kasama-rl
11th April 2011, 01:05
Vern Gray has written a pointed essay on the communist controversy over class truth.. Over the next week, we will be publishing excerpts of this work on Kasama (http://kasamaproject.org). Meanwhile we urge you to read the whole thing, which appears in three parts on our sister site Khurkuri. Class Truth – An Essential Concept
by Vern Gray
Part 1: Reality, Truth and Reflection (http://www.khukuritheory.net/on-the-concept-of-class-truth-i/)
Part 2: Class Truths in the Natural Sciences (http://www.khukuritheory.net/on-the-concept-of-class-truth-ii/)
Part 3: Interpreting or Contemplating the World, and Changing It (http://www.khukuritheory.net/on-the-concept-of-class-truth-iii/)
* * * * * * * *
Intro by Mike Ely
We live in a world of deception and self deception. The most basic features of capitalist society, including exploitation itself, are shrouded in mystical veils. Wars are launched and waged based on lies that hide the real interests for which people kill and die.
For those reasons alone, truth is a life and death matter.
Meanwhile, to change the world, large numbers of people need to know their society deeply and dynamically. Imagine how ambitious it is for the formerly oppressed to aspire to be masters of society. Here are the powerless, the despised, the untrained, the once passive, the often illiterate, the constantly desperate — and yet through a revolutionary process (of training, struggle, summation and transformation) something new has to emerge.
For that reason too, the partisans of a revolutionary movement need methods for uncovering what is true and what is not.
Among communists there are important explorations and long-standing controversies surrounding the question of truth. Vern Gray has waded into those waters in an ambitious way. He starts by laying bare the importance of these issues — and revisiting key concepts and questions. And in the process he carefully constructs a polemical argument in defense of a communist concept of “class truth.”
This involves, among other things, the question of how much truth exists and emerges independent of the interests of sharply antagonistic forces in human society. It ask what the role of practice (including class struggle) is in deepening human understandings. And it involves a much needed critique of certain forms of scientism.
Vern writes in his opening page:
“In one of several contradictory sets of theses, the old International Communist Movement held that the proletariat had no interest in perpetuating any form of exploitation or oppression; and by the same token it had no interest in maintaining any illusions. Yet it came to interpret the class interests of the proletariat in such a way as to ensure that some illusions would be maintained and others created. In this way those conceived interests were allowed, time and again, to override the truth.”
In other words, communists have argued that they (being the conscious representatives of a coming liberation) have no interest in promoting falsehoods, and yet (in key moments of our history) new socialist states developed mythologies and expedient self-justifications that were (often crudely) far from truth.
How do we understand this experience? Where do we go from here?
In a footnote [#73], Vern raises one major historical controversy as an example, and intersects with discussions (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/11/05/historical-socialism-and-stalin-need-better-defenders/) we have held here on Kasama:
“One major measure of the real damage done by political truth in the history of the ICM concerns the Great Purges in the USSR. If the purges are not summed up, then a form of political truth is perpetuated.”
Challenging an idealist denial of class truth… that downgrades the role of practice
In addition, Vern Gray is engaging a more recent controversy of the communist movement in the United States.
A few years ago, Bob Avakian (of the Revolutionary Communist Party) announced (http://revcom.us/a/1262/avakian-epistemology.htm) that he had made (over two decades earlier) an “epistemological rupture” with the previous communist movement on this question of truth — and specifically in his rejection of the concept of class truth.
He said:
“From the time of Conquer the World [1981] (http://revcom.us/bob_avakian/conquerworld/)I have been bringing forward an epistemological rupture with a lot of the history of the ICM , including China and the GPCR [Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution], which had this thing arguing that there is such a thing as proletarian truth and bourgeois truth.”
This startling revelation of a previously unnoticed rupture forms the philosophical leg of Avakian’s assertion that he has created a new synthesis of communist theory — and that his work is a world-historic development-and-negation of previous Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Vern Gray explores this assertion (in a detailed set of endnotes) — and argues that while the previous communist movement had a troubled relationship to truth (both in theory and in its production of ideas), Avakian’s approach involves a mistaken attempt to resolve those important controversies.
This short excerpt from Vern’s essay (from note46) gives a sense of how that line struggle is joined:
“When the RCP’s new [I]Constitution was published in 2008, it contained a new formulation by Bob Avakian regarding the “theory/practice/theory dynamic”:
‘There is a back-and-forth interaction between the development of line and the transformation of the world that drives this whole process. This is the theory/practice/theory dynamic, and it is the heart of party life.’
“Avakian’s description of this dynamic is as follows:
‘proceeding at any given time on the basis of our theory and line, as determined collectively and through the structures, channels and processes of the party; extracting lessons from our practice and raising these up to the level of theoretical abstraction, but also drawing from many other sources (including the thinking and insights of others), and applying the scientific outlook and method of communism, dialectical materialism, to repeatedly synthesize all this to a higher level, in the development of and through the wrangling over theory and line—which is then returned to and carried out in practice, on what should be a deepened and enriched basis. And on . . . and on . . . and on . . .’
