Dialectics and Alienation

(August 2009)

By Dave Winter

(Page 3 of 4 pages; click here to go back to page 2.)

Computers are machines. Machines are not alive; they “think” formally and abstractly, and they (like the formal and abstract alienated person) cannot understand the incredible complex living dialectic of dramatic changes in nature. A dialectician (even if she or he is not a physicist) can comprehend it better than the super-computers. The reasons for this are relatively simple. What takes nature tens of thousands of years to bring about (a point of no return) has taken barbaric capitalism (with greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) less than two hundred years to create! We are about to be two degrees warmer from the time capitalism started, and, as noted above, the earth was only four degrees warmer when quantity was transformed into quality 250 million years ago—when an unstoppable process that ultimately destroyed most life on the planet began. Capitalism is creating the same phenomenon in an incredibly condensed amount of time. Only the “God” of matter knows exactly what this does to the complex planet. All bets are off. Capitalism is driving another process of mass extinction via an accelerating leap that nobody can fully understand.

From the point of view of dialectics, however, when a process is extremely condensed, the speed can only dramatically accelerate. If you take 10,000 volts and run it through extremely high resistance, the flow of the electrons will slowly warm up the circuit (the process 250 million years ago). But if you decide to create a short circuit (the speed at which capitalism releases greenhouse gasses), the “mad” electrons in the circuit will create a massive explosion—which is precisely what capitalism is doing to climate change: the short-circuit switch is about to be fully turned on, and only the working class and the international revolution can stop it and save humanity.

There are already dramatic changes happening. According to the latest data, about 350,000 people die every year from starvation and flooding directly connected to climate change. Soon the numbers of casualties are likely to reach into the millions. The information that I have provided above and much more can be found everywhere in the newspapers and on the Internet. The average person is aware of it, and she or he feels too helpless and demoralized to do anything about it.

What is at stake here is huge and fundamental, so we must ask: Why doesn’t humanity rise up against capitalism and overthrow it before it is too late? The dire consequences of climate change (combined with exploitation, oppression, the possibility of a third world-imperialist war, and deep alienation) should drive millions into the street screaming, “We’ve had enough, and we’re not going to take it anymore!” (Remember the movie Network?).

There are many reasons why people are quietly going on with their painful routine lives knowing what is at stake here. The “advanced” left is fully aware of the obvious reasons for climate change. The working class is demoralized and is occupied with survival. The leadership is betraying the working class, and unless the working class fights to overthrow capitalism for all the other reasons Marxists have been listing for the last 150 years, humanity cannot deal with climate change.

The cynics will add a few other correct fundamental reasons for the inaction of the masses in regard to climate change. According to public polls, the economy is first on the public’s mind, and climate change is the last thing on its mind. The cynics say that this is so because humans react to what is right in front of their noses. Until climate change affects them directly, they will do nothing. There is, of course, a sad truth to this. What, then, is the difference between humans and animals in this regard? None, say the cynics. Here I depart from the cynics. How can we explain the apathy of the masses from the angles of alienation and dialectics? When hundreds of millions of human beings are going on with their lives and doing nothing, while at the same time knowing perfectly well what is at stake is the survival of their species, what is happening to their brain, their consciousness? I say that at the moment their consciousness is flat. And unless this changes rapidly, we will lose our humanity. We are dehumanized as long as we do not have the courage to risk everything, including our own lives, to save our species.

I do not say that de-humanization is a worldwide development. The most oppressed are fighting back. In Peru, thousands of workers and poor peasants risked their lives as they fought to kick out the imperialist corporations from the Amazon. Their demands were: Imperialists out of the Amazon! Leave the bio-diversity of the Amazon alone! They knew exactly what they were talking about, because the Amazon is drying out, with more frequent droughts due to climate change. This is what scientists are saying, and this is what the native Amazonians are experiencing. The native Amazonians cannot survive under these conditions. If this process does not stop, scientists say that the world will turn into a desert with reduced oxygen; it is kissing life good bye. The pro-imperialist Peruvian regime responded to the uprising in the Amazon with bullets, killing hundreds in cold blood. Where was the solidarity in the imperialist countries against the murderers and against the destruction of life on the planet by the imperialists and their puppets? There was no visible solidarity. Millions of “progressive” petty bourgeois and “greens” will not give a damn until it affects them directly. Yes, they are involved in habitat restorations in their own backyard. Big deal! These are simply small actions to place little green dots on the map and make capitalism look a little greener while the entire planet is on the brink of horrific changes.

