Resistance and Revolution in the 21st Century.

Resistance within hierarchical mass societies has taken many forms and has been almost continuous since the first emergence of this form of human aggregation several thousand years ago. Resistance, individual or collective, occurs because these hierarchical social forms are oppressive, exploitative and alienating. However, although there is occasionally a direct link between resistance and the outbreak of revolution, those links and occurances are few and far between. Nevertheless, some people seem to think that repeated high levels of resistance will automatically lead to revolution. This, however, is not how the two symptoms interact. This is because increased resistance is merely a quantitative development, whereas revolution is a distinctly qualitative development. No matter how violently or widely expressed, resistance breaks out among the victims of oppression their decision is only motivated to act against some of the oppressive or exploitative actions inflicted against them. By merely resisting they do not necessarily act against the entire system of oppression. In such cases of collective resistance, there comes a point in which one side modifies its position and backs down. On the one hand, the elite side will often cease or ease their oppression, or are replaced by a different set of elites, or on the other the resisters are appeased or defeated and the oppresive system carries on. Even resilant resistance is countered by reformist promises.

Revolutions, on the other hand see resisters go beyond a stage of progressive or intermittant resistance to any mass exploitation and oppression and become transformed into forming movements for a completely different way of living and working. A revolution to change a mode of production, therefore, becomes a struggle for and against an entire system of living and producing not just immediate acts of oppression. This is why throughout history, revolutions are both infrequent and different to the everyday class struggles within hierarchical mass societies. First of all activists who decide to take part in revolutionary struggles, whether these are successful or not, have to arrive at a practical realisation that the existing way of producing and living – as a whole -should not be allowed to continue any longer. Yet even that experience and its ideological expression, is still not enough to initiate an actual process of revolution. Secondly, and of crucial importance, there must already exist an alternative way of living and producing that has successfully materialised and been substantially developed. Unless these two elements are present, all talk of revolution is just fantasy. Although intellectually it can appear to certain individuals, that it is new ideas that can change old realities, in fact collectively the process is invariably in the opposite sequence. The ideas of large communities about how to live and produce generally only change from directly experiencing the existence of new productive realities. New forms of large-scale community living are not a result of direct exposure to new ideas, but to new ways of being.

This material relationship between reality and ideas at the social level is demonstrably clear from the case of the production and dissemination of ideas of socio-economic revolution. The concept of revolution has been used descriptively and rhetorically many times on the left and right particularly during the 20th century but without any notable changes in the ideas of the masses concerning a rejection of the dominant mode of production. Over a number of generations, the resistance of the working classes has peaked and troughed and yet questioning the system as a whole, has remained the exclusive intellectual pursuit of only a tiny minority. The mass uprisings and resistance shown by sufferers of oppression and exploitation prior to the so-called 20th century fascist and socialist revolutions in Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, China and elsewhere were not revolutionary with regard to the hierarchical systems of exploitation and oppression. These uprisings and resistances did not result in an end to the form of exploitation of the masses, nor put an end to the existence of an exploitative ruling/governing elite. In the end the energy of the working class resistance and uprisings only served to back one side or the other of contending or competing ruling elites, who, when victorious retained the existing class based system of hierarchical mass society living and producing.

So from a revolutionary-humanist perspective, all these so-called ‘revolutions’ have been misnamed. They were not actually socio-economic revolutions, for in essence, the resistance of the masses quickly came under the influence and direction of the radical actions and ideas of disident political elites. In the 20th century, these elites, supported by the masses, managed to replace the previous ruling elites by the means of engaging in extreme levels of civil war. These 20th century resistances to the exploitation of the capitalist mode of production, by being manipulated into focussing on replacing the type of ideology espoused by various elites, left the three essential structures of all hierarchical mass societies firmly in place. The capitalist mode of production (i.e. mode of living and producing) became merely the latest iteration of the general hierarchical mass society form. These essential socio-economic aspects of the capitalist domination of the hierarchical mass society form are 1, the existence of wage labour; 2, the separation of control/ownership of the results of past labour (now designated as capital) from the working producers of it; and 3, the existence of an elite with the protection of a militarily force to keep the labour of working people under a direct or indirect form of elite control.

In all the 20th century so-called revolutions, this elite control continued to be exercised over the ‘duration’, the ‘purpose’ and the ‘distribution’ of the results produced by the main means of economic activity. In actual fact the main ‘means’ of production in the 20th century had been previously changed from subsistence production based on agriculture to commodity production based upon commecial trade and manufacture. People were already living by engaging with this new (capitalist’) mode when the political power of its main representatives had later been consolidated by the bourgeois political revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The class representing the new mode of production (the commercial bourgeoisie) had successfully existed by means of their trade for many decades during the late middle ages, before they were eventually challenged in civil wars, by the aristocratic establishment within the fuedal system to remain subordinate. Later still, the dominant means of production based upon ‘commercial capital’ had changed from agriculturally based technologies to industrial based technologies and the conditions of working labour had changed from land based tied labour to waged labour freed from all direct connections with the land. In other words, the means and part of the mode of production had already been changed technologically and socially, but the rest of the mode of production remained essentially the same. This general mode of production and living was based upon the three great classes of all hierarchical mass societies.

