Chapter I: Scientific Socialism

"The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses."

1.1.1: At the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America held in Havana, Cuba in 1966, Amílcar Cabral delivered an address titled, "The Weapon of Theory." Cabral was a revolutionary pan-African socialist, agricultural engineer, and guerrilla fighter in the people's war for the liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. In his address to the Tricontinental, Cabral argued "that every practice produces a theory, and that if it is true that a revolution can fail even though it be based on perfectly conceived theories, nobody has yet made a successful revolution without a revolutionary theory."¹ If like Cabral, our aim is to achieve the revolutionary transformation of society, then we too require a revolutionary theory to guide our revolutionary practice, and for the concrete results of revolutionary practice to inform the further development of revolutionary theory. For Cabral, the key is to raise the people's consciousness of the objective conditions and subjective factors which, through their dialectical entanglement, make social revolutions possible. Equipped with a shared theoretical framework, revolutionaries can unite the people's movement on the basis of a common ideological and political orientation, formulate a common program, and select strategies and tactics of struggle which correspond with the prevailing objective conditions and correlation of subjective forces.

1.1.2: Communist theory emerged from the historical development of human society in the age of capital. Arising from the need for the global working class and all oppressed peoples to establish a scientific basis for mounting a revolutionary challenge to capitalist-imperialism's social domination, communist theory aims to prove that: (a) the prevailing material conditions at the present phase of humanity's historical social development are ripe for a socialist transition to communism (defined as a classless, stateless, decolonized, feminist, ecological, democratic, and free society), and (b) capitalist imperialism is the main obstacle standing in the way of humanity's social progress in the direction of communism.

1.1.3: Whereas utopian socialists such as Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and Henri de Saint-Simon elaborated compelling visions of a free and equal society that was rationally planned in order to satisfy human needs and develop human capacities, these early socialists had a tendency to overlook the material basis and political means required to achieve humanity's liberation from all forms of exploitation and oppression, as well as the arduous character of the process through which a new society might be progressively constructed. In other words, visions of a new society are only helpful in the political sense if they are, in fact, achievable.

In contrast to utopian socialists, communists are scientific socialists who derive our ideological and political orientation from a critical and maximally objective theoretical analysis of humanity's historical social development, situated within the broader context of natural history, and the identification and study of the contradictions and struggles which shape the processes of historical change. Like the scientific enterprise itself, scientific socialism acquires in the course of revolutionary struggle the status of a living theory, permanently open to adaptation and modification in the face of new historical experience.

1.1.4: While grounding itself in a maximally objective understanding of material reality, the theory and practice of scientific socialism is unabashedly partisan, firmly adopting the standpoint of the global working class and all oppressed social groups struggling for liberation from all forms of exploitation and oppression, and locating within the people's movement the hope and promise of social progress and freedom for humanity. As Lenin explains, "There can be no 'impartial' social science in a society based on class struggle," for bourgeois science is logically utilized by the bourgeoisie to defend their material interests and perpetuate their social domination.² In contrast, scientific socialism openly declares war on the system of capitalist-imperialism, on the imperialist ruling class and their state machinery, and on all forms of exploitation and oppression. "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways," Marx teaches us, "The point is to change it."³ With this viewpoint in mind, it should be clear that the theoretical framework adopted by communists has implications not only for the analysis of historical social systems, but for the method of synthesizing a revolutionary communist vision, strategy, and program, as well as the criteria for selecting appropriate tactics.

1.1.5: The theoretical foundations of the communist movement were laid by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, who were themselves shaped by the great social transformations and political struggles of their time: capitalist industrialization, European colonialism, the Great Irish Famine of 1847, the democratic revolutions of 1848, the founding of the Communist League and First International Workingmen's Association, the development of evolutionary biology, anthropological studies of Indigenous societies (specifically the Haudenosaunee people), the American Civil War and Reconstruction, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Paris Commune of 1871.

Situating our political project within the broad tradition of Marxism is a testament to the contributions made by Marx and Engels to the development of philosophy and science in general, and to communist theory and practice in particular. However, we must be careful to never deify Marx and Engels, who, like all people, were not only complex and flawed, but products of their time and place. As Robert Biel has emphasized: "Insofar as Marxism is not applied in an all-round, universal way—insofar as it leaves aside the historical processes in non-European areas and the way these were distorted through exploitation by the white world—it is bound to fall prey to mechanical materialism and idealism."⁴

Since Marxism's emergence, communist theory has been tested and further developed in the crucible of revolutionary practice. In the course of their direct participation in the revolutionary process, masses of working people in all corners of the world—mainly the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of the Global South—have liberated Marxism from the Eurocentric biases embedded in some of the initial formulations of its founders and early proponents. Marxism's contributions to philosophy and science, honed in the course of the previous century's socialist experiments which attempted to build the foundations for a communist society, continue to provide a solid theoretical framework for advancing the world socialist revolution against capitalist-imperialism. A coherent theoretical framework remains an essential tool for identifying, analyzing, and resolving the social contradictions which inevitably arise in the course of the protracted revolutionary struggle and socialist transition to communism.

1.1.6: Scientific socialism asserts that labor is a necessary condition for human existence. Labor power, or the human capacity to labor, consists of the aggregate mental, physical, and emotional capacities present in human beings, which are consciously set in motion and expended in the social production and reproduction of our existence. In combination with various means of labor and a definite object of labor, our individual labor powers are exercised socially in a labor process. Through this labor process—which encompasses moments of both social production and reproduction—we appropriate and metabolize elements of nature in order to satisfy human needs. These needs are not static, but evolve historically in accordance with our social development (i.e. culture) and environmental context. From the outset, the labor process is a social process, through which humans communicate, cooperate, and coordinate in a range of interconnected social activities such as foraging, hunting, cooking, nurturing, healing, migrating, teaching, learning, farming, manufacturing, etc. Through the labor process we encounter and transform the material world, and upon the basis of this practical social activity we accumulate and systematize knowledge of nature, society, and self. By transforming nature, we transform ourselves and develop our capacities. Through practical experience we become conscious of our needs and drives, and identify the means and obstacles to the satisfaction of those needs. It is on the basis of praxis, defined as the process of acting and reflecting upon the material world in order to change it, that consciousness emerges.

1.1.7: The theoretical framework forming the philosophical and scientific basis of the communist worldview is known as dialectical materialism, which asserts the existence of a material world that is knowable, but which exists independently of our knowledge of it. This material world conditions our forms of life and ways of knowing. Humanity's knowledge of the world and capacity to consciously transform it arises in the course of our struggle to satisfy needs through our metabolic interchange with nature. Knowledge is thus always situated within a specific material context, arising from the historical development of nature and society, and—in the era of hierarchical class societies—corresponding to specific social standpoints shaped by the prevailing structures of class exploitation and social oppression.

1.1.8: Theory is knowledge generated through social praxis, developed to the point that it can be systematized and generalized. Theory is a tool people use to determine what is happening, why it is happening, and what to do about it. Theory accomplishes this by going beyond immediate appearances, attempting to understand the deeper, causal processes at play. In the hands of an organized communist movement, theory becomes an instrument for overcoming exploitative and oppressive social relations and institutions, and for constructing a free life in common. Wielded by the masses of exploited workers and oppressed peoples in the struggle for liberation, theory becomes, in the words of György Lukács, "an instrument of war."⁵ Communists use theory to map the terrain of social struggle and identify our movement's line of march.

1.2.1: The aim of science is to produce, systematize, and generalize objective knowledge of our universe. Through scientific inquiry, we can discover the patterns, structures, and processes of various natural and social phenomena. On the basis of this knowledge we produce meaning about our place in the universe. Through investigation and observation, scientists collect data. On the basis of this data, scientists form hypotheses, meaning educated guesses to explain how things work. These hypotheses are then tested through processes of experimentation. On the basis of repeated experimentation, evidence is collected; patterns, laws, and tendencies are identified; and theoretical explanations are formulated. These theories are then subjected to review, interpretation, and critique by the scientific community, as well as the broader public. The cycle then begins anew—but now with a stronger foundation—advancing in a spiral development with a new round of data collection, hypothesization, experimentation, theorization, and review. The results of this research process are then synthesized and systematized, thereby further expanding humanity's base of scientific knowledge. This, in the broadest sense, is the scientific process of knowledge production, moving from the perceptual to the conceptual, then from the conceptual to the rational, and back again, in an endless spiral. Building upon this foundation, a people's science of nature and society does not limit itself to analyzing material conditions, but seeks to address the question: what is to be done?

1.2.2: Scientific theory does not establish natural and social truths once and for all: science is an open project, rooted in a practice of criticism, self-criticism, summation, and transformation. To be classified as scientific, the results of a research process must be subjected to processes of verification and falsification, remaining permanently open to new challenges in the form of alternative hypotheses, experiments, evidence, theories, and interpretations. We have seen how the communist movement in the past was plagued by dogmatism, whereby a particular theoretical paradigm within Marxism was assumed to be immune to critique and closed-off to new challenges. In the fields of philosophical and scientific inquiry, we can and must do better.

1.2.3: Science strives for maximum objectivity. However, objectivity is relative, as it is the outcome of human social learning and determined through human social practice. Scientific theories are constantly modified or discarded in light of new scientific developments. The most accurate scientific theories contain intrinsic limitations due to the material context from which they emerge, as well as the material limits of scientific praxis at a given historical conjuncture. There is no endpoint for the scientific process, as the search for truth and the production of knowledge is constant. Furthermore, a theory may be accepted as correct under specific circumstances, but proven incorrect or inadequate in light of new information. Thus development—be it natural, social, or intellectual—proceeds in a spiral motion. Scientific advancements are always partial, but become increasingly systematized, comprehensive, and complex as the process of knowledge production spirals outward, with qualitative advancements achieved through theoretical ruptures or paradigm shifts.

1.2.4: Scientific knowledge cannot be separated from the historical development of society, nor disembodied from everyday social practice. Science is the collective product of human labor, developed across many generations, building upon knowledge accumulated through the labor process in the course of observation and experimentation, and ultimately transforming the labor process itself through the application of this knowledge. Scientific practice is always situated within a distinct historical context, and scientific knowledge can be applied in ways that advance or hinder the subjective aims of a particular vision of social progress. Science is inseparable from politics, and in the context of hierarchical class societies, scientific theory and practice will always serve the material interests of specific classes and social groups, and the political projects associated with them. In their 1974 report on the role of science in China's socialist revolution, members of Science for the People (an organization of progressive scientists from the United States) were impressed with how the Chinese people—against the capitalist conception of science as the product of individual genius, a field reserved for experts, and the private property of corporations, universities, and governments—defined science as "a summation of the laboring people's experience," "a tool forged by the people's labor to be used for the improvement of their lives," and "a process of thinking and developing rational knowledge through practice."⁶ In the final analysis, we must reclaim this emancipatory conception of science—of a science that serves the people—and empower the masses of workers to take science into their own hands.

1.2.5: Subjective motivations in science—particularly in social science—should not be hidden behind false claims of pure objectivity and value neutrality. Instead, subjectivity and subjective aims in science should be clarified openly. We can therefore speak of the need for a partisan social science, which consciously adopts the standpoint of the exploited and oppressed masses, and which aims to serve the communist project. The goals of this project are to achieve the self-emancipation of the working class and all oppressed peoples, establish a sustainable metabolic interchange with nature, and realize the full and free development of every individual. The extent to which society reaches these goals can be said to constitute the real measure of historical social progress. These are among the material realities, ethical and moral imperatives, and political considerations which should inform and guide the production and application of scientific knowledge today, particularly on the social and ecological fronts, as the imperialist world-system will ultimately undermine the material conditions of complex life itself if it is allowed to continue to dominate humanity and the planet. The liberation struggles of the working class and all oppressed peoples, as well as the theoretical, ideological, and political terrain generated by these struggles, are part of the material reality with which social science must grapple, and within which social scientific research must be situated. Neutrality is not an option: lines must be drawn, and sides must be taken.

1.2.6: While not dismissing the utility of research conducted "from above" for critical social science, the lived experiences of exploited classes and oppressed social groups as viewed "from below" can provide the best starting point for an empirical and maximally objective analysis of society. The social locations occupied by the exploited and oppressed are the best vantage points for understanding the material realities of human social organization at our present historical conjuncture, because they can provide a more objective, empirical, and comprehensive understanding of how a hierarchical class society actually functions, and illuminate paths to its revolutionary transformation through the political agency of particular classes and social groups.

1.2.7: There is no such thing as absolute objectivity or value-neutral science. As opposed to weak objectivity disguised as universal knowledge—an act which conflates particularities with generalities—science must strive for strong objectivity and the harmonization of multiple scientific research agendas.⁷ Objective knowledge of the world is always produced from within a particular historical context and, within our present form of society, by members of specific classes and social groups that occupy structural positions within a matrix of exploitative and oppressive social relations and institutions. The class position, social standpoint, material interests, and political orientation of a participant in scientific research thus conditions the process of knowledge production itself. In summary, a people's science aims to be objective in its analysis of the material world and identification of historical patterns, tendencies, and potentialities, but partisan in the questions it raises, the problems it aims to solve, and the political movements for social change it participates in. Furthermore, dialectical materialist research must never cherry-pick data, essentialize social relations, or assume the inevitability of revolutionary change and social progress.

