With the setting down of the Law of Transformation the Communist philosophy of nature became complete. The Dialectical Materialists felt that a great intellectual contribution had been made to man's understanding of the universe. Through these laws they decided they had shown:
1. Matter is a unity of opposites which creates a conflict that makes it auto-dynamic and self-energizing; therefore matter does not need an outside source of power for its manifestation of motion;
2. Through its pattern of constant negation or dying, nature tends to multiply itself and fill the universe with an orderly development or increase without requiring any guiding intelligence; and
3. Through the Law of Transformation matter is capable of producing new forms without the need of any creative or directing power outside of itself.
Engels boasted that by discovery of these laws "the last vestige of a Creator external to the world is obliterated."9
From this brief summary, it will be seen that the Communist intellectual believes that everything in existence came about as a result of ceaseless motion among the forces of nature. Everything is a product of accumulated accident. There is no design. There is no law. There is no God. There is only matter and force in nature.
As for man, the Communist philosopher teaches that he is a graduate animal -- an accident of nature like all other forms of life. Nevertheless, man is supposed to have the accidental good fortune to possess the highest intelligence in existence. This is said to make him the real god of the universe. This is precisely what Ludwig Feuerbach had in mind when he said: "The turning point of history will be the moment man becomes aware that the only God of man is man himself."
This will account for the almost passionate zeal of Communist leaders to destroy all forms of religion and the worship of God. Nikolai Lenin declared: "We must combat religion -- this is the ABC of materialism, and consequently of Marxism." When Karl Marx was asked what his objective in life was, he said, "To dethrone God and destroy capitalism!" However, it is interesting to observe that having denounced God, the scriptures, morals, immortality, eternal judgment, the existence of the spirit and the sanctity of individual human life, the dialectical materialists turned to the worship of themselves.
They decided that man is the epitome of perfection among nature's achievements and therefore the center of the universe.
But if man is supposed to have the highest intelligence in existence then it becomes his manifest duty to remake the world. Naturally, Marx believed this task was the inescapable responsibility of the Communist leaders since they are the only ones who have a truly scientific understanding of social and economic progress. Marx and Engels accepted the fact that the remaking of the world will have to be a cruel and ruthless task and that it will involve the destruction of all who stand in the way. This is necessary, they said, in order to permit the Communist leadership to wipe out the social and economic sins of human imperfection in one clean sweep and then gradually introduce a society of perfect harmony which will allow all humanity to live scientifically, securely and happily during all future ages.
However, before striking out on such a bold course, the founders of Communism realized they would have to develop a whole new approach to morals and ethics for their followers. Lenin summarized it as follows: "We say that our morality is wholly subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat."10 In other words, whatever tends to bring about the Communist concept of material betterment is morally good, and whatever does not is morally bad. This concept is simply intended to say that "the end justifies the means." It is not wrong to cheat, lie, violate oaths or even destroy human life if it is for a good cause. This code of no morals accounts for the amoral behavior on the part of Communists which is frequently incomprehensible to non-Communists.
A Brief Critique of the Communist Philosophy of Nature
From experience it has been observed that a newly converted Communist frequently acquires a feeling of omniscient superiority over his unconverted fellow men. He feels that at last the universe is laid out before him in a simple, comprehensible manner. If he has never wrestled with philosophical problems before he is likely to be overwhelmed by the infatuating possibility that through Dialectical Materialism man has finally solved all of the basic problems necessary to understand the universe. In this state of mind the student will often drop his attitude of critical inquiry. He will invite indoctrination in heavy doses because of his complete assurance that he has at last discovered Truth in its ultimate form.
There are many things, however, which the alert student will immediately recognize as fallacies in the Communist philosophy of nature. Take, for example, the Law of Opposites. This law proclaims that all matter is a unity of opposites, and that out of the opposition manifested by these contradictory elements, energy is derived. This is supposed to explain the origin of motion. But two contradictory elements would never come together in the first place unless they already had energy in themselves. Contradictory forces in nature are found to have energy independent of each other. Bringing them together simply unifies energy or motion already in existence. Therefore, as philosophical scholars have pointed out, the Communist Law of Opposites does not explain motion; it presupposes it! 11
As one author facetiously put it: "Two inert elements could no more produce a conflict and create motion than a thousand dead Capitalists and a million dead Communists could produce a class war."