Alienation has reached its darkest stage. With every passing year during which we do nothing, our alienation becomes deeper and our humanity flatter. Capitalism has created many devices that make human beings flatter, emotionally less engaged and more self-centered. (See Alienation in the Post Cold War Era.) Now we have 200-plus TV channels, hundreds of movies that we can watch on-line at any time, the Internet with e-mail, YouTube, Facebook and other mechanisms that keep us isolated without the direct interactions that make mammals, mammals and humans, humans. In order to be human, you need to hear another person’s voice, see the person, touch the person, read her or his facial and body expressions—all of which have made us who we are and have allowed us to connect with one another and experience our humanity for thousands of years.

Nowadays, these interactions are being replaced with text and e-mail messages, virtual “friendships” on Facebook and other social networking sites, electronic chatting, and the like. This is not to say that, if only used when necessary, human interactions via machines are not useful. But the alienated and lonely person abuses these means of communication dramatically. What kind of mature adults can we expect to develop from teenagers who communicate with each other day and night over the Internet when they live across the street from each other? Given people’s isolation and dependency on machines to interact with one other today, Marcuse’s “one dimensional person” was emotionally rich and thoughtful in comparison to today’s alienated person. The vestiges of real human communities that remain in the US today are quickly disappearing. The alienated person is more atomized and separated from others than ever. If the dire state of climate change had been known in the 1930s or even the 1960s, it would not have been just a topic of dinner conversation; the masses would have gone into the streets, enraged and ready to fight to save the human race. (Of course, we still would have needed a revolutionary party to mobilize the masses on a class basis, etc.) Dialectically speaking, the bourgeoisie has made us so self-centered and focused on our petty lives that now “my internet friends and I” are the basis of most of our regular and “meaningful” interactions with others.

Thus, our humanity is about to take a final leap backwards to the point of de-humanization at which a person is just an abstraction. This partially explains why the American working class’s reaction to the deep crisis of capitalism is so slow (of course, this reason is combined with many other political and historical factors which I will not discuss here). This does not mean that the human race in the US and most of Europe (in the semi-colonies the struggles are progressing much better) has been numbed to death. A spark that re-ignites the class struggle will bring solidarity; it will be the key to breaking down the alienation that separates us and keeps us as clueless pawns in the claws of the bourgeoisie. Dialectically speaking, it boils down to two options: Either the working class will fight back to overthrow capitalism by creating mass solidarity and breaking down the walls of alienation, or capitalism will keeps us de-humanized to the point (in the future) at which it will be too late to save the planet.

Millions of workers and the oppressed have no choice but to work or look for work to the point of exhaustion. They don't have free time to save the planet. But there are still hundreds of millions of petty bourgeois and privileged workers (particularly in the imperialist countries) who are aware of what is at stake here, but they do nothing about it because of demoralization and deep alienation. They have developed a flat human consciousness in regard to our dire future that is expressed in their subjective consciousness: “I know we are on the edge of a catastrophe that could wipe out my species, but my own self-centered needs are too important for me to change and dedicate my life to organizing with others to stop this.” What are those of us who are consciously or semi-consciously aware that capitalism is destroying the planet—knowing that we have merely decades at best to stop it—feel and do? The large pessimistic majority of people with petty bourgeois consciousness needs a greater and greater means of escape from themselves and the pain of the fact that our species is threatened with possible annihilation. Hence the rush to meaninglessly stare at computer and cell phone screens “twenty-four-seven.”

This situation is expressed by how the particular (the individual person) is related to the general (capitalism). This has developed historically. As capitalism has become more decadent, so have the levels of decadence taken on by the (pro-capitalist, or apolitical petty bourgeois) individual. The more decadent capitalism has become, the shallower human relations have become, as the flatter individual brain reflects the growing decadence and barbarism of the capitalist system. It is no accident that the flat human Internet “connections” are evolving side by side with the final stage of capitalist destructiveness.

