Auteur/autrice : IoULeeM0n

Where does the sensation come from ? Such a question is a typical
error, the produce of the feudal and the bourgeois approaches, which separate the brain and the body.

The feudal conception separates them totally, whereas the bourgeois way links them in a tormented way.

Both consider that the question of the sensation is connected to the body, to the interpretation of the body by the brain. A feeling, a sensation, can not exist in itself; it has an existence only in the case of an interpretation by an individual.

The reason for this anthropocentrism resides in Metaphysics. For the feudal
conception, the mind must leave the body and join the origin of the world, God, which is immaterial.

For the bourgeois conception, we can not explain the origin of the world, so we should restrain us in elaborating theory about the relationships we make with reality.

Life is seen through individuals, through their relationships. There is no world, no nature, only a world, a nature existing insofar we have a relationship to them.

This conception was necessary to the bourgeois to justify the existence of the capitalist, which is an individual acting through his own understanding of its surrounding reality.

Protestantism is here the main ideological construction of this approach.

Nowadays, existentialism and all the post-modernist variants that exist support a terrorist version of this self-centeredness, this vision of the world based merely on the individuals.

Therefore, in the history of science dominated by the bourgeoisie, it was always considered that animals know no pain. They are considered as mere mechanisms, by Descartes and Malebranche notably, without a “conscience”.

Of course, this wrong conception proved more and more wrong, through the affirmation of democratic and socialist thought.

One major historical event here is when, on 10 December 1907, in a turmoil following an dissection of a living brown dog in London, 1,000 medical students marched through central London waving effigies of a brown dog on sticks, justifying and promoting vivisection, attacking for this reason suffragettes and trade unionists fighting against vivisection.

Two conceptions of the world struggled. Nowadays, the sensation of pets are recognized, but they are still mistreated; the sensation of vertebrates is also recognized but they are considered as of minor interest.

Moreover, the sensation of fishes and invertebrates are openly negated, in the name of the nervous system and the brain, in an anthropocentric conception.

On the contrary, dialectical materialism connects living matter to sensation.
In Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Lenin deals with this question among others, and remembers us this important question :

“There still remains to be investigated and reinvestigated how matter, apparently entirely devoid of sensation, is related to matter which, though composed of the same atoms (or electrons), is yet endowed with a well-defined faculty of sensation.

Materialism clearly formulates the as yet unsolved problem and thereby
stimulates the attempt to solve it, to undertake further experimental investigation.”

Lenin says also that we have certainly to go in the direction of considering that, in the foundation of the structure of matter, we can surmise the existence of a faculty akin to sensation, like Denis Diderot did it.

And indeed, compassion and empathy are a proof of it. What is the dialectical materialist conception of reflect? That thebrain reflects reality; what we think is an echo.

But, if René Descartes and Emmanuel Kant are right, if each individual is like surrounded by a Chinese wall, how is it possible to feel what somebody else feels? How are compassion and empathy possible ?

This is only possible because living matter knows sensations; sensations are linked to the principle of echo, of movement of matter.

That is why a revolution can occur: the masses have synthesized, at different levels, the same vision of the world, corresponding to reality.

Revolution occurs at the general level, compassion and empathy at the individual levels, but their foundation is the fact that matter and sensation can not be separated.

Living matter is therefore at the heart of dialectical materialism, as it is a developed form of matter, a direction which corresponds to the auto-movement of matter itself to more complexity.

This is the reason why we have to recognize, cherish and defend the dignity of reality of nature, of the animals, of each living being, which correspond to the auto-development of matter, and participate in the global system of life on our planet as a Biosphere.

The universe consists of the infinite and eternal process of the reflection of matter by the matter and for the matter.

Matter is indeed sensitive and knows in itself an impression shaping it to different degrees.

This difference in the marking of the reflection has as its source in the fact that the universe is in motion and that it is through it that the reflections and impressions are carried.

This movement and the many aspects of reality make that reflections and
impressions know different rhythms, different magnitudes.

We can say that the universe is the reflection of itself in an uninterrupted
process of transformations.

Its nature is the equivalent of an infinite ocean where everything is reflected in an uninterrupted movement of waves at all levels, at all scales.

This process of reflections and impressions within a moving universe, with all its different aspects of matter, is thus characterized by unequal development.

