We cannot revolutionize the world without rethinking the whole of reality.

We cannot revolutionize the world without rethinking the whole of reality (and not just in the political and social domain)

The vast majority of organizations that call themselves revolutionary have stopped really dealing with science and philosophy and are content with political and social interventionism, which is a worrying sign of the degeneration of revolutionary ideas. Whether out of modesty or opportunism, in any case, the task has been abandoned, yet it is central to revolutionaries. Understanding the world and changing the world are one and the same approach for Marxist revolutionaries.

Revolutionizing the world is a real act that necessarily takes place in the material world, you might say, not a simple act of thought. Yes and no... If that were entirely true, the great revolutionaries would never have written "Capital," "Ludwig Feuerbach," "The Poverty of Philosophy," "Anti-Dühring," "Dialectics of Nature," "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism," and many other works that are both political and social, but also scientific, philosophical, and historical. The works cited above are not, moreover, the cup of tea of ​​our "revolutionary" activists who build "parties," penetrate and establish themselves in unions, play with bourgeois elections, and devote all their intellectual energy to this agitation. The place of ideas is reserved for a few polite genuflections toward the great revolutionary intellectuals cited above, but whom it is certainly not a question of pretending to imitate.

Giving thought a predominant place over action is idealism, you might say. No, it is thought that can be idealistic or not. The materialist thinker does not give less place to theory than the idealist thinker, but a different place. He reasons about matter as much as about thought ; it is only the order in which he places the two that is reversed. No thought without matter, says the materialist. And the materialist will therefore think... about matter first. He will not give up thinking about matter under the pretext of the supremacy of matter over thought !

All the great revolutionary thinkers have given a key place to ideas. It is the activists who have taken a different approach.

And the revolutionary militant is first and foremost the thinker of a new world, but that requires having studied the old one...

Studying reality cannot be broken down into small pieces separate from each other.

Aren’t revolutionary activists likely to waste time rethinking ideas from Marx to Trotsky, and can’t they just study them in order to have enough energy for their militant activity ?

Not at all ! The two are inseparable. To intervene in the world, one must have a conception of it, and this conception does not reside solely in observation. Any more than science is solely in observation.

No revolutionary politics without revolutionary theory. And no revolutionary theory without a general theoretical effort on the world...

To stick to Marx’s text is to kill Marx’s approach.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2855

The Marxist approach is scientific, that is to say, never closed and always being reworked.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3223

Science always questions itself

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2546

Is Marxism right to claim to be scientific ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3223

Does Marxism claim to be the end of philosophy ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3309

We need a philosophical science coupled with a scientific philosophy

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4033

Against Empiricism : Does science dispense with theorizing and limit itself to observing facts ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2869

Is there a need for philosophy in science ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7

Why do we need to philosophize and can’t we just observe the world and act ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2543

Prove to me that science is not just experiment, measurement and calculation, but that it is first and foremost philosophy.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2282

What is philosophy and why is it essential in science ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5025

Physics is not only a calculation but a thought, and even a dialectical materialist thought.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4174

Is Hegel’s dialectic still relevant to scientific thought ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2424

Idealist though he was, Hegel discovered the objective dialectic of the real world.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5118

Those who want to revolutionize society must reason dialectically.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5643

Dialectics is both thought and reality

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5017

The scientific concept is not a copy of reality

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5618

One world, one science

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5

Scientific Knowledge and Commitment

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5310

Why science still needs revolutionary thinkers and why the scientific establishment pushes them aside, discourages them, or stifles them

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3655

What is revolutionary thinking ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2680

Trotsky’s conception of permanent revolution is a theoretical question to be asked... constantly

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6088

The collapse of capitalism is a theoretical question to ask.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7441

Opportunism is both theoretical and practical

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7176

When the Russian bureaucracy claimed to do philosophy and theory and… didn’t

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6050

Revolutionaries who are philosophically wrong about... revolution

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3411

What does dialectical philosophy have to do with the politics of revolutionaries ?

http://www.matierevolution.org/spip.php?article3617
Philosophy and Politics in an Age of War and Revolution

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4265

Opportunism within revolutionary currents cannot be combated without theoretical activity based on scientific Marxism.

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3946

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3440

What theoretical work for revolutionary activists ?

https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2614

Building the revolutionary class struggle and the revolutionary party are also theoretical, scientific and philosophical tasks !