Sep 6, 2009

Revolution in Science

“Natural scientist may adopt whatever attitude they please, they are still under the domination of philosophy”. To grab the essence of Engels’ this statement we must answer what is natural science and what is natural scientist, through a historical analysis of development of science and philosophy.
Any natural phenomenon has a complex picture due to complicated interrelations among its individual constituent parts and their connections with other processes that has occurred or occurring side by side with it in nature, making the whole phenomenon of dynamic nature, constantly changing. In order to understand the details of individual constituent parts of this complex picture we must detach them from their natural connection and examine each one separately according to its nature, special causes and effects, etc. and then combine them to get a more complete insight of the whole complex picture. This is the primary task of natural science. And a natural scientist is that real and most advanced form of conscious living organic matter that becomes a medium of addressing this knowledge of nature to the society. But before a man could function as a natural scientist, he has to live as a man and, not as an abstract man but as a real man in a certain kind of society and had to participate in all the myriad functions of a real man in that society. Thus, in doing so, a whole superstructure of theory generates. To be a natural scientist is to apply this most general theory to a particular domain of quality in reality, physics, chemistry, biology etcetera, but this superstructure is the product of economic conditions of the society which creates different philosophies that control the content and form of any theory.
The modern natural science that dates from the period of ‘Renaissance’ showed the revolutionary character at the outset as it had developed among revolutions, revolutions that destroyed the old retrogressive feudal system and established the comparatively much more progressive system based on capital, capitalism. The period was of struggle of philosophy of theology, perpetuated by church, against materialism the philosophy of science which grew in its shadow and then become larger than it. The scientist of that time didn’t deal only in science but were also masters in philosophy and in various other fields, it was the characteristic of that period, as Engels said-, “called for giants and produced giants”. Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Durer, Luther and many more were product of that society. It was period of Copernicus, Bruno and Servetus who died to let science live, their death proved to be harbinger of new ere, era of revolution of science. The development, defeating theology, thenceforth proceeded with great strides and as Engels puts it “gained in force in proportion to the square of distance (in time) from the point of departure.” New evolutionary sciences developed, like biology, geology, cosmogony, anthropology, archeology, etc., that torn apart the theories of creation by God and unchanging nature of universe, earth, humans, and other living beings. New theories, based on the large amount of scientific evidence present at that time, established the view of evolution not only of universe, earth and life on it but also that of humans and even human society, and that their present condition is just a passing phase in time. The other branches of science that were of primary necessity to industries, e.g. physics, chemistry, etc. also achieved the new heights.
But every action has equal and opposite reaction, the science which helped economics to develop now became appendage to it, economic relations now decided the course of development of science. With the increasing penetration of capital into the society, the increasing polarization of society into idle capitalist class and toiling proletariat class gave birth to acute problems of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, etc. on a large scale of common masses and study of arts, sciences, philosophies, politics, law, etc. remained accessible mainly to rich classes. This dominance of non-working classes over the whole society gave rise to a general tendency of strong disrespect and reluctance to any kind of physical work. With this isolation of manual work from mental work the link between science and society; thought or idea and matter; subjective reality and objective reality; theory and practice got broken and procreated a narrow metaphysical mode of thought in the field of natural science that limits its development, sooner or later, as beyond this limit it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract and lost in insoluble contradictions. The highly anarchic and unproductive capitalist production, the dying bourgeois culture and degrading social relations directed, and could only be, this realization of untenability of metaphysics into the more retrogressive, reactionary philosophical channels—empiricism and positivism, agnosticism, violent reductionism and the thought of eclectic mish-mash of all the various specializations with no attempt to resolve their contradiction. The famous problem of physics in the early 20th century, the inability of contemporary physicists in combining the Maxwell’s electromagnetism, Planck’s quantum and Einstein’s relativity theory into one synthetic theory, that was the call of time and becoming even more difficult with the further integrations achieved by these theories in their respective domains resulting because of the increasing specifications in each domain and their uncoordinated growth, reflecting the general characteristic of capitalist production, its anarchy, presents an instance of the realization of the maximum limit to which metaphysics and its daughters can advance natural science. As a consequent of the effect of these reactionary philosophies on natural science theories became highly abstract, uncoordinated and diffused, and practice became specialized, restricted and empirical, each theory and practice devoid of one another and it became very difficult to have a world-view touching on all the fronts of practice, science regressed to the forms left behind by it showing the revolutionary crisis in natural science and in general, in the capitalist society.
The solution to all this chaos is not in another “absolute” philosophy of world view but in changing this world, as Marx showed us, this is the philosophy of science, the dialectical materialism. We will have to break the fetters science is enslaved in, capital, by the sword of dialectical materialism. This way although goes through the path of revolution, not only scientific but also economic, political and philosophical also, through the socialist revolution.