The inequality of the markings of the reflection, of the impression, causes
situations of imbalances.

There is movement because unequal development, and uneven development because movement.

The main aspect depends on the stage of the process.

On the one hand, the impression of reflection in matter results in making it
more complex on the internal plane.

On the other hand, the uneven nature of this impression provokes breaks. The break is precisely what characterizes a process leading to a transformation as a qualitative leap.

There is concretely neither cause nor consequence, but only an internal transformation resulting in a greater complexity of matter, an enlargement of its impressions, an increase in the power of its reflections, one or more moments of rupture, a qualitative leap.

It is this movement of internal transformation reflected from matter in matter which itself inscribes impressions and produces changes. And what takes place internally is the contradiction brought to its conclusion.

The law of contradiction, with two poles opposed in a relative manner or not, expressing uninterrupted antagonistic relations, belongs to the general and universal movement of matter.

There is neither beginning nor end, because no process is isolated.

The reflection and the impression are generalized and uninterrupted; every phenomenon is related, in different ways and to different degrees, to all the other phenomena.

In the universe, everything is constantly transformed, with transformations whose reflection causes impressions, which themselves produce reflections, which provoke impressions, and this to infinity.

There is consequently neither cause nor consequence.

The process of transformation is dialectical, it unites the particular and the
universal, the relative and the absolute, all being bound together and at the same time unbound in an infinite and eternal process.

Any transformation is added to other transformations and is reflected in them, producing interaction, liaison, mediation.

Nothing is so isolated and independent.

Everything is mutually connected and interdependent, constantly transformed and transforming, by the reflection, by the impression.

Absolutely everything is reflection and reflection of reflection, and this to infinity.

Matter is inexhaustible and ever more complex, ever richer.

No turning back is possible, never, because the movement produces a series
of qualitative leaps that has resulted in a more developed form, more intertwined with the rest of the material.

What is called time is the description of transformation and what is called space is the description of matter, because the universe is only matter, always richer, ever more complex, ever more intertwined to an infinity of aspects of itself.

Any process obeys this mirror system. The most developed phenomena of nature and life correspond to major qualitative leaps in the complexification of matter on a large scale.

The two poles of electricity, molecular asymmetry in the domain of life in relation to the domain of non-living matter, action and reaction in mechanics, mirror neurons in brains, union and dissociation of atoms in chemistry, childhood and parenthood, the masculine and feminine, the class struggle in the modes of production… are examples of complex expression of the movement of matter and of a very high degree of
interplay with itself.

This process has no beginning or ending.

There is no starting point to the universe, nor any point of arrival.

There is no « God », no Big Bang, no source, no beginning.

There is only a ever deeper movement of reflections and impressions, in a spiral movement, proceeding by jumps, characterized by unequal development at all levels, affirming the dynamic nature of the internal relations taking a contradictory dimension until the break.

In fact, not only are the developments unequal between them, but each development is itself unequal in itself, because of the different density of
impressions.

The law of contradiction applies to the expression of the contradiction itself.
Nothing is therefore indivisible, nor eternal. One becomes two and that forever and everywhere.

As it is formulated in the article « The universe is the unity of the finite and the infinite », published in the Journal of the Dialectic of Nature in People’s China in the first half of the 1970s:

« The end of all concrete things, the sun, the Earth and humanity is not the end of the universe.

The end of the Earth will bring a new and more sophisticated cosmic body.

At that time, people will hold meetings and celebrate the victory of the dialectic and welcome the birth of new planets.

The end of humanity will also result in new species that will inherit all our achievements. In this sense… the death of the old is the condition of the birth of the new. »

Communism is the product of the movement of the synthesis of matter through leaps, that is to say that matter ceases to use itself in a partially
unproductive way to find a way to form an active whole.

By partially unproductive, we must understand that matter can only use
matter to develop itself, which implies that one aspect develops at the expense of another, within the framework of an uneven development.

The imbalance caused is resolved by a dialectical leap.

Mao Zedong tells us here that:

“Imbalance is a general and objective law. The cycle, which is endless, goes from imbalance to equilibrium and, again, from this one to the other.

Each cycle, however, corresponds to a higher level of development. The
imbalance is absolute, while the balance is temporary and relative.
The rupture of the balance is a leap forward.”

