Technological Change and the Revolutionary Process (Keith) by Keith

The work of the inventor and futurist Ray Kurweil was a part of our discussion in a study group in New Brunswick. (We hope to stream our study groups on line soon so that comrades outside of town can particpate too).   Here is a talk that Kurweil gave on "technology's acceralating power."

On this blog and in our practical work we have been developing the theory of revolutionary democray in a way we think is unusual among the left, we eagerly look to the future,  instead of the past. We are not critics of counsmer culture and consumption so much as we are fighting for better as well as more opportunities for consumption. We are more interetsed in productive process that have a future rather than preserving the past. 

In previos posts I argued that What is revolutionay about the working class is that workers are best able to bring down the system and today these workers are in high tech sectors of the economy.  We have also argued that the most advanced communications technology provides the scaffolding of revolutionary democratic orgainzation and enhanbces its possibilities.  Understanding technological change and its social effects is crucial for develping revolutionary democratic stratgey and tactics. 

This talk by Kurzweil raises a number of questions which it would be worth investigating further. Here are the ones that jumped out at me:

Kurzweil early in the talk says "humanity is a technology creating animal" and throughout the talk he erradicates the distinction between natural history and social history.  

Is there no difference between political/social/cultural history and natural history (evolution)? 

Kurzweil says: "price performance” improve continuously. In other words the price of technology continously declines. This is pretty easily explained by Marx's value theory. But it is impossible to explain with modern bouregois economic theory which argues prices are determined by individual subjective preferences. 

How does bourgeosie or neoclassical economics (the less deragatory term), and Kurzweil understand improved "price performance"? (Also what he calls the 40-50% defaltion rate-- which is price deflation. He also inadvertently mentions teh radical increase in teh rate of exploitation. Worker productivity in the U.S.rose from $30 per/hour to $150 per/hour) 

Is Kurweil aware of the incapablity of his theory with theories of price formation in neoclassical economics? How are the conradictions resolved ideologically? Are there openings to create division between the technocratic classes and neocalssical economics here?

Kurzweil speaks about the laws of technological evolution. What are these laws? How are they enforced? Kurzweil mentions competition (it is not clear if the laws are enforced by competition in this talk. If so, that would be Marx's basic view, but it is only under capitalist social relations that competition is orgianzed and universalized). Kurzweil seems to argue that technologival change is a given rather than a social product. 

Kurzweil use the trem "research pressure." Where does this pressure come from?

In our study group we also discussed some of the questions raised by rapid technological change in the context of Marx's theory of tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Simply stated: the amount of human labor in each commodity is reduced by technological innovations which develop labors productivity. This causes the price of the commodity to fall and th3 rate of profit to decline. Here is a paragraph from the Grundrisse where Max talks about technological changed and the end of capitalism. 

"To the degree that labour time -- the mere quantity of labour -- is posited by capital as the sole determinant element, to that degree does direct labour and its quantity disappear as the determinant principle of production -- of the creation of use values -- and is reduced both quantitatively, to a smaller proportion, and qualitatively, as an, of course, indispensable but subordinate moment, compared to general scientific labour, technological application of natural sciences, on one side, and to the general productive force arising from social combination [Gliederung] in total production on the other side -- a combination which appears as a natural fruit of social labour (although it is a historic product). Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production."

So I would also ask what are the barriers that capitalist social relationships pose to the development technology and labors' productive power and how can we find ways to explain the obstacles posed by capitalism?

It would be great if we can begin a discussion here, and do further research, discuss it at study group, write it up notes from the discussion as a blog post for those who can't make it to study cirle. 

Revolutionary Democracy and Dual Power (Brian) by Keith

What is “dual power”? Dual power, most generally, is the phenomenon of the existence of two distinct powers in the social relations within the institutions of a capitalist society (the system and the people, the state and the resistance, capital and labor, etc.) – the existence of an entrenched, constituted power AND a transformative, constituent power. Revolutionary Democracy’s definitions and uses of dual power differ from previous ones.

Leninist-derived groups express dual power only vis-à-vis the state. The “second power” within this dual power relation exists only as resistance to (and for seizure of) that state power. They really only use the term “dual power,” then, to describe an event – the sufficient empowerment of the transformative, constituent power on the precipice of revolution.

Many anarchist groups also operate mostly within a state-bound formulation of “dual power,” but instead build toward a second power that exists totally outside of the state. Other anarchist groups do organize otherwise isolated examples of resistance to the state (and thus don’t completely forego engaging state power), but that dual power is still state-based, and has its ultimate goal as the unequivocal abolition of that state.