Jul 30, 2009

R&D in Capitalist Society

In earlier post of “The Spark”,titled "Science in service of capital", we explained how capital has become the governing factor in the development of science and this article is a continuation in that series; here we will try to explore the motive forces and laws of development of Research and Development(R & D).
R & D in general of any kind and in particular industrial has major role in determining the state of scientific, technological, economic and social development of any society. It is one of the basic foundations of the economy of that society. Thus, it is of great importance to understand the motive forces and laws of development of R & D in any society.
The most basic fact is that R & D, in any society, is a sector of social production and like any other sector, it is always pursued in the same framework of socio-economic conditions of the society and, consequently, overall the same laws and motive forces govern the development of R & D that governs the dynamics of whole socio-economic conditions of the society, although intrinsic contradictions specific to R & D field also affect its development.
In a capitalist society the socio-economic-political conditions are controlled by the motion of capital and thus, the laws of motion of capital enforce themselves as the basic laws of development of all sectors of social production including R & D as well.
A capitalist society progresses with the progress of competition among individual capitals and with changes in the form of this competition. It is basic characteristic of every capital that it functions to increase its profits and to add volume rather than develop production. But in “free market competition” the compulsory forces of market compels each individual to increase its labor productivity for extracting more profit in order to survive in the market. Thus, every capital is forced to innovate and advance the technology of production and they invest in R & D, which is of primary necessity in developing new technologies and their use in the process of production.
The growth of R & D, other things being equal, is undoubtedly dependent on the mass of capital allocated to it. Big capitals, which extract huge profits and have access to banks and government credit on privileged terms, have wide possibility to earmark larger funds to R & D. Thus, development of R & D is directly related to production concentration (which is proportional to scale of production) and as Lenin said-“With highly concentrated production, the development of technology accelerated immeasurably.” And this development in technology gave huge impetus to the advancement of R & D by fulfilling the basic technical requirements necessary for R & D.
But in capitalism production concentration naturally leads to monopolization of market by a few big capitals. It should be noted that in the present state of globalization of world markets, the market competition takes the form of competition between monopolies and gives birth to even bigger monopolies, either by dissolution of one into another or by combination of two or more.
Like every other capital, monopoly develops production as long as it brings monopoly profits. The incentive to develop production can be understood clearly by understanding the relation between changes in the rate and mass of profit. As Marx emphasized-“the rate of profit is the motive power to capitalist production.” Between two capitals the one which secures the higher rate of profit will, thus, have larger mass of profit. With gigantic capitals, however, the mass of production is so large that even with a low rate of profit, compared to small and middle capitals; they enjoy incomparably more favorable material conditions for retaining the positions they have gained in production and on market.
“….and as soon as formation of capital was to fall into the hands of a few established big capitals, for which the mass of profit compensates for the falling rate of profit, the vital flame of production altogether extinguished. It would die out.”(Marx)
Thus a decline in the importance of change in the rate of profit inevitably weakens the incentive to develop R & D and other kind of social production. And as Lenin pointed out, this capitalist monopoly, “inevitably engenders a tendency to stagnation and decay. Since monopoly prices are established, even temporarily, the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all progress disappears to a certain extent and, further, the economic possibilities arises of deliberately retarding technical progress.”
Thus it becomes clear that, although, capitalism organized and advanced R & D to much greater extent than ever before, but after a certain limit the same capitalism has become shackles in the further development of R & D. This system cannot provide economic and technical assistance to the R & D related to those fields which do not provide immediate profit, viz. environment and its preservation, development of renewable sources of energy, infrastructural development to uplift the living status of common people, etc. and government of each capitalist state waste a huge amount of money by investing in R & D devoted to war preparations for their control on world markets and protecting the profits of its capitalist class.
This antagonistic system inhibits the free flow of scientific knowledge in the society by applying economic, political and social bondages, while it can be well proved with appropriate facts and figures that development of R & D depends on the depth of scientific knowledge in the society. This system creates strata in society with different level of scientific and technical knowledge, leaving majority of people to level zero. This exactly matches the need of this system from professionals in science to workmen with little or no scientific knowledge. The huge number of unemployed people with different level of scientific and technical knowledge fulfills the need of industrial reserved army who are ready to work on any wages and in any condition to get meal even for once in a day and the parasitic capitalist class extracts profit from the last drop of blood of working population by decreasing the wages to minimum level of subsistence.
Thus, today it is primary responsibility of every sensitive, logical and justice loving person to struggle for the abolition of this anti-human system based on profit and replace it by a system based on humanity, brotherhood and equality, which can be done only by socialist revolution in the leadership of proletariat. Only that system can ensure the unrestricted development of R & D and of whole society.

