by Bruce E. Parry
Political Logic: Principles of Marxist Politics. By Wang Huning, 1994. 544 pages.
Politics is the concentrated expression of economics. In order to study economics, we turn to Capital, Marx’s magnum opus that details his most complete understanding of political economy. It’s 2800 pages long in three volumes. It is very complete, giving a detailed explanation of capitalism that stands today, 150 years later, as the most complete work on how the capitalist economic system works. Of course, there are other economic pieces he wrote including his Economic Notebooks, the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the Grundrisse, Value, Price and Profit, Wage Labor and Capital and others. But it’s all summed up and fully developed in Capital.
Now try to find Marx’s political writings to get an idea of how we need to approach politics from a scientific perspective. References are spread all over the place. Marx and Engels’ Collected Works fills over 30 volumes, the vast majority of that is about worldwide political developments. By comparison, Capital is brief. What is needed is one place where the basics of Marxist politics are detailed. A scientific understanding of politics is a fundamental necessity in today’s complex and ever changing world. We need to master politics in order to function at the most basic level. Our work is political.
To really get into it, read and study Political Logic: Principles of Marxist Politics. This book, as its stated purpose, is to do for Marxist political thought what Capital did for political economy. It gathers in one place the myriad strands of political thought developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Deng Xiaoping and others. It compiles the theory of scientific political logic in sixteen chapters and only 544 pages, brief by Marxist standards. Now, a lot of people write books about politics, including Marxist politics. What makes this different and important?
Political Logic was written in 1994 by a Marxist collective of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Its lead theoretician and attributed author is Wang Huning, today a member of the highest body of the CPC Political Bureau, the Standing Committee. The Communist Party of China started in 1921 with about 50 members and was able to organize millions of toiling masses and defeat the ruling capitalist class in 1949 when it seized state power. Today the CPC has nearly 100 million members. Wang has been a leading theoretician in the country since the 1980s. He has been a member of the Standing Committee since 2017. In short, he was assigned to the Standing Committee after completing this work, and, one must assume, in part because of it. The English translation of the book has just been released by the CPC, which indicates its continuing importance.
It is important because we need a scientific understanding of politics. Everything the University of the Poor is about is political. We are extremely busy with our work, but it is imperative that we take a little time to study and think about what we’re reading and studying. When we say study Marxism, we mean study the science of society. Marxism doesn’t tell us what to think, it tells us how to think.
The book is based on principles and outlines the fundamental methodological foundation that underlies all of Marxist political science. At the base is Dialectical Materialism. Dialectical materialism is the recognition that the world and its politics are first and foremost material. All matter is in motion and that motion obeys the laws of dialectics. But the book really emphasizes the importance of Historical Materialism.
Historical Materialism is the methodology of Dialectical Materialism applied to society. It teaches that we need to study the historical development of the economic forces of production in order to understand the structure and therefore the politics of any society. These two fundamental tools of Marxism must be mastered by everyone seeking to have a scientific understanding of society.
Wang goes on to develop fifteen basic principles. Among others, these include that politics is the concentrated expression of economics, the centrality of class struggle, the development and role of the state, the nature of democracy, the fact that politics is a science and an art, and the inevitability of society developing to communism. A chapter is devoted to each of the fifteen basic principles.
Politics is the struggle between classes. One task of this period is that we raise the question of class in our work in a way people can understand. We are in a battle to transcend the divisive policies of the ruling capitalist class and unite the poorest and most exploited section of the working class. Everything we do in that regard is political. This is an idea that is repeated throughout Political Logic and is central to a scientific political science.
Classes are defined in terms of their relation to the productive process. The capitalists own the means of production and distribution and all the other businesses (including finance and communications). The working class is the dispossessed; it owns no means of production, no property which provides income. Workers are forced to work for the capitalist owners of the means of production. This alone roots politics in the economic reality that underlies the basic structure of society.
