VHeadline commentarist, University of Los Andes political sciences Professor Franz J. T. Lee writes: Ushering in the coming elections for governors and mayors on November 23, 2008, the narrow streets of the Andean university town, Mérida, have become hot, belligerent and sanguinary again. Is this the ominous prelude to a bloody hot summer? Last week, student and police blood have already marked the coming CIA death trail of emerging guarimbas, of violent paramilitary onslaughts against the democratic government of President Hugo Chávez Frías. These student riots, which tend to spread nationally, have already claimed their first victim: a PSUV Bolivarian student, Douglas Rojas Jiménez, shot brain dead on the streets of Mérida. To bury the assassinated student today big marches are planned. More disturbances are expected for this week.Is this a premonition of more brain massacres, of a mental holocaust, of Orwellian "double-think", of "newspeak", of global fascist ideology? What role ideology, indoctrination and manipulation are playing in this alienation of the youth, of students?
Are we armed against all kinds of oppressive, repressive, depressive and suppressive ideology and their corresponding practices?
If we ever would reach safely the November elections, then the bellicose goals of the "opposition" are crystal clear: infiltration, sabotage, social unrest, to produce ideological confusion and political Trojan horses. Ordered by its North American master, it wants to capture political power, the central oil states, plans to threaten with secession and to topple President Chávez in 2009. This the Bolivarians have to halt, to counter with real organized praxis and true philosophic theory.
With obsolete practices and ossified ideologies, no matter how victorious they may have been in the past, against global terrorist fascism, armed to its teeth with arsenals of mortal weapons of mass destruction, logically in the sense of Frantz Fanon, we will have to invent and create a new generation of appropriate scientific and philosophic arms of self-defense, that must be invisible to the enemy, invulnerable and invincible. Otherwise, Uncle Sam in the Second Conquest, aided by his loyal local and foreign lackeys, would come to "save" us, to rob us of all our means of production, creation and sustenance, of all our oil, gas, biodiversity, precious metals, strategic minerals, water and oxygen, by means of "military humanism" and will convert them all into private property of "humanity", of world capitalism. This is what constitutional reform has to abolish, has to nationalize, but not as state capitalism.
Meanwhile, the spearhead of reaction in Mérida is a relatively small student group, Movimiento 13. However, it has powerful patron saints, living in the White House and the Vatican.It is totally blinded by ideological straw of the mass media and is aided even by criminal elements outside the university campus. Partially its vandalism is tolerated by some powerful members of the top brass of the university, by the oligarchic church coupsters and by some ossified academia seated in their legendary ivory towers, derailing trains of thought, stoking the corporate "war of ideas". The result is that across the whole city all types of armed gangs are playing havoc with the population, are burning cars, trying to block the local airport, shooting in all directions. In fact, they are trying to disrupt business and town life, are causing personal insecurity, traffic jams and social disorder. Some students simply want to go home, to close the university, ushering in early vacations. This is a very delicate situation which the regional government barely can handle, without generating more serious conflicts.
It seems that all over working lass solidarity is vanishing. The traditional alma mater has lost its theoretical soul, its praxical natural mother. Long ago university studies cum ira et studio, with the necessary political militant engagement have fled the emancipatory scene. The curricula have been purged, the history of the labor movement, social revolutions, scientific and philosophic socialism, Marxism, all fell under the ax of the "Cold War of the Ideas"; till this day revolutionary ignorance has become bliss in the aula magna.
Bourgeois ideology, cultural imperialism and the mass media attack the revolutionary fervor in Venezuela which was hopefully generated at the turn of the century, which gave birth to the splendid victories of 2002 and 2003. Meanwhile, we are losing a strategic battlefront, the war of theory versus ideology, praxis versus practice. Already on the streets of student protests and sabotage, in the classes, progressively revolutionary theory is disintegrating; reformist ideology reaches its heyday, is capturing the student vanguard. Hence, currently just listening to brain-washed empty phraseology, to barren slogans about concepts like revolution, Marxism, socialism and ideology, makes an emancipatory heart bleed incessantly.
How could the knowledge about ideology and theory prevent the massacres of students and revolutionaries on the insecure streets of Venezuela and Latin America?
Yes, know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Just to tell the truth is already revolutionary praxis, censuring the truth is a capital, cardinal crime against humanity, is ideology.
Concerning the armed weapon of strategic differentiation between revolutionary praxis and reformist practice, between emancipatory theory and neo-liberal ideology, at this decisive moment of the Bolivarian Revolution, this article seriously is being edited to assist all our comrades theoretically and to help in the scientific guidance and direction of our revolutionary, socialist praxis.