Revolutionary Democracy sees dual power differently – temporally, corporeally, and strategically.

In Revolutionary Democracy, dual power exists all the time and everywhere – at work, in your home, in the broader society, even within the movement itself. This conception of dual power is more in tune with people’s everyday experience of being forced into a labor process that creates surplus for someone else, and our many daily forms of resistance to it – from slacking at work to organizing and empowering others. And this clearly is not just an economic/labor phenomenon. Just about everyone, everywhere can measure their power against capital’s power – or against other entrenched, constituted power – and know, at a gut-level, “the system sucks.”

This recognition of dual power as an ever-present phenomenon is in no small way linked to Revolutionary Democracy’s recognition of capital (in its broadest definitions) as a social relation, not as a static “thing” – that is, once something is intended to be used as capital (or has become capital), it is inherently imbued with an exploitative social process. Transforming capital into a tool of the people – bending the machine to our will instead of raging against it – is one way that Revolutionary Democracy succeeds in making dual power (cognizant of capital as a social relation) a “living theory” (linked to practice) – a theory in action, a theory in motion.


Therefore, Revolutionary Democracy will sometimes use the term “dual power” to also mean the building or establishing of the “second power.” One might say the city machine was entrenched power, but the growth of EON (dual power as an action) created a state of more clearly discernible dual power (dual power as a phenomenon or fact). Creating consciousness-raising empowerment – direct experiences of agency and self-determination – therefore renders the phrase “dual power” an ongoing strategic process (one that both leads to radicalization as people simply “live the revolution,” and one that furthers cause of achieving specific goals – an example is the widening outreach of “Empower Our Neighborhoods” at present).

Dual Power, Strategy, and Tactics

Dual power meant as the cultivation of the “second power” then, is perhaps the very essence of Revolutionary Democratic strategy. When we strategize, we identify enemies and allies and gain a general plan of how we attack the problem. If the phenomenon/existence of dual power (two powers present in an institution/social relation) is, according to Revolutionary Democracy, omnipresent, then the ongoing fundamental answer to the question “How do we win?” is simple: “Build dual power (cultivate, strengthen the second power). Build it everywhere.” It is here that we see Revolutionary Democracy willing to utilize and infiltrate existing, constituted powers while simultaneously strengthening transformative, constituent power outside those structures. This means we do not dismiss actions such as running for elected office as revolutionaries (an example might be the People’s Campaign of 2000), or, say, building dual power even in institutions like the military or police (unlike anarchists bent on statelessness per se).The degree to which any institution, social relation, etc. is allied with the cause of the people determines how that “dual use” (of the system, and of forces outside it) will take shape. All tactics – more specific, immediate, concrete answers to that question, “How do we win?” – flow from the strategic Revolutionary Democratic theory AND practice of “dual power.”

The Basics of Marxism (Keith) by X.

Three concepts are necessary to understand the basics of Marxism: Class, Surplus, and Exploitation. Before proceeding to these three concepts a caveat is necessary. Marx and Engels' collected works fill 50 volumes and many texts remain unpublished. The secondary literature on Marx's theory is elephantine, not to mention the original contributions to revolutionary thought from practicing Marxists as well as revolutionaries from other theoretical traditions. So, it would be a remarkable lie if I were to say that the introductory remarks below represent the essence of Marxism or socialism--it is a big topic. And there are very many Marxisms, each with their own emphasis and developed in differing historical conditions. If this weren't the case Marxism wouldn't be a theory but a religion. And it is important to remember that anyone who tells you that their Marxism is the only Marxism is not a revolutionary theorist but a priest trying to build a religion.

The most important concept in my view is surplus labor and its related opposite, necessary labor. Surplus just means "more" or "extra" -- as in more than is necessary. All societies produce a surplus of goods and services. Take, for example, a communal egalitarian society like the Iroquois or Cherokee in their pre-European contact state-- all members of the tribe work except the very young, the very old, the sick, or disabled. In order to care for those that cannot work (the young, the old, etc.) those who can work must produce a surplus, extra—they must produce more than is necessary for their own sustenance. This extra is the difference between what the people who do work need to live and what they produce for others. These societies are egalitarian or non-exploitative because the people who produce the surplus control it collectively and decide how to use it-- to take care of the old, the young, and the sick.

