Culture and Revolution

 Originally posted here 8th April 2020

As culture shifts across the globe workers are beginning to realise their importance and power again - but can this be harnessed against the Capitalist class which exploit them?

Building an effective opposition within the Neo-Con, post-industrial societies 

David Harvey, in a recent Democracy-at-Work offering, once again, with his usual eminently Marxist analysis, and profound cultural understanding, finds it necessary to dramatically switch the emphasis that the Left must take, in order to effectively combat the results of 40 years of Neo-Con Capitalism, which have clearly effectively de-unionised and de-politicised the Working Class Movements in Countries like the UK and the USA.

Now, there is a lot wrong with the TV series The Sixties (currently broadcasting on Sky in the UK), BUT, nevertheless, it does reveal much of that crucial tumultuous decade which prepared the ground for the later Neo-Con transformation of World Capitalism, which by the 1980s, with Thatcher and Reagan, was beginning to dismantle the traditional Working Class oppositional politics with the systematic destruction of its historical strengths within organised Labour, and, in the USA, the Cold War effective annihilation of all the Political Parties of the Left!

Yet France, with its Gilet Jaune Left Populism, and the current joint action with the still existing Unions' own General Strike, is demonstrating what can be done in favoured areas. And a single major crack in the Neo-Con System, still not recovered from the 2008 Economic Collapse, could this time precipitate an unrecoverable Crisis from the Capitalists point of view!

(Editor: the current worldwide health / economic crisis, for example)


The Socialist Agenda

But, the usual separation of major campaigns of "The Sixties", and the lack of a Socialist Party backing them all, guaranteed failure in spite of the remarkable numbers often involved.

BUT with a Common Socialist Agenda, and a combined fight, and, a concerted effort to prevent the always agitated-for separation of campaigns, which will always and inevitably oppose this necessary aim, and the "Please Everybody" demand from them.

It must be countered, by making the disenfranchised ex-Working Class the only reliable source for Real Change on every single front.

(Editor: they can no longer hide from the vital role 'key workers' play in keeping the whole system going)

And, within that sector, the major Class Objective will be in providing a Young Socialist Movement for the discarded Youth - just as we did successfully in the 1960s with the Labour Party's Young Socialists. That youth will thrill their de-classed elders, and energise the whole undertaking, as the introduction of the Youth did in the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties in the USA!

The Left needs a Socialist Party committed to literally all campaigns, but always unified by socialist solutions, and energised by a commitment to Working Class youth, with activities and facilities concentrated upon where those Youth are, yet mobilising them as the spearhead!

And, contradictably, NOT seeking the support of the Educated or the Middle Class, while at the same time delivering the very best informed and well explained Theory. But allowing NO exclusions of our generalist demands, and the very best organisation when under attack!

Without such a unifying participation, individual campaigns will quickly rise, and just as quickly fall. So, every single action or strike must be immediately supported, not just with individual participators. but with banners expressing both support and Socialist demands.

And, demonstrations, no matter how small, and a march directly to support the fight, with food, and collections of money arranged for the fighters, from Working Class Estates, accompanied with the most vigorous chants and energy!

Of Cycles and Dialectics

 

Dialectical Dynamics

In Part 17 of David Harvey’s series of Lectures upon Marx’s Grundrisse, he reveals some crucial features of Marx’s version of Dialectics, based upon the repeated Cycles developed in the very intrinsic dynamics of both establishing the wholly New, within processes that then become parts of repeated Cycles, and which in their subsequent development, also elicit other consequent related Cycles, all of which, thereafter, mutually-determine each other’s qualities!

But they never settle into finally Fixed Forms. This can be confusing for readers of Marx, who expect definitions of things to stay the same - as they do in all Pluralist forms of study.

Indeed, they are always undergoing constant changes, and suffering consequent Crises, for Dialectics indeed emphasizes the Holist nature of Reality!

Now, this makes it very different for Classical Formal Logic (a Pluralist view), which has dominated all Reasoning since the Ancient Greek Intellectual Revolution. This Logic must consider things Qualitatively Fixed, though they can vary Quantitatively, and so-called Understanding becomes a kind of Logical Game - with fixed rules! The most fundamental rule of all forbids contradiction.

And, this meant that, for well over two millennia, that there was NO way of explaining Qualitative Development - which was reduced to Quantitative changes of fixed entities. So though the wholly New was often recognised, it could never be explained: a crude “Quantity into Quality” was merely assumed, and its circumstances noted, and used to predict when & How such things may change, but never Why!

But, certainly, how Marx understood such things, in his Grundrisse, was revealing its intricaces to Harvey!

And, some of the most revolutionary processes are revealed there as to how-and-why the wholly New could first emerge, give birth to other consequent processes and cycles, and were then, unavoidably, transformed, recursively by their own creations!

Indeed, though neither Marx nor Harvey were aware of it, recent research into both long-lasting Natural Stabilities within Reality, and their roles both within and outside of Emergent Interludes have been recognised and both described and explained via the concept of “Balanced Stabilities” - Stability itself is not only dynamic, but contradictorily accomplished via change.

For, these are combined phenomena, due to many simultaeous processes acting together, in balancing pairs, which fairly quickly, when subjected to cycles of variability, gradually filter out lesser contributions, yet establish relatively stable pairs of opposing processes, which effectively deliver an overall, co-ordinating bunch of these, which together provide a self-maintaining Stability overall, and, which is usually self-maintaining, for extended periods of time, but which can in extreme circumstances, precipitate an overall dissociation of all the individual component “balances” and finally cause the overall collapse of the complete “Balanced Stability” - a Revolution, in fact!

In consequence usually immediately forming new opposing Balanced Pairs, and ultimately composite Bundles in wholly New “Balanced Stabilities” in so- called “Emergent Interludes”

And elsewhere, and over time, these features, and others like them, are THE ONLY explanations for real, entirely- innovative creation of the totally NEW! Evolution is impossible with a strictly pluralist view of Reality.

And, the holistic mutal affecting of multiple simulateous processes, and cycles, makes the incredibly long odds of changes by mere Random Chance, in an entirely Pluralist World, a total non-starter!

Also, and perhaps even more important, the Pluralist set up is exactly what leads to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, permanently immobile Stability as the end point of varying factors, and the whole concept of Entropy as nonsense.

And, perhaps, even more importantly, the many wrong turnings due to Plurality, have been the myriads of contradictions that it has caused, initially in the division of studies of Reality into separate “Subjects” and “Specialisms” as a workaround, but most profoundly of all in dispensing with very effective Logical Models like The Aether, as an undetectable Universal Substrate filling all of Space, and the dispensing of Physical Explanations, replacing them with INADMISSIBLE, entirely pluralist mathematical Equations, which contain none of this crucial dynamic quality, whatsoever.

Reality may not have any pre-ordained directions of Progress, but it certainly behaves very differently when everything can potentially affect and transform everything else.

Exploring this brave new world is where Science must go next.

This post was taken from Issue 70 of SHAPE Journal entitled Cycles. 

Joseph E. Stiglitz and the Trajectory of Chinese Communism since 1980

Stiglitz in China

In a recent Lecture to a Norwegian Business School Conference, Joseph E. Stiglitz (from Columbia University in the USA - he has been advising the Chinese Communist Leadership since the early 1980s, upon a transition to fitting China into a Market Economy globally), was, in his contribution to that Conference, extremely informative, in ways totally unmentioned either by the Citadels of Capitalism globally, OR by the current Left, supposedly opposing that system (including, surprisingly, many of the self-professed the Marxists)!

