Resistance & Revolution in the 21st Century.
The human centred bourgeois ideological constructions, noted in (Part 1), have for generations been intellectually integrated into a set of largely unchallenged assumptions based upon the social domination of the ancient hierarchical mass society structure of human living. Consequently, the aim common to most of these left, right and centre proposals for revolutionary transitions is the need to ‘save human civilisation’ from it’s current self-destructive trajectory’, whatever they think that trajectory is. However, this is exactly the same abstract purpose as understood by the liberal bourgeoisie.
In other words it is the ‘content’ of hierarchical mass society forms they disagree upon and wish to change, not the form itself. In the name of ‘civilisation’ (i.e. the current hierarchical mass society form) the liberals think and profess they have been saving humanity for multiple generations from the barbarity of so-called ‘ignorance’ and primitive backwardness and (for more recent decades) by the ‘progress’ of industry and science. If 20th and 21st century genocide, industrialised warfare and ecological destruction is a result of enlightenment and progress, then perhaps a little nostalgia for pre-civilised life on earth would not be so irrational as at first it may seem.
It turns out that for a century or so the elites in control of hierarchical mass societies have been destroying life on earth (human, insect, animal and natural plant material), in every possible nook and cranny for their own self-gratification. And of course classifying that as civilised behaviour. Civilisation is of course the bourgeois term used to describe the ancient, middle and latest advanced hierarchical mass societies based upon elite directed production and consumption. So one unanswered question in all such ‘saving civilisation’ proposals for revolutionary change is what is deemed worth saving and for whom is it to be saved?
But even before that question can be adequately dealt with, another missing aspect of most left liberal fantasies concerning revolution is the fact there are the two necessary dimensions to human existence (the biologically determined economic dimension and the socio-biologically determined organisational dimension) mentioned in part 1. And again, whilst these two aspects; ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’ are linked, they are not achieved in the same manner.
Most anti-capitalist thinking concerning any future human society to the capitalist dominated hierarchical mass society form, therefore, is still based upon a hierarchical mass society model but imagined to be differently governed. The only slight difference is that the left version of saving human ‘civilisation’ is to be organised on the basis of the ideas of a progressive elite and managed by elected or appointed representatives of the class from which this progressive elite emerges. In essence this new idea of a progressive elite is not so new. It is just a repetition of the old bourgeois idea of a progressive elite, leading humanity torward to an elite determined future.
Here again we have parts of the revolutionary left uncritically accepting the bourgeois ideas of general material progress and the continuation of class distinctions. They envision a class of politically educated rulers, a class of institutionally educated bureaucrats and a class of ‘trained’ workers. This is why this type of idea of revolution arises primarily among the dissident thinking classes, who assume their ideas are necessary to determine what happens in future once implemented at a practical level. Therefore, if they produce clever or logical sounding ideas and put them out there, this will enable discontented people to implement them and change the miserable reality of their lives.
Therefore for several generations, most ‘revolutionary’ thinkers have formed themselves into groups to spread their ideas and even invite workers to pay to read their ideas, by selling them magazines, papers and now blog subscriptions to fund their own existence. That is how any class of intellectuals continues to exist within bourgeois societies. They sell their ability to think and eloquently express those thoughts in literature and to talk about them in front of paying (in some way) audiences whilst convincing themselves they are doing it for the benefit of mankind. The ‘revolutionary’ intellectuals are no different in this regard and within their organisations they invariably replicate the traditional hierarchical mass society system in miniature.
They soon (often immediately) choose a leader (elected or appointed), select a managerial support group (editoral staff or central committee) and rectuit an almost endless supply of discontented worker/followers to appeal to for funds and other forms of support such as providing free labour. If such ‘sects’ become relatively successful, they invariably institute all the typical infrastructure of hierarchical mass societies, such as paid staff, appointment and promotion procedures, competitive jockeying for staff positions, resorting to disciplinary and expulsion procedures, when challenged. So even whilst advocating a revolutionary transition to a different form of living and working they, like the elites they oppose, are actively conserving the ancient form of hierarchical mass society living and working.