Humanity has two basic choices when it comes to nature. We are a part of nature and we cannot change it, whether we like it or not. However, unlike animals, we have a choice. We can either use technology to preserve the bio-diversity of nature and live with nature in balance and harmony, or destroy nature to point that nature will turn its tables on us and eliminate the human race because in an evolutionary sense, humans are incompatible with living matter, nature.

Marx wrote that in order to overcome the fundamental alienated feeling of being separated from nature, we need to create a new harmony with nature in which civilization persists. Instead of destroying nature, humans will develop a creative relationship with nature in which we see nature with the “[non-alienated] human eye;” that is, we will restore our lost connection with nature through love and respect for nature, while maintaining the further development of our “civilization,” which arose out of nature. Marx did not mean a destructive civilization, but a civilization that can re-connect with nature via human creativity and a “special human eye.” (See the early Marx's writing on alienation). Thus, we have higher consciousness than animals, thus we can feel connected to nature but maintain our special status of higher consciousness.

As the capitalists remain on their current destructive course, they are pushing the basic laws of the dialectics of unity and struggles of opposites (Lenin) to a breaking point, because they only use the struggles of opposites (destruction of nature) to the point at which there will be no more unity; nature can no longer sustain us. The extreme disregard of bourgeois society to the dialectics of matter will inevitably destroy humanity. Only a new, non-alienated humanity under socialism on an international scale can bring about a rational relationship with nature and restore our unity with nature. A failure to bring about international socialism in the coming decades will bring the laws of the dialectics to the total breaking point. There will no longer be a unity of opposites, but the extreme “struggle, respectively unfolding, of these opposites, contradictory strivings” (Lenin) to the point of a total breakdown of the opposites (humans versus nature), in which there can be only one winner: nature. Thus planet earth will go backward to the “the apparent return to the old (negation of the negation)” (Lenin). Planet earth, through the convulsions of massive climate change, will destroy most current life forms or the conditions that make human life viable, and many new life forms will have to start over, likely in different evolutionary forms. Thus, eventually there will be a new balance of unity of opposites.

As we approach the breaking point, it is absolutely clear that no reforms of capitalism are possible when it comes to climate change and the environment. This differs completely from other social reforms called for in the class struggle (better working conditions, better healthcare, etc.). We are approaching a point at which the socialist revolution should have happened yesterday to save the human race. Thus every single green reformer, all the petty bourgeois green organizations and all the Gores of this world only create mass illusions in reforms that will make no difference to the continued accelerated capitalist destruction of nature, or to the acceleration of global warming. Simply put, there is not enough profit in "green" capitalism for the capitalist system to undertake the massive conversions of the productive forces and technology that are needed to stop or even slow down the acceleration of climate change. For every green dot that the petty bourgeois green movement and the “Gores” (the green bourgeoisie) create on the planet, capitalism creates billions of tons of greenhouse gases. Statistics clearly show that despite all of the green dots that have been put on the world map, the release of greenhouse gases is accelerating every year. What more can we expect? “Green” Obama is sending thousands of soldiers to kill thousands of peasants in Afghanistan and Pakistan so that the imperialists can control the area and run a new oil pipeline through Afghanistan. The oil companies can then use “cheap” oil instead of green energy to maximize their profits and release billions of tons more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The bourgeoisie and their "green" Obama are destroying nature in Alaska for oil as well. We must ruthlessly remind the petty bourgeois “greens” and the left that this is what Obama is really about.

I may be called sectarian when it comes to challenging the environmental “reforms” under capitalism, but the reality is that the illusions that the Greens and the Gores are promoting are fatal for the human race. The struggle against environmental degeneration and climate change is about socialism or death. This is where real objective reality stands. Lenin’s “objectivity of consideration” means that a dialectician needs to look at the real objective reality straight in the face, outside of subjective wishes and illusions. Such objectivity in critical times like today is the most important thing in the world of matter. Objectively, it means that in order to survive, we must establish a humanistic, non-alienated society organized via a rational planned economy.

The opposite of such a socialist society is today’s capitalism, with its small sector of green profits (as greedy and even more exploitative as any other sources of capitalist profit, because "green" capitalism uses the high cost of technology to cut workers' salary). The little green society at the head of the “progressives” and the Gores is a delusion, as in reality, capitalism is controlled by the great majority of polluting multinational corporations which profit from the super-exploitation of the masses and the plundering of nature. Capitalism and imperialism doom humanity to total barbarism or extinction. This is what is on the table today, not thirty years from now.