Question still remains.....

A new academic session has commenced, the newness although is due to fresh wood, axe is the same older one. The enchanting of bourgeois philosophy remains the same, which can slowly freeze the blood flowing through your veins, rot the humanity in you and if you don’t rebel you will be evolved into a new species, a cold blooded animal, many have evolved many will, as it is the success key, this evolution, to survive in the cut throat competent market. But we wish to converse to that lot which is rebellious in thoughts , is closest to humanity, to whom truth is not impotent and their mind still follows the laws of gravity rather than defying it to be in heaven.
Well past few months have been clearly indicative of the antagonistic contradictions of the capitalist system. The tides of stormy recession has caused such great havoc to world economy that it still is suffering and repairing the wreck, the enchanting of “end of history capitalism” faded in this havoc . While in India amidst this crisis elections took place and Congress is re-elected after miraculously completing its 5 year tenure. The victory of congress brought a great rejoice to stock market with a positive kink in sensex. The fuss and excitement of elections have settled down, the political parties which suddenly appear during election time like rainy season’s frogs have returned back. During these elections these frogs cried loud asking people to exercise their right to vote and to realize their responsibility but to disappointment of these greedy political creatures only 55% of population voted. Huge population exempted voting as they know whichever political party comes to power simplest and usually obscured facts, that in India still 77% of population lives under Rs. 20 a day, 30 crore people are unemployed, 9,000 children die every day due to lack of nutrition and only 7% of the eligible youth population reaches to higher education, cannot change. Even the contesting parties know that these problems are ineradicable under current system and escape most of these questions and choose rather to divide people on religion, cast and regional basis to increase their vote bank. They do best is to serve the profiteering plunderers, their “masters”, and Congress has top ranked in this job, to serve their “masters” with best of “dishes” and to throw the trash to the common people. BJP’s hinduite card was rejected by the people; parliamentary leftists had left the hand of true leftism a long ago and joined the parliamentary circus. Red colour seems to have left only in their veins and even that isn’t sure, who knows it might be green. CPM has not only defamed leftism but has also top ranked in state repression, first it was Nandigram and now Lalgarh. The repression has led to rise of armed struggles by common masses which find their political basis in parties like CPI (Maoist). CPI (Maoist) or “Naxalites”, name given to the various such parties by bourgeois media, come under category of left adventurism, a deviation from Marxism. The incorrect understanding of Marxism causes such deviation. To change the society we must first analyze the laws of society as given by Marx and Engels and further developed by Lenin and Mao and then practice them. The days of capitalism are nearly over, but it still is sitting over history’s chest by virtue of its inertia. Old senile capitalism has gone very weak due to its incurable diseases and only a slight force is required to throw it and let history move to depth of humanity, to the socialism. The momentum will be created by the heat of boiling anger of toiling common masses, indefatigable belief in truth, the collision of progressive thoughts and which will be led by the proletariat. Defeat of capitalism is inescapable, we have to choose the sides, friends and identify enemies. To those of you, who don’t want to be mere puppets of money, we give a warm invitation to join us and let us together reach the depth of ocean to grab the essence of humanity.