1.2.8: Scientific research and the production of scientific knowledge have both historical and geographical dimensions. Research always takes place within a specific material context, with particular agendas and assumptions operating among the actors involved, all of whom occupy specific class positions and social standpoints which shape their worldview and the research process. This too must be critically examined and demystified. By grounding science in the practice of criticism, self-criticism, and summation, we can develop a more comprehensive understanding of the world that is maximally objective, while remaining permanently open to further critique and modification.

1.3.1: In the historical development of philosophy, we can locate the emergence of two contending conceptions of reality: idealism and materialism. Idealist philosophy is best represented by thinkers such as Confucius, Plato, Zhu Xi, René Descartes, George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, and G.W.F. Hegel, while early materialist philosophy found initial expression in the thought of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, and was further developed in the writings of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Wang Fuzhi, John Locke, David Hume, and Ludwig Feuerbach.

Idealism asserts the absolute primacy of ideas, consciousness, or spirit in the development of material reality. For idealists, the material world—encompassing both nature and society—can be broadly conceptualized in one of the following ways:

1.3.2: In opposition to idealism stands materialism, which asserts the primacy of matter in the development of our universe. Materialism recognizes an objective material world which exists independently of our knowledge of it, and which shapes the development of nature, society, and consciousness. Materialism is broadly synonymous with the philosophy of science, defending the existence of certain objective principles and laws of motion which govern the development of the material world. These principles and laws operate regardless of our consciousness of them, or the general level of scientific knowledge prevailing in society. Nonetheless, these objective principles and laws of motion are comprehensible, and can be grasped through scientific practice. As Georges Politzer succinctly put it, "materialism is nothing other than the scientific explanation of the universe."⁸

1.3.3: Whether reality is viewed from the standpoint of idealism or materialism, the method for conceptualizing and investigating the development of reality can be further divided into two opposing camps: metaphysics and dialectics. For metaphysics, reality is essentially static and unchanging, composed of fixed categories and linear paths of development. Instead of dynamic interconnection, the metaphysical worldview considers the constituent elements of our reality—matter, nature, society, the mind, and so on—in rigid isolation from one another. Engels summarized the metaphysical method as follows:

Thus the development of reality is reduced by metaphysics to a mere increase or decrease in the quantities of certain unchanging ideal forms, or to a mere displacement of these forms. "Moreover," Mao tells us, "the cause of such an increase or decrease or change of place is not inside things but outside them, that is, the motive force is external. Metaphysicians hold that all the different kinds of things in the universe and all their characteristics have been the same ever since they first came into being."¹⁰ This metaphysical conception of development produces a one-sided and ahistorical understanding of our universe. In our present historical conjuncture, this metaphysical conception is reflected in a range of pithy sayings: "nothing changes," "history repeats itself," "genes determine behavior," "geography is destiny," "the brain is a computer," and so on.

1.3.4: In contrast to metaphysics, dialectics views reality in a dynamic state of movement, emphasizing interconnection, change, emergence, and contradiction. Idealist philosophy imparted to scientific socialism the concept of the dialectic, albeit in mystified form. Building upon the work of Heraclitus, G.W.F. Hegel described reality as unfolding through the dynamic development of contradictions, or the unity and struggle of opposing forces. The internal relations of a particular contradiction drive it towards its ultimate resolution, leading to the emergence of a higher form or synthesis. However compelling when contrasted with a metaphysical view of development, the Hegelian dialectic incorrectly assumes that the unfolding of reality is driven by the transcendental movement of an Absolute Idea or universal spirit, and thus repeats the mistake made by all idealist philosophies of abstracting consciousness from matter, the mind from the body, humans from nature, the individual from society, thinking from doing, and being from becoming.

1.3.5: Idealists assert the absolute primacy of ideas, consciousness, or spirit in shaping the development of reality. In contrast, materialists emphasize that nature and society—and by extension, our ideas and consciousness—are products of material conditions. In opposition to idealism, materialists assert the existence of an objective material world of which humanity forms a part; thus the organic arises from the inorganic, and the complex from the simple. However, just as idealist dialectics overlooks how material conditions shape our mental conceptions of the world, mechanical materialism overlooks how conscious human activity can transform material conditions. According to the mechanical materialist paradigm, matter does indeed shape the conditions for the emergence and development of natural, social, and intellectual life, but adopts a metaphysical position by assuming that our present material reality—especially in its social dimensions—is essentially unchangeable, or at least beyond the realm of conscious transformation by purposeful human activity. As Engels explained:

The resolution of the contradiction between idealist dialectics and mechanical materialism is to be found in the theoretical paradigm of dialectical materialism, which recognizes the dialectic of structure and agency as central in the development of all natural and social phenomena.

1.3.6: Bourgeois theories of nature and society oversimplify material reality in a reductionist fashion. Mechanical materialism correctly emphasizes the material conditions which shape human social life, while eschewing the role of human agency in changing those very conditions. Idealist dialectics may correctly recognize the power of the human mind and agency, but will ignore or downplay the material conditions which give rise to certain ideas and shape the development of thought itself. Communist theory synthesizes these two perspectives as dialectical materialism, emphasizing the relational, developmental, and interdependent character of the material world, encompassing nature, society, and thought. Matter is here understood as kinetic and dynamic, constantly undergoing processes of transformation and assuming ever more complex forms of combination.

It is from matter's perpetual self-movement that complex combinations known as systems arise, and it is from the dynamic interconnections of these systems of matter in motion that a web of life emerges. This perspective recognizes that humans indeed make our own history, albeit not under conditions of our own choosing: we inherit from the past particular natural, social, and intellectual forms which condition, shape, and set important limits to purposeful human action.

Philosophy	Metaphysics	Dialectics
Idealism	Idealist metaphysics: The material world is shaped by eternal, unchanging, and transcendental ideas or spiritual forces originating from an immaterial realm. Historical change is a sequence of events driven by forces beyond human control or comprehension.	Idealist dialectics: The material world is shaped by the development of human thought, universal spirit, or the Absolute Idea; the role of material forces and relations in structuring historical agency is largely overlooked. Historical change is a product of internal contradictions, but this unity and struggle of opposing forces is restricted to the realm of ideas.
Materialism	Materialist metaphysics: The material world exists independently of human thought and is the primary reality. Historical change is driven by material conditions and social relations.	Materialist dialectics: Historical change is a result of the contradictions within material conditions and social relations. Change is driven by the struggle between opposing forces in the material world.

1.3.7: Dialectical materialism is a theoretical framework that is both a philosophy of science, as well as a method of scientific inquiry and analysis, that is applied by communists to the study and transformation of our objective reality. Dialectical materialism asserts that the universe is composed of matter, which is in a constant state of motion. This kinetic matter is self-organizing and self-acting, dynamic and creative. Thus material conditions are in a perpetual state of movement and flux: change is constant in our universe. From the various forms taken by matter in motion emerges a complex web of life, of which human society forms a part, and from which our mental conceptions of the world emerge.

It is our conviction that the communist movement must commit itself to the development and application of a dialectical materialism that recognizes the interdependence of nature and society, humanity's metabolic interchange with nature, the shaping of human consciousness by social relations and institutions, the dynamic entanglement of multiple spheres of social activity, the transformation of society and nature by means of conscious social action, and the interconnected and often contradictory historical processes which organize and structure everyday social life.

1.3.8: Combined with materialist philosophy (which is synonymous with the scientific understanding of the universe), dialectics serves as both an instructive analogy for the complex and dynamic relational processes which constitute our universe, and a method for investigating the interconnectedness and interdependence of material reality, the spiraling development of life's emerging complexity, and the transitions between phases in the development of matter, nature, society, and mental conceptions of the world. As a theory of change, dialectical materialism assumes that transformative movement is constant: matter is active, creative, and always in a state of motion, generating complexity and diversity in both nature and society. If we understand the dynamics of change—that is, kinetic matter's particular forms of motion—we can more effectively change the world. To do so, we must view the development of nature and society historically. Far from being the monopoly of academic philosophers, dialectical modes of thought and theories of historical change are central to many Indigenous worldviews, which emphasize universal interconnectedness and interdependence, the cyclical flows of nature, the permanence of change, and the emergence of order out of chaos.

1.3.9: Dialectical materialism is a philosophical worldview and method of scientific inquiry that conceptualizes the universe as a dynamic totality composed of complex and interconnected systems in constant movement and transformation. In both nature and society, systems develop through contradictions, or the unity and struggle of opposing forces. These contradictions drive the transformation of systems, accumulating quantitative changes which eventually lead to qualitative changes or ruptures, culminating in the emergence of new systems. Systemic changes may result from internal contradictions (that is, tensions within the internal structure of a particular system), external contradictions (interactions between systems), or a combination of the two.

As a philosophy and science of change, materialist dialectics is predicated upon several principles concerning the material organization of all natural and social systems, asserting that: (a) everything is connected; (b) everything changes; (c) changes in quantity produce qualitative changes; and (d) change is driven by the unity and struggle of opposing forces.

1.3.10: The first principle of materialist dialectics is the universal interconnectedness and interdependence of matter: everything is connected. This principle helps us grasp the mutual entanglement and reciprocal determination of all natural and social phenomena, which forms the basis of our material reality. This principle can be observed in nature if we examine our planetary ecosystem, where plants, animals, bacteria, and abiotic factors create a complex web of life. Disruption to any one part of this network of relations can affect the system as a whole.

Let's take, for example, the issue of bee population decline: the loss of pollinators impacts the ability of plant populations to reproduce, which in turn disrupts food systems for a variety of other organisms, thereby reducing the ecosystem's overall resiliency. This principle can also be observed in society if we examine how in the context of capitalist-imperialism, an economic crisis in one country can send shockwaves throughout the world-economy, in effect triggering a global economic crisis affecting everything from prices, wages, and employment to the rate of exploitation of labor by capital in both the imperial core and global peripheries, all which in turn shape the historical development of the class struggle, struggles for national liberation, and possibilities for world socialist revolution.

1.3.11: The second principle of materialist dialectics is the universality of development: everything changes. Matter is always in motion, and all natural and social systems undergo processes of development. Even when change is cyclical, the cycle never resumes from the exact same starting point because matter was transformed in the course of the cycle's movement. This means that changes in nature and society move in spirals, not circles.

Through the spiral development of matter in motion, new forms can evolve which preserve certain aspects of prior forms while simultaneously advancing towards greater complexity and the emergence of new defining aspects. Following Hegel, Engels called this process of change the "negation of the negation," meaning there is both continuity and rupture in the spiral development of nature and society, whereby the new incorporates elements of the old while transcending it, whereby the present contains within it elements of the past.

For example, anthropological and archaeological evidence suggest that in early human social formations, a communal mode of life premised upon social property typically prevailed.¹² However, these communal social systems were negated—that is to say, overthrown—by the emergence of class society, which was premised upon the transformation of social property into private property. With the evolution of class society from antiquity to modern capitalist-imperialism, capital universalized private property while socializing the labor process.

Viewed in light of this historical context, the world socialist revolution is the "negation of the negation," for it abolishes private property by reestablishing social property in the transition to communism. However, this is not a return to pre-capitalist forms of social property, but a historical process building upon the achievements of preceding modes of social organization—including advancements made in the era of capitalist-imperialism—by reappropriating the means of labor, democratizing the social labor process, and revolutionizing all aspects of social life while abolishing private property, the market, and all forms of class exploitation and social oppression.

1.3.12: The third principle of materialist dialectics is emergence: changes in quantity produce qualitative changes. The gradual accumulation of quantitative changes can generate qualitative leaps or ruptures. While evolutionary change can misleadingly produce the appearance of a stable equilibrium within a natural or social system (as change appears to happen according to gradual, linear, and predictable patterns of development), this is merely the prelude to a turning point or phase transition in this system's development: evolution gives way to revolution. This means that in the course of a system's development, quantitative changes accumulate to produce a revolutionary rupture, resulting in a qualitative leap forward and a new pattern of development.

1.3.13: The fourth and final principle of materialist dialectics is the universality of contradiction: change is driven by the unity and struggle of opposing forces. Contradiction is immanent to all natural and social systems, and a central driver of change in the development of nature and society. By identifying and analyzing contradictions, we learn that struggles internal to a particular system can generate change. The struggle between opposing forces eventually leads to a turning point, which produces a synthesis by resolving the contradiction, ultimately culminating in the transition to a new phase in the qualitative development of the system in question, or the emergence of a new system entirely. On this basis a new unity is established which supersedes the old unity, while still preserving certain aspects of the old unity. In this way, the concept of contradiction helps us to understand the simultaneity of continuity and rupture in nature and society. The new unity arising from the resolution of one or more contradictions inevitably generates new contradictions, and the sequence begins anew: unity→ struggle→ synthesis→ unity.