Now let's look at surplus in very different social relations. Take slave-based societies: The slaves do the work and the master gets the product of their work and decides what to do with it. The difference between what the slaves get back as food, clothing, and shelter and what the master keeps is the surplus. This form of social organization is very different than the arrangements of the Iroquois or Cherokee. In those societies the people who do the work decide on what to do with the surplus. In slave society the people who do the work have no say over the surplus—that is exploitation by definition. Exploitation occurs when the people who do the work and produce the surplus are different from the people who get the product of that work and the surplus. The difference between the people doing the work and the people getting the surplus produced is a class difference. Exploitation is at the heart of class difference. In a society where the people who create the surplus are different from the people who get the surplus and decide what to do with it, there are class differences, and class struggle.

Marxism defines class by the relationship between groups of people (classes) and the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus. I should qualify that assertion by saying different Marxists have different ways of thinking about classes, some identify classes by consciousness, others by property or power, mainstream discourses usually think in terms of income or status: i.e., "blue collar or "white collar," or "middle class." Sometimes these alternative ways of thinking about class yield insights, but often they obscure the question of exploitation. Thinking about class in these different ways will lead to very different politics and social practices. I will say more about this towards the end of this essay, but first we should look at a couple more class structures.

In European feudalism somewhat different arrangements for exploitation occurred. In the corvée system a peasant might work on a piece of land for three days and kept the fruit of his labor for himself. Then he was required to work an additional three days on a different piece of land—the fruit from this labor was delivered to the feudal lord. The first three days are necessary labor (necessary to re-produce the peasant by providing food, clothing, shelter and so forth) and the second three days are surplus—taken by the lord.

Exploitation and class difference are obvious under slavery and feudalism. The slave and the peasant know that they do the work and their lords and masters don't work. The systems are justified in two ways: violence and ideology. Slavery and feudalism require the extensive use of force, but force can be a blunt and limited tool. In addition to force ideologies are developed to win the consent of the exploited. Some religious ideologies, for example, propose that social hierarchies are ordained by god and reflect the spiritual world, or ideologies like paternalism, or white supremacy which racialize class differences making them seem natural, biological, or divinely sanctioned. The obviousness of exploitation in a slave or feudal society disappears under capitalism.

What is clear under slavery and feudalism becomes mysterious under capitalism. The hidden nature of capitalist exploitation accounts for the rise of economics as a science. Economics emerged with the rise of capitalism because it was unclear, for instance, how market prices were determined, or where profit comes from. Marx's most important works, the four volumes of his magnum opus Capital (totaling over 4,000 pages) is a study of how surplus is produced, appropriated, and distributed in capitalist societies, or as he called it "the capitalist mode of production." Marx built on the work of his predecessors, especially Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and David Ricardo another important classical political economist.

The short story of work under capitalism goes something like this: When you go to work part of the day you spend producing the goods and/or services that you will get back in the form of wages or as a salary. This is the necessary part of the working day because you are making the value that you need in order to buy the things you need to live. But once you have accomplished this you will keep working, and during this time you will be producing surplus that the capitalist will take. Part of the surplus produced by workers becomes the capitalist profit and the rest is distributed by that appropriating capitalist to others (some goes to other capitalists like bankers as interest, landlords as rent, some goes to the state as taxes, and so forth). This surplus will take different forms, capitalist profits, bankers' interest, landlord rents, stock holder dividends, and can be used by the capitalist (or in a modern corporation the board of directors) in a large variety of ways. Marx wants us to see that labor produces surplus and the exploitation of workers is the origin of these different forms of capitalist income.

The story is simple when looking at an egalitarian society, or a slave society. In these societies everyone knows that labor produces the goods and services that we need to live on. It is no mystery. But under capitalism it is a great mystery. The mystery emerges basically for two reasons. The first is what Marx calls commodity fetishism and capital fetishism. Fetishism is expressed in an idea like "money makes money." Under capitalist social forms it appears that money magically produces itself. What is hidden then is the exploitation of labor, money only makes money if it exploits labor somewhere along the way. The second reason for the mystery of exploitation under capitalism is ideology. Workers are daily bombarded by an ideological assault (paid for out of the surplus we produce) telling us that the system is just, that "capitalist take risks" and so they deserve a "reward," or investors "contribute" their capital and "deserve a return" and other such nonsense designed to legitimize exploitation.