Our name, Humanists for Revolutionary Socialism, comes from the understanding that (at least partially) non-alienated humans within a working class vanguard must lead the fight to overthrow capitalism on an international basis. Because of what is at stake here, this means the most ruthless struggle against the Greens and the Gores. The Greens and the Gores create illusions that capitalism can survive and do well with green reforms (dots in the overall bleak reality). Since the Greens and the Gores also know what is at stake, their politics hold back the masses from fighting to overthrow capitalism.

The problem of denial of what’s at stake is not confined to the Greens only, but also to the fake socialists, including the fake Trotskyists. One of the latter, David Walters, a sympathizer of Socialist Organizer (the Lambertists), wrote to me:

“Climate change, as real as it is, and its solutions, as real as they ‘may be,’ is not based on political parameters easily set by people, but on climate science and thus, based on ‘computer models’ and climate history and we can do [nothing] to affect that. But it’s not a given .... Politics provides conditions for ‘maybe’ changing the climate; then again, maybe it won’t. And again, it’s possible things might just change if enough political pressure is exerted short of a socialist revolution on a planetary scale. If it is ONLY through world wide socialist revolution that those conditions can change enough politically, we might as well wrap it up and party.” (March 20, 2009)

This mumbo jumbo summarizes well the thinking of the reformist socialist left. Walters does not mention the cause of climate change—capitalism—nor does he mention anything about the class struggle, or if and how the working class can fight climate change. Instead, he writes that maybe climate change is happening, maybe it’s not. Putting pressure on the capitalists may help resolve the crisis. And forget about the socialist revolution. There is no need to tell the working masses the dire consequences if they do not fight to overthrow capitalism and save the planet, because the cynics (like David Walters) tell us that “we might as well wrap it up and party.”

Reading these words from someone who claims to be a Marxist and a dialectician makes my stomach turn. No, we should not “party” because we are doomed. We should go to the working class and, as we fight like hell for every issue and transitional demand that will lead to the socialist revolution, and as we build the revolutionary international to lead the socialist revolution, we must tell the masses what is really happening: that with the acceleration and buildup of greenhouse gases, and with the data that every good scientist gives us, we are beginning to run out of time. The workers’ movement faces stark choices. It either fights to overthrow capitalism, or it faces the most horrifying forms of barbarism. This is completely consistent with Trotsky’s writing in the transitional program. Cynics like the Lambertists who call themselves “socialists” and “Marxists” are misleading the working class directly to this point of barbarism.

The alienated Greens’ consciousness has become so dull and dead about the objective breaking point (they read every scientific report that we have either crossed the point of no return or are about to cross it) because they do not want to let go of capitalism. This leaves us no choice but to denounce the pro-capitalist reformers in the most ruthless way. “But they are not fascists,” our opponents are likely to scream. This is true. But let me here use the dialectic to explain the relationship between form and content. The form of the Greens is much milder than the form of the fascists. The fascists talk about violence against the workers now, while the Greens and the Gores only want to put pressure on the capitalist system to make it greener; certainly they call for a “progressive,” mild, liberal form of capitalism. But the real objective content of the Greens is ultimately as violent and destructive as the violence of the fascists. The Greens, the “progressive” capitalist regimes (such as the Bolivarian regimes of Chavez and Morales in Venezuela and Bolivia respectively, who talked about the green reforms of capitalism in Poland) and the rest of the left who ignore the seriousness of the situation are aiding the development of a catastrophe that will, in the last analysis, be more destructive and violent than any of the actions of the fascists.

We do not deny that at present and in the very near future the fascists are always our worst enemies, or that workers must organize to destroy them. But while the Greens and Co. talk of a nicer, greener capitalism, they create huge illusions and apathy within the working class; they minimize the dire necessity for the socialist revolution. The content of their politics is ultimately catastrophic for the entire human race and the many other life forms on the planet. This is why a dialectician must examine all the time the contradictions between form and content; that is, the real objective dynamic between form and content. As Lenin put it, [there is] “the struggle of content with form and conversely, the throwing off of the form, the transformation of the content.” If we throw off the form of the Greens (“We just want a greener capitalism.”), we discover the real objective content: A bunch of useless green dots along with rapidly accumulating greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere with powerful destructive potential. Compared to this situation, any forms of past barbarism on this planet (including the two world wars) appear as small episodes in the final chapters of humanity.