1.3.14: On the one hand, the constituent aspects of a contradiction constitute an organic relation: they are complementary, mutually influencing and reciprocally determining one another, thus forming a unified whole. On the other hand, a contradiction's constituent aspects constitute a negative relation or polarity: they are exclusive, oppositional forces locked in continuous struggle, thereby producing tension or friction which generate distinct forms of agency and possibilities for change. There is both unity and struggle, and in their dialectical movement these two poles of a contradiction can produce transformations in matter, nature, society, and consciousness. For example, the central class contradiction within capitalism is between the working class on the one hand, and the capitalist class on the other.

1.3.15: The working class and the capitalist class require one another, as this relationship defines capital itself, thus constituting an organic relation. Yet they also exclude one another, and are thus negatively related: because control of the labor process and paying workers less than the value of what they produce is central to capital accumulation, it is in the capitalist's objective interest to oppress and exploit the workers. On the other hand, it is in the worker's objective interest to control their own labor power and ultimately overthrow and abolish capitalism and all forms of class society. This contradiction gives rise to particular forms of class struggle within capitalism, which is a driving force in capitalist social development and a potential source of its ultimate overthrow and abolition. It is because of this contradiction and the struggles it generates that the social structure of the capitalist system undergoes constant recomposition.

1.3.16: According to dialectical materialism, contradiction is universal, present in all forms of matter, but contradictions are particular, unique to a specific organization of matter in the historical development of nature and society. The specific forms of motion assumed by a particular contradiction will vary in accordance with the unique defining aspects and historical context of the contradiction in question, which in turn generate particular forms of struggle and paths to the contradiction's ultimate resolution.

1.3.17: In the particular case of human social development, we must distinguish between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions. For example, in a capitalist society, the contradictions between various sectors and strata internal to the working class are of a non-antagonistic nature and can thus be resolved through peaceful forms of struggle, principally dialogue. In contrast, the contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class is an antagonistic contradiction, and can only be resolved through a socialist revolution which successfully overthrows the rule of the capitalist class, smashes the capitalist state, establishes the political power of the working class, abolishes all forms of class exploitation and social oppression, and progressively builds the social relations and institutions of a communist society.

1.4.1: Historical materialism is the application of dialectical materialism to the study, analysis, and interpretation of the historical development of human social systems and their metabolic interchange with nature. According to historical materialism, in every historical epoch and geographical location where humans live, definite social relations emerge which organize the labor process and structure everyday social life. These social relations acquire definite patterns of development over time in the form of social institutions, as can be observed in the various historical forms assumed by the family, private property, and the state in the epoch of class society. The historical configuration of specific social relations and institutions and their corresponding patterns of historical development lead to the emergence and evolution of social systems.

1.4.2: In accordance with the dialectical materialist conception of the universe (i.e. matter in motion), historical materialism views contradiction as the driving factor of social change. The struggle to resolve social contradictions is the motor force of social transformation, and the essence of politics. However, different social systems generate different contradictions in accordance with their real historical development, which require different methods of resolution. For example, capitalism generates a contradiction between an increasingly socialized labor process on the one hand, and the private appropriation of social wealth on the other. This contradiction generates class antagonisms between owners and non-owners, which finds its sharpest expression in the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. This contradiction can only be resolved with the overthrow of the capitalist state by a socialist revolution led by the proletariat, and the subsequent transformation of private property into social property in the course of the socialist transition to communism. The scientific analysis of social contradictions using the theoretical framework of dialectical and historical materialism is of special importance to communists, for this is the primary method through which we identify the motor forces and potential agents of revolutionary social change in history, and on this basis locate sites for political intervention by the organized communist movement.

1.4.3: Historical materialism asserts that humans are a social species. That is to say, humans only exist in the context of organized social systems composed of other humans. It is through the coordination of cooperative social activity—be it voluntary or compulsory, direct or indirect—that the human species has survived, subsisted, developed, and evolved. A social system provides the material conditions within which the dialectical development of humanity unfolds. The system of social organization—that is, the particular configuration of social relations and institutions which govern the labor process, everyday social life, and humanity's metabolic interchange with nature—is of central importance in shaping humanity's historical evolution. Consciousness, or the reflexive capacity to critically perceive, interpret, and respond to environmental stimuli, is an emergent property of material conditions. Human cognition and self-awareness arise from our direct participation in various cooperative social activities which constitute the labor process and mediate our relationship to both external and internal nature.

1.4.4: According to historical materialism, the development of labor—taken in the broadest possible sense to encompass the purposeful activities of social production and reproduction through which humans transform both external and internal nature in order to satisfy our needs—is a precondition for human existence, and the liberation of labor is itself a necessary condition for humanity's social progress. In every social system, labor is the essential means of appropriating, metabolizing, and transforming nature in order to provide society with the necessary means of subsistence. However, labor plays no less a role in childcare, education, housekeeping, healthcare, or the production of culture than it does in farming, mining, manufacturing, or construction. Humans must participate in a labor process in order to satisfy our needs. In the course of our metabolic interchange with nature, we deploy our mental, physical, and emotional capabilities, or labor power, in combination with means of labor (tools, technologies, and infrastructures), in order to transform definite objects of labor (which includes both unprocessed and processed materials appropriated from nature, as well as cultures, affects, psychological behaviors, and forms of social organization) into products of labor (i.e. objects transformed by labor). In the course of the labor process, human capacities are developed, knowledge is produced, and nature is itself transformed. This leads, in turn, to the transformation of the labor process.

1.4.5: Society cannot exist without labor, and labor universally assumes social forms. In analyzing the historical development of various social formations, we can abstract from the social totality different spheres of social activity, encompassing kinship, science and technology, economics, politics, culture, mental conceptions of the world, and society's metabolic relation to nature.¹³

Within any one of these spheres we can identify specific combinations of labor power, means of labor, and objects of labor, which result in the social production of the necessities of life and the reproduction of society. Farmers plant seeds and till the soil. Truck drivers deliver agricultural produce and grocery store clerks stock shelves. Technicians in a mill load and operate furnaces to melt scrap metal into steel. Builders, electricians, and crane operators construct housing and infrastructure. Educators in schools develop curriculum, plan lessons, and teach courses. Nurses and doctors in hospital emergency rooms assess, stabilize, and treat patients. Parents prepare and cook meals, wash and fold laundry, clean the house, and put children to bed. Musicians write, practice, and perform songs that foster collective memory, identity, and connection among diverse peoples and give popular expression to social contradictions. Indigenous communities work with environmental scientists to clean up contaminated ecosystems and rehabilitate local habitats by planting native vegetation, removing invasive species, and restoring wetlands. Workers gather at a pub to grapple with questions of philosophy and political economy in order to understand capitalist-imperialism, the ways it shapes their lives, their social position within it, and both the ends and means of revolutionary social change. It may be primarily manual, intellectual, or emotional, but it should be obvious to all that labor—in a multitude of concrete forms, with its innumerable challenges and difficulties, and in all its creativity—makes society possible.

1.4.6: We have thus far spoken of the labor process in general, that is to say, in the abstract. In order to move towards a more concrete understanding of the labor process, we must examine the real historical development of social systems. We shall do so by analyzing the development of forces and relations of social production and reproduction, which structure the labor process. Upon first glance, it may appear that the forces of social production and reproduction primarily refer to tools, technologies, and infrastructures in a narrow sense. While these are certainly part of the equation, they are best classified as the means of labor. Upon closer examination it becomes clear that we are mainly talking about social forces, which is to say, the totality of human labor power—be it manual, intellectual, or emotional—and the social organization of this multifaceted labor power, in combination with definite means and objects of labor, in a cooperative labor process.

The combination of many specialized forms of labor power and the embodiment of accumulated knowledge in the labor process itself generates transformative potentialities that would be impossible to achieve without the growth of social cooperation, which has itself been enabled and enhanced by the relative democratization—however limited—of literacy, education, culture, and healthcare. It is for this reason that Marx spoke of the emergence of socialized intelligence, or "the general intellect," as a factor enhancing the innovative capabilities of the labor process.¹⁴ In this sense, it should be clear that the many labors of social reproduction are factors of equal importance to the overall development of the productive forces of society as science and technology.

1.4.7: Within any social system, the forces of social production and reproduction are always governed by definite social relations, which organize and regulate the processes of social production and reproduction by establishing a social division of labor. In the context of capitalist-imperialism, the relations of social production and reproduction lead to the division of society into antagonistic social classes (i.e. of owners and non-owners), as well as into social groups organized hierarchically on the basis of gender, sexuality, race, caste, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ability, and age. The social division of labor structures the labor process through the feminization and racialization of various categories of labor, for example, and it conditions our mental conceptions of the world by shaping the ideological and political viewpoints adopted by members of various classes and social groups.

1.4.8: At a certain point in the historical evolution of a social system, the social relations which govern the labor process can inhibit the creative utilization and further innovation of a society's productive and reproductive forces. This is one of the main contradictions driving social change throughout history, for it is only by transforming social relations that certain potentialities theoretically enabled by the development of the productive and reproductive forces can be realized. In the context of capitalist-imperialism, the prevailing productive and reproductive forces provide a more than sufficient basis for humanity to establish, on a world scale, a society of communal abundance based on the free association of social individuals who, working with the means of social production and reproduction held in common, and having liberated labor itself by transforming it into creative self-expression, can rationally, ethically, and democratically regulate their metabolic interchange with nature and plan their interconnected economic activities.¹⁵ Having overcome all forms of class exploitation and social oppression—and having resolved the contradictions between manual and intellectual labor, town and country, humans and nature, and so on—communist society will have transformed property relations and the organization of the labor process in such a way as to achieve the direct satisfaction of human needs, the all-round development of human capacities, and the sustainable stewardship of our planetary ecosystem.

1.4.9: Yet by maintaining a social system based on relations of exploitation and oppression, capitalist-imperialism obstructs social progress in the direction of communism by acting as a fetter on the further development of society's productive and reproductive forces. Indeed, today we not only witness the obstruction of social progress, but the rapid acceleration of a regressive trend generated by imperialism in decay, perhaps most clearly embodied in the resurgence of fascism, an unmitigated planetary ecological crisis, and the looming threat of inter-imperialist world war. We see how the productive and reproductive forces of society are generally developed in an uneven, irrational, ecocidal, and militarized fashion.

In the peripheral countries, these forces have been developed in such a fashion as to maintain colonial and neocolonial systems of super-exploitation to enable the imperial core to extract super-profits, thus preventing the autonomous social development of the peoples and nations of the peripheries. In the case of Israel's settler-colonial genocide in Palestine, we have seen how the occupation has served as a laboratory for the testing, development, and international export of new weapons and surveillance technologies.¹⁶ In the imperial core countries, the development of those productive and reproductive forces which bolster imperialist capital's authoritarian social control and military power have been favored, as evidenced by the massive growth and development of the military, surveillance, policing, and prison industries. As Rosa Luxemburg warned over a century ago: "In this hour, socialism is the only salvation for humanity."¹⁷

1.4.10: The method of abstraction is a necessary step in any scientific research process. In the case of the partisan social science of historical materialism, making abstractions helps us to isolate and understand the laws of motion and tendencies shaping the historical development of specific social systems (i.e. capitalist-imperialism), which informs the development and application of revolutionary strategies and tactics. As Marx explains in his discussion of methods used in bourgeois political economy, it may appear sensible to begin research on a particular country with seemingly obvious and concrete categories—such as the population of that country—and then proceed on this basis to develop abstract theoretical concepts. In other words, to move from the concrete to the abstract. "However," Marx explains, "on closer examination, this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed." In turn, these classes presuppose categories such as wage labor and capital, which presuppose production and exchange, social reproduction, the social division of labor, and value, price, and profit.¹⁸ In this example, the investigation begins with the assumption that abstract theoretical concepts can be readily derived from what are assumed to be concrete categories reflecting objective material realities. Yet it soon becomes clear that the concrete is confused for the abstract, and if the process of inquiry succeeds in producing an accurate reconstruction of social reality, this will be achieved only after the completion of a very chaotic and torturous journey.

1.4.11: The alternative is to move from the abstract to the concrete. According to Marx, it is preferable for scientific research to begin with the act of abstraction—as he began his critique of political economy with the isolation of an abstract category: the commodity—before gradually concretizing a more comprehensive, multidimensional understanding of the world "as a rich totality of many determinations and relations."¹⁹ Marx abstracts the commodity from the complex totality of capitalism, using it as an entry point for his reconstruction of the historical development of the capital accumulation process and the identification of the social contradictions which animate it.²⁰ In this way, historical materialism moves beyond abstract appearances in order to grasp concrete essences. "The concrete is concrete," Marx tells us, "because it is the concentration of many determinations... It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation and conception."²¹

1.4.12: In accordance with the principles of materialist dialectics, historical materialism initiates social research on the basis of perceptual knowledge accumulated through repeated sensory experiences, that is to say, past social practice. By subjecting perceptual knowledge to critical analysis, abstract theoretical concepts are synthesized and internal contradictions are identified. On the basis of this synthesized conceptual knowledge, rational knowledge is systematized as a "concentration of many determinations," as historical laws of motion and tendencies. In turn, this rational knowledge is applied to living social practice, and the practical results are summarized, the limits of rational knowledge and the validity of abstract theory are tested, and the cycle begins anew.