As we argued elsewhere on the blog, revolution is a process. So ending exploitation is not something that will happen by decree after a great revolutionary event. Overthrowing the capitalist mode of production is a process. In the past many Marxist and socialists thought state ownership of the means of production and suppressing the market (markets are just places where people buy and sell) were the way to overcome capitalism. Identifying socialism with state ownership of the means of production follows very naturally if class is defined in terms of property ownership. In this view capitalist are "owners" and workers are "non-owners." I see three problems with this "classical view." First, exploitation is based on the production of surplus value and the appropriation of the surplus by people different from the workers who made it. Is this situation changed by state ownership? Not necessarily. In a modern capitalist enterprise, known as the corporation, the "owners" don't appropriate the surplus they just "own" a piece of paper (the stock certificate). The surplus is appropriated by the board of directors which makes the decisions about what to do with the surplus. Or take an example of state ownership: The state owns the postal service and still postal workers labor under the same basic conditions as the rest of us. This leads to the second problem with this view: State ownership was the goal pursued in the Soviet Union. During the revolution workers seized their factories and turned them over to the "workers state." After the revolution surpluses were appropriated by commissars or state managers. Without addressing the achievements and shortcomings of the Soviet experience it is enough to point out that using the definition of exploitation discussed above the Soviet Union wasn't able to overcome exploitation (in fairness they weren't trying to, they defined class by property ownership and were concerned with ending private capitalism through state ownership.) The last problem with this version is getting from private ownership of the means of production to public ownership of the means of production requires an (unlikely) insurrection and momentous seizure or power, because there is no transition, no in-between stage: The workers must take state power and make private industry public.

Choosing to define class by surplus production is in keeping with the strategy and tactics of revolutionary democracy and in keeping with our rejection of the politics of insurrection (and their kissing cousin—protest mode). Insurrection, just like protest, is a tactic, not a strategy. Whether or not there is an insurrection in the future, we still have to overcome exploitation step by step, starting today, as a part of the revolutionary process. We have already discussed on the blog an overarching revolutionary democratic strategy. Overcoming exploitation is the same process: People who do the work also make the decisions about how that work gets done and what to do with the surplus that work produces. In a modern corporation the board of directors gets the surplus and decides what to do with it. We must develop tactics so that workers can take these boards over. Every union's long term goal should be the democratic seizure of the board of directors by the workers. In Universities our goal should be the democratic seizure of boards of trustees and boards of governors by faculty, staff and students. We can also set up worker co-operatives where the people who do the work decide on how to spend the surplus. Some of that surplus can be used to finance the movement –the growing revolutionary democratic movement will make sure social conditions that allow worker co-operatives to exist continue and expand.

Overcoming exploitation is a major theoretical and practical project. In the above I put forth a few rudimentary ideas. We must start thinking seriously about this question, and experiment practically with tactics to overcome exploitation one shop, one factory, one college, one school, one corporation at a time. But in order to think about exploitation we must know how it works.

In New Brunswick, the Revolutionary Democratic movement is organizing an electoral campaign to transform the city council from a system based on at-large representation to one based on neighborhood representation. As the city becomes increasingly democratized (a ward based system is a step in this direction, part of the revolutionary process) we can propose and agitate for laws that will spur the development of worker co-operatives. Instead of tax breaks for corporations, we argue for tax breaks to worker co-ops and state-funded programs to assist in setting up co-ops.

As part of the local movement, we can urge teachers and staff and students to take over the board of education, and with an increasingly democratic city we can demand laws and policies to make it feasible. We don't have to wait for some distant future event or "crisis" to end exploitation. We can start working for it now.

In the above discussion I relied on Marx's works especially the four volumes of Capital (the fourth volume is called Theories of Surplus Value). In addition, Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, have been arguing forcefully to put Marx's theory of surplus production back on the agenda. See especially their texts Knowledge and Class, and Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. See also Lenin's essay "On Cooperation."

What's Revolutionary about the Working Class? (Keith) by X.

The Financial Times (FT), the standard bearing newspaper of the global capital, recently published an editorial entitled: The biggest threat from cyber warfare lies in the future. The author, Stephen Fidler, responding to reports that the so-called People’s Liberation Army of China hacked into the Pentagon’s computer begins his commentary with this seemingly doomsday scenario: “The lights go out; the internet goes down. Banks close; cash machines fail. Radio and television stations stop broadcasting. Airports and railway stations bar their doors. City streets are jammed with traffic. After a night of uncertainty, power and communications are still blacked out - in fact, they might not come back for months. People start to panic and, as looters emerge, police are unable to restore order.” According to Fidler’s the United States would go from “super-power to third world nation” overnight. The paper goes on to call for greater security measures from the department of homeland security. And maybe (though probably not) these securities measures could prevent an attack like the one recently put on the Pentagon’s system. Secretly embedded in the “nightmare” story told above is the secret of working class power.