The above paragraph outlines why the social reality of Soviet Russia, under the Leninists, Trotskyists and Stalinists, and Communist China under Mao and his successors (and other similar so-called revolutionary transitions) so closely resembled all other hierarchical mass society forms – including the ones designated as Fascist! The fact that the leaders are designated differently as Fuhrer”s, Commisars, or Ministers, matters little to how the system functions. This is also why simply advocating the elimination of the third defining characteristics of hierarchical mass societies (elite wealth accumulation) does not solve the problems associated with hierachical mass societies.
Nor would it solve the destruction of the ‘natural’ foundations of all life on earth – including humanity! In the modern context, even a policy of levelling down the rich and eliminating the incentive for wealth accumulation and profit, the existence of nine billion human beings continually consuming organic and inorganic nature inorganic would still be existentially problematic. Such numbers, producing and consuming at even a moderate level on a finite planet with a rapidly diminishing number of ‘key’ species supporting the rest, does not represent a solution for life on earth in general, but a continuation of the same old anthropocentric problem.
The above noted intellectual limitations imposed by this combination of lived experience within hierarchical mass societies and its inherited ideological assumptions has prevented many anti-capitalists and those who class themselves as ‘socialists’ from understanding how human social reality has unfolded with regard to the socio-economic and bio-chemical aspects of the evolution of all life on earth. Marx summed up this intellectual tendency amongst the 19th century left-leaning middle classes when he wrote;
“The act of transforming society was reduced to the cerebral activity of their own criticism.”
And;
“They forget, however, that they are opposing nothing but phrases to these phrases, and they are in no way combatting the real existing world when they are combatting solely the phrases of this world.” (Marx. In Marx/Engels Collected Works Volume 5 page 30)
Life on earth, including human life, is essentially practical even in the case of the modern social domination of an intellectually employed labour force. The cycle of Nutrition, Cell-Metabolism, Body Growth, Species Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) are all physical processes – for all forms of life on earth! They are certainly not the result of intellectual processes even though they are now more comprehensively understood by intellectual means. Indeed, thought itself is dependent upon the practical implementation of the (N-M-G-R + A – D) processes of living and producing. It is not ‘I think therefore I am’, but ‘I am (at a stage were) I can think. Also in reality only practical circumstances and, techniques can actually be revolutionised.
Therefore, any reference to socio-economic revolutions should primarily refer to a practical reorganisation of living and producing – not a reorganisation of people’s thoughts. To start a genuinely revolutionary process on the revolutionary left it is necessary to radically change what is being done by the revolutionary left – in practice – not in theoretical formulations! Simply carrying on as before and just talking and writing about what others (usually the workers or ‘the people’) should be doing in future is not revolutionary but conservative. In the 21st century, revolutionary phrase-mongering is an anthropocentric indulgence and essentially an act of conserving existing class distinctions and hierarchical assumptions of leaders and led; of a modern version of shepherds and sheep.
In particular, anthropocentric focussed intellects tend to ignore the biological reality concealed or conceptually obscured by the abstraction ‘modes of production’ and therefore they ignore or downplay the revolutionary changes needed to the organization and purpose of production and consumption which are currently negatively affecting the biological processes required for life on earth to continue as previously. It should now be an absolutely taken for granted fact that the bio-chemical processes of life on earth pre-date the formation of hierarchical mass societies and politics, by millions if not billions of years, but even so, the practical implications of this evolutionary fact are still being insufficiently considered.
The implications of such a perspective, however, are becoming clear. They are that any future ecologically balanced forms of human society would need to recognised (now from accumulated experience) the importance of two essential changes to production and consumption. 1. The need to stop and reverse the current profit-led, ecological destruction of life on earth by human productive activity; and 2. To begin to reintroduce and replant or allow a repopulation of most of the already depleted forests, insect, animal, bird and sea life habitats and their inter-connected species.