1.4.13: One must, however, exercise caution when making theoretical abstractions. Or, perhaps more accurately, one must be careful when reconstructing social reality theoretically and building mental conceptions of the world once an abstraction has been made. It is unfortunate that many self-proclaimed Marxists have ignored the emphasis Marx placed on approaching a society as "a rich totality of many determinations and relations," for this oversight has led to the formulation of linear and mechanical conceptions of historical development masquerading as historical materialism, with profound and tragic political consequences.

1.4.14: For example, Stalin's one-sided emphasis on the rapid development of the productive forces—mainly heavy industry—was derived from a seemingly rational observation: in order to satisfy people's basic material needs and raise their standards of living, socialism presupposes a certain level of industrial development. Therefore, in the context of a predominantly rural and agrarian society with a relatively underdeveloped industrial infrastructure, industrial capacity had to be increased. Furthermore, the reality of the Soviet Union's encirclement by the imperialist countries, combined with the rise of fascism in Western Europe and the looming threat of another inter-imperialist world war, made the development of industry an urgent question of survival.

1.4.15: However, industrialization—like population—is an abstraction. The subsequent movement from the abstract to the concrete in Stalin's thought was partial at best: while he distinguished between capitalist industrialization and socialist industrialization, he failed to concretize this distinction on the basis of a clear understanding of the socialist transition to communism as a process of self-emancipation, leading him to draw a number of incorrect conclusions and make many serious errors.

For Stalin, socialist industrialization meant a single-minded focus on the development of heavy industry—primarily steel production—to the detriment or exclusion of other factors crucial to achieving socialist transformation. Policies balancing the development of heavy industry with light industry and the transformation of agriculture were not pursued. The participation of the masses of workers and peasants in the governance and administration of society, as well as the planning and coordination of the economy, was not stressed, and the system of council democracy which emerged with the formation of the soviets in 1917—from which the Soviet Union derived its name—atrophied. Rigid teleological conceptions of historical change were embraced and propagated, arguing that changes in the economic structure of society (i.e. state-led industrial development) would automatically transform the superstructure in a socialist direction. In fact, once heavy industry had reached an advanced level of development in 1936, Stalin went so far as to suggest that class struggle had come to an end in the Soviet Union.²²

1.4.16: Under Stalin, the process of socialist transition was, in effect, reduced to a process of rapid industrialization; industrialization came to be synonymous with the development of heavy industry; the socialization of industries was considered accomplished with their nationalization by the state; and socialist economic planning came to be associated with a state planning bureaucracy. The goals of creating a new culture and new consciousness were subordinated to the imperatives of developing new technologies and more efficient management systems. Democratic centralism was replaced with bureaucratic centralism, and open struggle in the organs of the state and civil society over theoretical, ideological, and political questions facing the communist project were repressed. In contrast, Engels clearly articulated a nuanced and multifaceted approach to the question of socialist transition, asserting that the commune state generated in the course of the socialist revolution "will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole—that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society."²³

1.4.17: Another unfortunate misapplication of the method of abstraction can be found in various Eurocentric distortions of historical materialism. Eurocentrists classify European social formations as "advanced" and "developed," and non-European social formations as "backwards" and "underdeveloped." In his critique of this pseudoscientific and unwelcomed current within the communist movement, Robert Biel identified at least nine characteristics of the conception of history shared by Eurocentric Marxists:

Such mechanical conceptions of historical social development only serve to justify the continued oppression, exploitation, and dependent status of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as the internal colonies of the imperial core countries. In fact, such abstract schools of thought reflect the bourgeois worldview of mechanical materialism, not the revolutionary worldview of dialectical and historical materialism.

1.4.18: We must struggle against reducing the scientific analysis of society to the narrow study of economic systems. While it is true that the system of economic organization profoundly shapes social consciousness and the political, cultural, and kinship structures of a specific society, and that without an economic system people's basic needs would go unmet and human social existence would come to an end, it is equally true that politics, culture, and kinship profoundly shape the system of economic organization, as does the organization of society's metabolic interchange with nature. It is better to conceptualize the historical development of social life dialectically as a process of mutual accommodation and reciprocal determination, in which there is correspondence between structures and superstructures, between forces and relations, between social production and social reproduction.

1.4.19: While we can correctly assert that our mental conceptions of the world—that is, our ideas and forms of consciousness—can assist us in transforming the material organization of society, it is equally true that if there is no correspondence between our mental conceptions of the world and material reality, then we will prove ineffectual in transforming the world. In the final instance, matter conditions the development of nature, nature conditions the development of humanity, and human social organization conditions the development of human thought and agency. Historical materialism asserts that humans make our own history, but not under conditions of our choosing. To both understand and change the world, we must center the dialectical development of matter in motion when building our conceptions of natural and social history, grasping the role of material conditions in shaping the possibilities of a given historical conjuncture.²⁵

1.4.20: Before we proceed, let's summarize the basic elements of the materialist conception of history. According to Marxism, humans appropriate and transform both external and internal nature in order to satisfy our needs. This satisfaction of needs is achieved by expending many varied forms of labor power (i.e. the physical, mental, and emotional capacities of humans) in combination with means of labor (i.e. tools, technologies, and infrastructures) in order to transform definite objects of labor (i.e. materials derived from external or internal nature) in a social labor process.

From the development of articulated speech, the harnessing of fire, and the invention of the bow and arrow, to the creation of pottery, the domestication of animals, the cultivation of plants, and the smelting of iron ore, the historical development of human social systems is marked by a series of qualitative leaps in the development of labor power and the means of labor, which leads to radical transformations in the social organization of the labor process. In dialectical relation to this transformation of the material conditions of society emerge various spheres of social activity (encompassing kinship, science and technology, economics, politics, culture, mental conceptions of the world, and society's metabolic relation to nature) which shape the organization and experience of everyday life.

When human societies developed the capacity to produce basic necessities in excess of immediate, short-term subsistence needs—a qualitative leap made possible mainly through the development of the labor process, mainly in agriculture—we observe the gradual emergence of patriarchal class societies and the rise of the first systems of authoritarian state power.

1.4.21: Early human social systems were essentially communal, organized on the basis of common social property and collective social labor. These early communal societies were generally nomadic, matricentric, and met the basic subsistence needs of the population initially through foraging and hunting, and later through various forms of agriculture. As there were no classes or dominant social groups, there was no need for a system of state power. However, with the development of agriculture and corresponding transformations of nature, labor, technology, and social organization, human societies developed the capacity to produce a social surplus, defined as the portion of the total social product which exceeds the immediate survival needs of the population, and which can be allocated for purposes other than basic subsistence. The agricultural revolution and the production of a social surplus led to rapid population growth, specialized divisions of labor, and increasingly complex systems of social organization. At this historical conjuncture, an important question was posed to humanity: how should this social surplus be appropriated, and how should the labor process be organized?

1.4.22: In combination with the social, technological, and ecological transformations stimulated by the agricultural revolution, struggles over the appropriation of the social surplus and organization of the labor process led to the emergence of the world's first hierarchical class societies. In the course of this historical process, certain members of society eventually coalesced as a ruling class who controlled the extraction of surplus labor and the appropriation of the social surplus. With the subsequent dissolution of the classless, stateless, and matricentric communal societies of early antiquity, there emerged a range of social contradictions. These hierarchical class societies developed certain shared historical characteristics: they were patriarchal, having institutionalized male ownership, domination, and exploitation of women in both the household and society, asserting male control over biological and social reproduction and instituting a sexual division of labor; they were based on private property and class exploitation, whereby members of a property-owning and non-laboring class appropriated the fruits of labor's productive activity by means of enslavement, tribute, rent, or the wage relation; and their stabilization, reproduction, and expansion presupposed the emergence of the state, defined as a system of organized social control exercised through centralized political administration, repressive armed force, and ideological legitimation. Contrary to certain idealist and mechanical materialist conceptions of history, this transformation of human social systems was neither natural nor the product of logical necessity, but mainly the result of war and conquest by predatory social formations ruled by an unproductive, propertied class.²⁶

1.4.23: In the historical development of each successive form of hierarchical class society, we observe the existence of multiple classes and various sectors and strata therein. However, we can identify a dominant class antagonism corresponding to the prevailing system of social production and reproduction. As Marx and Engels so eloquently explained, the history of all hitherto existing society—that is, all forms of society following the dissolution of communal social systems—is the history of class struggle:

Now, let's dig a bit deeper into this history of class struggle in order to understand how historical materialism grasps the internal contradictions which drive the development of class societies.

1.4.24: The first class societies of antiquity were based on systems of slavery, in which a ruling class of slaveowners oppressed and exploited a class of enslaved working people, who produced a social surplus in the form of agricultural produce, manufactured goods, and services. Legally considered property, the enslaved classes of antiquity were typically composed of prisoners of war and debtors, and subjected to pervasive systems of violent coercion and social control to facilitate their exploitation and maintain the social domination of the slave-owning class. However, given the dependence of ancient slavery upon the conquest of new territories and subjugation of new peoples in order to constantly expand the supply of enslaved labor, there were absolute limits to the extraction of a surplus product by the ruling class of slaveowners, leading to economic stagnation. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of this slave-owning ruling class, combined with the impoverishment of free peasants and artisan workers, led to the eruption of violent class struggles. Throughout the period of ancient slavery there were innumerable slave insurrections, immortalized in history by the uprising of Spartacus against the Roman slavocracy.

1.4.25: The internal contradictions of ancient slavery ultimately led to the crisis and decline of the ancient empires, and slave-based systems of class exploitation eventually gave way to feudalism. While slavery persisted in various forms throughout different parts of the world (and indeed, slavery would be revived in the modern world by the imperialist countries of Europe and their settler colonies, and many forms of slavery persist to this day), and feudalism certainly preserved elements of ancient slavery (albeit reconfiguring them), the dominant class antagonism of feudalism was defined by the social relation of serfdom. Under feudalism, a ruling class of landlords oppressed and exploited a class of peasants, or serfs. The landlords would collect rent from the peasantry in the form of labor rent (in which peasants were forced to work for a set period of time, as seen with the corvée and encomienda systems), rent in kind (in which peasants had to provide a certain quantity of agricultural products directly to the landlord), and money rent (in which peasants had to pay the landlord a quantity of money equivalent to the product that would be otherwise extracted via rent in kind).

1.4.26: Driven by internal contradictions arising from the lord-serf class relation, feudal society stagnated as the landlords struggled to extract surplus labor from the peasantry through rent and debt, the peasants struggled to meet their basic subsistence needs, and the influence of an incipient class of merchants—the ancestors of today's capitalists—developed with the expansion of trade networks, systems of monetary exchange, and urbanization. The systemic crises and class struggles of late feudal society ultimately gave way to capitalism.

Like its feudal predecessor, capitalism reconfigured earlier forms of class exploitation and social oppression, which included the revival of slavery in racialized form through the establishment of a global plantation system based on the kidnapping, coerced labor, and super-exploitation of African peoples, as well as the cultivation of various feudal and semi-feudal relations throughout the colonial and settler-colonial peripheries in which Indigenous peasants continued to generate an agricultural surplus for both landed estates and cities.

However, the locus of class exploitation under the social domination of capital is found in the wage relation. By untethering masses of peasants from the land-based social relations of feudalism, capital created a class of "free" workers: free to sell their labor power to profit-seeking capitalists, or starve. In combination with the means of social production owned by the capitalists, these workers are compelled to produce commodities to be sold by the capitalist on the world market. While not all members of the working class succeed in obtaining waged employment—indeed, capitalist-imperialism both generates a pauperized reserve army of labor to keep wages low, and relies upon various forms of unwaged labor to reproduce itself—the working class as a whole must relate to the wage as the primary means of satisfying subsistence needs under capitalism, given their dispossession from all autonomous means of social production and reproduction.

1.4.27: With the historical development of capitalist-imperialism, we observe an important contradiction. On the one hand, global increases in literacy and access to education, scientific and technological advancements, the rise of popular revolutionary movements among the workers and oppressed peoples of the world, and the accumulation of historical lessons learned through past socialist experiments make the construction of communism an objective possibility. Premised upon the rational, ecological, and democratic planning and coordination of social production and reproduction, communist society would be capable of providing communal abundance for all through the direct satisfaction of human needs, the all-round development of human capacities, and the sustainable stewardship of our planetary ecosystem. On the other hand, the hierarchical division of society into antagonistic classes and social groups, the organization of everyday life in accordance with private property and the profit motive, the alienation of workers from political and economic decision-making, and the control of state power by the imperialist bourgeoisie actively inhibit humanity's social progress. This immense potential cannot be realized without the revolutionary overthrow and abolition of capitalist-imperialism by a united front based on an alliance of the working class with all oppressed social groups, defended by a people's army, and led by an organized communist movement.