The capitalist mode of production thus permits the development of the productive forces, but this at the expense of the proletarians; socialism is the negation of it and the communism which prolongs it is then humanity
applying the principle of each according to his means, to each according to his needs.

There is however no negation of negation and socialism organized by humanity does not mean that it is alone to march to communism.

In reality, for dialectical materialism, the whole universe goes to Communism. Dialectically, this means that the entire universe has also gone to communism.

Matter is eternal and infinite; it is inexhaustible.

Consequently, it has already undergone a dialectical evolution, by means of transformations, since this is its very nature. It therefore implies that it has already known and that in every great step, every leap forward, it knows
a communist leap.

This communism consists in the universalization of the means of production of a material form, its synthetic combination. Any rise in the complexity of matter on a certain level corresponds to a communist assertion.

Mountains, galaxies, plants and animals are examples of synthetic leaps corresponding to a communist stage. We have an affirmation of a complex and organized system, a pooling of multiple contradictory aspects of the matter.

These complex systems themselves have a past made up of steps that established the elements that were going to synthesize.

The separate elements combine; they form a harmonious whole and at the same time obey an internal contradiction involving them in a development.

This development is itself uneven and this explains the different galaxies, the different mountains, the different plants, the different animals. The systematization of the production of a complex system is itself uneven.

These are not nature tests or nature errors; it is a reality of any development to be unequal.

Any process takes advantage of a process which has by definition been
unequal in itself to produce a more complex form, through an equally
unequal development.

This past is infinite, as much as the future. The process is endless, its
aspects infinite.

Matter, based on the inequalities of development of its different aspects, knows an infinite development by the affirmation of contradictions leading to a communist leap, producing new forms which themselves bring more
complexity in the general development.

Any jump does not correspond to a communist stage.

But each leap contains, in germ, the tendency to the leap forward towards
the communist nature of the system.

The communist stage is distinguished from the others by a unification where the contradiction ceases to be antagonistic between different aspects to allow a harmonious development – which corresponds to the development of new contradictions, which are different from the previous ones, which have shifted.

This displacement is done by placing the new form in new relationships with the rest of the material.

Each mountain, each galaxy … is the fruit of an internal contradiction, and its realization as a complex form produces a new contradiction with other aspects of matter, for example the galaxy with another galaxy, the
mountain with a river, etc.

The initial internal contradiction, allowing the advent of a new one, of a more complex form, then moves towards the dialectical relationship between the new thing and another thing, forming a new internal contradiction.

The article « The Universe is the unity of the finite and the infinite », published in the Journal of the dialectic of Nature at the time of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, presents the new relationship which established itself as follows:

« The end of all concrete things, the sun, the Earth and humanity is not the end of the Universe. The end of the Earth will bring a new and more sophisticated cosmic body.

At that time, people will hold meetings and celebrate the victory of the dialectic and welcome the birth of new planets.

The end of humanity will also signify that species will inherit all of our achievements. In this sense… the death of the old is the condition for the birth of the new. « 

Communism therefore generalizes on ever more complex levels, because matter transforms itself and its interaction at a complex level deepens, becomes systematized. In this sense, there is no negation of negation, no end of history, nor indeed beginning. There is communism for communism, matter for matter.

The universe is an infinite system where complexity develops in leaps and
bounds. The Japanese physicist Shoichi Sakata, in Theoretical Physics and
Dialectics of Nature, in June 1947, defines his conception of the Universe
as an onion, greeted by Mao Zedong:

“Current science has found that in nature there exist qualitatively different “levels »-the form of motion — , for example, a series of the levels such as elementary particles — nuclei — atoms — molecules — masses — heavenly bodies — nebulae.

These levels form various nodal points which restrict the various qualitative modes of existence of matter in general. And thus they are not merely related in a straightforward manner as described above.

The “levels” are also connected in a direction such as molecules — colloids — cells — organs — individuals — societies. Even in the same masses, there exist “levels” of states corresponding to solids-liquids-gases.

Metaphorically speaking, these circumstances may he described as having a sort of multi-dimensional structure of the fish net type, or it may be better to say that they have the onion-like structure of successive phases.

These levels are by no means mutually isolated and independent, but they are mutually connected, dependent and constantly “transformed” into each other. For example, an atom is constructed from elementary particles and a molecule is constructed from atoms, and conversely the decompositions of a molecule into atoms, an atom into elementary particles can be made.

