For revolutionaries, doctrine is a general policy or set of principles that guides political activity to accomplish a definite political goal. But doctrine isn’t just a subjective choice. It is based on the conclusions of the science of society: a definition of the specific set of inherent, objective laws that govern the objective process you are dealing with and how the operation of those laws is manifested in changes in society. Science allows us to understand the world. Doctrine is a guide to changing it.
Developing and using doctrine to define and shape the work of revolutionaries depends on a philosophical understanding of how change takes place: Change doesn’t come about through a mechanical increase or decrease of numbers or intensity. Qualitative change depends on the introduction of something new into an ongoing process. The outcome of material, objective changes in society depends on the consciousness and conscious activity of people.
The epoch Marx and Engels (and many others after them) wrote about was defined by the shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society. Our epoch is defined by the electronic revolution and the beginning of laborless production. It is different in fundamental ways from the past epoch.
In the period Marx and Engels described, the clash between the social character of production and the private ownership of the means of production expressed itself in various economic crises within capitalism. Marx and Engels rallied their comrades to take advantage of every economic and political crisis in order to advance their class and political goals. But crisis in their epoch was a product of the internal contradictions of capitalism, contradictions that moved capitalism ahead. Quantitative changes within capitalism could resolve or overcome those crises.
Today we face something qualitatively different. The beginning of production without labor (that is, the beginning of valueless production) represents the emergence of an antagonism that is external to capitalism (which is defined by the buying and selling of labor power). Today it is not so much the social character of production, but more so the beginning of a new quality – "laborless" production – that clashes with capitalist forms of private property.
Marx and Engels faced a situation in which the interests of the working class were opposed to those of the capitalist class, but the working class was locked into the system defined by the interdependence of the two hostile classes. The connections between the capitalist class and the working class were growing and strengthening. By contrast, today new methods of production are undermining and destroying those connections. The back-and-forth struggle between the working class and the capitalist class cannot reform the capitalist system to solve the questions of the day. Thus, today we face the social consequences of a system in the process of destruction – not the growing pains of an expanding and developing system.
The universal and timeless responsibility of revolutionaries is to develop the subjective aspects of the revolutionary process. Doctrine is a general guide for carrying out this responsibility and advancing the revolution along its line of march. The emergence of a new epoch calls for the development of new doctrine.
Readings
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the relation between "science" and "doctrine."
2. What is the difference between Marx's epoch and ours? Discuss this in relation to the difference between, on the one hand, contradiction as the basis for quantitative stages of growth and, on the other hand, antagonism as the basis for the process of the leap from one quality to another.
3. From the standpoint of the discussion of point #2, why does a new epoch call for new doctrine? Discuss the difference between Marx's doctrine of the class struggle and today's doctrine of the leap.
4. Compare a conception like "unite to fight the right" with a dialectical conception of how change takes place. What does this mean for doctrine in this epoch?