Is Dialectics Necessary for the Survival of the Human Race?

Yes. Even if a revolutionary party formally has a great program, it means nothing if such a program is not carried out with conscious use of the dialectic. Many times, I have seen Trotskyist organizations develop a good program and abandon it later. This is just a typical zigzag of centrism; that is, a good looking shell without any real life inside.

Marxists supposedly know that without a revolutionary party and a revolutionary international it is not possible for the proletariat to take power on an international scale. But how can we build such a party if the revolutionaries do not master the dialectic? Bourgeois society has a profound impact on everybody. Its impact is so devastating that most people remain emotionally like children; they do not have the basic tools to transcend the alienated bourgeois society inside them. It is not possible to build a healthy revolutionary party that can lead the workers to power if the human relationships inside the revolutionary party are relationships among alienated comrades who, under the intense pressure of capitalist society, reflect in their politics the alienated consciousness promoted by capitalist society. The internal relations within the organization can cripple such a revolutionary party. And, since the fate of humanity depends on the development of a healthy revolutionary party, humanity is doomed without it.

In the chapter of Alienation in the Post Cold War Era entitled “How the Alienating Features of the Socialist/Progressive Movement Contribute to Its Failure,” I describe how Trotsky explains this in regard to the Bolshevik Party:

This emotional immaturity can be traced to the conduct of key Bolshevik leaders in the period before Stalin rose to power. In his books History of the Russian Revolution and My Life, Trotsky examined the psychological weakness of the most important Bolshevik leaders — weakness that led to opportunistic positions before the Russian revolution and to capitulation to Stalin later. While Trotsky does not give a full analysis on the interaction between the psychology of such leaders and the objective development of the revolution, his insights are nevertheless quite revealing. Two of the key Bolshevik leaders were Kamenev and Zinoviev. This is what Trotsky wrote about Kamenev:

‘Although a Bolshevik almost from the very birth of Bolshevism, Kamenev had always stood on the right flank of the party. Not without theoretical foundation or political instinct, and with a large experience of factional struggle in Russia and a store of political observations made in Western Europe, Kamenev grasped better than most Bolsheviks the general ideas of Lenin, but he grasped them only in order to give them the mildest possible interpretation in practice. You could not expect from him either independence of judgment or initiative in action. A distinguished propagandist, orator, journalist, not brilliant but thoughtful, Kamenev was especially valuable for negotiations with other parties and reconnoitres in other social circles — although from such excursions he always brought back with him a bit of some mood alien to the party. These characteristics of Kamenev were so obvious that almost nobody ever misjudged him as a political figure. Sukhanov remarks in him an absence of “sharp corners.” “It is always necessary to lead him on a tow line,” he says. “He may resist a little, but not strongly.” ’

In other words, an opportunistic political character that impels one to dilute political principles, can always be traced to a weakness in the fundamental personality — to the inability to withstand social pressure and maintain independent thinking and initiative; to the fear of being ostracized, and of being alone. It is always the case that when a person has a weak core, that person does not have a real nourishing connection to him/herself and to his or her closest friends and comrades. In such a case, political leaders including the best Marxists and socialists, cannot withstand the adverse pressure that involves the defense of big political principles. Such leaders will be driven to embrace the prevailing views of their social milieu. In the case of Kamenev and many others Bolshevik and Communist Party leaders, this meant an abandonment of independent thinking and principles, which are exchanged for the security of the herd.

Kamenev and Zinoviev did not capitulate to Stalin overnight. They went back and forth between Trotsky’s left opposition and Stalinism; they finally capitulated to Stalinism in 1926 when it was clear that Trotsky was losing. Thus they could not withstand the pressure of being in a small minority against impact of banishment from the party’s social milieu. In their case resistance against the Stalinists was also tantamount to risking their life.

Zinoviev’s opportunism was not as straightforward as Kamenev’s. Trotsky explains that on a superficial level his character seems to contain the opposite attributes to Kamenev’s political identity:

‘Where Kamenev was a propagandist populariser, Zinoviev was an agitator, and indeed, to quote an expression of Lenin, “nothing but an agitator.” . . . Lacking inner discipline, his mind is completely incapable of theoretical work, and his thoughts dissolve into the formless intuitions of the agitator. Thanks to an exceptionally quick scent, he can catch out of the air whatever formulas are necessary for him — those which will exercise the most effective influence on the masses. . . . Although far more bold and unbridled in agitation than any other Bolshevik, Zinoviev is even less capable than Kamenev of revolutionary initiative. He is, like all demagogues, indecisive.’