These kinds of transformations occur constantly, with the creation of new quality and the destruction of others in ceaseless changes.”

The universe is an infinite ocean of contradictions raising matter to a more complex level, bringing richer contradictions, allowing an ever richer combination of matter, more sensitive, more complex, and this in all
directions.

It’s the meaning of communism.

The MLPD, Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, is the only Marxist-Leninist structure to have maintained itself since the 1960s and 1970s in West Germany. It was one of the main initiators of the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations (ICOR), regrouping since 2010 some fifty structures claiming to be Marxist-Leninist and, most of the time, in one way or another, uphelding Mao Zedong.

The line of the MLPD and of the ICOR is classically neo-revisionist: revisionism is denounced, but in reality it is revisionism itself which is assumed. We can see this very simply with the thesis of “state monopoly capitalism”. This thesis is revisionist. State monopoly capitalism would be a new stage of imperialism.

The state would have acquired a great level of independence from the classes, it would be “rational” and by relying on it, capitalism would reach an “organized” stage. The state, through the socialization of losses, would prevent monopoly capitalism from sinking.

Developed by Eugen Varga, this thesis was strictly rejected in the immediate post-war period in the USSR, as part of a great ideological battle. Then, Nikita Khrushchev made it an official device of the revisionist ideology. And, unfortunately, most Marxist-Leninist organizations defining themselves as anti-revisionists in Western Europe have maintained this thesis of “state monopoly capitalism”.

This is the case with the MLPD.

The MLPD does not say that the state is neutral and that it could be wrested from monopoly capital. This distinguishes it from those practicing open revisionism. However, it maintains the thesis of “state monopoly capitalism” theorized by Eugen Varga as a new stage of imperialism. Willi Dickhut, the main theorist of the MLPD since its founding in 1982 and until his death in 1992, fully assumed it in 1973 and this position is documented
by the MLPD itself in 2019.

The MLPD says exactly the same thing as Eugen Varga and this thesis was strictly rejected by the USSR at the time of Stalin, in a vast controversy. Here is how the MLPD presents it:

“In connection with the Second World War, there was a qualitative leap: in all imperialist countries the transition from monopoly capitalist imperialism to monopoly state imperialism has matured.”

This thesis is totally revisionist, historically indefensible from the communist point of view, since it was proposed by Eugen Varga, denounced by Stalin’s USSR, assumed by revisionism in the USSR and systematized in all revisionist parties in the world. The idea of a “qualitative leap” in the history of imperialism was rejected by Stalin. There has never been any talk of a new stage of imperialism.
The consequences must be understood.

Indeed, Eugen Varga’s thesis of “state monopoly capitalism” implies that the state systematically comes to the rescue of monopolies, being even only an appendage to them. The activity is therefore the same as that of the Western European revisionists of the 1960s: the regime should be “unmasked”.

The MLPD says in 2017:

“Bourgeois democracy masks that we live in Germany in a state monopoly capitalism, a dictatorship of monopolies.”

And since we are already living in a dictatorship of monopolies according to the MLPD, then the communist analysis of fascism disappears. There can no longer be any attempt by the monopolies to take control of the state by means of fascism, since the monopolies already have the power. The monopolies therefore wrest the necessary profit thanks to the “organizing” State making society pay. No more need for fascism, no more need for
imperialist war.

The thesis defended by Stalin in 1952 on the inevitability of wars for capitalism, specifically targeting Eugen Varga, is rejected.

Instead, we have the 1920s socialist thesis of so-called organized capitalism.
The MLPD fully accepts this conception and, to satisfy its formulation, has put in place several concepts: the “surmonopoly”, the “sole domination of international financial capital”, the formation of new imperialist countries, the “proletarian way of thinking”.

The MLPD says:

“The international financial capital alone dominant is a small disappearing layer of the bourgeoisie, which is formed by groupings of the international surmonopolies with different national-state bases and links.”

By “surmonopolies”, the MLPD means the 500 most powerful companies in the world. They would form an “international financial capitalism” dominating capitalism on a world scale and supported by states subject to them. Not only non-monopoly capital, but even monopoly capitalist is subject to these “surmonopolies”. And these surmonopolies have not
only merged their own organs with those of the state apparatus, they have pushed for the dismantling of the states themselves.

