Monkey Riding Dragon
19th July 2009, 20:47
When we ask ourselves what the proper relationship is between the development of the productive forces and revolutionary transformations in society, one often runs into the answer: 'First, you develop the productive forces sufficiently and then you'll be in a position to go forward with revolutionary leaps and transformations in socialist (or new-democratic) society'. I've never believed this to be a correct answer. While the productive forces provide the material conditions for certain levels of socialist advancement (and thus you can't simply "skip" whole stages of historical development), at the same time there is the necessity of continually moving forward toward the goal of communism. If you simply build up, build up, build up the economy, but neglect to continually move forward with the further transformation of the 4 Alls (class distinctions, production relations, social relations, and ideas), you'll only wind up going back to the old society.
What am I proposing? I'm proposing that these things -- the development of the productive forces and revolutionary transformations in society -- should be continually occurring at one and the same time and in dialectical (back-and-forth) relationship to one-another.
For example, it's not simply that you build tractors and thus the peasantry is enabled to enter into state ownership of their farms. Rather, it's that, in this example, you can make revolutionary leaps within lower levels of collectivization that open up the way further forward. When you have a system of cooperative farming, you can initiate regional public works projects that bring multiple cooperatives together toward common goals. In that way, you begin to win people over to the idea of broader collaborative work for the common good, rather than just leaving them to the 'me and my work team' level of thinking. And some of these projects worked on might include, in this example, building additional tractors. And that, in turn, ultimately opens the way further forward to where you can leap into higher levels of collectivization. This all needs to be done in a mass way and from below, but led forward by the party in an active way. And so you have that simultaneous and back-and-forth relationship going continually so that you can continually move forward not only in developmental terms, but also in revolutionary terms. The point here being that you can always take the initiative.
What do you think?
What am I proposing? I'm proposing that these things -- the development of the productive forces and revolutionary transformations in society -- should be continually occurring at one and the same time and in dialectical (back-and-forth) relationship to one-another.
For example, it's not simply that you build tractors and thus the peasantry is enabled to enter into state ownership of their farms. Rather, it's that, in this example, you can make revolutionary leaps within lower levels of collectivization that open up the way further forward. When you have a system of cooperative farming, you can initiate regional public works projects that bring multiple cooperatives together toward common goals. In that way, you begin to win people over to the idea of broader collaborative work for the common good, rather than just leaving them to the 'me and my work team' level of thinking. And some of these projects worked on might include, in this example, building additional tractors. And that, in turn, ultimately opens the way further forward to where you can leap into higher levels of collectivization. This all needs to be done in a mass way and from below, but led forward by the party in an active way. And so you have that simultaneous and back-and-forth relationship going continually so that you can continually move forward not only in developmental terms, but also in revolutionary terms. The point here being that you can always take the initiative.
What do you think?