Revolution and Evolution

Real Evolution: The Dialectical Materialist Version

This is the latest in the long series of papers on The Systems Theory of Everything, currently being published in instalments on the SHAPE Journal. The most recent unpublished papers in this series have been, without any doubt, Revolutionary!

And it has taken some two thousand five hundred years of mistaken & Wholly Pluralist Misguidance, to finally announce the Ultimate Demise, and the Impossibility (at least at present), of both a Sound and Developable Truth-Revealing Approach, that will radically transform Human Understanding of all Development.

And, let us be clear, it is not a moment too soon! We need a new Dialectical Materialist Science to understand and deal with rapid changes happening today - both socially and in the natural environment.

The War in Ukraine, similar to many that, for example, the USA regularly indulges-in - without the Whole World System having to be purposely-and-consciously put in Existential Jeopardy - now threatens to be a repeat of the Second World War, when both sides were also Capitalist, and the Capitalist Dominance of the World turned out to be at stake then too.

Now, this will NOT be a primarily Political Paper, but these points are much too important to be ignored, and they will always be regularly addressed when appropriate. But, at this point, the Full and Crucial Replacement of the Millennia-long errors made by Mankind, were clearly, and will be, by far, the most important initial task: so, the arguments arising from abolishing the currently Universal-and-Incorrect Stance, have not yet been by any means sufficiently elaborated - so, let us, at this time, continue with that First & Foremost undertaking, and get what we will more generally require, initially, from the clearly emerging ideas in this set of papers.

For, upon a re-assessment of the currently major mistakes in Science, I am sure that we will reveal, in addition, answers to the more general questions too! And, the Key Area, is surely in correcting our conceptions of the Required Context for any Sound Analysis of Systems undergoing transformation.

Absolutely Nothing will take place, anywhere, unless the required features are available-and-beginning to come across what they will quite naturally combine-with! Indeed, what we now know are vital are the CHAINS of Processes - linked by the Output of one being the necessary Input of the next in the series! And, of course these will never all be happening at the very same time: they simply couldn't do so, as initially they would totally all be entirely separate - distributed singly throughout a relatively unstructured melee.

The trajectory of the subsequent-build, could only be a One-at-a-Time situation! And for the whole CHAIN to be successfully sequentially-acting, would not only take an inordinate length of time to complete the CHAIN, but would be regularly-interrupted and even sometimes prematurely terminated, by adding other links from different potential-partial-CHAINS that were available with the same link, but inappropriate.

Any Outside Observer would confidently only predict just a different kind of Random Chaos resulting for the whole population of Partial Chain potentially available by the same link. And such a conclusion would be correct, and remain so, until by chance after maybe Eons of Time, a favourably functioning Complete Chain was finally executed. But still entirely alone, what could it DO?

Indeed, the answer would surely be Absolutely Nothing, and would remain so, until a different and somehow Complementary Chain also arose, that could connect with the other one, and thereby produce something Absolutely New, with always reproducibly favourable functions!

Now, such seeming miracles have been, and still are, considered Totally Impossible to occur - within the established Thinking of Mankind!  For, within their known World, such situations would just have to be the result of a Supernatural and All-powerful, yet Man-like Director of Absolutely Everything - indeed A GOD!

Order could never actually Emerge out of Total Chaos! All the consonances of Everyday Reality simply must have been arranged-for: how else? Clearly, these remarkable and complex situations, just with Reality alone as the Sole organising Source, and if just left to itself, would perhaps Complicate, but surely never mutually Co-operate! Order couldn't happen purely by Chance!? Surely, the everywhere evident, Direct Contentions would always predominate?

Indeed, the trajectory of Human Development has long been attributed to particularly powerful Men! You have never been able to just sit back and observe Reality, bringing up all things everywhere exactly as is - & carrying you with it, has it? On the contrary, Early Mankind was always lucky-to-survive at all, in a mostly hostile World! And, it appeared to be the actions of particular individuals that changed the odds to every single greater extent that enabled the subsequent rise of Mankind to dominate their environment.