Mar 31, 2009

Long Live Revolution

23rd march 1931 was the day of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom, the day he was hanged till death. Every year on 23rd March various political organizations; leaders give tribute to the brave revolutionary, who sacrificed his life for freedom of the nation from British colonialism. If this was the dream of Bhagat Singh then on 15th august 1947 that did happen, our country got freedom from British colonialism, no! the dream of Bhagat Singh was not this political freedom which India achieved when British slipped power in hands of the bourgeois congress party, by freedom he meant end of exploitation of every kind of one man by other, and quite clearly the task of completion of his dream still beckons us.
Bhagat Singh said- “the sleeping lion once awakened from its slumber shall become irresistible even after the achievement of what our leaders aim at”. Time has come for justifying the prophecy of Bhagat Singh, as congress was able to achieve the kind of freedom it wanted in 1947. We will have to awake the “sleeping lion” the toiling masses from its slumber, to awake the irresistible storm which will make tyranny, cruelty and private property history and will be a harbinger of a new era, the era of humanity.
Post freedom we have read about Bhagat Singh, in our history books, as a hero, a courageous youth who shouted the slogan “Long Live Revolution” and longed for freedom from British Rule. This is only half truth, Bhagat Singh said-“The political revolution does not mean the transfer of state (or more crudely, the power) from the hands of the British to the Indian, but to those Indians who are at one with us as to the final goal, or to be more precise, the power to be transferred to the revolutionary party through popular support. After that, to proceed in right earnest is to organize the reconstruction of the whole society on the socialist basis. If you do not mean this revolution, then please have mercy. Stop shouting "Long Live Revolution." The term revolution is too sacred, at least to us, to be so lightly used or misused”.
The bourgeoisie historians have tried hard to quell the fire of Bhagat Singh’ ideas, never is the intellectual side of young Bhagat Singh is revealed. Bhagat Singh at the age of 23 became committed Marxist, he analyzed the economic and social conditions of India and proposed a very clear goal to the youth; the goal was the proletarian revolution.
“Revolution is a very difficult task. It is beyond the power of any man to make a revolution. Neither can it be brought about on any appointed date. It is brought about by special environments, social and economic. The function of an organized party is to utilize such an opportunity offered by these circumstances. And to prepare the masses and organize the forces for the revolution is a very difficult task. And that required a very great sacrifice on the part of the revolutionary workers. Let me make it clear that if you are a businessman or an established worldly or family man, please don't play with fire. As a leader you are of no use to the party. We have already very many such leaders who spare some evening hours for delivering speeches. They are useless. We require — to use the term so dear to Lenin — the "professional revolutionaries". The whole-time workers who have no other ambitions or life-work except the revolution. The greater the number of such workers organized into a party, the great the chances of your success”.
Keeping in mind the ideals of Bhagat Singh we invite every youth, brave sons and daughters of India, to carry on the struggle waged by Bhagat Singh. To join hands and promise ourselves to complete the dreams of martyr Bhagat Singh. And finally with his words to which he wrote to youths we wait for your reply……
“Cast aside the youthful dreams of a revolution within ten years of Gandhi's utopian promises of Swaraj in One Year. It requires neither the emotion nor the death, but the life of constant struggle, suffering and sacrifice. Crush your individuality first. Shake off the dreams of personal comfort. Then start to work. Inch by inch you shall have to proceed. It needs courage, perseverance and very strong determination. No difficulties and no hardships shall discourage you. No failure and betrayals shall dishearten you. No travails (!) imposed upon you shall snuff out the revolutionary will in you. Through the ordeal of sufferings and sacrifice you shall come out victorious. And these individual victories shall be the valuable assets of the revolution”.