His contribution was NOT, of course, superior to those critics of Capitalism, but it DID highlight the inadequacies of the current Left's policies for fighting for both the End of Capitalism, in the West, AND, crucially, exactly how to achieve the necessary Revolution, without the major liabilities of the Rise of Stalinist Bureaucracies, as have followed such Revolutions in the past.

Now, immediately prior to the period that Stiglitz covers, the writer of this paper was resident in Hong Kong, as a lecturer in a University there, and had visited Communist China, as an already committed Marxist. So I was aware of the then current fight between the Maoist so-called "Gang of Four" (including Mao's wife) and the "Capitalist Roaders" - led by Deng, so I knew who won that fight, and how they disagreed with Mao's "Cultural Revolution". And, I travelled through the countryside observing how the smaller Country Soviets were working. So I am able to link up Stiglitz's account to its immediate prehistory in the Chinese Communist Party. But I must emphasise, most strongly, that in spite of the great value in studying Stiglitz's account, he is, certainly, no Marxist, nor even a Socialist. He is a Capitalist Economist, who accepts Capitalism, and plots its "best possible" consequent Trajectory economically, as both essential, yet worthy of much better critical study than it is usually accorded.

Indeed, literally all the criticisms of Capitalism, that both inform and energise the Socialist and Communist oppositions to it, are totally missing in Stiglitz: for his account is more like a modern Keynesian critique of current Neoliberalist Capitalism, rather than taking a steadfast position of requiring Capitalism's total termination.

Yet interestingly, Stiglitz was brought in to help, as it became increasingly clear to the Chinese Leadership, that the insertion of some tightly regulated Capitalist enterprises in China, was running into problems with the many country-localities in China, that were not included in the joint schemes, and these leftover-and-leftout town and village "Soviets" were clearly not benefiting from the economic changes, and were beginning to oppose the plans of the Central Bureaucracy, which would ultimately reveal iteself in the Tianamen Square Events: and require a Wholly New Phase, integrating this opposition into becoming part of the New Turn, and economic boom, in what was called the TVE (Town & Village Initiative), but to make it work, any remnants of the "Soviet" nature (which I had observed when I visited China before 1980), just had to go - and this, in time, would again require yet another New Phase!

Photographs from my travels in Communist China, 1979

But, as the reader will have already imagined, the alternatives to be put forward on this blog are most certainly NOT Keynesian criticisms of Capitalism, but, on the contrary, major criticisms of the current Left's opposition to Western Capitalism, as they were surprisingly and increasingly revealed by the experiences in China in the last 40 years, which has revealed a very Marxian Trajectory of differently necessary Phases of development, as what were previously-Working-Policies ran out of steam, and had to be regularly replaced, but, in a very pragmatic - "Crossing the River by Feeling for the Stones" way, as they put it! For, every change in Policy, was NOT occurring within an established Socialist Economy, but now in a mixed Communist/Capitalist Economy, both unavoidably linked to World Capitalism, and thereby guaranteed to engender such Crises regularly, and ultimately, at some point, precipitate a Wholesale Collapse.

NO, what I intend to extract from those twisted-temporary-experiences in China, is a much better Theory, extracted from and among Real 21st century Marxists, intended to guarantee the Success of Socialist Revolution in the West!

For, a comprehensive, all-areas-applicable Marxism (more properly described as Dialectical Materialism) was not sufficiently fully defined by Karl Marx - for though his contributions were Truly Revolutionary, they were not soundly applicable when not limited only to Marx's completed work: indeed the absolutely crucial area of The Sciences, was not significantly addressed, comprehensively, until the second decade of this century, with the various critiques of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory published in SHAPE Journal and elsewhere on the Web, by 2019.

And, in addition, the now available extensive range of lectures by David Harvey, all now on Youtube, both on Marx's Kapital and the Grundrisse, have brilliantly revealed aspects of Marx's method and begun to make them more generally applicable, BUT ONLY if tackled in the same way as Marx had worked, and in addition by scientifically-trained-experts, not only covering the specialist ground, but also, and crucially and necessarily extending the Marxist Method.

Indeed, though he didn't realise why it was necessary, Stiglitz, in his account of the trajectory in the last 40 years of Communist China, clearly identified the various key Crises, in the sequence of required changes, which could alternatively be explained using Harvey's interpretations of Marx's Method, but extended beyond what Marx had access to.

Now, the most important re-application of these methods is NOT primarily in addressing the failures of the Stalinists in China, but, in the far more important criticisms of the truncated appreciations of Marxism currently available, and unavoidably incorrectly applied to the necessary political agitations NOW, against Capitalism in the West! For, no matter what they all call themselves, the various Left political elements are NOT equipped with the 21st century Marxism that I am talking about: and hence, necessarily, their "Theory" leads to both Strategies, Tactics and Propaganda, that are all doomed to result in failure!

And, if Proof is required, they should all be pressed to explain both the various Phases that have been forced upon the Stalinists in China, AND, even more importantly, exactly how those same analyses can be effectively applied to their own current positions and policies - for there definitely are similarities, indicating what inexplicable-to-them failures they will most certainly encounter, and hope to understand enough, to be able to plot paths around them.

And, if they cannot do it, redirect them to both Harvey and Marx's original works to effect a radical change in what they consider to be MARXISM!

For, no-one on the Left seems to be aware of the Revolutionary Situation they are careering towards at some considerable speed, and are ALL at a loss to see what transforming Transitional Demands they will undoubtedly need, to orient themselves and Their Class to what must be done!

Have they read "Ten Days that Shook the World" by John Reed?

Do they not know why the slogan "Bread, Peace and Land", was their cry, and that it worked, and why it did so?

What should our demands be?

The Role of Mankind

Sándor Bortnyik: The New Adam, 1924

The Role of Mankind in Understanding 

and Interacting with their World

The Grundrisse Lectures by David Harvey are already-and-unavoidably taking the study of Marxism well beyond a dialectical analysis of Capitalist Economics, to also begin to delve ever more deeply and revealingly into Mankind's essential-and-unique role as the only Thinking species upon Planet Earth, and maybe also in all the possibly reachable Universe at large!

For, productive Labour has long been Mankind's most self-determining and indeed qualitatively-developing feature in their evolution, and therefore has been playing the Key role in their Socio-Economic advances with respect to their increasing knowledge amd control with in their containing-and-developing Living World context, in which they both dwell, seek-to-survive, and even to prosper.

For, along with their bipedal gait, and a flexible and manipulatable hand, with an opposable thumb, Human Beings, in consequence of all their extensive potentialities, have also developed advanced, new and unique cerebral capabilities, which, after millions of years, led first to primitive tool-making, from sharp flint fragments, as well as the means to make and control fire, develop a Hunter/Gatherer, Family group existence, and simultaneously initiate the beginnings of Language, which, all taken together, enabled their considerable geographical spread across literally all accessible areas of our the globe.

And ultimately, via the transforming effects of the epoch-changing Neolithic Revolution, which also brought-in the beginnings of extensive Human Societies - and via Farming and Animal Husbandry, also led, in a remarkably short period of time, to Intellectual Revolutions, primarily in Ancient Greece, but also (and in a very different and important direction) in Ancient India too.

