Socialism: Utopian & Scientific | Classics of Marxism #2

Okay, welcome everyone to the second episode of the Classics of Martyrs and Podcast. There's probably no need to explain again what the series is about, but just very briefly. We're trying to make classics more approachable and encourage more people to actually read them for themselves. So do not expect this podcast to answer all your questions about these texts and do not, you know, this is not supposed to be a cohesive, complete analysis of these texts. This is something that, you know, each one of us has to do for themselves. And today we're going to be discussing about Socialism Utopian Scientific. Written in 1880, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's basically a compilation of a few chapters from anti-during a much bigger work by Engels. And it's a very concise summary, really, of the ideas of Marxist's any word that they come from. And also the method of Marxist's method of dialectics and its application to reality, to society, to history. And again, just like we've come in this manifesto, it's a short text. It's mere 40 pages in our edition. You can get from where it books are coded again. But it's packed with so much content. It is worth not just several reads, but I'm reading it over and over again. And sometimes it can be dismissed as just a text of like merely historical importance, right? Because it talks about these utopian socialists and these guys from 18th century. But it's actually explaining what came before scientific socialism. It's explaining the method as I mentioned and treating it just as this historical text, I think, will be a great mistake. So today in our studio, we have Danny Morley again, member of the executive committee of the RCP and the editorial board of the In Defense of Marxism magazine. We've got Nice Show, who is a member of the editorial board of the communist and Georgina Ryan, who is a leading comrade in the London region. So, before we go into discussing maybe starting with chapter one, etc. Do you have any general overarching thoughts on the text? Why do you like it? Why do you enjoy it? When I first read this, I was coming from the direction of really loving history. I feel like when you read about the French Revolution or the English Revolution, usually the way bourgeois historians handle it, it's like, well, that was a mistake, wasn't it? What a terrible thing. They always look at the contrast, the great ideas of the leaders of it, people like Rob's Pierre and so on, what actually happened. So, I think it's very well explained how a relation between these kind of revolutionaries and their ideas and the class forces that they represented, I think, really demonstrates how Marxism allows us to actually understand how history has developed, especially the third chapter, which was amazed by reading this on just how succinctly it gets it across, it really packs a lot in. I mean, on that, of course, it's in the title, social utopian insight. So, it's a criticism, a kind of friendly criticism, if you like, because Engels has tremendous respect for the early utopian socialists, but it is a criticism of that school of thought. And it remains very relevant because that sort of tendency, you grasp it even just in a small scale, not as a theory, but just people who are all the time, sort of look at the state of the world, what is happening, what some leader is doing and say, why they shouldn't do that, they should just do this. And, you know, that's kind of, of course, we're not fatal, we don't think that everything is rigidly set in stone for time. But the idea that things are just a mistake, that things just shouldn't have been done this way in history, and it would be better if people just understood this idea. That's a very widespread kind of flaw in political thinking. And I think you have that a lot today, even though, you know, as Engels is saying, you know, these utopians are sort of a product of an early stage or capitalist development, really that, that thing they ought to be, have been concerned the history. It's a part of a sort of pre-scientific stage and also stage in which the working class hardly existed. But you do still get it all the time. You get it with, for example, anarchists today. There aren't many kind of literal utopian socialists to have a whole kind of theory, but the closest probably would be anarchists. And there's a quote, there's a right to give this quotation from the book where Engels says, it's not a bad anarchist, but it says, but it, I utopian socialism could not explain them and therefore could not get the mastery of them. It could simply, it could only simply reject them as bad. That is the flawed ideas, basically political ideas that existed. The more stronger, sorry, the more strongly this early socialism denounced the exploitations of the working class, which are inevitable under capitalism. The less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted. And I always think when I discuss with anarchists or read their writings, it's, it's a list of bad things that shouldn't happen. It's like, well, this, the status bad, hierarchies bad, this organization has too much hierarchy that has too much centrism in it. But you know how a sense of, why does that exist? Whether or not it's good or bad, why does it exist? It's just, that doesn't seem to be so important for them. It's just enough to declare it to be bad and it shouldn't exist as if it could just be willed away. And in particular, there's a guy called Michael Albert, who has a theory called participatory economics or gets shortened for some reason to paracon. And I mean, this is extremely, you know, it's not usually as explicit, the utopian, with the anarchist as this. Usually the utopianism of anarchism is just sort of like, oh, that shouldn't be this way, it should be this way. But this is a whole fleshed out theory in which Michael Albert has essentially tried to sort of create a blueprint for a perfect anarchist society in which there's no imbalances between anyone. No one with power over others, nor kind of privileges of any kind. And it's all sort of, it's very elaborate kind of scheme of like, well, if this person has a bit more