. Trying to “stay out of trouble”, for example, contradicts trying to lead workers to fight for communism.
In the physical world, there are contradictions between forces that pull the parts of atoms together and those that push them apart. A volcano is the result of the pressure of melted rocks held back by the pressure of the earth’s crust. A communist revolution is a social explosion that happens when the organized working class overcomes the armed power of the capitalists.
Contradictions are important because they cause changes or prevent them. The worker-capitalist contradiction produces the protests, strikes and rebellions that are happening everywhere in the world now. This contradiction will eventually drive the working class to overthrow capitalism.
Contradictions are always internal to some thing, process or system. They are the biggest influence on how that thing changes. People exposed to TB germs will get the disease or not, depending on the struggle of their immune system against the TB germs.
The most fundamental internal contradiction of capitalism is this: Capitalism needs an unlimited increase in capitalists’ wealth and forces of production while it must restrict the mass of producers to bare necessities. This contradiction grows larger over time. It provides opportunities for the working class to eliminate capitalism and build up communism in its place.
Contradictions between imperial powers like the US and China can pass from mild conflict to trade wars to huge shooting wars, like the two world wars in the 20th century. These provided opportunities for communist-led revolutions in Russia and China.
In the next issue, we will discuss how dialectical contradictions affect the practical work of the party.
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