It will be recalled that the second law of matter according to the Communists is the Law of Negation. This is the principle that the contradictory forces in an entity tend toward its own negation but, through the process of dying, these forces of motion are released into an even more extended development. Thus, a barley seed germinates and is negated to produce a plant which, in turn, is negated to produce a quantity of new seeds. In this manner the numerical increase in nature is accounted for.
But as Dr. McFadden points out in The Philosophy of Communism, the Law of Negation explains nothing. It merely describes a phenomenon in nature. True, the plan of nature is to reproduce itself in ever-expanding quantities, but the demise or negation of a parent is not necessarily related in any way to its power to reproduce itself. The growth and demise of any being goes forward whether it reproduces itself or not, and some beings reproduce over and over again before any negation takes place.
Furthermore, the first and second laws of matter leave the Communist philosopher in the position of arguing that motion and life are not only auto-dynamic, self-creating and spontaneous but that the development of a barley seed into a plant and the reproduction of many barley seeds by the plant is the result of accumulated accident. Engels deplored the possibility of being left in this position and frankly agreed that there is "law, order, causality and necessity in nature."12 Nevertheless, he would not admit the possibility of intelligent design in nature but said the barley seed produces a plant and the plant produces more barley seeds because the nature of the thing demands it.13 Why does the thing demand it? No matter how the point is obscured by philosophical terminology, the student will have little difficulty detecting that Engels is arguing that blind, uncomprehending forces of mechanical motion in nature are capable of ordering themselves to produce intricate things which are designed in advance to achieve a pre-determined end. What, for example, is there about a barley seed which would demand that it negate itself and produce a plant? And by what rule of reason can the Dialectical Materialist account for the fact that a germinated barley seed always produces a certain kind of plant and nothing else?
The authorities point out that Engels developed a pattern of thought that led to conclusions which even he recognized could not be demonstrated in nature and therefore he retreated behind obscure generalities which the student finds nebulous and intangible.
The third law -- the Law of Transformation -- also describes a phenomenon in nature but fails to account for it. It confirms that in nature we discover widely separated species with distinguishing qualiti
es and characteristics. But while some of these "leaps" can be produced with certain inorganic substances simply by quantitative accumulation (as in the paraffin hydrocarbons) it does not explain how the new qualities are produced. Furthermore, when this same principle is used to explain life as spontaneously emerging in albuminous substances, the Communist philosopher is defiantly flying in the face of all scientific experience. The universal demonstration of nature is the fact that only life begets life. It has not been possible to produce life synthetically or spontaneously either in the laboratory or in nature.
These basic weaknesses in Communist philosophy were the factors which ultimately convinced Whittaker Chambers (an American espionage agent for the Communists) that he had been deceived. In spite of the heavy terminology of Communist dialectics he finally became convinced that blind, uncomprehending material forces in nature could never produce -- regardless of the time allowed -- the highly complex things which man finds all around him.
As students of the problem have often pointed out: "The odds against nature, of itself happening to produce an organ of such complexity as the eye, with its thousands of infinitesimal parts combined in exactly the manner required for vision, are mathematically almost incalculable. But the eye only one of the many complex parts of the human body. The chances against nature producing precisely that material organization found in each of the other organs and glands are equally great. But this is not all. For, in man, all of these organs and glands are organized into a perfect functional unit. And man is only one of the countless species of nature, inanimate and animate, each one of which possesses a similar marvelous organization of its most minute parts."
It was this kind of thinking which finally awakened Whittaker Chambers to the realization that the realities around him were much more complex and profound than the Communist explanation of "motion in matter" could begin to satisfy or account for. Thus, he began his retreat from the philosophy of Communism.
The great tragedy of Communism, however, is the fact that its founders did not stop at the so-called "harmless speculation" of Dialectical Materialism. They determined to permeate every aspect of human existence with the principles which they felt they had discovered. Therefore, they promoted a new approach to history, economics, politics, ethics, social planning and even science. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels admitted that critics of Communism could say that it "abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."14
Because more than a third of the earth's population is now being subjected to the terrifying "plan of action" which the Communist founders believed should be forced upon all mankind for their ultimate good, we will try to discover how Communism proposes to solve the world's problems.
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1. Engels, Friedrich, Ludwig Feuerbach, International Publishers, New York, 1934, p. 31.