“I want to call attention here to the fact that while a party’s own practice is correctly referred to as only one of the sources of knowledge, there is only a vague reference to “extracting lessons” from it. After a new line is formulated, the party “carries it out” in practice. There is no sense here that the party’s line is being tested in practice or that it is being determined whether it corresponds to the objective world. With this weak link between practice and theory, it is not at all clear how or why the theoretical line ‘should be’ deepened and enriched. Contrast all this with Mao’s explanation of the relation of practice to theory, in which practice is clearly principal overall and is the site where it is seen whether ideas accurately anticipate, or predict, the actual results of practice…”
A theme runs through Vern Gray’s essay that we need a radical new leap in communist understandings (including in our philosophy of truth), but that this leap still lies ahead of us as a challenge. And, then, best of all, he sketches valuable lines of inquiry on this important question of truth — for us to explore and debate.
by Vern Gray
Part 1: Reality, Truth and Reflection (http://www.khukuritheory.net/on-the-concept-of-class-truth-i/)
Part 2: Class Truths in the Natural Sciences (http://www.khukuritheory.net/on-the-concept-of-class-truth-ii/)
Part 3: Interpreting or Contemplating the World, and Changing It (http://www.khukuritheory.net/on-the-concept-of-class-truth-iii/)
* * * * * * * *
Intro by Mike Ely
We live in a world of deception and self deception. The most basic features of capitalist society, including exploitation itself, are shrouded in mystical veils. Wars are launched and waged based on lies that hide the real interests for which people kill and die.
For those reasons alone, truth is a life and death matter.
Meanwhile, to change the world, large numbers of people need to know their society deeply and dynamically. Imagine how ambitious it is for the formerly oppressed to aspire to be masters of society. Here are the powerless, the despised, the untrained, the once passive, the often illiterate, the constantly desperate — and yet through a revolutionary process (of training, struggle, summation and transformation) something new has to emerge.
For that reason too, the partisans of a revolutionary movement need methods for uncovering what is true and what is not.
Among communists there are important explorations and long-standing controversies surrounding the question of truth. Vern Gray has waded into those waters in an ambitious way. He starts by laying bare the importance of these issues — and revisiting key concepts and questions. And in the process he carefully constructs a polemical argument in defense of a communist concept of “class truth.”
This involves, among other things, the question of how much truth exists and emerges independent of the interests of sharply antagonistic forces in human society. It ask what the role of practice (including class struggle) is in deepening human understandings. And it involves a much needed critique of certain forms of scientism.
Vern writes in his opening page:
“In one of several contradictory sets of theses, the old International Communist Movement held that the proletariat had no interest in perpetuating any form of exploitation or oppression; and by the same token it had no interest in maintaining any illusions. Yet it came to interpret the class interests of the proletariat in such a way as to ensure that some illusions would be maintained and others created. In this way those conceived interests were allowed, time and again, to override the truth.”
In other words, communists have argued that they (being the conscious representatives of a coming liberation) have no interest in promoting falsehoods, and yet (in key moments of our history) new socialist states developed mythologies and expedient self-justifications that were (often crudely) far from truth.
How do we understand this experience? Where do we go from here?
In a footnote [#73], Vern raises one major historical controversy as an example, and intersects with discussions (http://kasamaproject.org/2010/11/05/historical-socialism-and-stalin-need-better-defenders/) we have held here on Kasama:
“One major measure of the real damage done by political truth in the history of the ICM concerns the Great Purges in the USSR. If the purges are not summed up, then a form of political truth is perpetuated.”
Challenging an idealist denial of class truth… that downgrades the role of practice
In addition, Vern Gray is engaging a more recent controversy of the communist movement in the United States.
A few years ago, Bob Avakian (of the Revolutionary Communist Party) announced (http://revcom.us/a/1262/avakian-epistemology.htm) that he had made (over two decades earlier) an “epistemological rupture” with the previous communist movement on this question of truth — and specifically in his rejection of the concept of class truth.
He said:
“From the time of Conquer the World [1981] (http://revcom.us/bob_avakian/conquerworld/)I have been bringing forward an epistemological rupture with a lot of the history of the ICM , including China and the GPCR [Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution], which had this thing arguing that there is such a thing as proletarian truth and bourgeois truth.”
This startling revelation of a previously unnoticed rupture forms the philosophical leg of Avakian’s assertion that he has created a new synthesis of communist theory — and that his work is a world-historic development-and-negation of previous Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Vern Gray explores this assertion (in a detailed set of endnotes) — and argues that while the previous communist movement had a troubled relationship to truth (both in theory and in its production of ideas), Avakian’s approach involves a mistaken attempt to resolve those important controversies.
This short excerpt from Vern’s essay (from note46) gives a sense of how that line struggle is joined:
“When the RCP’s new [I]Constitution was published in 2008, it contained a new formulation by Bob Avakian regarding the “theory/practice/theory dynamic”:
‘There is a back-and-forth interaction between the development of line and the transformation of the world that drives this whole process. This is the theory/practice/theory dynamic, and it is the heart of party life.’
“Avakian’s description of this dynamic is as follows:
‘proceeding at any given time on the basis of our theory and line, as determined collectively and through the structures, channels and processes of the party; extracting lessons from our practice and raising these up to the level of theoretical abstraction, but also drawing from many other sources (including the thinking and insights of others), and applying the scientific outlook and method of communism, dialectical materialism, to repeatedly synthesize all this to a higher level, in the development of and through the wrangling over theory and line—which is then returned to and carried out in practice, on what should be a deepened and enriched basis. And on . . . and on . . . and on . . .’
“I want to call attention here to the fact that while a party’s own practice is correctly referred to as only one of the sources of knowledge, there is only a vague reference to “extracting lessons” from it. After a new line is formulated, the party “carries it out” in practice. There is no sense here that the party’s line is being tested in practice or that it is being determined whether it corresponds to the objective world. With this weak link between practice and theory, it is not at all clear how or why the theoretical line ‘should be’ deepened and enriched. Contrast all this with Mao’s explanation of the relation of practice to theory, in which practice is clearly principal overall and is the site where it is seen whether ideas accurately anticipate, or predict, the actual results of practice…”
A theme runs through Vern Gray’s essay that we need a radical new leap in communist understandings (including in our philosophy of truth), but that this leap still lies ahead of us as a challenge. And, then, best of all, he sketches valuable lines of inquiry on this important question of truth — for us to explore and debate.