1.4.28: Historical materialism can inform the process of social investigation and the organization of the working class and all oppressed social groups for revolutionary struggle. By recognizing the complex interconnection and reciprocal determination between multiple spheres of social activity within a particular social system; the metabolic relation of this system to its natural environment; the historical factors which shape the social organization of the labor process and everyday life; and the specific contradictions that drive processes of historical social change, this theoretical framework has far reaching implications. Not only can historical materialism shape how we understand the historical development of complex social systems and envision viable alternatives, it can guide how we conceptualize the process of transitioning from one social system to another by assisting the identification of the exploited classes and oppressed social groups most capable of leading and enacting revolutionary social change.

1.4.29: By studying the contradictions which shape the historical development of social systems, materialist dialectics can help us identify and analyze the laws of motion and tendencies which govern these systems, and inform the summation of lessons learned through past and present cycles of revolutionary social struggle. By applying the theoretical framework of dialectical and historical materialism to the practice of social investigation and the self-critical assessment and summation of our political work, the communist movement can improve our overall effectiveness by identifying strategic sites for the social insertion and mass work of communist organizers, and elaborate programs of action corresponding to the historical conjuncture encountered. There can be no revolutionary practice without revolutionary theory, nor revolutionary theory without revolutionary practice: this is the essence of the dialectical and historical materialist conception of praxis, understood as the spiral development of conscious social activity and self-critical reflection in our struggle to change the world. Or as Marx put it, "The simultaneous occurrence of changing circumstances and human activity—or self-transformation—can only be conceived and rationally understood as revolutionary praxis."²⁸

1.5.1: As communists, how do we intervene in the contradictions of capitalist-imperialism in order to liberate the general intellect—that is, the collective scientific, technological, and cultural intelligence of humanity accumulated through the labor process in the course of our long historical development—and build a communist society? What is the nature of the dialectical relationship between social structure and political agency? How do dispersed individuals come to recognize themselves as members of a class or social group in struggle, as partisans of a united people's movement, armed with a revolutionary vision, strategy, program, and methods of organization? Using the theoretical framework of dialectical and historical materialism, communists conduct social investigations in order to deepen our collective understanding of the terrain of struggle and correlation of forces, and to establish organic connections with the masses of workers and oppressed peoples. Through social investigation, we intervene in the processes of political recomposition by scaffolding organizational infrastructure, developing operational plans, and waging mass campaigns. Through social investigation, communists deepen our understanding of the dialectical relationship between social structure and political agency by identifying potential faultlines in the social formation which could serve as strategic locations for the concentration of political forces through social insertion and mass work.

1.5.2: Social investigation is a means through which the communist movement can establish and maintain an organic connection with the masses, as well as a means for the masses of workers and oppressed peoples to further develop their consciousness of the conditions of their exploitation and oppression, the material possibility of communism, and their latent collective potential to build a system of counterpower and unleash socialist revolution. Informed by the theoretical framework of dialectical and historical materialism, revolutionary organizers conduct social investigations with the aim of using the results of a co-research process to verify and deepen our historical social analysis, identify social contradictions, accompany and support the development of revolutionary consciousness among the people, map the terrain of social struggle, and scaffold the construction of the people's movement by organizing, consolidating, and networking mass organizations, defense organizations, and revolutionary party organizations, culminating in their convergence within a revolutionary united front.

1.5.3: By conducting social investigations, communists can locate forms of everyday resistance and alternative modes of world-making that emerge organically within the structural confines of capitalist-imperialism, and ultimately advance the people's struggle to a higher level using the investigation as the basis for a programmatic synthesis. Through social investigation, we situate our revolutionary political project within the reality of the prevailing material conditions, accompanying the masses in their everyday lives, synthesizing the emancipatory political content implicit in their everyday struggles, connecting multiple sectors of struggle as a united front, and articulating a collective revolutionary subject from a multitude of revolutionary subjectivities.

1.5.4: In accordance with dialectical and historical materialism's commitment to a partisan social science, the process of social investigation makes no claim to pure objectivity or value neutrality. Our research aims are political, consciously situated within the contradictions generated by the imperialist world-system. When conducting a social investigation, the co-research team seeks to identify, organize, and deepen the antisystemic antagonisms arising from these contradictions, and in the process accompany the masses in constructing first a system of counterpower, and later a union of socialist communes, in the revolutionary transition to communism. Throughout this process of militant investigation, communists apply dialectical and historical materialism to the analysis and transformation of complex systems in society and nature. Empirical data alone is insufficient for formulating plans of action; the communist movement requires an explicitly political framework through which to analyze, interpret, and utilize this information. This framework must not only account for the historical development of various classes and social groups, their social struggles, and their technical, social, and political composition within a particular social formation but also enlist the participation of the masses in the co-research and co-production of knowledge about the world, and in the revolutionary struggle to transform it. In this way, communists can use social investigation to raise the people's revolutionary consciousness while contributing to the resolution of the contradictions between researcher and researched, educator and educated, organizer and organized.

1.5.5: Through social investigation, we can develop place-based people's histories grounded in local realities and local knowledge. We can map the terrain of struggle by analyzing the local political economy, including the prevailing composition of various classes and social groups, the local manifestations of various social contradictions, and the correlation of forces between the people's movement and the bourgeoisie. In the course of our inquiries, we can identify the basic problems facing the masses of workers and oppressed social groups, such as high rent, low wages, gentrification, debt, state repression of mass organizations, gender discrimination, racist police violence, toxic working and living conditions, unaffordable healthcare, disinvestment from public education, and so on. From an initial survey, we can develop working programs and plans of action. Practical experience and further investigation inevitably lead to the refinement of our analysis, leading to the progressive development of a more accurate understanding of material reality and the contradictions which drive its transformation, as well as the operational terrain of politics and relative effectiveness of certain tactics. Based on new information collected in the course of subsequent iterations of the co-research process, we can determine if the terrain of struggle has shifted, and if a new correlation of forces has emerged.

1.5.6: By applying the theoretical framework of dialectical and historical materialism to the practice of social investigation, communists aim to advance from perceptual to conceptual to rational forms of knowledge.³² In this context, perceptual knowledge refers to the initial gathering of data through observation and participation in the labor process, everyday life, and the struggles of the exploited and oppressed masses. Once data is collected, conceptual knowledge is generated in the form of abstract concepts derived from an analysis of the data in light of dialectical and historical materialism, through which emergent patterns and relationships are identified. Finally, rational knowledge is produced when members of the team leading the social investigation draw theoretical conclusions and chart a course of action by synthesizing a strategic plan for political intervention. In turn, this knowledge is verified through practice, and the process begins anew, albeit enriched by the results of previous cycle of inquiry. On the basis of the rational knowledge produced through the social investigation process, the organized communist movement can more effectively select sites for the social insertion and mass work of its cadre, intervene in the political recomposition of the working class and all oppressed social groups, and ultimately unite the people's movement around a common program for world socialist revolution.

1.5.7: As we have thus far emphasized, the formation of a collective political subject capable of leading the socialist transition to communism is a dynamic historical process. This process involves the construction of a historical bloc based on the class struggle of the proletariat with the liberation struggles of all oppressed social groups as a revolutionary people. This movement for the self-emancipation of all exploited classes and oppressed social groups finds its highest organizational expression in the form of a revolutionary united front. Within this united front, only an organized communist movement—i.e. a communist party or union of parties—can provide the theoretical, ideological, and political leadership to guide the people's movement on the road to socialist revolution. In the dialectical unfolding of this historical process, the perceptual knowledge produced through social practice is synthesized as conceptual knowledge through social investigation, before it is combined with the political organization and activity of the masses in struggle, leading to the production of rational knowledge and with it the development of the people's revolutionary consciousness.

Equipped with this general understanding, we shall now turn our attention to the method of class composition analysis, which aims to organize political interventions on the basis of an objective analysis of the dialectic of structure and agency in relation to the proletarian class struggle.³³ We will then briefly explore the application of this method of compositional analysis to the liberation movements of social groups struggling against special forms of oppression.

1.5.8: Before we examine class composition analysis, we must first address the question: what is a class? Basing ourselves on historical materialism, we can define a class as a social group formed in the economic sphere on the basis of a common relationship to the means of social production, and on the basis of the social locations occupied by members of this group within the organization of the labor process, the processes of social reproduction, and the appropriation and allocation of the social surplus. On the basis of this common social relation, classes develop shared material interests and consciousness of those interests, as well as shared cultures. In turn, classes organize and take collective action in pursuit of shared interests, engaging in economic and political struggles with the opposing classes. A revolutionary class can be defined as a class whose political struggle imparts it with the potential to envision, articulate, and lead the construction of an alternative social system, overthrow the ruling class, and resolve the main contradictions of the dominant system of social organization.

1.5.9: A class is determined on the basis of its relationship to the means of social production and reproduction, and its structural position within the labor process. However, classes are not fixed and static, but dynamic and always in flux, forged in the fires of class struggle. Indeed, the development of the means of social production and reproduction, as well as the structure of the labor process itself, are shaped by histories of class struggle. As Marx explained, during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the concentration and centralization of capital transformed the masses of peasants and artisans into a mass of proletarians with common material interests who are progressively integrated into an increasingly socialized and global labor process. While the working class, from the moment of its inception, objectively stands in opposition to capital due to its dispossession from the ownership and control of the means of social production, its alienation from the labor process, and its exploitation and oppression by capital, it exists initially as "a class in itself." However, in the course of its economic struggle against capital, "this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests."³⁴ As the economic struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat develops into a political struggle—that is, a revolutionary war between classes—the workers become conscious of their historical mission to lead the socialist transition to communism, and thus constitute themselves as a revolutionary class.

1.5.10: Adopting the scientific perspective of historical materialism and the class standpoint of the proletariat, we can identify three interconnected processes that shape the formation of the proletariat as a class and influence its struggle against capital. The first process is technical composition, which refers to the specific material organization of labor power deployed in the labor process and mediated via the market. The technical composition encompasses various technological and management systems, as well as the general design of the commodity production and circulation processes at the level of both enterprise and industry. The second process is social composition, which refers to the material organization of proletarian social reproduction. This includes the reproduction of various divisions within the class (such as those formed on the basis of race, nation, gender, sexuality, etc.), as well as the social relations and institutions governing everyday life outside the direct exploitation of labor by capital (encompassing housing, education, healthcare, and social infrastructure in general). In dialectical relation with the technical and social composition of the class, political composition refers to the forms of consciousness, self-organization, and self-activity within the working class which emerge in the course of its struggle against capital. The technical and social composition of the class combine to form the material conditions from which a particular political composition emerges.

Informed by data collected in the course of the social investigation process, class composition analysis enables us to grasp the structure of capitalist social relations and the concrete manifestation of capitalist social contradictions at a specific historical and geographical conjuncture, and the concrete possibilities for the working class to exercise revolutionary political agency in the class struggle.

1.5.11: The conceptual framework of class composition analysis can be constructively applied to inquiries into the historical development of social groups who, due to their position within the social division of labor, face special forms of oppression (i.e. racial, caste, national, ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual oppression). By broadening compositional analysis to account for special forms of oppression, we can more effectively theorize a specific social group's role in the labor process, its internal stratification, its patterns of everyday life, and the forms of political subjectivity its members develop in the course of their struggle for freedom, and thus situate the history of a particular social group within the broader historical development of the social system as a whole.

1.5.12: When abstracting a particular social group from the totality of social relations, we must proceed with care. It is crucial to recognize that every oppressed social group in contemporary society has an internal class composition, a history of participation in class struggle, as well as a leading class which emerges in the course of its liberation struggle. Therefore, the special forms of oppression faced by different social groups cannot be separated from the social organization of the labor process, the division of society into antagonistic classes, the structure of class exploitation, and the history of class struggle. Conversely, the historical development of special forms of oppression and corresponding liberation movements cannot be reduced to abstract class categories: the oppression of women and LGBTQ+ people, or the racial and national oppression of colonized peoples, have their own historical characteristics and dynamics within the general historical development of capitalist-imperialism.

1.5.13: For example, the dialectical relationship between feminism and class struggle was emphasized by Marxist feminists such as Alexandra Kollontai, who recognized that women's liberation without the self-emancipation of the working class and abolition of class society would only mean "liberation" for a minority of women (i.e. bourgeois women), but the continuation of exploitation and oppression for the vast majority (i.e. the women of the proletariat and peasantry).

