| Development of the will for just property in World History |
 |
 |
| Written by Ianko Stoianov |
| Saturday, 27 September 2008 20:00 |
|
Development of the will for just property in World History
For a number of decades in the XX century the world witnessed the deepest, infinitely strong contradiction between private and common property of the means of production. While the peoples of West Europe were living in societies based on the principle of private property of exploiting type, the peoples of Eastern Europe, Russia and China were forced to live in societies based on the so called ?common? ownership of the means of production. The reason why we call the Stalinist type of ownership of the means of production ?common? will be elaborated upon later in a chapter titled Marxism and Stalinism. It was a great merit of Marxism to have articulated the question of ownership down to the level of its deepest contradiction. Yet, Marx?s humanist doctrine was a product of the pure understanding for only the understanding ? the very first stage of reason ? comes to its pure abstractions, in which it still does not know and does not possess the infinite flexibility of the absolute rational will. Only the understanding can raise to the idea of common property of the means of production and regard people as only common people, the result being that property is not personalized. Abstract thinking never goes beyond the inanimate universality, which is devoid of spirit and freedom of Will; it is completely illegitimate, untrue and lifeless. It lacks the free infinite personality, which is the greatest subject of politovolia, the supreme actuality of spiritual Will. The abstract is unreal and it is not living; this is the eternal and implacable fate of each abstraction. In the 1980?s world-history, ? and more precisely speaking, the Rational Will acting within it, ? confronted the task to solve this contradiction both practically and theoretically, i.e. to develop the practical and theoretical politovolia of modern times. Unfortunately, it has not been prepared to develop the political actuality of the era; consequently, it has shamefully failed to solve the most fundamental task of modern times. The reason was very simple: the World Rational Will could not continue the revolution, which the Marxist movement had started, because there were no avant-garde political thinkers capable of going forwards and producing new revolutionary ideas for development of modern Humanism. A capitalist class had emerged amongst the peoples of the former ?socialist? block; the spiritual and political leaders of this new class restored private property of exploiting type once again. What the ideologues of liberalism called a velvet Revolution was in fact a pure velvet Restoration of shamelessly arrogant capitalism. Although the Absolute Rational Will produces and will invariably produce the contradiction between private and common property, property of the means of production is not the supreme degree of contradiction, which the absolute volition holds; as a matter of fact ? as it has already been mentioned, ? private property of exploiting type is to be abolished and will be abolished and sublated by ?common? private property of humanistic type. It is for this reason that in this chapter we do not aim at examining the conceptions of private and common property in their narrow political economy's framework as only property over the means of production. We want to examine their deepest and most intensive politovolical value in more details. In its free activity the Absolute Rational Will eternally creates their contradiction and overcomes the latter insuperably through reconciling the opposites with one another. Speculatively speaking, both moments are absolutely indispensable. They are bound to reconcile with one another in Aristotle?s golden medium, in which one moment is as necessary as the other one. In this process the Absolute Rational Will fuses with itself and is for itself. The activity of Rational Will and its possessing is one and the same thing. I act as far as I have my own spiritual-willed nature, as far as I have the freedom to act, as far as I have taken possession of my property, but everyone is ?I? and everyone has his ?mine? i.e. the absolute content is subjective, private property of every concrete, individual person and at the same time it belongs to man as such, to the purely common ?I?, in other words, it is an universal property of the free for itself mankind. It is the supreme contradiction of the Rational Will, but in its infinite might and as the unconditionally acting, it bears in itself that contradiction and solves it as a free political life of the ethical community of individuals. The objective, intellectual-willed world and the wealth of its determinations, such as science, knowledge, law, ethics, industrial and trade skills, are common property; in this world every human individual as well as every human political community move in its own property, they are themselves. The rational organization of man's community as such requires the essence, the substance of individual Will to be the purely common self-determination of the absolute individual thinking Will; an unity of universal and individual Will, which is in and for itself having just itself. It is this Will and this unity that are the purpose and predetermination of individual person: not to act according to his purely arbitrary, miserable, self-willed Will, but in accordance with the rational self-determinations of the universal in-and-for-itself existing Will. All preceding principles of politovolia have been necessary moment of its self-development for politovolia is rational; it is the actual which has in itself the absolute necessity to self-realise itself. We have to examine them in their historical development on the base of Hegel?s principle of negation of the negation and be able to develop and unite them thanks to the own method of the rational will and in accordance with the necessary course of its own development. Man has a rational will; he is the willing itself will, a willing of the willing, the complete reality and manifestation of the highest principle of rational will: ?Rule yourself,? take into possession of yourself and your absolute essence. His will for property has in itself the greatest coutervolition of its opposite moment ? on the one hand, as Individual Will it wills to have private property and, on the other hand, as Universal Will it