THE PHILOSOPHY - jCOMMUNISM J' ' - JAMES E. JACKSON i THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMMUNISIM MORE ON THE PHaILOSOPHY OF COMMUNISM THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels SOCIALISM, UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC, by Frederick Engels .40 ON HISTORICAL MATERIALISM, by Frederick Engels THE STATE AND REVOLUTION, by V. I. Lenin THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY, by George Plekhanov THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY, by George Plekhanov ON THE NATURE OF FREEDOM, by Herbert Aptheker ON THE NATURE OF REVOLUTION: THE MARXIST THEORY OF SOCIAL CHANGE, by Herbert Aptheker ON CONTRADICTION, by Mao Tse-hng ON PRACTICE, by Mao Tse-tung SCIENCE AND RELIGION, by Marcel Cachin ON THE THEORY OF MARXISM, by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin Order from New Era Book & Subscription Agency 832 Broadway, New York 3, N. Y. The Philosophy Of Communism By James E. Jackson NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS: New York 1963 About the Author JAMES E. JACKSON, presentlv the Editor of the newspaper, The Worker, and a leading communist spokesman, has, since the early thirties been a prominent figure in the democratic struggles of the workers and Negro people. This pamphlet contains the text of his presentation in a debate, at Colby College, Maine, with U.S. Senator Edmund S. Muskie, at which Robert E. L. Strider, president of Colby, presided. The de- bateyheld in May of last year, attracted over 1400 students, faculty members and townfolk from nearby Waterville, who crowded into Wadsworth Field House to hear the Communistl position on peace- ful coexistence, disarmament, the liberation struggles of the Asian and African peoples and the fight against jim crow at home, the growing blight of unemployment, and the mounting struggle against the fascist-like McCarran Act which jeopardizes the liberties of all Americans. Mr. Jackson is also the author of The South's New Challenge, and of numerous essays and articles which have appeared in Political Afairs and other periodicals. NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS 832 Broadway, New York 3, N. Y. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. The Pl-fl--- r-7/ Of Communism By JAMES E. JACKSON The theory and practical activity of the Communists helps the working class and popular masses "to take a conscious part in the historical process of the transformation of society that is going on under ow eyes." The goal of the Communists is not some abstract ideal to which reality must conform. Rather it is the scientific projection of that which will result from the resolution of the contradictions already existing in the present reality. "Marxism," said Lenin, *is not a dogma, but a guide to action." For the purposes of study and exposition, Marxian theory, or Marxism-Leninism, may be presented in three component parts - philosophy, economics, and socialism - but they are three parts of a single whole, of one unitary system of social science that requires the combination of its theory with practice. For the laws of materialist dialectics-which is the essence, the fundamen- tal theoretical tap root, "the living soul of Marxismn-are drawn from Yhe real world, )both of nature and of history," to cite Frederick Engels' words. Einstein, the great physicist, once said: "when I study philos- ophical works I feel that I am swallowing something which I don't have in my mouth." The young Karl Marx must have ha red this feeling while at work on his doctordl thesis on the Philosophy of Jurisprudence. For he concllided his study with the cryptic judg- ment that ."philosophv at best only explains the world; the point is to change it." And Marx himself subsequently worked out a new rational scientific philosophical system which both explained and indicated the direction and methodology to change the world. 13ialectical Materialism Dialectical hhterialism is the philosophy and method of Xlarx- ism-Leninism for studying and divining the laws of motion and ac- tual force which transforms everything that exists. It is a dynamic materialist conception of the world and a method of scientific knowledge of the inws of its motion. The word "dia!ectic*' derives from the ancient Greek term for "debate." Subseqriently Hegd pop~llnrizedthe use of the term to nleati all motion by means of contra~liction. Hegel perceived that development in thought was a product of the negation of tlie old and the meation of new ideas and concepts. Indeed, motion and development nre ur~iversallyproduced in this way. Mam extended the Hege1i:ln dialectic beyond the area of thoughts and ideas and employed it in the study of motion and de- velopment in the material world both in nature and in society. Dialectical materialism, i.e., the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, has been fashioned by men out of the necessity of mankind to have an instrument for their conscious guidance in the development of history. Already in the sphere of the natural or physical