education in this way, then they ought to then have, there's a like, it's like, good golf handicap. And this person has some advantages than we calculate, but they must be given sort of a handicap in some ways, they must have to do certain things in that society. And if we work out this system, then it will all be balanced out. Those with some advantages will also be given other disadvantages. And you just think like, how is this going to happen? How are you going to, why is this not a right a reason so far? If it's such a good idea. How are you going to sort of put this into practice? It's just an abstract scheme in his head. So it is really relevant, not just because his theory, which is perhaps a little bit obscure, but it's just a kind of very common idealist way of looking at the world to just sort of try to set it to rights. Oh, it shouldn't be this way. You don't even have to be a revolution, you can just be a liberal. It shouldn't be this way. Why isn't it like this? Rather than trying to understand why things are a certain way, and how they will or can be changed. Yeah, I thought, I think my favorite thing about this text that has just always stood out to me when, when reading it, whether it's the first or however many times I have read it, is just really putting the development of ideas into their historical context. And I think this is reading this really allowed that to click for me, right? This idea that socialism isn't something that could just be plucked out of finair and the ideas could develop and take hold in society at any time. But society has to be ready, not only for those ideas to be able to come into existence, but also take hold in a society. And I think that is something that is really interesting in this through Engels talking about these utopian socialists who are brilliant in a lot of ways. But even the most brilliant thing is can't go past the limits of their epoch, right? They're writing in a time where capitalism hasn't fully developed. And their ideas are limited in the sense, right? And they have this idea that yeah, socialism could have really taken hold at any point if the right ideas like took hold in enough people's minds, right? But Engels explains that this isn't just this isn't about ideas, but ideas have to be attached to a concrete material reality. And these ideas can only take hold in a given historical context. And really Marxist ideas are, I'd say, a combination of all of the best of ideas that have come before them. And not just the utopian socialists, he talks about a haggle as well and those ideas and, and of how Marx and Engels developed. Marxism through these ideas looks back at the Greeks as well. And yeah, Marxism is really building on the best of all these ideas and that's one of the most important things in my opinion to take from this text. Yeah, I think that's the yeah, I mean, absolutely that's the most amazing thing really about chapter one, which I feel like we're pretty much covered already, chapter one, that's the essence of it. And that's kind of connected with what Daniel was also saying about, you know, people on repeating the same mistakes of utopians and idealists, socialists, etc. to this day. But whenever I read these texts, whenever I read classics, I just start thinking about how well, there's one bit in here where Engels is specifically saying we shouldn't be, you know, condescending towards these utopians, we shouldn't be laughing at them, we shouldn't be, you know, pointing fingers at them. We are standing, you know, on the shoulders of their achievements. And as G. U.S. saying, this is part of development of Marxism. As I guess, these ideas, like any idea, do not fall from the sky, right? They come at a certain point in what we are in the historical development in the context. Whereas remarkable if people like Michael Albert and all the other anarchists and all the, well, a big chunk of the left in general left activists and whatnot, is that in contrast to utopians, they do have 200 years of theory and experience behind them. They just refuse to study it. They do not learn anything from it. The thing with utopians is that utopians could not know any better. They were the first, they were the pioneers, there was nothing before them. Well, maybe apart from Christian socialists, sects in the Roman Empire, but that was not really a big, that was never a big part of, yeah, of historical study, I guess, at the time. And same goes with all the rest of theory, right? People still keep repeating the same mistakes of the utopians, of the naraltniks, of the anarchists historically. Well, similarly we can also look at, well, the development of other ideas in the historical context, like punishes of ideas of postmodernism, for example. They also did not fall from the sky. There was a certain historical material that's reason why these ideas emerged, the failure of 1968, revolutions all around the world, betrayal of Stalinism and the global scale. And you can see that you can study any idea from that point of view. It was just great achievement of Engels, is that he was the first to actually do so. Yeah, I think it just shows that his ideas exist for a reason, right? Like Marx couldn't have, even if Marx did exist in ancient Rome, right? Or, maybe it might have been somewhat called Marx, we never know. But like he would not have been able to come up with scientific socialism as we know it today, because the conditions weren't there. There was no proletariat as, well, there was a Roman proletariat, but not like the one we know today, so maybe it's more itself, but like the Neba was the basis of industry or international markets and so on. But I think as an aside, this isn't quite the same as say like a, I don't know, a fear attrition, if you like, of today. But you can even see this just with people you meet. I met someone once on the street when I was living in Surrey, and he described to me as, "Oh, I agree with what you're saying, you communists." But, you know, I disagree with the stuff about growth and progress. I think what we should do is we should go on to the hills and until the land and all living agricultural causes were sorry. Well, I said to him, what you're saying is