With revolutionary regards
Scientists for society

Aparajita

In our country lakhs of women sell themselves everyday in brothels, thousands of girl children are killed because they are girls. Domestic servitude, violence, sexual abuse, rape are social evils soul of woman is indefatigably struggling against for past few centuries. Even in the “democratic and free” capitalism these evils loom over society. The “end of history” capitalism has not able to untie this knot because this knot and several other intricate knots compose this self strangled system, and yes it is not possible to eradicate these practices in this system unless the bourgeoisie machinery is not smashed and replaced with a better social system. Although the subjugation of women by men arose when private property came to existence, but capitalism is not birth place of supremacy of men. We must look historical development of family and its transformation as history moves so as to understand the polarization of power between two sexes.
The course of history does not transverse linearly but spirally evolves along the axis of class struggle. But this spiral itself is very intricate, fabricated of various interwoven spiral, circular and complex developments which keep melting and thawing as the contradictions governing them change. The family evolves as the relations between its constituent atoms, men and women, change. Whole development of family in most scientific way is explained by Engels in his book “The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State”. The transition of human from ape, for achievement of greatest advance nature can show, an animal as defenseless as evolving man required united strength and co-operation of herd to survive, mutual toleration among adult males, freedom from jealousy, was the first condition for formation of large herds. Thus came into existence the most primitive form of family-Group marriage, the primitive communistic household , the form of family in which whole groups of men and women mutually posses each other. The kind of marriage existed for whole savagery and lower stage of barbarism, and with time different forms of group marriages gradually arose. First one reported to have existed was Consanguine family, where practice of promiscuous intercourse gives way to sexual intercourse between women and men of same generations, and this to finally Punaluan family, form in which brother and sister were excluded from sexual intercourse. On account of greater nearness in age, this second advance was infinitely more important but also more difficult. It was effected gradually, beginning with exclusion from sexual intercourse of own brothers and sisters first and then ending with prohibition of marriage even between first, second and third cousins. Here it can be seen this change affords the operation of principle of natural selection but which acted unconsciously. In all forms of group family it is uncertain who is the father of a child; but it is certain who its mother is, the recognition of descent was exclusively through mother, or the family was matriarchal family. “This communistic household, in which most or all of the women belong to one and same clan [gens], while men come from various gens, is the material foundation of supremacy of women”. (Engels) But still there was no subjugation of one sex by other. In transition from savagery to barbarism with the practice of prohibition of marriage between relatives which include several hundred degrees of kinship, complications of these prohibitions made group marriages more and more impossible; and finally they were displaced with pairing family in which one man lives with one woman. Other very important reason for this transition was the increased oppression on women. “The more the traditional sexual relations lost the native primitive character of forest life, owing to development of economic conditions with consequent undermining of the old communism and growing density of population, the more oppressive and humiliating must the women have felt them to be, and greater their longing for right for chastity, of temporary or permanent marriage with one man only, as a way of release”. (Engels)
In this stage, in barbarism with domestication of animals and breeding of herds humans found hitherto unsuspected source of wealth. And as instruments of labour belonged to men and household goods to women, the increase in wealth strengthened the position of men in family. This strength is quite reflected in the social decrees, although one man lives with one woman but polygamy and occasional infidelity remain the right of men, while for woman strictest fidelity is demanded and adultery on her part is cruelly punished. And still according to custom of that society mother-right was followed; his children could not inherit from him. In proportions wealth increased it made men’s position in family more strong, which finally led to overthrow of mother-right, “the overthrow of mother-right was world historic defeat of female sex. The men took command in home also; the women were degraded and reduced to servitude, she became slave of his lust and mere instrument for production of children”. (Engels) This also served the development of monogamous family which men affected to develop, to strengthen his position strong ever. The period of transition from barbarism to civilization comes out with development of monogamous family. It was first form of family to be based, not on natural, but on economic conditions. It differentiates itself from pairing marriage on basis of much stronger marriage tie, as it was only men who could dissolve it. Monogamous marriage comes as subjugation of one sex by other; it announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period. Along with the supremacy men enjoy over in the house, the old comparative sexual freedom has yet not disappeared but this develops in favour of men. Co-existent with monogamous marriage, sexual intercourse between men and unmarried women flourishes throughout the period of civilization and develops more and more into open prostitution. With rise of private property which distributes unequally wage labour appears sporadically side by side with slave labour, as appears the open prostitution of free women side by side with forced surrender of slave. “The heritage which group marriage has bequeathed to civilization is double edged, double tongued, divided against to itself, here monogamy there prostitution.” (Engels) Along with this a second contradiction on the part of women arises, as opposition must have other side the reaction, adultery on the part of women became an unavoidable social institution-denounced, severely penalized but impossible to suppress.
With entering into civilization and till now monogamous marriage has not change much of its character, only change being in the bourgeoisie law which gives equal rights to both sexes and both can now call off the marriage if required, but what happens inside the household is not a matter of concern to law, and supremacy of men domestic servitude of women, prostitution and adultery have remained intact. From savagery to civilization human society evolved a lot and the cell of this society, family also evolved from group marriage to monogamy. Should a new family arise out of the monogamous family, it did but the change is not evolution but a metamorphosis, proletarian class possess no private property, for preservation and inheritance of which monogamy and male supremacy were established, here there is no incentive to make this male supremacy effective. Also there is no means to do so. “Bourgeois law, which protects this supremacy exist only for possessing class and their dealings with the proletarians. Large scale industry has taken the proletarian wife out of the home onto the labour market and into industry, and made her often the bread-winner of family, no basis for any male supremacy is left in the proletarian household – except, perhaps, for something of the brutality towards women that has spread since the introduction of monogamy. The proletarian family is therefore no longer monogamous in the strict sense, even where there is passionate love and firmest loyalty on both sides and may be all the blessings of religious and civil authority. Here, therefore eternal attendants of monogamy, hetaerism and adultery, play only an almost vanishing part. The wife has in fact regained the right to dissolve the marriage, and if two people cannot get with one another, they prefer to separate. In short, proletarian marriage is monogamous in the etymological sense of the word, but not at all in its historical sense”. (Engels)
The most advanced class of our time, proletarian class shows the society a sight of our future, the futuristic relations and the futuristic society which in coming time will replace the present crisis-ridden, filthy, parasitic capitalist system. Then only women will again participate into social production, which was excluded for her in historical monogamous marriage, both women and men will come on level of equal economic and political freedom. The only way to do this is in understanding our historical duty, to guide the proletarian men and women to the way of socialism, by ruthlessly smashing the faulty bourgeois machinery. So called evils will slowly wither away as new social relations will slowly crystallize. Then only the struggle of Aparajita will finally be destined.