Nature was only very rarely conducive, perhaps initially only in the Eden-like tropical jungles, with their plentiful fruits and shelter from the elements. But the following Open Plains habitat was almost totally devoid of any natural succour for humans, who had to transform into fierce hunters of the Plains Animals, simply in order to survive.

Indeed, conceptions of natural mechanisms of Development, through all the Stages that must have been involved: and particularly the earliest ones - those entirely without Life - have never been really understood!

Yet, it is certainly those, existing at the Base of all subsequent processes, which have always been the Real Productive Drivers of Absolutely All Development!

Let's make it Crystal Clear.

We have to explain the earliest Pre Life Developments, that enabled everything that happened subsequently - including the Origin of Life itself!

Issue 76: Development

Read Issue 76 of SHAPE Journal

...

This edition looks at evolutionary development, but certainly not in the usual and expected ways. Jim Schofield's new Systems Approach to Science reconfigures how we think about how both natural and social systems change over time.

From the revolutionary tool use of Early Man, to the problems of solving Climate Change today, from the mysteries of Sub-atomic Physics to the unknown Origin of Life on Earth, this discursive series of essays plots a path through the many flaws in current Human Understanding, to reveal the vital need to appreciate systems holistically for the first time.

Revolution and Emergence are just as important to understanding Life's development, as genetics and incremental Evolution. How do such vast systems become stable in the first place, what finally makes them collapse, and how does that process lead to the Wholly New?

The initial conceptions by Human Beings, as with all the other simultaneously-existing living-creatures, assumed the Constancy of their Common World - and this intial assumption, in the Sole Case of Mankind alone, was then increasingly challenged, by their own, if initially meagre, sucesses in dealing with that World.

Now, such real developments, that were achieved, did not ever come easily, so there was nothing automatic about our progression. Indeed, it was also clear that they were difficult to “get right”, and Reality-as-is, was also definitely composed of multiple features, some of which seemed Contradictory...

The State II

Anarchists "Smash the State"

The Key Purposes of the Revolutionary State

Now, anarchists were, and still are, totally opposed to the idea of a Socialist State (or indeed to any kind of State at all), and they instead extol the virtues of democratically-run local communes and grassroots action.

It was The Anarchists that brought The First International Association of Working People, organised by Karl Marx, to total collapse.

Marx had insisted that a Socialist State was vital, providing both centralised resources and services to all, and protecting the new system from threatening opponents. Negotiating with other states on a global basis, would be essential - at least for a time.

It would definitely be even more imperative, after a successful Revolution, as most, if not all other states would still be under the prior kinds of Regimes, driven to protect their own Capitalist interests, and would consider the very existence of the Socialist State an exemplar for their Working People, and hence a threat to the current rulers too.

But, returning to the Anarchists, Subsequent History has shown that they were wrong, and Marx was indeed right! For, after the Sucess of the Russian Revolution - England, the USA and even Japan sent in armies to put down the Revolution, but due to a strong State-Organised Red Army of The People, they were all successfully defeated.

And, even after the Revolution, there were still ex-owners and even so-called Social Revolutionary Parties (based on the peasantry and still strong in the truly vast countryside), who continued to work against the new regime. It definitely required a State-wide organisation to root them out, or everything gained by a People's Revolution would be lost - most Revolutions do indeed fail.

And, in addition, opposing and surrounding Capitalist Powers worked incessantly to isolate the new State, particularly in Trade and Commerce, and even sent in agents allied with internal opponents, and even criminals, to undermine the nascent socialist Economy, and smuggle out valuables originally targeted for confiscation by the State to be taken from the wealthy as The Property of the People.

And, many different and previously non-existant Public Services had to be devised, built and organised on a vast scale, literally from scratch - and from immense Defensive Military Forces, on the one hand, and a totally new National Health Service, and a Quality Education System at all levels not just for the rich, but for Everybody and, finally, of course, Public Transport too - Russia was a truly enormous country! 

And, the intended country-wide Democracy, to be based upon People's Councils (or Soviets), was initially miniscule, and needed both resources and guidance, so that individual isolated organisations didn't all make the same mistakes all over the country.

What a tremendous undertaking! Yet with a majority of the People energetically-on-board. Remember, everything that had existed previously was constructed and maintained by, and to serve the needs of, the wealthy landed Gentry and the then Ruling Class, with the Tsar at its head. Absolutely nothing had served the needs of the workers - either the Peasants on the Land, or the Workers in the Factories.