wills to enter into possession of public property. The world history is a history of the struggles of both moments of this coutervolition of the rational will, which eternally fires up their struggles and eternally reconciles them in their unity and, by so doing, takes into total possession of itself. The world development begins with the common for all living people ownership of the Earth, so that nothings to belongs to anybody. The principle of common property is certainly the base of that substantial ethical freedom, which Plato deservedly loved and wanted ? with such little success ? to preserve from the equally necessary and irresistible principle of subjective freedom, whose highest form of realisation is the institution of private property. Being only the beginning of the whole further development of rational will, the common ownership of all people during the primitive order is utterly undetermined and unsatisfying. The universal ends of humanity ? self-preservation and development of the human species ? in and through the primitive community were of the utmost importance. The community not the individual is the fundamental end; the individual as such has the common good as his end. Yet, this communist ? still primitive ? ethical idea has in itself the urge to reveal the next stage of its development and give existence of what it lacks, namely the principle of subjectivity. The people feel that the universal, the common of their will has to divide and proceed to its strongest infinite opposite, to the independent personal will of every individual to act for himself. The universal ? the community of people - acknowledge that every individual has in himself the infinite volition to develop the whole power of his individual will; they desire it as an absolutely necessary moment of truly rational will. Willing to attend its ends, the universal, the common of the will of the people self-determines itself and becomes the common for every individual, the result being that their volition for common property passes over into private property; everybody is entitled to have private property the result being that the independent individual can guide his actions by his self-interest. The common good becomes personalised; now the member of the universal organism, of the community, acts not only in pursuit of the universal ends of the community but also in pursuit of his own ends, volitions and desires. This is the first negation of the will for common property. Private property is also a rational moment of the will, which in the course of its development wants to realise the moment of higher productivity and bigger individual freedom. At the same time, the common good is to be preserved in the new development of will and it is preserved in the institution of public property ? the state. The state has to appear with absolute necessity and ? in its first form ? it appears in order to defend private property. Nonetheless, the state has wider jurisdiction and ruling powers as well; the universal, the common is its goal. Thus, the first negative, the private property will, needs the universal and preserves it; it cannot do without it. Yet, at this stage of the development of the world will the state is a property of one, of the king ? an owner of his nation and its land, or a property of one particular class, of the slave-owning class, of the aristocracy in the days of feudalism, of the Big Bourgeoisie in modern times. This is still a manifestation of unethical, unreasonable will at its most extreme. The lies, the brainwashing, the propaganda to make people live in a fool?s paradise ? they all still serve the monstrously selfish class will of today?s Big Bourgeoisie in order to present its interests as the people?s vital interests. That is just what made Marx want total abolition of private property of exploiting type; and here he made a certain mistake. In Marx we see the bad kind of refutation of the political actuality for the new actuality of rational will ? based on the communist revolution, which he wills to spread across the world, ? asserts that the previous actuality is completely untrue, takes its place and declares itself to be totally true and wants to make itself perfectly legitimate. Marx failed to comprehend the positive essence of private property. We cannot totally abstract ourselves from personal talent, industriousness, persistence, initiative, strength of will for overcoming difficulties, possession of strong and powerful rational will, in one word, from everything that makes us unequal. In contrast to the Communist Manifesto, in which Marx sums up the theory of the Communists in the single sentence: Abolition of private property, in his Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 ? written in the period of time when he is still under the influence of Hegel?s positive-speculative philosophy, ? he understands ?Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement,? as an expropriation of the capitalist expropriation of the private property of man ?and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being ? a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development.?1 Had Marx understood better the rational moment of the humanistic will for private property as well as the entire wealth of the previous development of humanity, he would have developed the idea about the positive abolition of private property. It is beyond all doubt that understanding what is rational in the institution of private property is a sine qua non for coming up to the idea of private property of humanist type and developing the idea of communism infinitely better. Nevertheless, Marx undisputedly became one of mankind?s greatest teachers of genius because he understood excellently that the whole preceding development of the will for private property of exploiting type is still at the same time unreasonable in the extreme; as an utterly unethical and unreasonable moment of the process of organising human communities, it leads to exploitation of man by man and unashamed greed, it still leads and will continue to lead to incessant wars and the ruthless ecological devastation of the Earth and its resources. Marx explains and wills to change the social inequalities, the huge differences in social status, wealth and opportunities between the classes, the contradiction between the ideals and the real values of the West. Marx expresses the rational will of modern times: expropriation of the expropriators. For only the