According to Kollontai, women's liberation can only be achieved in the course of the socialist revolution and is, in fact, part and parcel of it. While not rejecting the importance of struggles to improve the material conditions and social position of women within capitalist-imperialism nor the specific characteristics and dynamics of women's oppression, Kollontai adopted a firmly proletarian feminist standpoint: "For the majority of women of the proletariat, equal rights with men would mean only an equal share in inequality... each new concession won by the bourgeois woman would give her yet another weapon for the exploitation of her younger sister and would go on increasing the division between the women of the two opposite social camps. Their interests would be more sharply in conflict, their aspirations more obviously in contradiction."³⁶

At the same time, however, the working class cannot be liberated apart from the self-emancipation of women and, indeed, the total liberation of humanity. Any revolutionary project claiming to have liberated the working class from exploitation, but which perpetuates the oppression of women (or any other social group), cannot be described as advancing in the direction of communism. The point here is that feminism, decolonization, democracy, and ecology can only be meaningfully approached from a proletarian class standpoint, and the self-emancipation of the working class can only be meaningfully approached from a feminist, decolonial, democratic, and ecological perspective.

1.5.14: As Ajith has argued, proletarian class consciousness must develop by engaging with all of the major social contradictions of capitalist-imperialism (race, caste, nationality, gender, sexuality, etc.), and workers must struggle relentlessly for the self-emancipation of all exploited and oppressed peoples: "The proletariat can acquire a conscious grasp of its historical mission and unite all streams of society rebelling against the old order into a grand torrent of revolution only by distinguishing between the oppressors and oppressed and their respective consciousness, by uniting with the struggling traditions of the oppressed, and by synthesizing the experiences of those struggles to the heights of class consciousness."³⁷ We must not restrict social investigation to pure economics, nor can we afford to restrict compositional analysis to narrow conceptions of class formation and struggle. We must broaden our horizons, probe deeper in our social investigations, concretize our analysis of the internal differentiation of the working class, and apply the method of compositional analysis to all those class fractions and social groups who, in the course of their historical development, demonstrate a capacity and willingness to play a progressive role in the socialist transition to communism, who must be rallied to the people's revolutionary cause, and whose demands must be reflected in the program of the socialist revolution.

1.5.15: Like the proletarian class struggle, the historical development of a struggle for the liberation of an oppressed nation is not a linear process. In the context of U.S. imperialism, class contradictions shape the national liberation struggles of internal colonies, and settler-colonial and racial contradictions shape the class struggle. It is therefore imperative that we grasp the dialectic of colonization and decolonization, and we can begin to do so by reconfiguring and applying the methods of compositional analysis to the national question.

1.5.16: In the settler-colonial United States, for example, the Black nation is oppressed as an internal colony, composed of peoples of African descent brought to America in bondage. The basis of this nationhood is the development of a common cultural, intellectual, political, and economic life, and the emergence of a distinctly Black or New Afrikan national identity rooted in the common historical experiences of slavery, racial and national oppression, resistance, and the continuing struggle for self-emancipation. The historical territory of the Black nation was forged in an agrarian region known as the Black Belt South, where Black people have historically constituted a majority and the labor process was organized around the plantation system.³⁸ According to Harry Haywood: "The Black Belt shapes a crescent through twelve southern states. Heading down from its eastern point in Virginia's tidewater section, it cuts a strip through North Carolina, embraces nearly all of South Carolina, cuts into Florida, passes through lower and central Georgia and Alabama, engulfs Mississippi and the Louisiana Delta, wedges into eastern Texas and Southwest Tennessee, and has its western anchor in southern Arkansas."³⁹

1.5.16: In the Antebellum period, the plantation system facilitated the extraction of surplus value through the super-exploitation of enslaved African labor in the Black Belt South, mainly through the production of cotton and tobacco. The hegemony of the plantation system was legitimized on the basis of race ideology, and maintained through the repressive violence of the state. The plantation system in the Black Belt was not static: its technical composition was continuously reconfigured in response to the political struggles waged by enslaved Africans, which in the Antebellum and Civil War periods used sabotage, strikes, desertions, and armed struggle, which in turn transformed the very composition of the Black nation itself. Indeed, the Black nation was forged in the struggle for freedom. In the course of the struggle for survival and liberation, a specific social composition emerged within Black communities, set against the backdrop of the technical composition of the plantation system. This social composition included the development of a distinctly Black culture, matricentric kinship structures, and autonomous networks of communication.⁴⁰

1.5.17: The Civil War and Reconstruction legally abolished chattel slavery and expanded democratic rights for Black people in the South. In turn, this led to the social recomposition of the Black nation, with the entry of masses of Black people into government for the first time at the local, state, and federal levels; the development of a Black economy in the South (which in turn led to intensified class differentiation within the Black nation); the founding of new social institutions such as Black schools, colleges, universities, social clubs, mutual benefit societies, and civic associations; and the flourishing of Black culture in art, music, journalism, literature, and culinary practices.

1.5.18: However, following the erosion of political support and the withdrawal of Union military forces from the South in 1877, the white supremacist reaction against the national democratic revolution of Reconstruction prompted the restoration and technical recomposition of the plantation system on the basis of debt peonage, sharecropping, and convict leasing, which were enforced using Jim Crow laws and racist terror of the Ku Klux Klan. As cities in the North and West industrialized, more than 6 million Black people fled the intensifying racist terror of the post-Reconstruction agrarian South in what is known as the Great Migration (c. 1910—1970), which over time led to a decline of Black majority areas throughout much of the Black Belt territory.

1.5.19: The Great Migration prompted a technical, social, and political recomposition of Black communities across the country. On the one hand, the historical period of the Great Migration was an era defined by the low wages, ghettoization, redlining, gerrymandering, lynching, and mass incarceration of Black people. On the other hand, the processes of technical and social recomposition it unleashed led to further class differentiation within the Black community (which included the growth, development, and political consolidation of the Black proletariat) and the development of a new culture (from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement, from jazz to funk). It was in the context of this historical period that the Black liberation movement achieved a powerful political composition, marked by events such as the defense of the Scottsboro Boys and the March on Washington, and embodied in organizations such as the Communist Party USA, the National Brotherhood of Workers of America, the National Negro Congress, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

1.5.20: As we see in the case of the Great Migration of Black communities from the rural agrarian South to the urban industrial North, geography plays an important role in the technical, social, and political recomposition of classes and social groups. Just as soon as the Black industrial proletariat had achieved a political composition corresponding to the prevailing technical and social composition, the deindustrialization of urban areas by capital led to a technical decomposition, which compelled the political recomposition of Black communities and other oppressed nationality communities as industrial employment evaporated, economic resources were shifted from multinational urban centers to predominantly white suburbs, and so-called "urban renewal" programs displaced Black and Latino populations on a massive scale. Revolutionary political organizations such as the Black Panthers and Young Lords were able to organize by politicizing the virulently racist economic policies destroying Black and Brown communities and building community survival programs capable of provisioning basic needs (e.g., free breakfast for children programs, medical clinics, etc.).

1.5.21: At the very moment when the Black liberation movement began to crescendo, the capitalist state unleashed a violent process of decomposition. Black leaders such as Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Hampton, and George Jackson were assassinated. The occupation of Black communities by a militarized police force and the rapid expansion of mass incarceration was achieved under the auspices of the so-called "War on Drugs," with the United States rapidly creating the world's largest prison population of over 2 million people (disproportionately Black and Latino). Striking prisoners were massacred during the Attica Uprising. The gains of the previous cycles of struggle were reversed as the welfare state was rapidly dismantled, trade unions were smashed, civic life atrophied, and urban public schools were transformed into pipelines to prison through the introduction of high-stakes testing, zero-tolerance policies, and increased police presence. In combination with these repressive measures, actions were taken by the capitalist state to co-opt remaining Black leaders and exercise "soft power" over the Black nation through the creation of a neocolonial comprador elite and the development of a non-profit industrial complex—a system of relationships between nonprofit organizations and their staff, private donors, and the capitalist state—that funneled public funds into private hands. In turn, these elites deployed non-profit organizations and institutions as mechanisms for diverting and misdirecting the people's struggle from revolutionary objectives, programs, and forms of organization into "acceptable" patterns of thought and action.

1.5.22: The process of decomposition transformed the terrain of struggle, but the stage was set for the reconstruction of the Black liberation movement in a new historical context and the eruption of a new cycle of struggle. In response to Hurricane Katina and the U.S. government's criminal neglect and ethnic cleansing policies, new mutual aid and disaster relief initiatives and community survival programs emerged from within the Black community in 2005. In 2006, a mass campaign was organized to defend the Jena 6 in Louisiana. Spontaneous mass rebellions erupted in response to the killings of Sean Bell in 2006, Oscar Grant in 2009, Trayvon Martin in 2012, Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014, and Freddie Gray in 2015; militant prison strikes were organized in 2016, 2018, and 2022 by the Free Alabama Movement and Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee; and the George Floyd Uprising shook the world in 2020. These events can be viewed as distinct moments in an unfinished process of the Black nation's recomposition within a longer cycle of struggle. Today, the ideological hegemony of the non-profit industrial complex has been progressively eroded by scandals of self-enriching "movement leaders," and the capitalist state is increasingly delegitimized in the eyes of the masses and correctly viewed as an instrument for the continued social domination and super-exploitation of the proletarians of oppressed nationalities.

1.5.23: Black communist intellectuals such as Kali Akuno and Kevin "Rashid" Johnson have theorized the historical transformation of internal colonialism and the national question in the United States in light of the aforementioned cycle of struggle's development through various phases of composition, decomposition, and recomposition.⁴¹ The demands of the Black nation for basic democratic rights, national self-determination, decolonization, and liberation remain prescient today, and while the Black Belt South remains a mecca of Black national culture and continues to contain an absolute majority of the Black population in the United States (approximately 13 million people), the social and technical composition of the Black nation and the broader historical context within which it exists have radically transformed since the Black Belt Thesis was first adopted by the Communist International in 1928, or the New Afrikan Declaration of Independence was first issued in 1968.

1.5.24: In fact, as Rashid has pointed out, the recomposition of the Black nation—still a "nation within a nation," but an increasingly diasporic proletarian nation—might, in the final analysis, prove advantageous when viewed in light of the programmatic objectives of the world socialist revolution and the urgent necessity of establishing a plurinational and multicultural socialist commune in North America. "The issue is not integration versus separation," Rashid says, "but revolution." He continues: "Our path to liberation... is to overthrow U.S. imperialism and play a leading role in the global proletarian revolution and socialist reconstruction. We must be the tip of the spear and rally everyone who has contradictions with imperialism to unite with us."⁴² Indeed, it was precisely such an intercommunal politics of solidarity that was prefigured in the original "Rainbow Coalition" led by Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, which aimed to build—on an explicitly socialist basis—an alliance of all oppressed nationalities with all exploited proletarians in a revolutionary united front of the people against fascism and capitalist-imperialism.

1.5.25: In accordance with revolutionary communist principles, we should continue to uphold the right of the Black nation to self-determination, up to and including the right to establish an independent republic in the historical national territory of the Black Belt South and the right to cultural autonomy in areas of majority concentration outside this territory. However, it is imperative that the method of social investigation and compositional analysis be applied to our conjuncture so as to grasp historical changes in the technical, social, and political composition of the Black nation and the role of the Black liberation movement in the struggle for socialism.

1.5.26: We could apply this same method of analysis to gender oppression and feminist struggle, as well as the question of social reproduction more broadly, by examining the technical composition of the family structure and gendered organization of the social reproduction process, and the corresponding forms of political composition achieved by feminist struggles. Furthermore, the conceptual framework of compositional analysis can be applied to particular institutions or territories by analyzing the technical and social composition of universities, prisons, or neighborhoods as discrete sites of mass social struggle and political recomposition.

For example, Leopoldina Fortunati has examined the historical transformation of the technical and social composition of social reproduction, especially domestic labor, and the corresponding forms of political composition achieved by the feminist movement. In particular, she has examined how the reorganization of the family and housework, alongside the reduction in the number of children women have, are the direct results of a specific political composition compelling the recomposition of the technical and social composition of domestic labor.⁴³ "But since the family is the primary cell on which the capitalist state is based," she tells us, "the transformation of the family also has consequences for the structure of society, which has become more diversely articulated and fluid. The regulatory framework, on the other hand, has changed little, making society dysfunctional, in the sense that the capitalist organization of the labor process it is based on a family structure that no longer exists."⁴⁴ Globally, men have taken on a greater share of housework, which indicates a technical and social recomposition of domestic labor that is a direct product of the feminist struggles waged by women.

1.5.27: The historical process of composition → decomposition → recomposition constitutes what Italian communists referred to as a cycle of struggle. When intervening in a cycle of struggle, the organized communist movement aims to facilitate the development of this cycle in a spiral motion—as opposed to a closed loop—where each new cycle builds upon the achievements and corrects the setbacks and limitations of the preceding cycle, while minimizing the intensity and duration of the phase of decomposition. This conceptual framework is helpful for developing a dialectical and materialist understanding of the historical development of the people's struggle, for it militates against the reductionist tendency to abstract forms of political subjectivity, agents of revolutionary social change, and various forms, principles, and methods of organization which are wrongly considered to be universally valid. Instead, compositional analysis emphasizes that classes and social groups act politically through historical cycles of struggle, and the development of a particular historical social system is itself driven by the dynamics these cycles unleash. If we can understand the historical processes of class and social group composition, we will be all the more prepared to intervene in a specific cycle of struggle, and ultimately lead the people's movement to socialism.