For, though initially somewhat limited by the development, for the first time, of a kind of Reasoning (the strict and damaging, but easily arrived-at Plurality), still managed to deliver both the very first rational discipline, Mathematics, along with a kind of Logic, based only upon wholly fixed relations and concepts!

Thereafter, Mankind was no longer just a continuing development of Homo Habilis (the priginal Handy Man), but, by then, one already capable of Thinking too: and that vastly transformed his capabilities, in that he also sought Reasons for everything that occurred, and NOT ONLY in what way and how he could use those revealed discoveries.

Man was now a Thinker, as well as a Tool-Maker and User, so instead of only asking "How?", he also began to ask "Why?"

So, there arose a division of Labour between achievements by hand, and those by brain, that were ALL still only carried out by Human Beings. And, aids to the making of new things, though involving an essential content of New Thinking, were still the products of Mankind, as also, of course, were the then invented machines.

And though, in modern times, these techniques will be programmed into Computers, rather than being the mere spades and wheeled-vehicles handled directly by people: they are still designed by, driven by, and even programmed by them too!

Sándor Bortnyik: The New Eve, 1924

Artificial Intelligence is merely the instructions devised by an expert in the given field, and then coded by a programmer, co-opeerating with that expert, then entered into a computer-driven-machine. That was the actual Labour-and-prior-knowledge involved in equipping, such a system!

AND, crucially, if that programmer was NOT implementing the detailed knowledge-and-understanding of an expert in the Real World field involved, the program delivered will be useless! The machine is still totally dependant upon the labour of the programmer, and, in turn, that involved in the knowledge of the discipline expert.

As such a System Designer myself, I can assert that NO machine can ever THINK!

Indeed, the quality of Thinking that goes into a Computer Program, AND a controlled machine, even today, is still totally inadequate to do literally ALL the tasks we can currently give them - and will always continue to give them in the future. And the reason for this resides in the kind of Logic (or Reasoning) that is implicit in all current Programming Languages and throughout the whole of Mathematics too.

Reasoning, as we generally know it, is wholly Pluralistic. Formal Logic assumes all relations and concepts are - forever FIXED - like the components of a machine.

Indeed, I spent most of the 1980s designing tailor-made control-programs across a very wide range of diverse disciplines, always along with discipline experts, in a University in Glasgow. Yet, nevertheless, only finally began to successfully address these major flaws via dedicated Multimedia Aids, applied to Film and Video recordings of dynamic Dance Performance and Choreography, in the first decade of the new Millennium. And, frankly, I have seen neither a similar general use, either in that area, or anywhere else, in the time since then.

So what is generally considered to be Artificial Intelligence, applied to computer-controlled machines, is still wholly pluralistic (comprised of fixed and discrete components - very unlike the evolving natural world) and totally incapable of applying any Human-like Intelligence automatically.

Indeed, the calamities frequently experienced in such situations, are not caused by correctable errors, but by irretrievable Pluralist Logic.

As a qualified professional Physicist, it still took me a lifetime of work in the field and latterly a whole decade of dedicated research to demolish the wholly Pluralistic Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, currently still dominant in Sub Atomic Physics.

Indeed, both ALL Technology, and all the so-called Sciences too, have not only been crippled by Pluralist Reasoning, but also completely idealised in abandoning physical explanations for mere mathematical formulae, in order to conform to the Plurality of ALL Mathematics.

Sándor Bortnyik: Composition II, Pink and Blue, 1921

And Industry, for centuries, has had to break recognised useful Natural processes (always involving multiple, contending factors), to turn such processes into sequences of very simplified restricted separated-single-factor processes, involving purposely arranged-for pluralistic steps to attempt to replicate the Natural multi-factor situations: and, consequently, only skirting around the Real non pluralistic World.

The seemingly unsolveable problems have always been to attempt to handle simultaneous, mutually-affecting factors, in order to both control sequences of different factors, and separate their individual effects, and thereby lose their various cross influences. Indeed, the nearest that could be achieved was by whole sequences of single law steps, but these were not only always approximations, but also always, by the way they were set up, could not but eliminate all cross influences, so that things that always happened in Natural phenomena, were guaranteed to be absent in the whole set of simplified sequences,

Indeed, it was at first considered to be impossible to handle a dynamic and Holistic World scientifically, but modern researches into multifactor circumstances have begun to reveal how so-called temporary, and long-persisting "Balanced Stabilities" can, and indeed do, replace the supposedly-permanent Stabilities on which Plurality is based. And the natural processes, in the Real World, are actually made up of alternating sequences of different long-lasting Balanced Stabilities, interspersed with short-period Emergent Interludes, where one long-persisting Balanced Stability is, via a series of Crises, finally totally dissociated. And, when, in what appears to be a resultant Chaos, a constructive Phase, via a series of partially successful Crises, finally achieves a wholly New and long lasting Balanced Stability! We can call this an Emergence, or even a Revolution. 

These can never be explained or understood mechanistically. 

The role of Mankind now, must be to try and work out a different way...

The real trajectory of Qualitative Change

Coronavirus and the Geopolitics of Capitalism

Edward Burtynsky documents the effects of Globalised Capitalism on the landscape

Harvey's Import of Geography into The Development of Capitalism

I feel I must strongly recommend David Harvey's two part contribution upon the geographic dynamics of Capitalism's totally unavoidable expansionist Development in his Anti Capitalist Chronicles on Youtube.

For, as a Geographer himself, he is ideally placed to wed his professional studies and expertise in this area, to his current fruitful and empowering involvement with his critical studies within his modern Marxist stance - via his historically long series of lectures upon Marx's Das Kapital. along with his subsequent-and-crucial treatment of Marx's earlier work upon Grundrisse.

But, though both essential and valuable in revealing that important, and sure to be on-going aspect, it is in an area which has thus far solely been limited to the entirely Pro-Capitalist lobby. So, as such, it delivers to Harvey yet another exclusively Pro-Capitalist body of Research, very similar to that which confronted Marx in his lifelong studies in Economics, as literally all his sources were from Pro-Capitalist apologists for that Emerging System also.

And, of course many of the chosen answers to address Crises in the Capitalist System were often of a Global Nature, with Imperialism extending Capitalism's reach into previously independent countries to secure them as protected sources of necessary resources, and even as more profitable sites for Productive Enterprises, because of the low cost of indigenous Labour.

So, Harvey will certainly have a similar onerous task in extracting as much Truth, and damning as much Falsity, as he can from those committed sources.

For example, without that vital critique, his revelation of the Global Dimension of the Geographical aspect of Capitalism, is certainly NOT where the forces aiming for Socialism can derive the required Understanding and consequent extra energy for the battle to come. Taken alone, without a demolishing exposure of both its own and all other involved contradictions, it would certainly seem to deliver an overpoweringly negative set of possibilities, to any so-derived political perspectives.

Yet, if there is one thing that a drivingly-positive Socialist Campaign both could-and-should contain, it is such a Global perspective, to guide its necessary adjustments to cope with such contradictions driving all attempted solutions via geographic relocations of one kind or another - something which is less and less evident, especially now, with the Coronavirus Pandemic focussing everything solely into the Family Home.

Yet, of course, the current unresolved contradictions of Capitalism are precisely what have turned this Event into a Global calamity.

