Revolution #222, January 16, 2011


BIRDS CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO CROCODILES, BUT HUMANITY CAN SOAR BEYOND THE HORIZON

[Editors' Note: The following is an excerpt from a recent talk by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA; this is one of a number of excerpts from that talk that are being published in Revolution. The first four excerpts appeared in Revolution #218–#221. The entire Part I of the talk is available at revcom.us. This has been edited, and footnotes have been added, for publication.]

The Theory of "Social Contract" and the Lack of Materialism

There are a number of themes that I have been, and I will continue to be, weaving in and out here and returning to repeatedly, because these are extremely important points, particularly having to do with the fundamental importance of materialism, which we need to firmly take hold of ourselves and engage in very living and lively struggle with others much more broadly about. So, as part of the process of excavating certain thinking and examining it in light of materialism, I want to examine briefly the whole, fundamentally erroneous notions of bourgeois political theory concerning the "social contract" and the idea of "governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"—which is, of course, a major theme and principle of bourgeois-democratic theory and in fact a major distortion of reality, and specifically a distortion of the historical development of human beings and their societies—in short, an unscientific, idealist notion.

We see in the writings of the 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (and others of the same general period, including Immanuel Kant) this whole notion that governments were formed to deal with the situation in which "man" had been in some supposed "state of nature": a bunch of individuals existing in some misty past in the development of the human species in which these individuals were in antagonistic conflict with each other (of course, the scientific understanding of evolution hadn't yet been brought forward in the time of Rousseau or Kant). And then at some point, according to this basic conception, human beings came together to form a society and government in order to regulate conflicts among themselves so they could live in an orderly way with each other and so that their larger interests could be served. Now, some variants of this make a point of saying that it isn't necessary, and they're not necessarily arguing, that such a "state of nature"—or, more to the point, an original "contract" or "compact" among human beings leaving the "state of nature" and joining together in society—actually took place, but that society needs to function as if human beings had come together to advance from "a state of nature" into a situation of civilized society.

With Rousseau, in particular, matters are somewhat more complicated, particularly with regard to the concept of "the state of nature." Rousseau conceived of man in his original state (and in his theories Rousseau, whose views were markedly patriarchal, did above all have in mind man) as essentially "innocent"; and Rousseau attributed the more "savage" qualities in man, which needed to be curbed, to the development of human social relations, and in particular the acquisition of private property and related inequality (Rousseau actually referred to this state as "savagery"). But, while he differed from some others in this regard—and most notably someone like the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes with his view of inherent human nature leading to a war of each against all in a "state of nature"—Rousseau nevertheless employed the concept of "a state of nature" in the sense of an existence (at least theoretical) of human beings without a social contract to bind them in society. And the basic flaws in the concept of "social contract" apply to Rousseau's theories as much as to others.

In any case, this idea of how human beings and their society developed is in conflict with the actual historical development of human society and the biological evolution of human beings, with the emergence of human beings as a species—and specifically the way in which early human beings lived in small groups and then in small societies in essentially communal relations, and the basis on which, out of that, class divisions and conflicts and other oppressive relations and antagonisms emerged and then, not just governments, but the state as an organ of class suppression, was brought into being. This scientific understanding was systematized by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State; and, although some of what Engels drew from was not completely accurate and much has been learned since then, in basic terms "The Origin" represented a crucial scientific breakthrough in understanding the emergence of exploitative and oppressive relations among human beings—a scientific understanding that was in sharp contrast with the idealist concepts of Rousseau and other bourgeois theorists. Engels drew to a significant degree, not only from Lewis Henry Morgan, an anthropologist who studied various Native American groups, but also, of course, from the breakthroughs that Darwin had made in developing and systematizing the scientific theory of evolution. Marx and Engels gave great emphasis and importance to Darwin's breakthroughs.

The concept of "social contract" articulated by bourgeois political theorists not only flies in the face of reality—of how human beings as a species and human societies evolved and went through different qualitative transformations and how, not just governments, but the state emerged—but at the same time, and for the same fundamental reasons, it flies in the face of what possibilities there are for further transformation in human social relations. One of the things that Immanuel Kant did, for example, in an essay on perpetual peace,1 was to extend the ideas of Rousseau in particular to the relations between different nations, or different countries, in an attempt to come up with principles for how you could have peaceful relations among these different nations and states—not by overcoming and abolishing those different nations and states, but through arrangements among them that would be an extension of what Rousseau came up with in his social contract theory. And, in this, Kant's theory and arguments suffered from the same fundamental flaws as "social contract" theory in general.

Now, I don't have time to go into all this in detail or in depth here, but it is important to point out the historically limited and fundamentally flawed understanding that is reflected in these notions, as insightful as they were in some important ways, and as much as they represented a break and advance beyond the rationalizations for feudal society, that in some important ways they were going up against and even polemicizing directly against. But when we weigh this against a scientific, dialectical materialist understanding of the actual dynamics of the development of human beings and human societies, and the basis and role of governments and—more than that and in a concentrated way—the emergence and role of the state, we can see how historically limited these notions of people like Rousseau and Kant were, and how in fact their ideas were a reflection, in some ways rather directly, of the underlying dynamics and relations, and the property and production relations in particular, of the society of which they were ideal spokespeople—namely capitalism. (In this regard, in addition to what is discussed in this talk, I would refer people to Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That?, especially the section on "The 'Rights of Man'" in Chapter 2, "The Roots and the Rise of Modern Democracy."2)

The outlook and interests of the petite bourgeoisie cannot lead to a real, radical and emancipating transformation

So, once more, we come back to the basic understanding that to overcome all these relations of exploitation and oppression and the constraints that are presently posed—not by god or, as it's sometimes popularly said these days in some metaphysical thinking, by "the universe," but by the actual social relations that have historically evolved among human beings—to advance beyond all that cannot be done, obviously, in a manner corresponding to the outlook and interests of the ruling bourgeoisie but also, and very importantly, cannot be done in a manner corresponding to the position, interests and outlook of the petite bourgeoisie: the material position and interests of this class (or of these strata) does not allow this.

We live in a world of highly developed and, more than that, highly socialized productive forces. This is so particularly with regard to the relations among people in the productive process; the role of people as a dynamic productive force in the overall process of production is highly socialized. Small scale property owners and proprietors, and small scale owners of capital in general, are not capable of unleashing and wielding these highly developed and highly socialized productive forces in a way that can lead to any alternative to the present system. Either they would make a mess of things—by trying to conduct production on the small scale to which their ownership of capital corresponded, when overwhelmingly the forces of production that have been developed can only be employed in highly socialized forms, on a large scale—or, if they succeeded in their wildest dreams, they would turn into the big bourgeoisie themselves and wield these highly developed and highly socialized productive forces along the lines that the big bourgeoisie does. At the same time, and as a reflection of this, the outlook that corresponds to the material position of the petite bourgeoisie cannot lead to overcoming and advancing beyond all this (all the exploitative relations of production and other oppressive relations in which human beings, and the productive forces as a whole, are confined and constrained): it is neither their aspiration nor does their outlook make it possible to lead people to rupture with and advance beyond all that.

1. See "To Eternal Peace," an essay written by Kant in 1795, reproduced in Basic Writings of Kant, Modern Library, 2001. [back]

2. Bob Avakian, Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? (Banner Press, 1986). [back]

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