not new. Like that was literally the set of ideas that the diggers based themselves on in the 17th century in England, in Surrey, not too far from where you actually are, right? And it's, I guess it goes back to this point of why you study old ideas. The point is, well, they're not old ideas, right? They are still coming up today. Even you see, for example, you know, just up oil has declared that they've succeeded, so they're kind of stopped oil. They've stopped oil. They've stopped and wound down that element and they're focusing on the bourgeois judiciary system. But like, there are documents and classics written, which answer these questions of what the correct methods to fight, you know, the system are written by Marx, Engels, Daniel, Trotsky, over 150 years ago. So these aren't just describing the ideas of the past. They have so much relevance for today. And it's not just the utopian, so to speak, but like, you know, Marx, you know, Engels talks about the ancient Greeks and that contribution to philosophy. I mean, you read those, you'll find a much richer vein of profound ideas, for the postmodernists and the new ideas, which even they're not new ideas, they're old ideas, repackaged and obscuredified. So it just introduces clarity, basically, and understanding where these ideas come from and what they really represent. And most importantly, whether or not they work for their stated goals. Yeah, I mean, when we say this point, we've used to have said about how people are learning from history and they're repeating these ideas. I think we should explain why that is, which is very much in keeping with the theme of the book, because we could also say like ourselves, like we think it's just sort of a mistake. You know, people just are learning from history, you know, people are just doing stupid things. But there is a necessity to it, which is that the, as Peter mentioned, failure of revolutions in the 20th century has thrown the movement back to certain extent, not all the way back to the conditions of the 18th century. But, you know, working class organisations and leadership have been become demoralised in the last 40 years. They suffer various defeats and they may be various mistakes. And participation from below, of course, diminished. And that has meant that a lot of conquests, you know, ideological conquests basically have been forgotten, have been lost. Of course, these lessons are still there and we are organisational, of course, preserving those lessons in our ideas. But, you know, we have people coming to the top of various organisations, repeating these basic mistakes and not even necessarily realising that this has been done before. Because the organisation that they are passed on has become weakened and demoralised. And so they aren't even necessarily educated in that. But also they're coming under the pressure of the ruling class more strongly and there's less pressure from the working class because of these defeats. And so that has meant that they have basically ideologically degenerated and are expressing very wishy, washi and vague ideas. When in fact we have very clear ideas to explain what's happening and what has happened. But that's been to a certain extent forgotten. Of course, not completely gone because ourselves obviously are preserving these. But that I think is something that's happened. And I would also like to highlight that the book is amazing or the pamphlet or whatever we call it because it's a very short book perhaps. It has a brilliant historical accounts as well. It's not just a theoretical kind of positional, oh you shouldn't be utopian basically. You should treat things as historically necessary. But Engels then goes on to give that history and it's a very broad history, incredibly knowledgeable. I mean he was extraordinarily knowledgeable about human history. And you have through that this fantastic explanation of capitalism's development, for example, being a product of the stage of development that it was that, for example, one of my favourite sections of the book is where he says that capitalism explains the private nature of capitalism which is what we all think of, or capitalism is all about the individual, private profit etc. He explains that actually that is a product of the feudal conditions that it emerged from. The under feudalism, he had these very small means of production, small tools and things like that. They really were belonged to one person and could only be used by one person. And so production was on that private and personal level. And so the class that emerged from that, the bourgeois class, of course, naturally were a private class of private individuals developing profit for themselves from their own work. But what capitalism has actually done is it has developed through competition, the means of production enormously, so that even in Engels' day and even more so today, it's actually an extremely socialised system that you have these massive workplaces, with a massive division of labour, of course also a worldwide division of labour, actually of course at the moment has been disrupted enormously by Trump. But the fact that that is so wrenching and we'll have such serious economic consequences proves how socialised the world economy is, how interconnected it is, how interdependent everybody is. You can't imagine the work of one factory happening without the work of multiple other workplaces. It's totally dependent on them. So behind the. the backs of the capitalists who always think it's all about their own private endeavor. Actually, they've erected a system of incredible socialized production and interconnected world, which of course means that the basis for socialism has been laid. So when he talks about how these utopens were speaking, because they had to have that position because the basis for socialism didn't exist, he then explains how that has now been built and why where it all came from, he puts everything in this historical context. But that kind of worldview was not possible in the past because it wasn't even understood, but prior to around the time of angles, the real history of humanity was not understood. People didn't even realise that there was a long prehistory