While, the reactions of a country like Cuba show what could, and indeed should be being done, as they offer to send Medical Teams to wherever in the world they are needed! The most pressing question within this current Crisis, has to be what Socialists can do, when they are not only limited to their own homes, but also exist in a time in which the Labour Organisations (particularly of Trades Unions), are no longer able to act within physical factories,  offices and schools, but also with the difficulty of concerted action on the streets.

And, there are undoubtedly aspects of these restrictions that are political too: for the Global calamity of the Coronavirus that will press the right-wing governments in Britain and the USA, to change things to make the Working Class PAY for the Crisis - as they always do! And, as restrictions are eased, will elicit action on the streets as the Governments do what we expect them to do!

For example the crisis in the USA could be truly colossal, as they have NO National Health Service, and the obvious solutions possible in a Socialist State will never be allowed in a staunchly Capitalism Regime! Look at the Black Lives Matter protests for a taste of where things might be heading...

Any action we undertake later will have to have been prepared for NOW, both theoretically and organisationally!

But how do organisations get built, in such circumstances, and what possible economic actions can thereby be effectively organised, and then implemented upon Social Media? For, it has also effectively been a shutdown, of all of these possibilities too!

Now, all the constraints are NOT totally determined by the extended Corona Crisis, for China (where it all began) has already turned the corner of a complete shutdown, which proves that some of the extensions elsewhere definitely due to the political counter-measures (and their tempos of implementation) both of which were decided-upon-and-implemented, for other so-far unadmitted reasons, apart from the Pandemic itself.

The real revelations of their intentions, will only start to become obvious, by the way Governments plan the emergence from those measures: for example, how China, and then everyone else, perhaps very differently, organise things via the threat of a second wave of the virus, due to the nature of the prior conditions for its Emergence and thereafter, the actions put in place to constrain its further progress.

Indeed, the crucial one will be the USA, for its over 300 million inhabitants, the almost total lack of a National Health Service, the Health Consciousness that such a lack of relevant policies engenders, and the exorbitant cost of their Private Health Companies, and the very high prices of pharmaceuticals, that seem to threaten chaos in that increasingly benighted Country!

And to-cap-it-all, most of the poorer countries on Earth will have literally nothing to protect them when the Crisis hits, and even the newly developing nations like Brazil and India, seem destined for chaos too: for the military have ousted their neo-fascist dictatorship in Brazil, for a purely military alternative, and the Hindu leader of India could easily precipitate a Hindu/Moslem series of pogroms, if not an all-out Civil War.

The Left-worldwide must start now before the more reactionary constraints are implemented from-the-top-down, in using the means they still have - The Internet, and their new capabilities, to prepare for all they will need in the next phase planned by Capitalist Governments.

And the political responses, from a still immobilised population, will have to be what can be organised on Social Media, and with the won-over-support of the National Health workers, and will involve financial arrangements over the Internet!

You can watch David Harvey's series on the Geopolitics of Capitalism, below:

Harvey on Marx's Grundrisse

Fantastic Marxist theory in action here

Culture and Revolution

As culture shifts across the globe workers are beginning to realise their importance and power again - but can this be harnessed against the Capitalist class which exploit them?

Building an effective opposition within the Neo-Con, post-industrial societies 

David Harvey, in a recent Democracy-at-Work offering, once again, with his usual eminently Marxist analysis, and profound cultural understanding, finds it necessary to dramatically switch the emphasis that the Left must take, in order to effectively combat the results of 40 years of Neo-Con Capitalism, which have clearly effectively de-unionised and de-politicised the Working Class Movements in Countries like the UK and the USA.

Now, there is a lot wrong with the TV series The Sixties (currently broadcasting on Sky in the UK), BUT, nevertheless, it does reveal much of that crucial tumultuous decade which prepared the ground for the later Neo-Con transformation of World Capitalism, which by the 1980s, with Thatcher and Reagan, was beginning to dismantle the traditional Working Class oppositional politics with the systematic destruction of its historical strengths within organised Labour. and, in the USA, the Cold War effective annihilation of all the Political Parties of the Left!

Yet France, with its Gilet Jaune Left Populism, and the current joint action with the still existing Unions' own General Strike, is demonstrating what can be done in favoured areas. And a single major crack in the Neo-Con System, still not recovered from the 2008 Economic Collapse, could this time precipitate an unrecoverable Crisis from the Capitalists point of view!

(Editor: the current worldwide health / economic crisis, for example)


The Socialist Agenda

But, the usual separation of major campaigns of "The Sixties", and the lack of a Socialist Party backing them all, guaranteed failure in spite of the remarkable numbers often involved.

BUT with a Common Socialist Agenda, and a combined fight, and, a concerted effort to prevent the always agitated-for separation of campaigns, which will always and inevitably oppose this necessary aim, and the "Please Everybody" demand from them.

It must be countered, by making the disenfranchised ex-Working Class the only reliable source for Real Change on every single front.

(Editor: they can no longer hide from the vital role 'key workers' play in keeping the whole system going)

And, within that sector, the major Class Objective will be in providing a Young Socialist Movement for the discarded Youth - just as we did successfully in the 1960s with the Labour Party's Young Socialists. That youth will thrill their de-classed elders, and energise the whole undertaking, as the introduction of the Youth did in the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties in the USA!

The Left needs a Socialist Party committed to literally all campaigns, but always unified by socialist solutions, and energised by a commitment to Working Class youth, with activities and facilities concentrated upon where those Youth are, yet mobilising them as the spearhead!

And, contradictably, NOT seeking the support of the Educated or the Middle Class, while at the same time delivering the very best informed and well explained Theory. But allowing NO exclusions of our generalist demands, and the very best organisation when under attack!

Without such a unifying participation, individual campaigns will quickly rise, and just as quickly fall. So, every single action or strike must be immediately supported, not just with individual participators. but with banners expressing both support and Socialist demands.

And, demonstrations, no matter how small, and a march directly to support the fight, with food, and collections of money arranged for the fighters, from Working Class Estates, accompanied with the most vigorous chants and energy!

Has David Harvey abandoned real Marxism?

Is A New Approach Needed?

If the traditional Organisations

of the Working Classhave been dismantled,

how will they be replaced?

David Harvey is one of the leading Marxist scholars in the world, and his analyses of Marx's key works are invaluable for any current Marxist theorist or activist. In one of his Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, he not only bemoaned the loss of the traditional Political and Industrial Organisations of the World Working Class, but also admitted that all the present day alternatives were both usually entirely disparate in their mobilising-motivations, as well as always being short-lived in the Mass actions they organised and participated in.

And, even though he also saw absolutely no-way-out of Capitalism's ever multiplying crises either, he could not conceive of what he called "A Revolutionary Solution".

Yet, without such a demolishing of the current Capitalist Structures of Provision, Distribution, and Enforcement being so eliminated, the Working Class (in no position to be self-supporting in these regards) would as a result suffer the most!

It was, as Harvey saw it, more like the terminations of many prior Economic Systems via unavoidable demolishing cataclysms, that could never, for truly long periods of time, remedy the collapse, delivering only a Dark Age, which took a considerable amount of time to slowly-find working alternatives, especially in what would now be the most highly developed Ex-Capitalist States.