2. Conze, E., Dialectical Materialism, London, N.C.L.C Society, 1936, p. 35.
3. Conze, E., Dialectical Materialism, pp. 51-52; See also Engels, Friedrich, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, pp. 47-48.
4. Quoted by V. Adoratsky, Dialectical Materialism, pp. 26-27.
5. Engels Friedrich Anti-Duhring, p. 138.
6. Engels, Friedrich, Anti-Duhring, p. 145.
7. McFadden, Charles J., The Philosophy of Communism, p. 50; see also C. Porter, The Carbon Compounds, p. 10.
8. Engels, Friedrich, Anti-Duhring, pp. 78, 85.
9. Engels, Friedrich, Anti-Duhring, p. 18.
10. Lenin, V. I., Religion, p. 47.
11. For an extended discussion of this problem see The Philosophy of Communism, by Dr. Charles McFadden, pp. 177-184.
12. Quoted by V. I. Lenin in Materialism and Empiro-Criticism, p. 125.
13. Engels, Friedrich, Anti-Duhring, p. 79.
14. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, Authorized English Translation, p. 40.
Chapter Three
The Communist Approach to the Solution of World Problems
Now we come to the part of Communism with which more people are familiar. At least, more people have heard about the Communist plan of action than the Communist philosophy of nature which we have just covered. Here are some questions that every student of Communism should be able to answer concerning the Marxist solution to world problems:
Why did Marx and Engels think they had discovered an inexorable law in history which made it possible for them to predict the course of future human development?
What is "Economic Determinism"? What is the "Activist Theory"? According to Marx and Engels is there any such thing as "free will"? Can men choose the kind of society in which they will live or are they victims of material forces which surround them?
How did Marx and Engels explain human progress as a product of class struggle?
What is the Communist theory of private property? Why is it considered a curse?
How did Marx and Engels account for the origin of the State? Why did they think it was "unnatural"?
How did they account for the origin of religion, morals and jurisprudence?
What was supposed to be accomplished during the Communist "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"?
Why do the Communists say "socialism" is only a temporary stage of human progress?
How did they propose to develop a civilization which would consist of a classless, stateless society?
The Communist Interpretation of History
Today very few people have had occasion to sit down with a professional Communist and listen to his views. Should such an occasion arise the student would receive the immediate impression that a Communist has a reverential regard for the record of man's past. This is because Marx and Engels thought their studies of the past had led them to discover an "inexorable law" which runs through all history like a bright red thread. They further believed that by tracing this thread it is possible to predict with positive assurance the pattern of man's progress in the future.
What did Marx and Engels discover during their study of history? First of all they decided that self-preservation is the supreme instinct in man and therefore his whole pattern of human conduct must have been governed by an attempt to wrest the necessities of life from nature. It is a dialectical process -- man against nature. This led them to a monumental conclusion: all historical developments are the result of "Economic Determinism" -- man's effort to survive. They said that everything men do -- whether it is organizing a government, establishing laws, supporting a particular moral code or practicing religion -- is merely the result of his desire to protect whatever mode of production he is currently using to secure the necessities of life. Furthermore, they believed that if some revolutionary force changes the mode of production, the dominant class will immediately set about to create a different type of society designed to protect the new economic order.
"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views and conception, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of material existence.... What else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production changes in character in proportion as material production is changed?"1
To appreciate their point of view, it is necessary to understand Marx and Engels' mechanistic conception of the way the human mind works. They said that after the brain receives impressions from the outside world, it automatically moves the individual to take action (this is their Activist Theory). They did not believe knowledge could be acquired without motivating the owner to do something about it. For example, when men became aware that slavery was a satisfactory way to produce crops, construct buildings and enjoy various kinds of services, this knowledge moved the dominant class to create a society which protected the interest of the slave owners. And in modern times Marx and Engels believed that the bourgeois or property class have done the same thing by instinctively creating a society to protect their capitalistic
interests. As they said to the bourgeois in the Communist Manifesto:
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence (system of law) is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of existence of your class."2
From this it will be seen that Marx and Engels did not believe that men could arbitrarily choose any one of several forms of society but only that one which promotes the prevailing mode of production. The very nature of man's materialistic make-up requires him to do this. "Are men free to choose this or that form of society? By no means." 3 According to Marx the thing which we call "free will" is nothing more nor less than an awareness of the impelling forces which move an individual to action; in taking action he is not free to change the course his very nature dictates.