Zinoviev’s capitulation to the social pressure of Stalinism and the Communist Party can be trailed to his demagogic character. It can be traced to the demagogue’s symbiotic relationship to others in general. The demagogue needs the cheering and the approval of the people in the street to achieve unity with others, to overcome the painful separateness. But underneath rules the anxiety of the insecure person who cannot think clearly and independently. The thoughts of the subjective demagogue do not come from the ability to assess the objective situation, but from the gut feelings of the ego that knows how to say to right things to get the caressing of the crowd. Underneath lies a damaged core that depends on the crowd’s approval to feel the self worth. Thus, Zinoviev who, depended on the approval of the crowd, also, like Kamenev, depended on the prevailing social mood of the Bolshevik party and ultimately on Stalin approval — such approval like in the case of many others Communists was more decisive than the principles of a humanistic socialist society that failed so miserably in the Soviet Union.” (Alienation in the Post Cold War Era, Chapter 12, “How the Alienating Features of the Socialist/Progressive Movement Contribute to Its Failure,” page 4, footnotes omitted.)

It goes without saying that worse problems of alienation existed within the Third International. The Stalinists were the international of a herd of cows. In order to remain “communist,” the Stalinist leadership and membership shut down any emotional and intellectual independence, which are the pre-requisites of dialectical thinking. The result of this and the Stalinists’ politics were devastating for humanity (the rise of Hitler, World War Two, countless betrayals of revolutions, etc.).

The Trotskyist movement did not do any better when it came to alienation. Since Trotsky’s death, not a single leader has had a clue about how to understand and implement dialectics; therefore, all of the politics of the different Trotskyist sectors have varied from sectarianism to the worst opportunism. The big tendencies (Lambertism, Usec, Militant, Morenoism, etc.) developed opportunistic politics. The smaller groups (SL and its cousins, RWL, etc.) tend to have a mix of opportunist and sectarian politics, with egocentric leaders and extremely degenerated alienated human relationships inside the group. A party with a petty bourgeois aliened internal life cannot become a mass party. This is why the fate of Trotskyism was doomed without leaders who were mature and capable of transcending alienation and building a strong, non-alienated collective leadership that could develop a healthy party, attract the masses, defeat the fake Trotskyists (centrists) and re-claim the banner of the Fourth International. This situation has remained up until today. The sad story is that besides Lenin and Trotsky, there were only a very few people who had any understanding of dialectics outside the realm of abstraction. (I am not talking about some elements of dialectics; many people have to use elements of the dialectics from time to time in order to survive, since dialectics ultimately reflects how the material world works. Centrists use elements of the dialectics from time to time.)

The Fourth International never had a chance to become anything significant without a steeled leadership that transcended alienation and mastered the dialectic. The result: the absence of a revolutionary international and the degeneration of capitalism to the point it has reached today. In the present crisis, we are witnessing the growing threat of a third world war because of the beginning of the clear decline of US imperialism and the rise of new imperialist countries like China. It looks like it’s a race between a new imperialist war and the horrifying destruction of the planet to the point of no return. The dialectic recognizes every second of change in human history, even though humans do not recognize the dialectic. Here we can explain again its central aspect: “the relations of each thing (phenomenon, etc.) are not only manifold, but general, universal. Each thing (phenomenon, process, etc.) is connected with every other. . . not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?].” (Lenin). This can be summarized as the interpenetration of each phenomenon in a constantly changing world.

The inability of the Bolsheviks beyond a few leaders to master dialectics made the alien pressure of the bourgeoisie (both physically and ideologically) intolerable to the breaking point. Thus the ability of the revolutionary movement to think dialectically and function as a steeled but mature leadership has vanished after Trotsky’s death. The absence of an alternative to capitalism allowed capitalism to degenerate further and further (“each thing [phenomenon, process, etc.] is connected with every other.”). Now this further degeneration of capitalism (which can be traced back both to the failure of leadership and to alienation) effects the composition of planet earth (bio-diversity is degenerating fast, climate change), and it is even reflected in the areas in the universe around our planet (less heat is reflected back into space because of climate change, capitalist garbage orbits the planet).