Indeed, no matter what means he considered, he concluded that a Social Democratic transformation of Capitalism was the only way forward, and that within which, wholly new pro-Working Class facilities, as well as appropriate Social Services and access to Education, which could possibly be constructed FIRST, to equip the Class for Revolution.

But that did happen in the UK, following the Second World War! I know because I benefited from it directly, as a Working Class boy from a very deprived background, who got an Education and ended up a Professor in a University. Yet Education at all levels was still staffed by the old Middle Class. I was educated to join those colleagues instead, and never to appropriately equip my Class!

But, how on earth did a majorly Peasant State like Tsarist Russia, ever manage to do it? Harvey doesn't answer this question.

Also, Harvey does not consider that the Working Class-in-Arms could take over Capitalist enterprises, Trading Firms, Banks, and the rest, Pay No Compensation, and from the outset re-organise them Democratically as Worker-Owned and Run enterprises. For, after all, they had always staffed such firms under Capitalism. It would be the ex-Ruling Class who would not even be able to feed themselves, or work the complex machines of Industry. 

They were tasks always carried out by the Working Class!

Amazon Warehouse by Andreas Gursky

Globalisation and neoliberalism may have completely changed the way industrial capitalism works, but the computer-controlled warehousing and distributive arrangements are still ALL staffed by ex-workers, who had lost their well paid jobs and unions, and got their current posts wherever they could find them - thereafter kept totally isolated from one another (in roles such as delivery drivers).

They could, after the Revolution, come together collectively to organise what they now OWNED. And, once-skilled workers could get together and forcibly take over premises, machines and facilities, as well as transport to construct and run all ex-capitalist service companies, and transform them into Real Social Services.

Come on David, we are talking about a Revolution!

Read it again Dave ;)

The Diverse Tasks for Revolutionaries

Revolution of the Mind

The essential modern extensions to a Marxist analysis of Capitalism are clearly underway with contributions like those of David Harvey. And, Richard Wolff correctly extols the virtues of Worker Co-ps as an alternative to Capitalist forms of production.

But these contributions are by no means sufficient to build an effective revolutionary organisation, capable, when a genuine revolutionary situation emerges, of leading the Working Class to finally overthrow Capitalism. Indeed, literally nowhere are such organisations being built!

I know because I spent a good part of my adult life in professedly Revolutionary organisations, yet none of them were anywhere close to being up to the competences required. And it was not just in their political organisation, or even their policies: they were, in retrospect, emasculated shadows of the real thing - embodied in such as the Russian Bolsheviks.

And, they were not only very top-down in their bureaucratic organisation, but also lamentably lacking in developing the essential and radically different Philosophy of Marxism - Dialectical Materialism!  Indeed, even their reasoning was dominated by the old Formal Reasoning, which had led to Hegel's attempt to correct its pluralist disabilities, via his instituting into it the directly contrary Dialectical Approach.

And as a professional physicist, I couldn't even raise any interest in the primary-philosophical-task still outstanding among self-professed Marxists - namely, both the philosophical, and the physical, defeat of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in Modern Sub Atomic Physics. Indeed, in bringing it up, I was admonished for using it to avoid the pressing day-to-day rasks of political Activism!

None of the parties I joined were general Dialectical Materialists: they were, in fact, well out-of-date, and inadequate purely economic Marxists, and political activists only, and they never discussed Marx's actual revolutionary philosophy at all. It most certainly did not guide their activities, or their publications.

Yet, it was undoubtedly Marx's creation of the wholly new philosophical standpoint of Dialectical Materialism, that enabled all his consequent contributions. But as a single individual, addressing the whole gigantic area of Capitalist Economics, he never had the time to address all the other crucial areas in the same way.

And, the most important of these, Science, has still not been addressed by any of the "Marxist" groups.

Marxism can only advance if it is diversified...

Dialectics: Fixed and Variable

The Profundity of Qualitative Changes

I have spent a considerable amount of time, over recent years, effectively condemning the Principle of Plurality outright, even though it was one of the most significant achievement of the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th Century BC, and I necessarily did that not only to criticise its inherent weaknesses, but to also in addition simultaneously applaud its major contribution to Human Thought and Reasoning.

Both certainly had to be done! For all developments can never be purely absolute and positive: Reality does not deliver absolute Truth ever, but only aspects or parts of it, which unavoidably alight upon the easiest simplifications, which always have damagingly negative effects too. It is also an admission of the inadequacies of Thinking in Mankind, who were, after all, fairly recent originators of such wholly new processes in relation to addressing Reality.

Yet, the obvious alternative, the Principle of Holism, defined at about the same time, by The Buddha in India, certainly delivered no easy one-for-one superior replacement to Plurality. Indeed, it too has subsequently defeated the Buddha's disciples ever since, in attempting to deliver a coherent, useable and developable alternative, in spite of its undoubted wondrous moments of real Wisdom.

And, that turns out to be both its strength and its weakness: for no holistic system has yet ever been easily extracted from it, as a basis for Explaining the World causally - not least because it so frequently could clearly turn many situations into something quite different, or even their direct opposites.

Most important of all, in putting Qualitative Change at the heasrt of all Develoopment, it made the explanation of the consequent Emerging-New wholly impossible to derive directly from its producing circumstances.

The seeming impossibility of there being a useable System of Reasoning, tended to relegate its profound use to creative artists of various kinds, who, in individual Works-of-Art, could deliver profound moments of revelation only.

Yet, in spite of their Plurality, which considered all entities and processes as fixed, the Greeks' intellectual achievements remarkably included the invention of Mathematics, which as exclusively the study of Pure Forms alone, could indeed legitimately make that assumption, and when they illegitimately also extended that supposition to both Reasoning and Science, though generally undoutedly incorrect, it did indeed reflect the apparent constancy of most things - most of the time - the everywhere evidently temporary, yet long-lasting Stabilities of Reality, not only allowed Plurality to be a reasonable approximation, but it could also be guaranteed artificially by both greatly simplifying situations, and also holding things still.

It enabled Technology, but inhibited explanatory Science and developmental Reasoning. And, therefore, it was wholly incapable of explaing significant Developments both in an Evolving World, and in Creative Thinking.

It took all of 2,300 years before Hegel systematically tackled Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, with his attempt to include Qualitative Change into Formal Reasoning, which he termed Dialectics, though it was a member of his Young Hegelians, Karl Marx, who first extended it to the study of Reality with a vastly recast Dialectical Materialism, which he successfully applied to the current Capitalist Economic System in his major work Das Kapital.

Now, embedded in that work implicitly were the required definitions and Methodology of the New Stance, but he was actually developing it, as he also attempted to use it, throughout that excellent achievement. But, it was never overtly spelled out formally, nor could it be, until Marx's untimely death prevented his doing precisely that.

David Harvey's Lectures on Marx's Capital

And, it is only now that this necessary contribution has been achieved by Professor David Harvey in his series of lectures and YouTube videos. The whole series is remarkable: but his fourth Lecture upon Volume II of Das Kapital is magnificent!

But be prepared for contention!

Nothing is ever fixed forever - things which will be taken as fixed, will always cease to be so, as a consequence of natural development. But the Holist approach, in full flower, explains far more than any Pluralistic accounts ever could.