Much of history is the story of technological advances leading to capitalism. In each era, the ruling classes suppress and take the surplus from the workers. That is the root of the class struggles. Over time, the complexity of class struggle simplifies. Today just two classes face each other in struggle: proletarians and bourgeoisie. The struggle today is governed by the labor-replacing electronic technology that is destabilizing capitalism. Capitalism is based on workers working while technology is destroying jobs.
The University of the Poor is in the struggle for the rule of the working class, the proletariat. Class struggle inevitably leads to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which is the beginning of the end of modern class society. Today, the electronic revolution is setting the conditions for that to happen.
We need to understand both of the classes engaged in struggle. We study the ruling class in order to understand how we are ruled. This is based in economics, history, national characteristics, the form of the state apparatus, and the specifics of time and place. It can be complicated, but we can learn how the capitalist class operates.
We also need to study our class, the working class, the dispossessed. We need a detailed understanding of who the poor and low-wealth are since we are trying to organize that section of the working class. What about the informal (and illegal) economy? Everyone needs to have the money to live, so people have their own hustle to deal with poverty. Debt of all types is important: student debt, credit card debt, mortgages, etc. Incarceration is a fact for this section of the proletariat. What about the rest of the working class? How are they organized? How are they in political activity? The Unions? Rural and Urban residents? We need to understand their politics and how they vote. We need to have a more detailed picture of our class.
The book examines the state. Politics is the participation in state affairs. The state is a tool for class rule. Politics includes setting the direction of the state and determining the form, tasks and content of state activities. The U.S. state apparatus is – as our Program points out – the main instrument of the global capitalist class. It exists at the federal, state, county (or parish), and local levels. Each level affects the others.
The federal government has an effect on each of the lower levels and in the international arena. The local and state governments can have national and even international consequences as well.
Politics is a science and an art. Economics is the base, but politics must take precedence. We deal with the political. We need the flexibility and understanding to help develop a working-class politics that can use the contradictions within the ruling class to advance our efforts to organize the poorest section of our class. We must understand the science of politics to implement the art. Flexibility and understanding come from a deep knowledge of the political terrain we are fighting on.
As revolutionaries, we are entering into political struggle. The comrades therefore need to understand politics at every level. We are continually striving to study the basic realities of political life in this country precisely because we need to understand them in order to win. Our work in homeless and housing struggles is daily affected by politics at the national, state and local levels. We are engaged with electoral politics at all levels. With the deployment of ICE and other federal agents, we are directly confronted by the federal government. In carrying forward the work of Rev. Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign and the welfare rights tradition, we are similarly confronting the state’s ideological offensive and policy violence against our communities. This is true of all the arenas of our work.
The University of the Poor is a pre-party organization that is struggling for the working class to take political power. We are working to develop the cadre necessary to unite the most oppressed and exploited section of the working class. In order to do that, we must be based in science. Marxism is the science of society and Marxist political science is the science of politics. If we do not understand what political power is in this day and age, if we believe that political power is going to be handed to us, we will be defeated. The only way to win is to understand society at least as well as our class enemy. We have to out-think and out-maneuver the class enemy to win.
Political Logic is a hugely important tool in developing our cadre. It deals with the basics such as defining politics, but it goes further and delves deeply into every aspect of politics. All politics are class politics. Economics is the foundation of politics. Political Logic discusses what the different aspects of politics are including how politics develops the state and is developed by it, what political interests are, the national aspects of politics, international politics, revolution, and socialist politics. It’s all there to be studied and absorbed by those fighting for a better world. I strongly recommend reading and even studying Political Logic with a collective.—
Bruce E. Parry is a member of the University of the Poor and is a long-term social activist and independent researcher in Chicago, IL. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY and completed his doctorate in Economics at The American University in Washington, DC. He is the Veterans Coordinator for the National Union of the Homeless and is a member of the Illinois Union of the Homeless. He is a member of the Coordinating Committee for the Illinois Poor People’s Campaign and works with the Campaign’s South Side Cluster. Although he is retired, Bruce continues to do research and teach classes in Political Economy. He lives with his wife, son and daughter on the South Side of Chicago.