Feb 28, 2009

Science in service of capital

Science originated because of the need of fulfilling the requirements of advanced human society. Advancement of human society gave imputes to the development of science which in turn further advanced the society to a higher level.
The role of science in advancing the society is connected to its role in increasing the productivity of labour, or in other words, to develop the productive forces. The rise and development of present capitalist society cannot be imagined without unprecedented progress of science. As the science progressed the new machines and technologies came into being which advanced the productive forces and increased the production to a larger extent than ever before. With the increase in production large industries came into existence and big capitalist class arouse. This started the whole new concept of “free market competition” and the tendency of extracting as much profit as they can to increase their private property. The new heavy machinery and technologies helped these capitalists in decreasing the number of workers in the process of production; thus decreasing the cost of production and increasing the profit; the gap between mental labour and manual labour, rich and poor started widening; unemployment, starvation and malnutrition of large masses became common problem and science became a property of only rich classes, far from the reach of common masses. Development of science became concerned only with increasing the private profit and creating the things for the comfort and amusement of rich classes.
In fact, science in itself is of no interest to the capitalists but only through its application in the more efficient production of commodities. With the further advancement in science and productive forces the concept of patent monopolies and cartels originated which helped these capitalists to establish their monopoly over market. In this era of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, scientific research is more highly organized than ever before, but always with an overriding aim of private profit. The monopolization of market to get more and more profit supports only those inventions and discoveries which are able in decreasing the cost of production of commodities and devoted increasingly to war and producing arsenal for protecting the private property. Thus in the capitalist society science became ‘a productive force distinct from labour and pressed into the service of capital’.
The training of a natural scientist is so departmentalized as to make it difficult for them to acquire a theoretical grasp of natural science as a whole and, even more, they receive no training at all in the study of human society. Conversely, social science and historical studies are so organized as to exclude the natural science. Economics is separated from history and both from politics. In the natural sciences student may know nothing of Marxism, yet at least he recognizes dialectical processes in nature, even though he doesn’t know them by that name; but the laws of dialectics mean nothing to bourgeois historian, who doesn’t even recognize the class struggle.
This contradiction in the bourgeois educational system between the study of nature and study of human society reflects the conflict in bourgeois consciousness between the need to develop science as a productive force and the need to conceal true relationship between capital and labour. This contradiction is also the base of metaphysical and idealistic approach of bourgeois scientists towards reality and this marks an upper limit on the development of science in capitalist system.
Thus to attain the full and unrestricted use of research laboratory and modern technology, developed in capitalist society, it is necessary first to remove private control over the modern technologies and scientific research and development; to reunite the science with labour as a force devoted to produce use-values in the service of people and to use science in the progress of whole human society and not for only the rich classes. This can be achieved only by the abolition of capitalist ownership of all the means of production and by establishing the dictatorship of proletariat class over them, that is, the establishment of socialism.