1.6.1: The application of dialectical and historical materialism to the study and transformation of the world, principally through conscious political interventions into the processes of class and social group recomposition, is an adaptive, reflexive, and self-correcting process. What is the source of this theoretical and practical flexibility? The answer is to be found in the practice of constructive criticism, self-criticism, and summation, which is rooted in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge and the historical materialist conception of social change. As the martyred Palestinian communist revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani put it: "When revolutionary theory acknowledges that knowledge and practice represent two poles of unceasing dialectical movement, exchanging their gains continuously, and continuously requiring additions, corrections, and modifications, then the organization cannot disregard the principles of criticism and self-criticism as a basis for its relations."⁴⁵

It is precisely the "ruthless criticism of all that exists," to use Marx's expression, that enables both historical materialist social science and the organized communist movement to grow, develop, and adapt to changing historical conditions.⁴⁶ To be critical is to think about one's thoughts, to become conscious of one's consciousness; it is to become aware of the defining contradictions of one's historical conjuncture, and to discover one's place and agency therein. Paulo Freire calls this process conscientização, or critical consciousness, through which people learn to perceive and understand the social contradictions which structure material reality, and to take collective action to transform this material reality by resolving these contradictions.⁴⁷ This is not something achieved in isolation, but only through one's participation in the class struggle of the proletariat and the liberation struggles of the oppressed.

1.6.2: It is the practice of criticism, self-criticism, and summation which, in part, supports scientific socialism's claim to the mantle of science: it is not a closed system, but an open project capable of both giving and receiving constructive criticism, summarizing lessons learned through experience, rectifying errors, and changing theory and practice in light of new empirical evidence. Those claiming the mantle of scientific socialism while dogmatically defending unqualified, outdated, or discredited theories are no better than pseudoscientists (racists, eugenicists, climate change denialists, misogynists, transphobes, creationists, etc.) hiding among the ranks of real scientists in biology, geology, anthropology, psychology, and other fields of scientific research.

1.6.3: Politically, the goal of criticism, self-criticism, and summation is to transform the praxis of the organized communist movement and the people's movement it serves in all aspects and on all fronts, encompassing theory and analysis, strategy and program, ethics and morality. On the theoretical front, the goal is to improve the movement's scientific rigor, bringing our theory into alignment with objective reality. On the practical front, the goal is to transform the conduct, character, and effectiveness of participants in the revolutionary process. Ultimately, the process of criticism, self-criticism, and summation aims to achieve the dialectical unity of theory and practice. With every action taken, we must ask ourselves: "Whose material interests are advanced by this action? Which classes and social groups does it serve? What type of politics are in command?"

1.6.4: The practice of criticism, self-criticism, and summation not only provides a method for achieving the theoretical, ideological, and political unity necessary for movements and organizations to be effective in revolutionary struggle, but also a means of both overcoming internalized oppressive attitudes and behaviors, as well as steeling comrades as revolutionary cadre. There are many forms of social chauvinism which must be struggled against and ultimately overcome, such as white, national, male, heterosexual, cisgender, and petite bourgeois chauvinism. While the edifice which produces such oppressive social relations must ultimately be overcome, we must also learn to forge a new communist humanity in the trenches of the protracted revolutionary struggle itself. Indeed, as Che Guevara emphasized, in order to build communism we must transform ourselves as we transform the world, for "the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love."⁴⁸ The material foundation established in the course of the socialist revolution will be of no use if a new people, guided by a communist ethics and morality, have not been forged in struggle. For this, we require the practice of criticism, self-criticism, and summation.

1.6.5: We must clarify that criticism, self-criticism, and summation is only to be conducted among communists and the masses of people as a tool for resolving non-antagonistic contradictions. It is not a tool for resolving antagonistic contradictions between exploiter and exploited, or oppressor and oppressed. These contradictions can only be resolved in the course of the class struggle of the proletariat, the liberation struggles of oppressed social groups, and, ultimately, with the victory of the world socialist revolution when the power of the imperialist bourgeoisie is smashed by the revolutionary counterpower of the masses.

1.6.6: According to scientific socialism, the masses of people—the working class and all oppressed social groups—play an active role in history. As the central protagonists of history, the people transform themselves as they transform the world. We should not fear criticism, but embrace it: contradiction is inescapable and struggle moves the world forward by progressively resolving contradictions. Movements and organizations that can learn from their mistakes can lead successful revolutionary struggles by continuously improving their praxis and style of work. Movements that ignore their mistakes are easily co-opted, misled, marginalized, or destroyed.

1.6.7: The practical work of the organized communist movement is rooted in the process of making strategic, operational, and tactical plans; implementing these plans; critically analyzing and summarizing the results of their implementation; and drafting new plans in light of theoretical knowledge generated in the course of practical experience and the process of criticism, self-criticism, and summation. Whether in the field of scientific research, the labor process, or revolutionary politics, the aim of summation—the culminating moment in a cycle of self-critical reflection and assessment—should be to tease out both positive and negative lessons learned through past practice, and to apply these lessons to future practice. In this way, a critical evaluation of past practice is furnished by analyzing the objective material conditions, subjective factors, and social contradictions at play, and the relative effectiveness of particular actions.

1.6.8: Criticism, self-criticism, and summation is always a collective process, in the course of which perceptual knowledge (in the form of observations derived from sensory experience, such as the tangible outcomes of a specific action or campaign) is synthesized into conceptual knowledge (in the form of abstract concepts, such as the strategies and tactics used in an action or campaign, in order to grapple with what worked and what did not). From conceptual knowledge, the collective arrives at rational knowledge (i.e. identification of concrete lessons learned which should inform future practice). When applied correctly, the process of criticism, self-criticism, and summation ensures the dialectical unity of theory and practice as a living revolutionary praxis grounded in material reality, the needs of the masses, and the programmatic aims of the socialist revolution. Through this social production of knowledge, the people are empowered to lead the revolutionary process to liberate themselves and make their own history through the development of their revolutionary consciousness and organizational skills and capacities.

1.7.1: We have emphasized that theory and practice constitute a dialectical unity as praxis. We shall now complicate this picture. The production of theory itself can, of course, be understood as a form of practice—namely, theoretical practice in the domain of philosophy and science. It should also be clear that theory informs the productive and reproductive practices embodied in the labor process. Take the example of agricultural production: based on knowledge produced and accumulated through generations of practical experimentation, theory informs the particular techniques deployed in agricultural production, thus shaping the organizational process through which humans satisfy our needs and develop our capacities through the transformation of nature. Finally, we can identify various forms of political practice. Based on knowledge produced and accumulated through the historical experiences of various classes and social groups engaged in struggles over the structure and direction of society, theory informs the particular programs, strategies, operational plans, and tactics deployed by political organizations. In all of the above instances, the results of practice inform theory, and theory informs practice, as both are transformed through the dialectic of praxis.

1.7.2: In all of the aforementioned instances—i.e. praxis in the fields of philosophy and science, the labor process, and politics—we find the concrete social activities and consciousness of individuals to be mediated by ideology. Through a critical reading of Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Alain Badiou, and Francois Balmès, we can define ideology as a series of ideas, beliefs, values, and representations which together constitute a worldview.⁴⁹ This ideological worldview can emerge spontaneously or as a result of an organized and systematized process of ideological production. An ideology can be internalized unconsciously or consciously adopted. Regardless of its internal coherence and level of systematization, ideology is always present in human social life: ideology serves to generate a sense of individual and collective identity, shaping people's perceptions of reality and mediating how people understand and experience the world, as well as how they might change it. Ideology mediates subjectivity.

1.7.3: In the course of an individual's everyday participation in social life, they acquire and internalize a particular ideological worldview, which in turn shapes their consciousness and social activity. Though a particular ideology may produce a feeling of internal coherence, and it may appear in a systematically organized form, ideologies are often internally contradictory and may or may not correspond with objective reality (and in this sense, ideology is distinct from theory). For most people, ideologies are internalized unconsciously and enacted reflexively, acquired as second nature. Thus a particular ideology is inculcated, reinforced, and reproduced through particular social institutions and apparatuses (such as schools, the family, workplaces, courts, religious institutions, political parties, civic associations, media, etc.), and enacted through a range of concrete social practices (including discourses, moral and ethical codes, spiritual or secular rites and rituals, and so on). In a social formation dominated by the social relations and institutions of capitalist-imperialism, the dominant ideology will of necessity be the ideology of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

1.7.4: However, the existence of a dominant ideology does not imply the existence of only one ideology. In opposition to the hegemonic ideology of capitalist-imperialism there emerge counter-hegemonic ideologies. These ideologies can take on relatively diffuse and spontaneous forms, or more organized and systematized forms. Regardless, counter-hegemonic ideologies tend to find their sharpest expressions in the course of systemic social crises and mass uprisings. From within the spontaneous counter-hegemonic ideologies brought forward by mass uprisings, the contours of a communist tendency and program expressed in the everyday language of the masses can be discerned. Alain Badiou and Francois Balmès refer to the emergence of such elements as "communist invariants."⁵⁰

While inescapably heretical when viewed from the standpoint of bourgeois society, it is from the successful fusion of communist theory with the communist invariants generated by the people's spontaneous ideological resistance to the hegemonic ideology that an organic and systematized revolutionary ideology can emerge.

1.7.5: Revolutionary ideology aims to formulate, on the basis of dialectical and historical materialism, and in the everyday language of the people, the main propositions of the communist program. In this way, the premises of the old (bourgeois) ideology are progressively eroded, and the bases of the new (communist) ideology are constructed in the minds of people. Ideological struggle is about breaking with old ideas. Through ideological struggle, the principles of communism are generalized throughout the social fabric, bourgeois ideas are criticized and delegitimized, and through thematic agitprop and popular education campaigns, the conflicting material interests of opposing classes and social groups are revealed to the masses, and the strategic direction of the people's movement for socialism is articulated. It is through ideological struggle that the working class and oppressed social groups come to see themselves and their material interests as being embodied and reflected in a revolutionary ideology and come to see themselves as a part of an emerging revolutionary people.

1.7.6: Ideology is a necessary component of any social system, mediating an individual's everyday social experience by solidifying (or subverting) one's psychological connection to the dominant social relations and corresponding institutions. Ideology should not be confused with false consciousness or an incorrect understanding of the world (though a particular ideology certainly can facilitate the development of false consciousness and incorrect understandings, as is the case with bourgeois ideology). Rather, it is largely through ideological practice—reflecting as it does one's position within the labor process and the social struggles which arise organically from the contradictions of a hierarchical class society—that political agency is discovered and political subjects are formed.

For revolutionary Marxists, the aim is to bring our ideological worldview into maximum alignment with a scientific analysis of material reality. This is achieved through the application of the theoretical tools of dialectical and historical materialism, the method of social investigation and compositional analysis, and the practice of criticism, self-criticism, and summation. In this way, errors in theory and practice can be progressively rectified, and the communist movement develops self-critical awareness of its ideology's historical origins and development, its contradictions, and its effects on individuals, on classes and social groups, on movements and organizations, and on society and nature. In this way, the dialectical unity of theory and practice enables the communist movement to develop a revolutionary ideology that is dynamic rather than static, and critical rather than dogmatic.

1.7.7: Lenin emphasized that within the historical context of class society, all ideologies are stamped by class struggle, for all ideologies represent the standpoint and material interests of particular classes.⁵²

Thus the hegemonic ideology of capitalist-imperialism necessarily reflects and embodies the standpoint and material interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie, whereas the revolutionary ideology of communism—as a counter-hegemonic ideology—must reflect and embody the standpoint and material interests of the people: the working class and all oppressed social groups. Adopting the ideological standpoint of the people's movement, and consciously linking this ideological perspective to the theoretical framework of dialectical and historical materialism, Lenin's communist axiom can be rearticulated for our conjuncture as follows: in the historical context of capitalist-imperialism, ideology is always either proletarian or bourgeois, feminist or heteropatriarchal, anti-racist or racist, decolonial or colonial, internationalist or nationalist, democratic or authoritarian, revolutionary or reactionary, communist or anti-communist.

1.7.8: Ideologies emerge from the contradictions inherent in the material organization of a social system at a particular phase in its general historical development. Hegemonic ideologies can serve to mystify objective reality by masking the relations of class exploitation and social oppression, or by recasting antagonistic social contradictions as non-antagonistic in the minds of the people. Alternatively, counter-hegemonic ideologies can produce worldviews which mediate the radical transformation of society and heighten antagonistic contradictions to their breaking point. Ideologies can therefore reflect, reinforce, and reproduce the dominant social system and the social power of the ruling class, or they can challenge, subvert, and transform society. However, as Marx and Engels explained, hegemonic and counter-hegemonic ideologies do not operate on a plane of equality:

Ideology thus serves to mediate between objective conditions and subjective experience, playing a crucial role in the formation of people's consciousness. However, ideology does more than merely "reflect" material realities: ideology plays an active role in the production of reality, and is intimately entangled with the everyday lives and experiences of people, operating at both conscious and unconscious levels. Through the formation of political imaginaries, ideologies shape political agency and the processes through which political subjects are formed.