I have just illustrated the “the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?].” (The answer to Lenin’s question is yes, but this answer requires a long explanation.) So far, alienation and the destruction of dialectical thinking and functioning within the revolutionary movement have excluded a progressive alternative for humanity. This has given capitalism the space it has needed to evolve into the monster it is today. Thus all changes, transitions, and interpenetrations of opposites in the class struggle and in historical developments lost a progressive unity and a positive side. Without a socialist alternative, they have evolved into their very opposite: capitalism, which is taking the planet and humanity down the toilet.

In every declining socio-economic system that has outlived its usefulness, the seeds of the new social system begin to emerge within the old system. Thus, the bourgeoisie emerged before the feudal system had fully declined and collapsed. There was a sort of “dual power” for a period of time. This is not taking place today between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (not in general but in short times of revolutionary situations) because there is a new, complicated dilemma. Capitalism does not decompose organically, or with relatively moderate social upheavals. Hence Leninism (the need for a revolutionary leadership within the proletariat) arises.

The extreme difficulties of getting rid of this barbaric system exist for many reasons (which this article does not cover). One of the most striking reasons is that the seeds of socialism within the capitalist system are rotten and half dead. The seeds must be stronger and better than previous seeds in a declining class society, because this is the last and most resistant class society in the history of class societies that have functioned for thousands of years. A new human being who begins to transcend all the mystics, garbage, fears, lack of emotional and independent thinking (to list just a few items)—that is, everything that makes us a reflection of the stupidity of class society—must emerge at least in an elementary form if we want to build a leadership capable of leading the masses to overthrow capitalism. In other words, a humanistic person who is capable of exploring his or her full potential must begin to develop as an alternative to the submissive humans who follow the destructive road of capitalism despite their desperation and suffering. This is one of the fundamental laws of dialectics: The new begins to emerge within the old, like the new flowers that begin to emerge toward the end of the cold winter.

By “new seeds,” I mean the seeds in a genuine revolutionary international. When we talk about a revolutionary leadership, we mean leaders who are capable of transcending alienation at least to some level, and of mastering dialectics. One task (transcending alienation) is profoundly connected to the other (mastering dialectics); both aspects interpenetrate with each other and should contribute to the further development of strong and mature leaders.

I have no illusions that fighting for the development of such seeds is going to be easy. Most Trotskyist leaders do not want to talk about alienation (since it is about themselves), and few have a clue how to think dialectically. We are very afraid of dealing with our conditioning under capitalism. After I wrote a book on alienation about ten years ago, I distributed it to my friends. Most of them could not deal with the content, and I received similar emotional reactions: “It’s about me, isn’t it?" I am aware of the difficulties, and I do not want to build a new Trotskyist cult in which everyone meditates for five minutes before and after a meeting and shares their emotional problems before the meeting begins.

However, if we want to go forward, certain minimum developments have to occur. The most important one is our ability to engage in a dialectical dialogue instead of having screaming “debates” when there are differences within the revolutionary party. This requires emotionally mature leaders who are capable of recognizing when their positions are beginning to be governed by emotions and old dogmas. In addition, this means a mature collective leadership without a main leader who is dull when it comes to real dialectical thinking and “rich” when it comes to the manipulation of the membership. Mature leaders need to know when differences are secondary—theoretical or tactical—and are then able to conduct patient discussions, waiting for life and future experience to resolve the differences. We need to trust the opposition because it is mature and capable of examining new developments dialectically, and we need to let the development of the class struggle confirm or deny its positions. In a healthy party such as this, one side eventually concedes an error. When the error or difference is tactical or theoretical, discussion and subsequent experience will only enrich the entire party and sharpen its collective dialectical thinking.

On the other hand, revolutionaries need to see when deep differences arise within the organization which boil down to the reflection of two opposing classes (the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie). In this case, the differences are reflected in the sharp tone of the discussions, and the proletarian side needs to trace the opposition to its class origins. And it needs to do so using the dialectic method.

If revolutionary Trotskyism revives, its seeds will not be rotten and dead. They will buzz with new life, and buds will eventually emerge.

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