Whole droves of agents. hangers-on and even servants to the Prior Ruling Class and their institutions, were now "demoted" to ordinary working class status - and of course they didn't like that one bit!

So, the enormous task of building a new, fairer society, had to undertaken with the whole country locked in Civil War with the Royalists and their supporters, while also being ravished by Armies of Intervention, aiming to put down the Revolution and re-instate the Old Regime.

And all this in the biggest physical country on Earth!

They needed to be organised Country-Wide - and that had to be via the State apparatus - how else could it have been done?

And, not only did they do it! BUT also the leaders of the Revolution - The Bolshevik Party, knew not only why they need a State, but also its dangers! For Lenin had long explained that, in the longer run, on the way to Communism - there would be a deliberate Withering Away of the State!

But, this was a completely new kind of Revolution. There was no nascent Capitalist Class, held back by a Feudal Regime. For, in spite of the Feudal monarchy, Capitalism was growing apace and welcomed by the Ruling Class. The Capitalists were certainly not siding with any Socialist Revolution.  Maybe the February Revolution of 1917 removed the Tsar, but the Revolutionry Tide hadn't yet finished, the October 1917 Revolution, this time led by the Bolsheviks, was for terminating Capitalism too.

And, all objectives were achieved - at least initially!

But, all Revolutions attempt the apparently impossible, by which is meant - that they attempt to establish the Wholly New. NO prior patterns were ever available for guidance: in fact every Emergence of any kind is inevitably prefaced by a series of major crises in the prior situation, which always finally culminate in the System's Total Collapse. And only then does a very different series of alternative constructive attempts occur, which, initially at least, also fail.

But, nevertheless, they can and do finally culminate in a wholly New and final breakthrough into a self-maintaining success - a new stable system.

The Origin of Life was such a Revolution, as was the Emergence of Consciousness in Human Beings. But, even these were not achieved without devastating calamities along the way!

And this one was surely typical of the real biggies, like Life and Consciousness: it would be a truly major Emergence Event, and would require a long gestation period to remove all unwanted liabilities left over from the past. And, as distinct from the other major Emergences, this one involved, for the very first time, conscious participants and organisations, who were aware of the occurrence of such events, and not only could they consciously intervene, but so could and did the defenders of the previous System. 

The problem with anarchists is that they don't understand Emergence. The Revolutionary State is the attempt to build and defend the new stability - without this consolidation of power Capitalism will return with ease. 

Is Revolution a Natural Part of all Development?

Natural Revolution

SHAPE Journal is proud to present a new film by Michael C Coldwell and Jim Schofield.

This is a film about revolution.

A film about how revolutionary emergences are a natural and crucial part of all developing reality. 

Based on a wide-ranging discussion between Marxist philosopher and scientist Jim Schofield, and filmmaker and researcher Michael C Coldwell, this essay film explores diverse themes, from Stalinism to the evolution of language, from the origin of life on earth to the failure of the 1960s revolutionary movement. The visuals are ripped and mashed from Youtube - archive footage, newsreels and films from the 20th century. Music is supplied by Conflux Coldwell and the Urban Exploration collective.

Natural Revolution (2019) A SHAPE film...

Natural Revolution

SHAPE Journal is proud to present a new film by Michael C Coldwell and Jim Schofield.

This is a film about revolution.

A film about how revolutionary emergences are a natural and crucial part of all developing reality. 

Based on a wide-ranging discussion between Marxist philosopher and scientist Jim Schofield, and filmmaker and researcher Michael C Coldwell, this essay film explores diverse themes, from Stalinism to the evolution of language, from the origin of life on earth to the failure of the 1960s revolutionary movement. The visuals are ripped and mashed from Youtube - archive footage, newsreels and films from the 20th century. Music is supplied by Conflux Coldwell and the Urban Exploration collective.

Revolutionary Socialism

The world has transformed substantially since the last time this was tried

What mechanisms of social change could finally enable a switch to socialism?

Do you really think that such a switch-over will be allowed to occur anywhere by countries like the USA?