To do that humanity will need to reject and reverse three past and current practically based elite assumptions and practices: 1, that we are not one species but made up of superior and inferior sub-divisions comprised of nations, religions or races; 2, that competition for sources of life support between human communities is not natural; and 3, That the concept of rich and poor is not a naturally determined outcome of biological evolution, but a continuing elite determined socially intended outcome. At root, these are practical 21st century issues which any genuine revolutionary activists should be discussing, resolving and implementing themselves whilst aiming to encourage others – by their practical example – to do the same.
Any proposals not including the essence of the last sentence of the previous paragraph is not revolutionary in any long or short-term term sense. Simply talking and writing about overthowing capitalist based mass society hierarchies and/or modifying the social composition of governing elites or removing class, gender, and ethnic divisions and prejudices, are only phrases and in any case these phrases only address anthropocentric concerns. These latter (original 20th century revolutionary perspectives) were drawn up by previous generations on the basic assumptions that all the above noted overthrows, modifications and removals could be achieved on a planet that would be relatively stable climatically, ecologically and socially.
The real world evidence for such assumptions, plus a further one that in an existential crisis, a majority of humanity could be relied upon to be rational – no longer exists! Those 20th century assumptions are no longer valid, even if they may have appeared to be still relevant in the late 20th century thinking of many of us anti-capitalist activists at that time. The globalisation of the capitalist mode of production and its associated bourgeois assumptions has introduced a level of socially determined irrationality among most of the human species.
It is now the case that far too many now consider competition, self-indulgent consumption and a high degree of narcissistic exceptionalism is the essential ‘natural’ essence of the human species. Thus such socialised ‘entitlement’ expectations are currently so embedded within the psychology of many mass society individuals that an endless supply of globalised commodities and experiences are not just longed for, but demanded and genocidally fought for by sections of humanity – even against the interests of other human beings – and against the survival needs of all other non-favoured life forms.
For the success of any future revolutionary movement, practical experience will need to have convinced a critical mass of citizens to reject entitlement exceptionalism among humanity in general. Moreover, the practical rejection of such aspirations will be every bit as important as a defeat of the ruling elites who control the current capital dominated hierarchical mass society nations. Indeed, the practical ‘life on earth’ basis of a hoped for universal entitlement to conspicuously consume is disappearing fast. The profit-based investments by the upper and middle-classes, is exhausting and deforming, more and more of the natural inorganic and organic resources of planet earth. But despite this vivid backdrop of existential threats to life on earth, the current political reality is that entrenched elites, organising, campaigning and engaging in genocidal levels of mass killing is proving a more obtainable objective than the long term organised resistance to such outcomes.
Currently, where opposition to such entrenched elites actually develops, it more often takes the form of sectarian militarised groups, which as noted, replicate the male dominated anthropocentric social forms manifested by those elites they are actually opposed to. Civil wars then become wars between competing elite-led movements for the purpose of capturing power over economic, financial and social resources, rather than revolutions seeking the liberation of life on earth from oppression and exploitation. Whilst in general, the implications of understanding that the bio-chemical maintenance and reproduction of life on earth – as a whole – is essential for the future of all life on earth, the practical means of ensuring that outcome are not at all clear.
However, it is possible to say that the problems facing all the species of life on earth (including the human species) will not be solved by elite fantasies of how hierarchical mass societies can be continued, reformed and anthropocentrically governed politically, socially or economically. The historical evidence on previous ‘civilisations’ (sic) suggests, that despite warnings, some things (including human societies) have to overwhelmingly collapse from their own internal contradictions, before enough time and space becomes available for the survivors of the collapse to initiate alternative ways of living and producing which cannot then be effectively obstructed.
Roy Ratcliffe (April 2024)