Basically, there remained a class of ‘rulers’, a class of ‘managers’ and a class of ‘workers’. Of course, lots of changes had occurred in the technology of production and in the social lives of the working classes, but the essence of the hiearchical mass society mode of production had been retained. Therefore, the fundamental problems and tensions arising from the two human devised triads remained. The first (human) triad comprised of a) the ‘ruling elite’, the social ‘managers’ and the workers (living labour) who produce. The second (economic) triad comprised of b) the ‘duration’ of production, the ‘purpose’ of production and the ”distribution’ of the results of production, were also retained, in the transition to capitalism from feudalism. But note also these two historic social and economic triads were also retained under the 20th century ‘socialist’, ‘communist, fascist and social democratic liberal regimes. Consequently, the Neo-liberalist stage of capitalism in the 21st century still contains all the defining problems facing previous generations of working people but it has also become clear that the capitalist mode dominating human production now causes existential problems for the whole of humanity and the rest of the species of life on earth. The economic, financial and political elites within the first social triad (the ruling classes), determine the purpose, the duration and the distribution of production, which ensures not only the relative and absolute impoverishment of many millions of humans but the relative and absolute degradation of other essential forms of life on earth. The managerial/bureacratic levels of hierarchical mass societies, ensure the elite wishes are fulfilled, and the workers are compelled by various incentives and punishments to fulfil them.

This system and the lack (as yet) of any viable and acceptable alternative mode of production is why the idea of revolution, partially or completely muddled or not, does not resonate with or become seriously considered by most of those oppressed and exploited within hierarchical mass societies. Since the marginalisation and undermining of the cooperative way of working and living, in the 20th century, there is simply nothing better, than liberal capitalism actually on offer. Until there is a practical example of a co operative way of living and working whilst protecting and nurturing the rest of life on earth, the idea of a revolutionary transition away from liberal capitalism will remain moribund. However, this does not mean that the idea of revolution will not continue to be raised among certain segments of society. Not only genuinely mistaken concepts of revolution will continue to appear, but also novel variations will emerge promoted by those wishing to replace existing elite structures with their own preferred elite cohort of ideologists. The latter are frequently quick to recognise that in a crisis, they need to sound radical enough to be taken seriously by people in desperate straits. This happens in any deepening social and economic crisis. Karl Marx, when he studied the Paris Commune uprising response of working people in 1871 noted the emergence of such people who in every serious struggle whether with good or bad intentions, are often;

“without insight…hamper the full development of every previous revolution.” (Marx. ‘Class Struggles in France’. page 84.)

Meanwhile, imprecise uses of the concept of revolution and differing motives for using it really hamper understanding and need to be rectified, particularly in the 21st century when the implications of human production and overproduction can no longer be considered from a purely or exclusively human standpoint. Human productive activity can no longer be intellectually and economically separated from the needs of the rest of life on earth (i.e. nature!). The current human mode of production increasingly threatens the very life-support foundations for all life on earth. Climate, air and water quality, sources of nutrition etc., are being altered by human production in ways that can no longer be corrected by natural levels of biological reproduction of the essential key species maintaining the evolutionary processes of life in general. So I suggest that in periods of 21st century crisis, the idea of revolution is of little use if it remains abstract and without any real clarity as to what is intended and how it is to be established and how it is to socially evolve. Indeed, the concept of revolution has again also been more recently used in terms of advocating a transition from the existing capitalist domination to a post-capitalist socio-economic system of so-called ‘de-growth’.

However, the concept of ‘de-growth’ in contrast to continuous capitalist growth may sound radical to some, but it still offers little overall clarity of content and form within such proposals for revolutionary change in the 21st century. The left alternative of green growth instead of polluting petro-chemical growth is no less dualistically framed as well as vague. This general level of confusion and abstraction is understandable and entirely predictable for obvious reasons. Most so-called revolutionary thinkers have evolved within an intellectual paradigm predominantly determined by the direct experience of the bourgeois mode of hierarchical mass society socio-economic production. The current socio-economic base of humanity has given rise to a narrow range of ideological assumptions and political structures focussed entirely on the exagerated needs of an elite-led humanity. Take a further ‘left’ anthropocentric example; such as the concept of ‘sustainable development’ This roughly translates to mean “development that meets the human needs of the present without compromising the ability of future human generations to meet their own needs.” ‘Yet what are the human needs of the present’?

In reality, the first existential requirement for humanity, arises from the biologically determined need for balanced nutrition (N), clean water, clean oxygenated air and reasonably stable climatic conditions, so that photosynthetic produced food and oxygen sources will be functioning and abundantly available for all life on earth. For humanity, their own needs are precisely these unreferenced and unmentioned biologically determined needs, which in order to be met, are absolutely dependent upon the existence of a whole interconnected and interdependent network (or web) of species life on earth. In the 21st century, any revolutionary perspective for the future of humanity, which does not include the needs of other life-forms essential to all existence, alongside it’s own needs, is not potentially revolutionary, but potentially reactionary. This is because the existing hierarchical mass society form of human aggregates which is currently ‘glossed’ as ‘civilisation’, is already deeply reactionary. It is genocidally destroying humanities species unity and damaging the complex interdependent foundation upon which the human species has evolved and which it needs to survive in any future form of social aggregation. The overwhelming experience of living in the bourgeois form of meeting these two needs, (by mass economic production and mass biological reproduction) has resulted in an anthropocentric paradigm of thinking by most citizens and also by many anti-capitalists. This closed paradigm of thinking needs to be not only resisted but also revolutionised.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2024).