ruling dominating class exists as a class for itself; only it is superbly organised and uses the enormous power of its state ? so successfully privatised by it ? to keep in fear the robbed and enslaved classes, which seldom are equally well organised. The middle class, the political proletariat is downtrodden, robbed, exploited, lied and deprived from the right to rule, deprived from the right to genuine democracy; its will for self-determination was and still is expropriated. The forceful expropriation of the means of production and res publica by the capitalist class is expropriation of Man from both his economic and political personality, a negation of Man?s free economic and political will, in other words, an expropriation of his self. Because of its countless social evils the principle of private property in its capitalist form cannot satisfy the ethical volitions of Man. The Absolute Rational Will has in itself the urge to abolish the principle of private property of capitalist type, to negate its exploiting nature and ? aiming at making it ethical ? to introduce the principle of private property of humanist type, to make the state universal property, to transform it into truly common good, in other words, to transform it into res publica. Thus, nowadays the rational will comes to the second negation, to the negation of the negation, to the principle of ethical freedom including in itself the principle of subjective freedom, the principle of self-determining individuality ? which despite his excellent and enormous economic and philosophical culture, Marx failed to understand in its truth and right, the result being that Marxism was only capable of making the first step towards the actual realisation of the ethical ideals of humanism. Only when the principle of subjective freedom is carried out into practice in its universality, does the rational will constitute a res publica of the ethical and, therefore, just freedom; only then it constitutes the highest social organism, the state as a public property of Man, of the person as such. Everyone is a political person; the very divine will wills that ? the unity of the singular and the universal. Man is not to be an object of economic exploitation and political enslaving any more, but a subject of economic and political freedom and to take full and competent part both in ruling his private life ? the family, the little res publica, ? and in the rule of his social life in-and-for the truly common good, in the rule of the just res publica of truly free and equal people. The expropriation of the expropriators is an energetic manifestation of Hegel?s brilliantly developed method of the absolute: Hegel?s negation of the negation is the imanent dialectical soul, which everything actual has in itself; it is ?the innermost, most objective moment of life and spirit through which a subject, a person, a free being, exists.?2 Due to it, the expropriation of the expropriators moment is a sine qua non of the return of the total ownership of Man both over his final economic product and res publica. It is the absolute end of the infinite free volition for it aims at achieving the highest moment of rational will ? an actually free person in an actually free political society. It brings the process of permanent dehumanisation of Man to an end; it is the humanist expropriation of the forceful capitalist expropriation of Man from the products of his labour and the deeds of his res publica with the result that Man comes into possession of his human essence and becomes an actually free social human person as a member of an actually ? economically and politically ? free community. Only the expropriation of the expropriators can lead to the constitution of positive private property of humanist type. It is the return of Man?s personality and, therefore, his liberation; Man becomes an actually free person. His most personal being is at the same time a totally communal and political being. Only as a member of well-organised community this communal Man is a humanist human being which is independent from the mercy of the capitalist class and free. The whole revolutionary movement of world history finds its empirical as well as theoretical base not only in the movement of private property, in economics, as Marx claim, but in the movement and development of the common good as well. It is the common good that gives the universal character of the community; it is of primary importance who determines its ends. They must be determined by Man, who as a social Human being has the will to work for the common good and only in-and-through-the-society and in-and-through-the-common-good works for himself as well. This provides a new optics of his activities; virtue becomes the first and most essential of Man?s qualities and the base of a new truly humanist ethics. Thus, now the world will is still to become rational for itself; it has the urge to achieve its end and be the developed beginning, to create a world in which Man has the totality of the whole contents of the universal of the will and freely uses it in its universality. This return of Man?s rational will at itself is the implementation, the realisation of the rational, humanist principle ? which is the beginning and the end of the whole development ? of the will, due to which Man does not have only a pure individual being, but has himself, takes into possession of himself as a social being as well, i.e. the individual knows and wants the will of the sovereign people, he also wills to live and work without fear for the common, which belongs to no exploiting classes but belongs to him as much as it belongs to anybody else as well. Marx initiated the superb and great beginning of the march towards the expropriation of the expropriators. Today the Humanists continue this march carrying the torch for a genuinely democratic res publica which empowers Man as much as his community; they want to do it better than the Marxists and they know that they can do it better than the Marxists. Nowadays the state has to appear as a truly public good, not as a privatised entity obeying the selfish class will of the rich but for the first time in human history as a res publica of the people for the people and ruled by the people in defence of private property of humanist type. And the day when it is achieved will be a day of the full metamorphosis of the only pretended bourgeois democracy into a genuine democracy in a res publica truly owned by the people.
NOTES:
|