The global context of all this is the fact that Big Business is War and that War is Big Business. Big joint ventures with international big capital is looking for trouble, for war.
In a genocidal belligerent situation we have no alternative but to enter the global, globalized class struggle, the global class war. Currently human life itself is at stake. Without direction, without orientation, without organization, without a socialist program, in one word, without theory, we are lost, lost from the very start. Lenin did not say: Without Ideology, No Revolution. Expressis verbis he underlined: Without Theory, no Revolution. In the debate with Rosa Luxemburg, he knew what he was talking about: With Ideology, only Reformism.
Now let us place ideology into historic focus, into political perspective. Serious studies, stringent "ideology critique" of the 1960s, long ago have verified that next to "religion" ... or even to "socialism" or "revolution" ... the very concept ideology itself, measured by its modern contents and usage, is the most ideologized concept that we could imagine.
Marxists have warned that modern ideology has become an instrument of the ruling classes, the ultima ratio for the merciless accumulation of capital and ruling class power. It became a synonym for telling premeditated lies, for half-truths, hoaxes, corruption, manipulation and indoctrination. To control the toiling masses, it reflects reality inadequately, a virtual reality, places events out of focus, upside down, out of historic context; it destroys all revolutionary contradictions, denies dialectics and class struggle and bedevils scientific and philosophic socialism, Marxism. It is reformism.
Let us introduce these ideological machination and confusion with the identity dilemma of the "star-crossed" lovers, Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague, literary members of feudal class war, of two belligerent families.
William Shakespeare reminded us of the dialectical relation between concepts, language, essence and appearance. With natural philosophic incision Juliet tells Romeo that a combination of letters or sounds selected at random in any language to coin a name or a word in itself is an artificial and meaningless convention. Of course, all over, stereotypical names and rancid words are very often being used in everyday political jargon and fascist propaganda to direct popular attention away from the real burning issues, away from bureaucracy and corruption. However, such barren phraseology is not identical to fresh ideas, creative thinking and ever-flowing thought, to praxical theory. At best, not to become brainless walking encyclopedias, we have to see written or spoken words as that what they really are, as relatively inadequate cognitive tools; as yet, there is no substitute for precious human thinking; we still have to theorize and philosophize all of, by and for ourselves, by using our very own brains. Written or spoken words, also language and ideology, do not think for us. If we do not want to think, well, then others will do it for us, with disastrous results.
To theorize philosophically is not to repeat obsolete beliefs, is to do, think and transcend of, by and for ourselves. Concerning the truly innovative, the real existence of things and their new relations, in creative despair Juliet exclaimed:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Definitely, it is all fair in love and war, also in the legendary bed of roses, however, the above is even more true for other grim earthly realities and myths such as wearing a crown of thorns entering Golgotha, also true for sipping mental venom from the world press, for victims of mind and thought control and especially for ruling class ideology itself. We could call reformism by any other name, essentially it is, it will remain Kautskyian reformism forever. This is why it has to receive the Maquiavellian royal treatment, to be eradicated by all means necessary.
Also, consciousness in capitalism is always class consciousness. Class alliances, class consensus, class dialogues and 'truth commissions' are intrinsic elements of class collaboration, of reformism. They form the 'stormtroopers of apocalypse' in the destruction of working class power, militancy and solidarity. Across modern history, in nearly all the social revolutions, this fatal mistake was made, with horrible results in Indonesia and Colombia. The opposite of proletarian class consciousness, of emancipatory theory is simply bourgeois capitalist ideology, the ruling ideas of the ruling classes of our epoch of global fascism, which surely never "smells sweet".
In the epoch of "postmodern globalization", to develop an international proletarian class consciousness with its corresponding emancipatory praxis, scientific identification and philosophic differentiation form a fundamental conditio sine qua non. It is not an issue of semantics or sophistry, it is simply the crucial question whether we really and truly act and think permanently in a anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist way, that we do not just pay lip service to billion fold proletarian human emancipation.
If not, then very soon we will become easy prey to the vultures of ruling class ideology and reformism. Of course, as Marx pointed out, a working class that has lost its revolutionary orientation and identity, its subjective factor, can easily fall prey to CIA ideology, for that matter to any ideology that presents itself. Such a forlorn working class voted Hitler into power in Nazi Germany. As a class only in itself, it could even produce its own brand of reformism or ideology. This can never be the case of a class conscious proletariat by, in and for itself, who with organized praxis and theory makes the revolution and defends global emancipation. The global capitalist class has not yet given up its zeitgeist, its ideology, for this very reason, a world proletariat, global revolution, socialism and Marxism are all still possible. Relatively it seems that very little has been won, but not everything is lost already.