Stephen Fidler’s editorial unwittingly explains why the working class is the “revolutionary agent” and it is a lesson that despite all of the lip-service paid to the working class has been long forgotten. Workers are revolutionary not because of what they think, not because they are oppressed, not because they are poor, but because they make the system work and if they stop the system stops.

Fidler is worried about terrorism and international espionage but as a follow up letter to the editor points out cyber-attacks could well be inside jobs. This letter then explains how workers (in the author’s deluded mind they must be foreign terrorist moles) in the IT sector could bring about the above scenario from inside the company. That is they could shut down the functioning of the global capitalist system. He even speculates that many of the Microsoft windows security flaws which are patched up by windows updates could be purposefully placed breaches. Indeed, when Microsoft attempts to limit access to security updates to those who have a “legal” copy of the operating system hacks are immediately posted on the web—the hacks are almost certainly provided by Microsoft workers.

One of Marx’s most important and famous concepts is commodity fetishism, but perhaps even more important is his lesser known concept of the capital fetish—the idea that money makes money is an example of it. Marx explains that workers confront their conditions of work as they would an alien power. Capital --the machines and tools (like computers) -- seems all powerful and we seem weak. But this is the illusion. Capital has no power except what is provided by living labor-- by us going to and doing the work. Marx sometimes refers to capital as accumulated dead labor, and capitalism is then a system in which dead labor dominates living labor.

By theorizing the capital fetish Marx responds to various bourgeois economists who think that capital creates value. Marx explains that capital is not a thing but a social relationship, and if it is a social relationship then it is a class relationship, and if it is a class relationship then it is a relationship of antagonism and struggle. For example: a lawn mower may or may not be capital it depends on the social relationships in which it is used. If Jill mows her lawn with the lawn mower it is not capital. If Jill mows her neighbor’s lawn and gets paid $20 to do it, it is still not capital. The lawnmower is capital if Jill hires a worker to mow her neighbor’s lawn with her lawnmower and her neighbor pays her $20 and she gives the worker $10 and keep the other $10 as profit. The lawnmower is capital because it is used to exploit labor, to extract surplus value from living labor. As a budding capitalist her job is to accumulate more capital. If she is frugal and has the entrepreneurial spirit she will plow that capital back into her business buying more lawnmowers, hiring more workers and mowing the lawns of entire neighborhoods and corporate parks. If Jill has one hundred lawnmowers she can exploit the labor of one hundred workers, instead of “earning” $10 profit from one worker she can pump surplus value in the form of profit from each one, and so on.

As the business gets larger the source of profits becomes more mystified. The lawnmower appears to be everything when it is actually nothing. The lawnmowers appear to be the source of profit – that is the capital fetish. Without the worker it isn’t capital, without the workers the capitalist could not get the $10 as profit nor could the capitalist get the profit from 100 lawnmowers without workers. If the workers stop working there is no profit, if the workers get rid of the capitalist they can keep the lawn mowers. Clearly, the capitalist needs the workers but workers don’t need the capitalist. And here is the revolutionary potential of the working class. If the worker refuses to work for Jill then her mowers are no longer capital, if she can’t get anyone to work thecapital is destroyed because the social relationship is ended. Only workers can end the social relation of capital. The capital relation is terminated at the point of production -- that’s why workers are important and that’s why they are revolutionary.

Historically when revolutionaries sought to organize workers they sought out workers at the point of production in “the commanding heights” -- strategic industries where job actions like strikes could shut down the whole system. They usually organized workers in sectors like steel, auto, rubber, transportation and so forth. But today the commanding heights are quite different. As the editorial in the Financial Times revealed the commanding heights are in IT and other sectors of the so-called “new economy.”

This brings us to the central problem of political practice. What we are beginning to get from the above is a class analysis -- an analysis of the class structure in the United States. But it is only a beginning. In the long term expanding and extending the analysis is essential because it allows us to organize in the most effective way possible. But for the time being it should cause us to re-consider the class position of college students.

When the original SDS fell apart in the late 1960’s nearly all factions agreed on one thing -- students were not workers and workers had to be organized. The result was the destruction of the student organization in an attempt to organize workers, or to organize in the “community.” This was a fatal error that flowed from an incorrect class analysis, and especially of students’ position in the class structure. It is wrong first of all because it is self-evident that students historically have played an important and often leading role in revolutionary and other social movements. And secondly the analysis was based on a persistent but incorrect assumption that students were not, nor would they ever be, workers. According to the old story students would be managers or coordinators of capitalist production processes that exploit workers, but most students will not be coordinators. They will become skilled workers. Organize them into the movement now and we are organizing the working class of the future.