This is the thesis of organized capitalism theorized by social democracy in the 1920s, with ultra-imperialism forming alongside the possibility of world socialism, and modernized in the 1940s with the thesis of “State monopoly capitalism”.

To unmask this organized capitalism, it would be necessary, according to the MLPD, to have a “proletarian way of thinking”, which would make it possible to discover the real situation. But, quite logically, the only possible revolution is against these “surmonopolies” and we then arrive at the Trotskyist thesis of the unitary world revolution. The program of the MLPD is explicit:

“Under the conditions of internationalized production, the socialist revolution will take an international character. The international collaboration of the imperialists in the organization of the counter-revolution and the interaction with the international class struggle make that today it is practically impossible that an isolated revolutionary process in a country can be carried out victoriously (…).

In this world revolutionary process, there will be in indissoluble interaction mass strikes, mass demonstrations, anti-imperialist, democratic and revolutionary struggles and uprisings.

This is why the proletarian strategy and tactics in each country must essentially be understood and carried out as preparation for the international socialist revolution.”

This is Trotskyism.

And then remains a fundamental problem to explain for the MLPD: why is there still a very clear tendency to war which emerges?

An explanation was to be found. The MLPD then says the following thing: yes, war is inevitable in capitalism, because the states compete for their interests. This is not Lenin’s teaching at all.

Leninism explains that imperialism is the superstructure of national capitalism. The imperialist war is therefore carried by capitalism itself, because once developed, the monopoly fraction prevails.

It was therefore necessary for the MLPD to break this definition and broaden the concept of an imperialist country. Stefan Engel, leader of the MLPD, publicly expressed this “broader” concept in 2011.

Would be henceforth imperialist countries Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, India, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Argentina, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iran. Added to this must be China and Russia, as well as Israel, which the MLPD already considered as imperialist.

We immediately see the paradox, since the MLPD itself explains that these 14 countries bring together 3.7 billion people, more than half of the world’s
population. If we therefore add the population of the remaining imperialist countries (United States, Western European countries, Japan), then not living in an imperialist country would only affect 35% of the world population!

Here is completely reversed the principle of uneven development and the parasitic nature of imperialism. Besides that, the MLPD does not recognize the concept of a semi-feudal semi-colonial country, speaking of “neo-colonialism”. The MLPD needs all this fiction to pretend that it has not left communist teachings. The MLPD thus denounces the war, saying that it is the result of competition between imperialists.

What the MLPD does not directly confess, however, is that according to this conception, this competition takes place in what is called the “world imperialist system”. For the MLPD, this is a kind of by-product of the world domination of the “surmonopolies”.

It is therefore the fruit of state militarism in search of territories to be controlled – we come back here to Rosa Luxembourg’s erroneous thesis that an imperialist war is based only on the principle of conquering territories to widen the accumulation of capital.

For the MLPD, there is a global, unified imperialism, and within it competition between states. This is why countries without industrial production apart from oil and gas, such as Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, can be defined as “imperialist”. As they take a part of
the global « piece of the cake », they compete with others.

All this has nothing to do with the teachings of communism and the just understanding of the uneven development of semi-feudal semi-colonial countries, recognizing that there are indeed differences between Gabon and South Korea, Chile and India. Nevertheless, a semifeudal semi-colonial country can only be transformed into expansionism and not into
imperialism, because it is itself linked to one or more imperialist countries.

Iran practices expansionism, as does Israel, but neither the one nor the other is an imperialism. This responds to the specific needs of bureaucratic capitalism in crisis, which needs to get out of it by war. But their semi-feudal and semi-colonial dimension is obvious.

The weight of religions in institutions alone shows the undemocratic dimension present, the maintenance of backward social structures, incompatible with liberated capitalism and going as far as imperialism. There is indeed a tendency towards war, but it is not imperialism in substance or else one distorts the notion of imperialism by reducing it to a bourgeois definition of « geopolitics ».

This is why, beyond a few rhetorical remarks, the MLPD does not make imperialist war one of its favorite themes. The imperialist wars is for it only a secondary aspect, specific to the internal competition of states for in a “world imperialist system”. This is an entirely revisionist analysis.