In this lecture he analyses what he terms as Fixed and Varying Capital, via Marx's Explanation of Capital as Value-in-Motion, a process totally impossible to address pluralistically, but only with Qualitative Changes throughout, with categories actually changing into their once totally-excluded opposites with such happening repeatedly, and therefore being incapable of either Description or Explanation by the still dominant Pluralist Stance in both Reasoning and Science.

Indeed, many of the changes occurring within Capitalism's trajectory, as it regularly morphs to climb out of its very regular Downturns, Recessions and even Slumps, by converting literally everything into monetary values, as the only measure, then inflating that value by competition on the Stock Exchange, by which they then corral it into their hands as the only ones who can afford it.

In the current period, late capitalism gets ever more desperate, and the cause of the last Recession in 2008 is simply repeated, once again, just as before, but with new ever more rightward directions, that they hope will mitigate the next inevitable crisis.

But, both the World and Capitalism itself, is running out of possibilities. Both Climate Change and ever increasing Pollution, are heading things towards an existential Crisis for Mankind, and Capitalism is running out of alternatives to perpetuate itself, as it is fast becoming a deteriorating situation.

Fantastic lecture from David Harvey

David Harvey deep reading Marx's Capital volume one.

Practice without Theory: The Retreats in both Science and Marxism

For nearly 60 years I have been a committed Marxist and activist, while also being a professional Physicist. I am therefore equipped better than most to be critical of the evident and damaging declines in both of these absolutely fundamental disciplines. 

These failures have been generated within the hearts of the very organisations which should have been their veritable fountains-of-further-development, which should have fought for each of these crucial intellectual focii to generate the required research, analyses and consequent programmes of action, for the necessary (indeed essential) innovations within these areas, to enable them to equip their adherents to confidently achieve ever greater objectives!

However, such could have ONLY occurred, if, and only if, they continued to develop up to, through and even beyond, their own unavoidable crises and Revolutions - to ascend to wholly New and necessary Levels, capable of transforming Humanity upon this planet, beyond current limitations.

"But, what were you doing?" is likely to be the immediate response from Physicists and Marxists alike, "Why weren't you doing all that?" The right questions, for sure!

Well, I was only 19 years old and in my first term at University when I found myself disagreeing fundamentally with my professors, in my Physics degree studies. Here I met Marxists for the first time too and joined one of the Marxist Parties present in that University, and looked for answers, both within it, and in the University's excellent library, for alternatives to the evident prevailing decline in my studied subject.

I was a continuing student of Physics throughout my life, and in politics read a great deal, including Marx's masterpiece Das Kapital: but, nevertheless, as to The Marxist Analytic Method in politics, and my sought-for alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in Physics, I was regularly coming-up empty on both fronts!

Very slowly, I began to realise where the problems lay.

It was in the inadequate Philosophies of the Theorists of the consensus groups in both of these fields!

They weren't the same problems, of course, but they were both, in different ways, embarked upon the wrong tracks. There was no real Theory going on in either discipline.

Sadly, I wasn't initially up to undertaking the tasks in either area, but I persevered in political activism, without myself developing very far, even though I continued to read extensively.

In Physics, I eventually gave it up as a bad job, and in spite of all my qualifications being in the area, I never professionally did Physics again. Instead, I taught Modern Mathematics and even Biology in Schools and Colleges, and latterly, in my afternoons off, did Mathematical Research using the local University's Mainframe Computer, which I taught myself to both program and use. And, in no time, I was also teaching these new-found skills to interested students from my College, ultimately developing one of the first such Computer Sections in the country. Later I was approached to write a Machine-independent Fortran Compiler, which I finally achieved...

It is a long story, but I finally got back into Higher Education, lecturing in Information Technology, and in that role was soon involved in assisting researchers across a wide range of disciplines. And, in that very varied and interdisciplinary work I finally began to see what was wrong with Physics!

I returned to tackling Copenhagen, but now increasingly equipped with ideas directly abstracted from Marx, which I slowly extracted from Das Kapital (by also reading David Harvey's superb analyses of Kapital's volumes I, II and III). The gains made in this work were purely philosophical, and centred upon the inadequacies of the Principle of Plurality which had actually underpinned all the major Intellectual Disciplines, ever since the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC. 

For, both Logic and Science had been wrongly assumed to be "just-like Mathematics", as wholly pluralistic- that is composed only of qualitatively-fixed concepts or Natural Laws, which naturally limited both these crucial Disciplines significantly to only maintained Stable Situations.

All real Development was wholly excluded!

A key epiphany came through my research in Motion Studies in the 2000s (the analysis and computerised delivery of accurate Dance Performance - complex creative movements captured dynamically via interactive video recordings and animation) remembering Zeno's crucial, dialectical Paradoxes. Without revolutionary means, neither Continuity nor Descreteness were ever capable of delivering real Movement.

Now 200 years ago, the idealist philosopher Hegel had realised such flaws in Formal Logic. It did not allow qualitative changes of any kind due to the assumed stance of Plurality. Hegel began to address this inadequacy with regard to Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts (such as Continuity and Descreteness) - leading to his Dialectics!

Science and Logic cannot deal with contradiction and its role in change, and consequently considers only Fixed Natural Laws as capable of explaining absolutely Everything - and hence had no solutions to the many anomalies of the perplexing set of Double Slit Experiments, contradictions they "solved" by inventing Wave/Particle Duality, and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

Unfortunately Hegel had been an idealist philosopher and had never seriously investigated anything beyond Human Thinking. So, his follower, the historian and philosopher, Karl Marx, immediately realised that an extended version of Dialectics also applied to all Development in Concrete Reality too - and revealingly also to the Developments in Human History!

For the first time, it would clearly be possible to address Historical Development, especially in those seemingly-unanalyse-able convulsions of Change termed Revolutions!

Now, all of this was certainly not yet available: no such explanations had yet been revealed! But, Marx knew that the alternative holist stance, concentrating-primarily upon qualitative change, could indeed deliver what the current wholly pluralist Disciplines never could. And, as a professional Historian, Marx knew precisely where to start - with the recently ended French Revolution, which had overthrown the Feudal State, and replaced it with a Capitalist alternative, but one which was definitely NOT delivering the Liberté Egalité et Fraternité that it had promised to those workers who had carried in out.

So, Marx embarked upon the obvious research to reveal the Nature of Capitalist Economics, but only within the very process of establishing the required Holist means to do it! Das Kapital was never merely applying a ready-made method of doing this, as none yet existed at that time, but no one was better equipped to do it: for Marx had already devised Dialectical Materialism as his New Philosophy, but being Holistic, and hence including all Qualitative Change, it meant that a wholly new, as yet undefined Methodology had to be developed, and it would inevitably be far more complex and even more constantly-developing than anything employed previously.

These difficulties are clearly reflected in Marx's work, as in order to deal with these crucial changes, he had to first always establish a "basic" unchanging initial model (a Generality), and then as each dealt-with Phase led to another, he then had to retrace back to see how the new (Particular) Phase affected the initial one.

David Harvey deals with this aspect of Das Capital very well

NOTE: He was effectively involving the cyclical approach defined by The Buddha in his famed Loka Sutta, wherein each Phase, on completion, had to be repeated-from-scratch in the light of what it had produced.

It was a recursive, and indeed truly Holist, method!

So, Marx greatly simplified a Phase, in order to get an initial (General) handle upon it, but then, doing the same thing in the next Phase, he had to repeat, not only that current-Phase-reviewing process, but also to even adjust a prior Phase, due to changes due to a following (Particular) one!