For us in Venezuela, for Bolivarian socialism, it is crucial to note that not everything and anything is a rose, a revolution, is ideology or socialism. As Marx and Trotsky have pointed out, very often historic events appear more than once, but they can be perverted, were converted into their very opposites, into caricatures, betrayals, tragedies and farces. In this way, the real, true negation of world capitalism, that is, socialism, over the last century forever has been nipped in the bud, never has it been given the real historic possibility to realize itself, to venture beyond this imperialist misery, this vale of tears, beyond neo-liberal reformism, thus, to sweep away globalized "postmodern" corporatism into Luciferean oblivion.
Because so many of us are religious and Christian, allow us to use some biblical examples to demonstrate how important it is to call a spade a spade, a wine a wine, an ideology an ideology, a theory a theory.
Leaving the eternal academic hair-splitting aside for a while, nobody with a sane mind would try to convert something essential, scientifically identified by a noun, into its direct opposite, by just tagging that what it is not, an alien appearance form to it, that is, a negative adjective. In this case a nonsense like a "devilish god" and a "divine devil" would result, or even a "proletarian bourgeois" or a "bourgeois proletarian", a "rich pauper" or a "poor billionaire. Very often as a result of logical ignorance or of intellectual sluggishness such conceptual confusion occurs. This is very dangerous in political liberation because proper identification of the enemy, of CIA infiltration would not be possible anymore. Revolutionary reform or reformist revolution are simply absurd, ideological terms.
However, revolutionary theory (and praxis) allows two answers to a question, ... two questions with the same answer, answers as questions, questions as answers, ... it identifies the two opposite sides of the very same thing, of the liberation process (Reform and Revolution). This is forbidden in formal logical ideology, where eternal, absolute truths reign. Of course, in contradistinction, according to holy scriptures, a devil can be a fallen angel, can be Lucifer, the first son of god, but he can never become a god.
Theologically a devil surely can tell the truth and tell lies. However, a god, a logos can never tell lies. Nonetheless, as divine philosopher-king, Plato taught him how to tell lies to his toiling subjects, how to invent ideology. De facto, the devil within his "axis of evil" as Negation is dialectical. He is more powerful than any god. According to Genesis, he told Eve the truth about coming historical events, about the secret of how to acquire a class consciousness, of how to differentiate between "good" and "evil", between ideology and theory, about how formal logically not to mix up things and concepts. The devil even told her how to become creative, a creator, an emancipated goddess. In many natural religions of Antiquity all these themes, revelations and clarifications are self-evident. Ruling class ideology across the centuries has disfigured all these natural and social phenomena, possibilities and realities.
The very Nazis, with their propaganda machine, led by Goebbels and Goering, have taught us what is ideology and how it functions. They stole proletarian concepts like the "leader" (Fuehrer) or socialism and transformed them into their opposites, into fascist ideology. Current global fascist ideology was perfectly described by George Orwell in his famous classic "Nineteen eighty-four" (War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery). Ever since Marx, we know that the ruling ideas of any epoch, of any ruling class, in any exploitative ruling mode production and destruction, on any island, in any country or bloc, also on a global scale, form the ruling ideology, the zeitgeist of that specific dominant historic era.
Beyond any doubt, like so many other ideas, the word or name "ideology" which we use daily in Venezuela and elsewhere, we have inherited from Ancient Greece, from Plato, from the emerging bourgeois thinkers, like Francis Bacon and Destutt de Tracy, from the Hegelian "World Spirit", from the "Absolute Idea" on horseback conquering Europe, that is, from Napoleon or from the father of scientific and philosophic socialism, from Marx, or even from the contemporary neo-liberal European or North American 'think tanks'.
The history of the concept ideology already indicates its dangerous essence.
Etymologically, within the framework of idealist philosophy, we know that the word "ideology" is a composition of the ancient Platonic "idea" and of the "logos". Four years ago, on November 18, 2004, in an article "Venezuela: Theory or ideology, revolutionaries or ideologues", I explained:
"The philosophic padrino of the 'idea' is Plato. In his Doctrine of Ideas, we find everything which concerns idear , to conceive the idea of something, in other words, in formal logic, the technical know-how to think 'correctly', philosophically.
* The Idea, die Idee, comes from Greek, from idea , from eidos , the archetype, image. Furthermore, logos is also an ancient Greek idea."