The Fleeting Capitalism

Since the last year capitalism is fearful, fearing of what it has done, running away from its very own shadow. Searching remedy for its incurable disease, “economic crisis” is this incurable disease of capitalism, the crisis of overproduction. The crises arise because of antagonistic contradictions present in capitalism itself. This can be understood by considering the history and fate of present day crisis, and by identifying correct contradictions present in today’s capitalist system. Current Economic crisis will prove (is proving) to be greatest crisis after crisis of 1930s decade. Its symptoms started to appear in mid 2007, and till the end of 2007 foreclosures started to affect the economy. During 2008 it first consumed many giant banks, financial organizations and insurance companies and then spread to the global world market. Stimulus packages and bailouts were injected to stabilize the economy but crisis is still developing tyrannously, spreading to new branches of the industry and to new districts, and is becoming more and more acute as a result of failure of more banks. The bubble filled with speculations, greed couldn't last very long, at last it touched the surface of reality, and its busting destroyed capital on a very large scale while on the other hand with the fiscal and financial crises worsening, inflation, higher taxation, relatively falling real wages, and relative reduction in the purchasing power of the masses have inevitably further aggravated the economic crises of overproduction. Those bourgeois economists who first claimed it to be minor crash are now blaming on few individual capitalists for this crisis and are prescribing various “injections” to recover from it. But all these are wasting their wasteful ideas, rather if we look at the projections of world economy as predicted by World Bank which although optimistic are more realistic; it says that in 2009 the economic growth of world economy will only be 0.9% falling from 2.8% in 2008, and was 4.0% in 2006. UN report is also similar to that. Overall it can be said that even if national governments intervene to save the financial organizations it won’t be possible for world economy to recover till 2012.

Economic crises are not new, capitalism in old capitalist countries or rather we should now say imperialism is very much familiar with this chronic disease, whatever “injections” are given can relieve for time being but like steroids are shortening its life, it is a capitalist vicious circle in which same events repeat itself like summer and winter, and one need not to be prophet to foretell the next round of crash. In this capitalist cycle each recovery period of crisis sews the seeds of next round of crisis which is more severe and more frequent than earlier one. The rotation is more of a spiral than circle as Engels said “this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of the planets, by collision with the centre.” The current crisis itself is temporary phenomenon of this vicious spiral and not isolated or unique. It all started in 2002 when Fed reduced the interest rate to an unprecedented level, and injected capital into market in order to recover from dot-com crash. From this point onward starts the story of housing boom, real estate replaced the risky stock market and served as new “casino” for quick profit obsessed gamblers. After the crash people were reluctant to buy or invest, to increase the costumer sale “wealth effect” was created by providing easy loans, and dreams of owing house were filled, with the help of media and cheap bourgeois intellectuals like David Lereah who chew the bones thrown by real estate lobby to them, in people’s mind. Investment banks after the saturation of prime loans, to make more profit, started giving subprime loans blindly. Investment banks devised new methods to sell these dangerous (subprime) loans in packages. These packages were sold to other financial organizations like hedge funds, banks and insurance companies so as to distribute bad loans and avoid their accumulation at one place which could have been explosive. Various institutes gave these loans good credit history, but with the rise of subprime loan interest rate hedge funds and banks realized about the poisonous weed they bought and this inaugurated the bankruptcy of banks and hedge funds and thus started the subprime crisis.
The housing boom and then subprime crisis started with the end of dot-com crash, which itself was followed by boom during blowing of dot-com bubble, but story does not start from here, this boom was actually followed by 1997 crisis of East Asian economies for which Fed bank reduced the interest rate that time and helped in getting start-ups for companies like e-biz, e-commerce. The cyclic nature of crisis is inherent characteristic or rather contradiction of capitalism and even presently sciophobic capitalism in order to recover from depression will prepare base for even more severe crisis.

The vicious spiral of crises in capitalism has its origin in basic contradiction of capitalist system, contradiction between social production and capitalist private ownership. Economic crises fully expose the transitory nature of capitalism; reveal the existence of antagonistic contradictions between its productive forces and production relations. Whether it is East Asian crisis, dot-com crash or subprime crisis, all are capitalist crisis of over production and concentration of capital. Crises occur with increased “frequency and intensity” but with different faces. The overproduction and lack of options in investment results in rise of speculations and then finally to crash. The remedy to this disease does not lie in this system but only in crushing this illogical system, and replacing it with a system in which productive relations are compatible to socialized productive forces, then and only then this world can be saved from plundering of greedy capitalists, this task awaits us, to torch the oppressed class on the path of revolution against this profit based system.

दार्शनिक ब्लैक होल में गिरे विज्ञान जगत के नये प्रयोग!

हाल ही में विज्ञान जगत में ऐसी खोज हुई है जो विज्ञान के द्रष्टा आइन्सटीन की परिकल्पना को वास्तविकता में उतार लायी है। ब्लैक होल की तस्वीर क...