[This is described elsewhere in a paper on Generalities, Particularities and Singularites, by this theorist]

And, many of the overall systems involved were cyclic, so, with all these recursive effects, would all take several circuits to into become settled repeating cycles! Many of the features described in Volume I of Das Kapital, were shown to be modified by subsequent processes, only reveealed in Volume II.

NOTE: Now, if this seems to infer an unavoidably infinite, never-ending sequence of necessary modifications, that would also not be true! For, though at some later and different stage the sequence of recursions would be necessary once again: for each and every set these would always terminate in some sort of "Balanced Result", which could be used effectively, at least for a while.

But, clearly, constant vigilance would still be required, just in case that balance was about to be challenged, precipitating a necessary whole re-assessment.

And, many such effects were never understood by readers brought up throughout their Education by systems which assumed total Plurality throughout. Most Marxists haven't grasped this aspect of Marxism, and Physicists don't even know the problem exists!

Ten Days That Shook the World, by John Reed

Reading "Ten Days that Shook the World" by John Reed, or the "History of the Russian Revolution" by Leon Trotsky, as well as accounts of Lenin's necessary switches at key moments in 1917 - all demonstrate what Real Marxian Dialectics was, in the hands of those who had understood what Marx finally arrived at.

But, it wasn't what I came into contact with during a whole lifetime in professedly Marxist parties!

And certainly, without any application of his method to the Sciences, what was then understood, though vital, would still necessarily be inadequate in many other very important areas.

Now, to finally return to my title for this key paper, namely Practice Without Theory!

These words have great relevance to both Politics and Physics - the current chaos in Sub Atomic Physics is clearly due to that Science's continuous and unspoken subscription to both Plurality and pragmatism - why question the method if it just seems to work?

The Real Philosophy of Science attempts to challenge the clueless scientific consensus and the somnambulant Marxists, by using one to explode the other!

The Real Philosophy of Science by Jim Schofield
A Marxist refutation of Science, which is also a scientific approach to Marxism

The more difficult role is actually presented by the "Marxists", who are still totally unaware of the true nature of Dialectical Materialism when applied to their own area of political practice (let alone Science), and hence are totally ill-equipped to do anything significant politically! 

Activism and political practice without the directing guidance of real theory can never succeed in preparing for a coming Revolution!

Accumulation by Dispossession

How Modern Capitalism Works: David Harvey strikes again!

Current Praxis: The huge gap between theory and practice

Theory and Practice: To Serve and to Organise

As a long-time active Socialist, and latterly Marxist Theorist, I am acutely aware of the gap between my extensive efforts on the web, and its almost total lack of connection with the on-the-street organisations of the disadvantaged - and this is clearly a general problem.

Now David Harvey, surely not only the leading Marxist theorist living today, but one whose Internet offerings have become extremely widely-read - BUT, he is nevertheless concerned about his lack of connections with organisers on-the-street, and has put up two interviews with Chris Caruso, in his excellent Anti-Capitalist Chronicles (out of Democracy at Work), which excellently addresses these precise questions.

As everyone can see, naturally emerging protest demonstrations and even loose organisations are arising with crucial agendas all the time - the most important one currently being the Yellow Jacket Movement in France.

But too many of such occurrences don't last: single issues, no matter how important, cannot survive if they don't link up with others to enrich the content, capabilities, understanding and fraternal, social strength of their efforts.

The interviews carried out by David Harvey are crucial, and one, which is about this problem, and the linking of internet-based propagation and help, for the exciting developments in the streets and localities, is included here to introduce them to you.

Perhaps we can help too - either here on SHAPE, or by delivering your questions and concerns to places like the Anti-Capitalist Chronicles.

Contact us privately via email:

shape@bild-art.co.uk

or leave a comment under this post.

The Significance of China in the Global Economy

Generality, Particularity, Singularity

Performing Sculpture. Small Feathers, 1931, by Alexander Calder

Marx’s Abstractions

and Dialectical Developments

On further listening to David Harvey’s analysis of Marx’s Capital, it becomes important exactly what the necessary kinds of Abstraction are, that are actually being used.

Previously, when revealing the significant and transforming content of the Greek Intellectual Revolution, somewhat earlier in these investigations, the key achievement turned out to be in the wholly new kind of Abstraction that they had developed in their study of shapes, but which, at that time, had also enabled the development of the very first intellectual discipline - Mathematics.

So, once again, within this current discussion on Marx’s Capital, it has to be the kinds-of-abstraction used, as well as both when, and to what extent, they can be effectively employed, that are the most important questions.

Now, Marx wasn’t a scientist, he was a philosopher and historian - and neither is David Harvey, who is a geographer by trade: so neither of them were intimately familiar with the methods and abstractions of ‘hard’ sciences such as Physics, or even their associated disciplines, such as Mathematics. So, they would not be immediately aware of the unavoidable limitations of idealistic Mathematics - for their focussings were very different in their own primary disciplines.

Now, Marx crucially talks about Generalities, Particularities and Singularities as the abstractions concerned with the Laws of Motion of Capital, and how he sees and uses them, turns out to be crucial, and also very revealing when related to their somewhat different uses in Science and Mathematics.

So, once again, I am pressed to use my analogue regarding Multiple-Chemical-Processes, to clarify what is involved. For there, though many active factors are involved (all acting simultaneously), the most frequently naturally- achieved Stability, in this type of system, will always be in an achieved persisting balance between all of these processes, characterised by a certain Dominance, as the apparent underlying determining “Law” of the situation.

And, that would be what Marx calls the Generality of the situation.

But, the other factors involved will vary, and though they cannot dislodge this Dominant Law, they can move it about - somewhat!

They would be the contingent Particularities of the situation.

Finally, something could happen which completely terminates the situation: so this Law ceases to apply!

That would be due to a Singularity of the situation. These are key Abstractions from the situation with different properties and effects.

Now these are necessarily considered somewhat differently in their varieties of use: and though my explanations, that lead to these differences, arise from my always-holistic stance, it is important to note that many other widely current uses, even in Science, are wholly pluralistic in their determining, underlying stance, and hence differ significantly! That is, they take all the laws involved as permanently fixed.

So, Marx’s strictly holistic methods will never be considered by those usually employing entirely pluralist methods - like the majority of both scientists and logicians for example.

Now, in any such, many-law, holistic context, as with both my favoured chemical analogue, and also the ones involved in Capitalist Economics, the simultaneously-acting laws will most certainly NOT interact pluraliatically, for then all would be of the exact same type. Indeed, within holism there will usually be a Generality - delivering the underlying fundamental Law, determined as such by the overall, dominating conditions, but always also (potentially) modified by a whole series of Particularities; which can adjust and vary the Generality. While there will always be, in addition, one or more Singularities, which can, in appropriate circumstances, terminate the Generality completely, by changing the underlying situation. And, there will be different reasons, which causally-determine all these natures, and their roles, in a given situation.

Once again, my revealing analogue can be used to expose all their various determining causes. In that case, the Generality will be described by the basic underlying Law, itself, caused by the relative abundance of its major required resource, more often than not, determined by the circumstances in which it occurs. While, the various Particularities, will never challenge that objective dominance, but could modify it contingently to some extent. Finally, the Singularities are totally independant influences, sometimes from without, that cancel the dominance of the Generality and facilitate its complete replacement.