Isms Aren't the Problem, Dogma Is the Problem (Keith) by X.

Some notes on science, theory, ideology, and practice: Towards a critique of scientific reason

Revolutionary democracy, as we are attempting to develop it practically and theoretically emerges out of a critical dialogue with the Marxist tradition. The term “science” is bandied about within Marxist circles and the confusion over this term and what it means leads to a number of practical and theoretical shortcomings which have to be overcome if the movement is to develop. Specifically, we must be able to distinguish what science can do, from what it can not do.

Since Marx emerges in the 19th century we need to start with the 19th century conception of science. Science in the 19th century was linked to the word “critique.” The German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed a “critical philosophy,” and he wrote a number of texts which he called “Critiques” e.g.: “The Critique of Pure Reason;” “The Critique of Practical Reason;” and “The Critique of Judgment.” Marx, almost one hundred years later, published his magnum opus “Das Kapital: A critique of political economy.” Marx sees his own project as “a critique” in much the same way that Kant understood it. Critical philosophy, for Kant, is the opposite of dogmatic philosophy. Dogma, in this conception, means simply, “assertions without proof.” Critical philosophy refers to the idea that the assertions of critical philosophy can be proved by evidence and/or reason. It is,therefore “scientific.”

As Marx’s thinking moves out of the confines of it European context and begins to be utilized by revolutionaries around the world (Russia and Asia especially, but also Africa and Latin America) it is enriched in innumerable ways, but as the power of Marx’s ideas became recognized because of their effectiveness in practice (Revolutions in some of the world’s largest countries, and leading the decolonization of the world) a sort of cult of science emerged and the concept of science became so distorted that it has, in many Marxist circles, become its opposite: dogma. The cult of science generates analysis and truths which are always already known, and then they slap on a tired slogan. They use Marxism like priests, plugging new coordinates into the old formula and out pops an analysis.

Oddly, Marx argues for a distinct and limited conception of science in one of his most often celebrated and criticized pieces: the “Preface” to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” This piece is most often cited because in a very brief space Marx puts forward a theory of social revolution (property relations come into revolutionary conflict with the further development of a society’s productive forces), however, Marx also makes this under-reported comment:

“In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”

Marx, as a careful reading testifies, makes a distinction between an understanding of “the material conditions of production” which lend themselves to a scientific conception as precise as “natural science,” and the political or “ideological” forms in which people become aware of these issues and in which they fight it out. I read this to suggest, in opposition to the way that most Marxist-Leninist (-Trotkyist, -Maoist, -etceterists) read Marx, that there is no “science of revolution” or even a “science of politics” emerging from Marx’s thought. Instead, we can understand the development of capitalism in a precise or scientific way, but our political practice is much more akin to an art then a science. This, of course, does not mean we must proceed with practice without any theoretical guidance. Indeed, we may be able to approach revolutionary political practice with a version of the scientific method and certainly our practice will not develop beyond reforming the system without being highly informed by the scientific analysis of capitalism and its development. But in order to proceed we must make a careful distinction between the scientific analysis of capitalism and the art of revolutionary politics. Once this distinction is grasped then we can learn from the mistakes and successes of the past revolutions and revolutionary movements without succumbing to the cult of science.

If we can mark the distinction between the analysis of capitalism, which, according to Marx, can proceed with the precision of natural science, and the “ideological forms” which political thinking and practice occurs, how then, to conceive of revolutionary political theory? The blog is largely dedicated to the elaboration of a revolutionary political theory. I would propose that Marx’s method can guide us here. A theory is a series of inter-related concepts that emerge out of people thinking about and studying their own political activity and that of others. These concepts can be mobilized in practice and further developed in practice, becoming more defined, more refined, and more expansive. The concepts, then, become increasingly clear if they are useful in practice. The theory of revolutionary democracy as we are developing it here and in practice consists of a series of concepts like: “self-determination;” “alternate infrastructure and superstructure;” “cultural revolution;” “protest mode;” “there is no spoon;” “dual power” etc. On the blog we attempt to link these concepts with anecdotes from practice in order to make the concepts clearer, to concretize them, so that they can be useful to others but the examples we suggest do not exhaust the potential of the concept, even the concept of revolutionary democracy will be transformed with increasing practice and thinking --once a theory ceases to develop it can only become dogma.