1.7.9: As we have emphasized, the production of theory is, for communists, a scientific process, and a necessary starting point for the communist movement's ideological and political work. It is a process guided by the philosophy and science of dialectical and historical materialism, whose aim is to produce a maximally objective understanding of the material world through scientific observation, experimentation, analysis, and critique in order to effectively guide revolutionary political praxis. This theoretical practice aims to critique all ideologies, including Marxism itself (i.e. self-criticism), thus situating all ideologies within the material conditions of their real historical genesis and development. However, recognition of this in no ways leads to the transcendence of ideology as such, for it remains a necessary factor mediating the relationship between matter and consciousness. Theory informs practice, the historical results of practice inform theory, and both theory and practice inform ideology. Ideology, in turn, mediates between consciousness and political activity, and the historical results of this political practice are analyzed and criticized theoretically. A new cycle of theoretical production thus begins, which in turn transforms ideology, consciousness, political activity, and ultimately society. Within the domain of ideology itself, revolutionary struggle continues.

1.7.10: Ideologies always embody and reflect particular class and social standpoints within the matrix of the prevailing material conditions. It is through ideology that people become conscious of the material conditions of society, of their material interests as members of particular classes and social groups, and of the contradictions which permeate all aspects of a particular social system (i.e. between exploiter and exploited, between oppressor and oppressed, between the imperial core and the global peripheries, between the forces and relations of production, between social production and reproduction, between the power of the state and the counterpower of the people's movement). On the basis of ideology, people—as members of particular classes and social groups, and as partisans of specific political organizations and movements—develop consciousness of the material world and their material interests within it, and it is upon the basis of this shared worldview and consciousness that opposing classes and social groups, as Marx says, "fight it out" politically.⁵⁴

1.7.11: Through ideological struggle, political agency is discovered and political subjects are formed. In the course of this process of subjectivation, classes and social groups are recomposed, political organizations are established, political campaigns are waged, strategic and tactical alliances are formed, political programs and slogans are formulated, and battles are waged which shape the correlation of forces within a particular social formation. Ideology is thus historically contingent, corresponding to the prevailing material conditions in society, always and everywhere in a state of flux and reconfiguration, permeating all aspects of social life: from the family and the shop floor to the commanding heights of state power and the world-system. At our present historical conjuncture, we can locate and identify a range of ideologies which shape the consciousness of people and reflect a range of different material interests, from neoliberalism to postmodernism, Islamism to identity politics, reformist social democracy to revolutionary communism.

1.7.12: Ideology interpellates subjects, meaning that social institutions and discursive formations shape individuals into socially recognized subjects through the formation of collective roles, identities, and behaviors. In turn, people internalize their place within a particular web of social relations and institutions. It is through social institutions such as the family, the school, the factory, or the state and their associated discourses that the social identities of the mother and father, the student and teacher, the worker and boss, or the citizen and the state are formed. Similarly, it is through the social institution of the trade union committee, the workers' council, or party cell that the political figure of the labor organizer, proletarian militant, or communist revolutionary is formed. It is through participation in such institutions that these roles are recognized by others and the person themselves, thus shaping their identity, behavior, and sense of inclusion or exclusion within the dominant social system. When masses of people no longer see themselves and their social identity and political subjectivity as reflected in the dominant ideology, a crisis of hegemony arises. Such historical conjunctures present opportunities for the articulation of a counter-hegemonic political project and recomposition of a revolutionary political subject.

1.7.13: Finally, we come to the question of politics. We can define politics as the practice of managing or resolving social contradictions. Politics is concerned with the production and reproduction—or transformation—of social relations and institutions through purposeful human social activity. Politics is distinct (though not separate) from labor, ideology, and theory in that the labor process is concerned with the transformation of external and internal nature by humans in order to satisfy our needs and develop our capacities; ideology is concerned with the transformation of experience into subjectivity; and theory is concerned with the production of philosophical and scientific knowledge of our world. Politics, as the Students for a Democratic Society observed in their 1962 manifesto, politics can be viewed "as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations" and, potentially, to serve "the function of bringing people out of isolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life."⁵⁵

However, within the context of hierarchical class societies, politics is the domain through which different classes and social groups struggle for power over the direction of society. When communists say that we must "put politics in command," what we mean is this: since all social relations in a hierarchical class society have a political dimension, a crucial question we must ask when analyzing and assessing the political content of a particular social institution, movement, organization, campaign, cultural artifact, slogan, demand, or action is: "Whose historical interests does this serve? In what direction does this move society? Does this move society in the direction of communism?"

1.7.14: Politics requires theory, for this enables the identification and scientific analysis of particular social contradictions. It also requires an ideology, for it is through ideological practice that political subjects are constituted. Communist politics is thus, in the words of the late Marta Harnecker, "the art of making the impossible possible."⁵⁶ Communist politics must concern itself with the assemblage of a historical bloc of class and social forces that can decisively alter the correlation of forces in favor of the people's movement for socialism against the forces of capitalist-imperialism, thus making what was impossible today possible tomorrow.

1.7.15: Politics cannot be mechanically separated from the question of organization (nor organization from politics), for they are indissolubly linked as a dialectical unity.⁵⁷ "Organization," Lukács tells us, "is the form of mediation between theory and practice. And, as in every dialectical relationship, the terms of the relation only acquire concreteness and reality in and by virtue of this mediation."⁵⁸ Whether we are talking about science, labor, ideology, or politics, all forms of practice are mediated by particular forms of organization: the scientists collecting data in the field or conducting experiments in a laboratory; the workers on the farm or in the factory; the priest conducting a service in church or the professor teaching a course at the university; the workers going out on strike against their bosses or the masses launching a revolutionary uprising against the capitalist state, it is clear that a system of organization emerges in each particular instance.

1.7.16: We can situate within the domain of political organization the question of strategy. Through the articulation of a political strategy, particular methods for resolving social contradictions are identified, political subjects are identified, a sequence of actions is proposed, and operational plans are devised and implemented, all in an attempt to move society in a particular direction (i.e. a socialist transition to communism). The practical results and historical outcome of this process are subsequently analyzed and criticized, lessons are summarized, and a new cycle of struggle begins.

Strategy is not a precise science: interventions concentrated on the different aspects of particular social contradictions can have their intended effect, or they can generate unintended effects. Since we are always operating with imperfect and incomplete information about a chaotic and complex world, it is nearly impossible to accurately predict the precise effects of our actions. Therefore, we must strive to equip comrades with a revolutionary theoretical framework and revolutionary ideological worldview sufficient to make effective political interventions into the present historical conjuncture, and to make adjustments to our organizations, programs, strategies, operational plans, and tactics as dictated by the actual results of political practice. Armed with the weapon of theory, we are now prepared to apply dialectical and historical materialism to an analysis of the imperialist world-system, for this is the necessary starting point for communist politics. From this starting point, we can gradually advance from the immediate demands arising organically from the social struggles of the masses towards the highest form of political struggle demanded in the era of capitalist-imperialism: the direct assault on capitalist state power by the revolutionary counterpower of the people, the countrywide establishment of a socialist commune to serve as a base area for the world socialist revolution, and the forward march of the socialist transition to communism.

Amílcar Cabral, "The Weapon of Theory" (1966), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1966/weapon-theory.htm/.

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V.I. Lenin, "The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism" (1913), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm/.

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Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/.

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Robert Biel, Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2015), 12.

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György Lukács, History and Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 224.

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Science for the People, China: Science Walks on Two Legs (New York: Avon Books, 1974), 300.

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Sandra Harding, Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015).

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Georges Politzer, Elementary Principles of Philosophy (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 3.

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Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 21.

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Mao Zedong, "On Contradiction" (1937), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm.

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Engels, Anti-Dühring, 20.

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Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labor (London: Zed Books, 1998); Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2020).

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David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 123.

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Karl Marx, Grundrisse (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 690—695, 704—706.

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Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume III (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 957—959.

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Antony Lowenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World (New York: Verso, 2024).

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Rosa Luxemburg, "What Does the Spartacus League Want?" (1918), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/14.htm.

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Marx, Grundrisse, 100.

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Marx, Grundrisse, 100.

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Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I (New York: Vintage Books, 1977). Mao makes a similar point in his critique of Soviet political economy: "In studying a problem one must begin with the appearances that people can see and feel, in order to research the essences that lie behind them, and then go on from there to reveal the substance and contradiction of objective things and events." See Mao Tsetung, A Critique of Soviet Economics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 112.

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Marx, Grundrisse, 101.

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Joseph Stalin, "Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (1936), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htm; Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Stalin (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1947), especially chapter 8; Joseph Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2022); Mao, A Critique of Soviet Economics.

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Frederick Engels, "Principles of Communism" (1847), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm.

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Robert Biel, Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2015), 17—18.

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Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm.

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Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, 65—66.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm.

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Karl Marx, "Thesen über Feuerbach" (1845), Marxists Internet Archive, original translation, https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-engels/1845/thesen/thesfeue-or.htm.

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Mao Zedong, "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (1927)," Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm.

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Mao Zedong, "Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys" (1941), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_01.htm.

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Mao, "Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys." See also Mao Zedong, Report from Xunwu (Stanford, California:

Stanford University Press, 1990) and Marcelo Hoffman, *Militant

Acts: The Role of Investigation in Radical Political*

Struggles (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019).

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Mao Zedong, "On Practice" (1937), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm.

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Steve Wright, Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 2017); Gigi Roggero, Italian Operaismo: Genealogy, History, Method (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023); Notes From Below Collective, "The Workers' Inquiry and Social Composition," Notes From Below (January 29, 2018), https://notesfrombelow.org/article/workers-inquiry-and-social-composition.\ \ According to Roggero: "Class composition is the relationship between the capitalist articulation of the labor force, in its combination with machines, and the formation of the class as a collective subject. It is therefore the relationship between technical composition and political composition. But neither of these terms should be seen as static. Technical composition isn't a simple replica of the structure of exploitation, and political composition doesn't indicate an already realized autonomous subject. The articulation and hierarchization of the labor force are driven by workers' behavior, while the political formation of the class is in permanent tension between autonomy and subsumption. The social relation of capital, as an antagonistic relation, is as much within the technical composition as the political composition—it determines them and transforms them." (Roggero 2023: 37) As an organization, when we discuss the strategic social insertion and mass work of our cadre, we are referring to the insertion of communist organizers within such a process of political composition.

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Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02e.htm.

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David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers in the Russian Revolution: February 1917—June 1918 (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018); S.A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917—1918 (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017).

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Alexandra Kollontai, "The Social Basis of the Woman Question" (1909), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm.

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Ajith, "The Politics of Liberation," in Of Concepts and Methods: 'On Postisms' and Other Essays (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2020), 212.

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On the question of the Black nation, see: Claudia Jones, "On the Right to Self-Determination for the Negro People in the Black Belt" (1946), in Carole Boyce Davies (ed.), Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment (Banbury, UK: Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2011), 60—70; Harry Haywood, Negro Liberation (New York: International Publishers, 1948); Harry Haywood, "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question" (1958), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/1956-1960/haywood02.htm.

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Haywood, Negro Liberation, 12.

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George P. Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1972).

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See Kali Akuno, Riad Azar, and Saulo Colón, "Revolutionary Black Nationalism for the Twenty-First Century," New Politics 15, no. 3 (Summer 2015), https://newpol.org/issue_post/revolutionary-black-nationalism-twenty-first-century; "Black Liberation in the Twenty-First Century: A Revolutionary Reassessment of Black Nationalism" (2010), in Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, Panther Vision: Essential Party Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2019), 188—204.

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Rashid, "Black Liberation in the 21st Century," 192—194.

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Leopoldina Fortunati, The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital (New York: Verso, 2025).

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Fortunati, The Arcana of Reproduction, 280.

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Ghassan Kanafani, "The Underlying Synthesis of the Revolution: Theses on the Organizational Weapon" (1971), in Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi (eds.), Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings (London: Pluto Books, 2024), 171.

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Karl Marx, "Marx to Ruge" (1843), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm.

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Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2005).

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Che Guevara, "Socialism and Man in Cuba" (1965), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm.

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Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971); Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (New York: Verso, 2014); Peter D. Thomas, The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009); Alain Badiou and Francois Balmès, "On Ideology" (1976), Negation Magazine, https://www.negationmag.com/articles/on-ideology-badiou-balmes.

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Badiou and Balmès, "On Ideology."

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Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023); Mike King, When Riot Cops Are Not Enough: The Policing and Repression of Occupy Oakland (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2017); Rodrigo Nunes, Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization (New York: Verso, 2021).

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V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973), 48.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 2007), 64—65.

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Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: International Publishers, 1999), 21.

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Students for a Democratic Society, "The Port Huron Statement" (1962), History is a Weapon, https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/porthuron.html.

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Marta Harnecker, Rebuilding the Left (London: Zed Books, 2007), 66; see also Marta Harnecker, A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015).

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V.I. Lenin, "Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)" (1922), Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm.

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Lukács., History and Class Consciousness, 299.

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