sciences, mail has advanced over nature in a significant number of particulars. Some of our laboratory machines and tools "are more sensitive than the senses which Nature gave man," Peter Kapitza, the noted Soviet , physicist, reminds us in his article in the April issue of the Bullt~tfn of the Atomic Scientists. And he goes on to illustrate "that the microphone hears better than the ear; photo cells see better and , over a wider part of the spectrum than the eve; our feeling of balance is much less perfect than that of the scale. Only one sense -smell-is better than our devices." But in the sphere of our rela- tions in productior. and in political society in our country we stil! ,grovel on the primitive level of "laissez faire." Laws of Social Development As physicists mlist learn the laws of nature, so Communists, as scientists of society, strive to learn-and would have the working people learn-the laws of social development, of the historical motion of society. Marxism-Leninism is the system of the views and teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. In their totality they constitute that body of thought and generalized experience from which the guide lines of the ideology and theory of the modem Commrlnist move- ment arc drawn. The philosophy of Marxism-Leninism rests on the fundamental concept of the primacy of matter, that is, of the prior existence of objective, material reality that is only subsequently revealed to man's consciousness thro~ighhis sensations. Marxism is a material- ist philosophy as distin~uishedfroin a spiritualist, metaphysical or idealist philosophy. "The great basic question of all philosophy," wrote Frederick Engels, "is which is primary, spirit or nature? And the answers which philo~ophersgave to this question split them into two great camps: those who assmted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world crea- tion in some form or other, comprise the camp of idealism. The others. who regarded natlire as primarv, belong to the various schools of materialism." "The idea," wrote Marx, "is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." That is to sav, that mind, consciousness~thought, ideas, spirit, ideals are the products and functioning of the human brain, of matter, even as "man himself is a product of nature, which has been developed in and along with its enviroment." Matter in ,Motion. The materialist base of Marxist philosophy is to be distingushed from the old, mechanistic materialist concepts. To Marxists, there is nothing static in the material world, in matter. The very mode of existence of matter is motion. "Never, anywhere, has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be," wrote Marx. The materiality of the real world is ever in motion, of coming into being, development, and passing away. Our conceptions of str~iztnreand characteristic of matter evolve with the proqess of science. Matter itself undergoes infinite changes-that is, of passage from one state to another: for example, the transformation of the positron and of the elec*on into photons and vice versa, or of the conversion of light into corpuscles. Yet, the materiality of the world remains, matter does not disappear though it undergoes many transformations (such as between mass and energy and space and time i. e. matter in motion), it can neither be created nor destroyed. To this materialist conception of nature, Marx and Engels applied dialectics. "The great basic thought being," in Engels' words, "that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable. go through an untermpted change of coming into being and passing away." Karl Marx defined dialectics as "the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thought." "For dialectical philosophy nothing in final, absolute, sacred. It -,reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; - nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of La, becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendency from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy is n~hingmore than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain." "The dialectical o~~tlook."writes Waldeck-Rochet, outstanding French Marxist, "considers the world of which man is a part as a unified and coherent whole, where objects and phenomena are organically linked, react one upon the other and condition each other reciprocally; a world in a state of motion and perpetual change. the motor of this movement and incessant change which thus asserts itself in nature, in society, and in thought. is the shrggle of opposites, or the contradiction which is inherent in things themselves and constit~~testhe fundamental law of dia- lectics." As the "struggle of oppositer" and its corrolary, *the unity of opposites," can be represented as the first law of the dialectical process of development, so it is possible to identify other phenomena which .fuel the motor of the movement within things- the second law of development being "negation of negation," and the third law the atransformation of quantity into quality" and vice versa.