What did you think the two World Wars, the Cold War, and the now constant local hot wars, have been about, first in Asia, and are still the case now in the Middle East?

The World Wars were about an attempted change in hegemony between Capitalist powers, while the Asian wars, and a series of others, were to suppress the attempted extension of Socialism, while later conflicts were back to hegemony once again.

Do you really think that the replacement of Capitalism will be allowed to happen peacefully by the Ballot Box? Know your History: and the current situation in the UK, for all tell us very clearly indeed that the answer is without any doubt - NO!

All the "versions" of Socialism, which insist that a peaceful transition will be allowed to occur, effectively disarm those fighting for Socialism, with strictly moral alternatives, which have never in the past, and will never now, change the World.

And, of course, there has, and continues to be, a sizeable penetration of the Socialist Movements by those who, in the last analysis, will actually fight against real Socialism's institution, and will show their true objectives by who it is that they militarily align when the crunch comes.

The Socialist movement has, since its very inception, been divided into Liberals and Revolutionaries. And, while the former have never established anything significant, only the revolutionaries have ever managed to succeed in challenging the injustices of Capitalism. And, that was never just via a totally committed militancy, but by a theoretical superiority, based upon an understanding of the trajectory of past histories and the dynamics of social change, with their absolutely essential Social Revolutions!

The wherewithall for the necessary breakhrough was achieved by an Historian follower of the Philosopher Hegel, who after over 2,000 years since the Greek Intellectual Revolution, finally addressed the debilitating Pluralist flaws in Formal Reasoning, with his attempted inclusion of Qualitative Changes into that Discipline. But, Hegel was an idealist philosopher, and it was in the switch of Hegel's modified stance, only by Karl Marx, that his objective was generally achieved, by applying the same reasoning, but with a Materialist Philosophical Basis.

For, Marx then knew what had to be done, and spent the rest of his life applying that Dialectical Materialism to a thoroughgoing critique of Capitalist Economics in his 3 volume work Das Kapital.

So, for the first time, History could be considered dynamically- in its vast qualitative changes, and in their key events - Social Revolutions - where such changes happen at a remarkable rate, but nevertheless could be understood on-the-fly- as they occurred, and, consequently, acted upon successfully.

Indeed, that evident Marxian understanding divided the sheep from the goats - only Marxists had any idea of what was happening literally day-by-day, and even hour-by-hour. For, Marx had been able to use Michelet's History of the French Revolution to extract the Dynamics of Revolutionary Change from that period of maximal Social Flux, in a generally applicable way. And, of course, also apply it to a remarkable degree in Das Kapital!

The application of Marx's methods within an actual Revolution, especially those due to Lenin, were also made available worldwide by both John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World, and also Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution.

Now sadly, the early deaths of both Marx and Lenin left Socialism without a first-rate Marxist theorist, and both inside and outside the Soviet Union (as post-revolutionary Russia became), the absolutely essential extension of Marxism into the still-outstanding Sciences, had never been undertaken, and a multitude of self-professed "Marxists" appeared everywhere, but literally without the understanding or necessary profundity of a Marx, or of a Lenin!

Indeed, the crucial assault upon the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in physics, has only very recently been completed by this Marxist, mathematician and physicist, after a decade of study, and is as yet unknown in Socialist Organisations worldwide.

So, committed comrades in Socialist Organisations are still largely ill-equipped theoretically for the coming World Crisis, and unless something is done very quickly indeed, the madmen in power, and currently manipulating the present crisis will plunge us into what could be a terminal World War!

Can Socialists do anything if they limit themselves to blind activism and the Ballot Box? Current Elections have proved that Democracy can be effectively manipulated or even swept aside when it gets-in-the-way of certain politicians' purposes.

We surely must be prepared to act in a Revolutionary way to stop the Billionaires sacrificing millions of ordinary People via their dangerous and undemocratic plans...

SHAPE Journal has recently produced a documentary film on the theory of revolution, you can watch it below:

Coming soon... Natural Revolution

SHAPE Journal is collaborating with philosopher Jim Schofield and filmmaker Michael C Coldwell to make a documentary film about Marxism, Revolution, Science and Emergence