1) See: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=23567
; http://www.franz-lee.org/files/pandemonium01060.html
Firstly, as indicated before, in Grammar, the logos is simply "human speech" that is expressed by means of the letters of the alphabet, and which dissipates itself in syllables, words, and sentences.
Secondly, in Rhetoric, the logos is speech itself, prose or a fable.
Thirdly, and this concerns us here, in Greek Logic, the logos is 'the premise (Aussagesatz), is judgment or conclusion. It is definition, definition of the concept.
2) Ibid.
Fourthly, in Psychology and Metaphysics, the logos is the 'human soul', the microcosm. Fifthly, in Theology, it is the Supreme Being, the Almighty God Himself.
Hence we have to be extremely careful with the usage of concepts that end in "-ology". The latter is not simply the naive 'teaching' or innocent 'doctrine' of life (of bio or zoe), of the body (physis), of the mind (psyche), of the stars (astra); "-ology" is also the precise educational and cultural indoctrination of the soul, by means of the ethical highest good, by a god (theos, a summum bonum) and by means of the ruling ideas of the ruling class ideology of our postmodern slave masters.
The origin of the concept ideology is closely connected to the advent of modern capitalism as a dominant mode of production, to the class struggles around the bourgeois political French Revolution, to the capitalist Industrial Revolution and to the 1830 political revolutions in Europe. Francis Bacon (1561 1626), the British philosopher, for the very first time used the concept "ideology" (ideologia) in his philosophic doctrine of the 'ídolos'. Much later, the French aristocratic philosopher and sensualist of the Enlightenment, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, Compte de Tracy (1754 - 1836), ... who defended classical liberal capitalism, especially the rights of the bourgeois classes to own private property of the means of production, ... perpetuated the political concept of ideology in the title of his mammoth work, Eléments d'Idéologie (5 volumes, 1801-15). In Auteuf he founded a society of "ideologues", to further ideology as the "science of ideas". This happened when the bourgeoisie was still young and fresh. In the meantime we have reached the age of "full spectrum dominance", of "newspeak", a dying culture, which has converted ideology into global strychnine.
Some authors, who studied the origins of ideology and of ideologues, claim that the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was convinced that ideology and ideologues were harming the French revolutionary process of spreading capitalism across Europe. To counteract these counter-revolutionary forces, he organized a campaign of defamation against them, and thus the concept "Ideology" acquired its first notorious connotation. Nevertheless, with the advent of scientific and philosophic socialism, ideology received the first nail in its coffer.
The "young" Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels gave ideology its final ambiguous (negative) meaning by placing all ruling class spirituality, philosophy, religion, law, art, metaphysics, logic and science, in the ideological superstructure of modern capitalist exploitative society. 3)
3) See: Franz J. T. Lee, Teoría-Práxis de la Revolución, Segunda Edición, Cap. 3, CDCHT, ULA, Mérida, 1991.
One thing is sure, Marx never called his Science and Philosophy an "Ideology." Engels even went so far as to call ideology a "false consciousness." Lenin committed an error by talking now and then about a "proletarian ideology". Modern socialists left and right speak about the necessity of a new, of an own ideology.
If this is what is on the order of global emancipation, then we respect the right to have a proper ideology. This essay is just a serious warning, to be extremely careful with all forms of ideology.
In his early works, Marx had a very negative attitude towards ideology. In the article mentioned before, I elaborated:
"Marx explained that all social classes can develop ideology, especially when their once revolutionary ideas become ossified, begin to affirm the status quo, thus distorting or disfiguring social reality, placing themselves at the service of the counter-revolution, in the interest of new rising ruling or elitist classes. He emphasized that in all epochs, the dominant ideas (ideology) were always the dominating ideas (ideology) of the dominant ruling classes; they nurture capitalist, economic exploitation and reformist, political domination."
4) See: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=23567
; http://www.franz-lee.org/files/pandemonium01060.html
Over the last decade, precisely against these dominant, oligarchic ideas and ideology the Bolivarian Revolution was (and still is being) directed. However, new liberating ideas can only be born in daily revolutionary praxis and theory, in anti-capitalist class struggles; social power must be conquered by the real, true liberator, by the millions of wage workers of Venezuela.
As such our young promising students will not fall prey to capitalist ideology and terrorist practices on the streets of Mérida, rather they will be among the workers and peasants, elevating their class consciousness with living revolutionary praxis and theory and will stay alive, to realize socialism in America and in the rest of the world.
Franz J.T. Lee
blackdiamond@franzlee.org
____________________________________
Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.
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