NOTE: Now, the above constitutes only the briefest start in addressing such Holistic Changes and how we can deal with them, and, as we develop this discription, the significant differences and evident superiority to the consensus Pluralist Approach, will gradually, and excitingly, be revealed. For example, the conundrums and even impasses connected with Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts will be fully explained - particularly via our revealing analogue, which will always include an opposite sub-dominant process, which, in certain circumstances replaces the prior Dominance, without significantly altering the overall Balance and Stability!

But, the very reason for the prior adoption of Plurality as the universal stance in investigating Reality, does have some sort of basis, in the evident relative predominance of long-persisting Stabilities within Reality: indeed Stabilities are frequent and persist for long periods, but can never deliver any significant Qualitative Change.

So, in spite of the always very short durations of Emergences, they are, nevertheles, the sole sources of all Development. And, the apparent “Truths” of Plurality are usually arranged-for, by artificially-constructing and actively-maintaining appropriate Stabilities, to ensure the possibility of applying such Pluralist Laws successfully.

But, of course, such a purely technological approach can never address any of the areas involving qualitative changes and their explanation - and these are evident in by far the widest ranging areas of study. Even Modern Physics and Cosmology have both been brought to existential crises by the limited pluralist appoach, and without a veritable revolution in these areas, they are effectively doomed as sources of Explanation for Reality. .

NOTE: It is interesting to consider Mathematical Singularities alongside Marx’s use of the term. The use of singularities in Mathematics means indisputedly that they are occurring wholly-within a legitimately pluralist context - namely Ideality. But, the infinities possible within Ideality, legitmises the positioning of a found “real” relation upon a graph of infinite possible extention, though for it is only a small locality within that graph, that maps onto a situation in Reality, and the rest of the space included in the graph necessarily constitutes what are, in that context, termed as Singularities - that is as aymptotes to Infinity, or swoops to Zero. They should just be the boundaries-of-Reality, but in idealist Modern Physics are instead suggested as portals to alternative Worlds!

Controller of the Universe, 2007, Damián Ortega

Singularities and Emergences

Now, of course, even the role of Singularities, as so far merely described, can never explain any consequent real development, but only individual qualitative changes: and where they lead is also never-supplied, at such a level of analysis.

What is actually needed is a causal-mechanism for “system-change”, wherein a mutually-affecting collection of many different, and even contradictory, processes actually dismantles the old order, and generates a wholly New System. And, such an event, has a name within this Holist View of Development: it is called an Emergence.

And, it is certainly not a mere fixed-causality, with a given single outcome at all! Indeed, it is not even a consistent, co-ordinating system of coherent, related processes, naturally coalescing into a consequent final outcome. It is, remarkably, a balancing system of contradictory factors, which ordinary Logic would see as merely inhibiting, or even cancelling, one another, and hence leading nowhere!

And, it should be clearly contrasted with such co- ordinated systems, whhich can never lead to real, entirely-original qualitative changes.

An Emergence is always a remarkable Event, which produces purely temporary Stabilities, which almost always involve the same self-restoring balance of contradictory factors, while displaying an apparently resultant Dominance (which, superficially, certainly looks like a pluralist law).

Now, this turns out to be a surprising entity, for though it appears to be, and usually is, a conservative arrangement, ensuring its Status Quo for long periods of time, it can, in certain circumstances, become undermined. And yet, though that cause undermines - in one area of the balance, it mostly restores the situation - in another area, to counter that undermining. Such a contradictory Stability, therefore, includes the wherewithal to correctingly deal with Crises most of the time.

But, if pushed too far, it not only precipitates a wholesale dissociation - a total Collapse - it also always delivers an unexpected outcome. The produced intermediate situation no longer perpetuates anything. New subsytems can now begin to come together, relatively unhindered - though many just as quickly dissociating again in their own Crises. But, finally they come together in a new balance of contradictory factors, which constitures yet another new Stability! And, that new system could never have been predicted from the prior Stability. This is how the Wholly New emerges!

But, how is the necessary variety first produced, and then maintained in any given context? The engine of our Solar System is clearly The Sun, but different parts of a planet, presenting different angles of incidence of the Sun’s Rays at its surface will receive different amounts of heat, and consequent differential heating of the local atmosphere, causing Winds and hence differential evaporation from any liquid water available in seas or lakes.

And as the planet spins, it will also at every point on its surface by alternately be illuminated, and then plunged into darkness, causing differences in heating over time!

So, already, just considering the ‘stable’ Sun and Earth, we get diverse conditions including precipitation and even worldwide small particle distibution, via moving winds. And the more things that are considered, the more variabilities are involved.

The point is, how do they co-exist in some maintained, or regularly repeatable mix? Clearly, conditions can vary enough to promote opposite processes in extreme situations, the results of which can be moved about by winds and currents. Yet, some planets in our Solar System do seem to exhibit restricted ranges of prpocesses, and continuing as such for seemingly vast periods of time. While others, like Earth, seem to be in relatively constant change: which appears to be largely due to Life.

And Life itself must have once been some kind of Emergence: what else could it have been?

So, why no evident Life elsewhere in the Solar System?

We can deal with a variety in conducive circumstances, but what triggers the crucial event that enables everything that can consequently emerge? Clearly, once we abandon the fictional simplicity of a Pluralist World, we find ourselves in a much more complex Reality, requiring a wholly new approach when attempting to understand it.

Postscript:

Clearly, there is still a great deal to yet be addressed, but I feel some brief foray into that waiting world should be addressed here, as a sample of what is to come.

Let us consider Causality!

For, our idea of Causality is significantly distorted by not only the premise of Plurality upon its nature, but also in the consequences of that stance for how we see, explain and use Causality.

The Principle of Plurality has all elements extracted from Reality as permanently-fixed: not only categories and concepts but also extracted Natural Laws too. And, consequently, our tools for dealing with these were obviously also “tailored-to-fit” such fixed entities and relations.

Primarily, if Plurality were true, it would be entirely valid to deliberately restrict, or even “farm” investigated situations to effectively isolate a given relation: for, if that relation were naturally eternal, our manipulations would never affect it: it would remain the same.

Also, we could never effectively use that relation, if we didn’t similarly simplify the context for use, as with “only one Law free to act”, we could easily apply it to achieve predictable ends. And any complex production would have-to-be organised as a series of productions, one for each pluralist Law evidently involved.

We would never attempt to apply them all simultaeously! Yet, of course, simultaneously, is exactly how Reality works with its “Laws”, when left to itself! So, because of our subscription to Plurality, we purposely prohibit, for ourselves, any knowledge whatsoever of how simultaneous “Laws” might actaully affect one another, or even follow particular natural sequences over time.

The natural selection of such sequences is NEVER available to us, as it must have been in totally unfettered Reality. Indeed, Plurality is NOT true in either Reality, or even in Reasoning. In fact, it is only true in Mathematics, because of its simplified relatable abstractions, on which it was constructed. But, they don’t form the abstractions upon which Reality and Reasoning are constructed!

So, in making Plurality the basis where it does not apply misleads what we can do with what we obtain by such means: and, in addition, limits the conditions we can apply them in to severely restricted and unnatural contexts.

This essay is taken from the latest issue of SHAPE Journal called Changing Dialectics