of classless society, but then you had to have a long period of painful period of building up of different class societies and civilization. That just was not understood. It wasn't grasped the connection that we have with our past. That's all. So that idea that humanity is on this process of development, of increasing complexity, was not understood. So of course, people didn't have a scientific and a historical view of things. They just did see things in terms of, "Okay, well, this is the wrong idea, and that would be a good idea, as if there are just different options that could be put into place at any time." So of course, angles was a genius and extremely knowledgeable, as I've said. But that knowledge just was not there even probably 50 years or certainly not 100 years before angles. It just was not understood where we came from. Yeah. And speaking of history of ideas and all the ideas, I think we should really cover well, what is the title of chapter two of the dialectics? What is exactly dialectics? What is that method that angles is using to analyze, you know, this, well, to analyze history seriously for the first time, as you've done, you just said. So what does it mean? Is it some kind of, it's often presented as this mystified idea that Marxists tend to throw around, "Oh, this is dialectical, dialectical, this explains everything," but it actually explains nothing, right? So why angles is, you know, writing a whole chapter going back to these ideas of ancient Greeks and why, by extension, why do we bother with philosophy in the first place? I mean, relatively simply terms, simple terms. I'd say that dialectics is a method that allows you to understand that contradiction is at the heart of everything, that things are constantly in motion, right? And this, applying this, as you said, you can apply it to history, you can apply it to a society, it's relevant in all of these areas. You can apply this idea of contradiction being at the heart of everything, to understanding of, you know, looking at things not just in isolation or separately, but looking at them as part of a whole in their movement, not looking at things statically and rigidly, but looking at them within their processes of movement, of development, and connected to a wider picture. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. I mean, I always use this example of, I use this example of, well, I ask people, have you ever studied science at school? And do you remember, you know, these physics problems that they would present you with and you would have to calculate, you know, acceleration of an apple falling from the tree and calculate the gravity or whatever. I don't remember the details of that, I was never good at physics, but this, this is an example of non-dialectable thinking. This is an example of, you know, trying to look at the world formalistically through, you know, these formulas, these numbers, but the actual reality is so much more complicated than, you know, a school level physics question. There's so many different variables, you know, this fictitious apple that you are operating on this tree that doesn't actually exist on the on paper. You know, the shape of the apple, the wind, the time of the day, there's so many different things that can influence, yeah, influencing is actually, as you said, G, in motion, that's the whole point. It's, there's this great comparison Trotsky's using when he's trying to explain the difference between formalistic or formal logic thinking and, and dialectical thinking is that formal logic is, is just like taking pictures, taking snapshots. But viewing world dialectically is more akin to a film, to a moving picture where these snapshots actually get connected in motion, right? Yeah, I think it's, it's about uncovering, like, you know, the lawfulness behind, you know, seemingly accidental phenomena, right? Like, angles gives us a brief history of philosophy and actually I think that illustrates the kind of principles of dialectics itself very well actually, because you see different philosophers and different schools of thought basically looking to negate each other and kind of, you know, disagreeing with elements of each other's philosophies, but it's not just a, you know, a dry debate and so on, they retain something rational in the old ideas. You see it, this deepening of human knowledge through actually contradictory ideas kind of all expressing one element of reality to varying levels of accuracy. Some philosophers did it better than others, it has to be said. But I think it can often be taught, like, I feel like my understanding of philosophy growing up was that we had a lot of ancient Greeks and we said a lot of very clever things and, you know, it's just like a list of aphorisms. You read them and you've almost reached in a bag for an aphorism or an axiom to apply to the moment, which if you read, I mean, we've got our work by Alan Woods' history of philosophy, but even Hagel's history of philosophy, he shows this is actually a necessary process of development. It's all an interconnected whole rather than just, you know, seeming accident that this philosophy emerged in this period and of course, Engels develops us to a much higher level in this text explaining not just how this process occurred, but how it's tied to the productive forces of a development of class society and class struggle as well, like the philosophers of the enlightenment, for example, where we're many of them are revolutionaries in kind of attacking the dogmas of the church, which upheld the ideas of feudalism. If you look back through history, you see any revolutionary movement began not with not with high-flying phrases about, you know, the revolution itself. It can actually with small circles like this, even the people discussing great ideas that express, you know, something profound about society, even if it flies in the face of the established norms. That's how the thinkers of the enlightenment started and these ideas would directly inspire and lead for kind of the revolutions themselves that led to, you know, storming of the Bastille, the beheading of long monarchs and the establishment of the relations that we know today, which of course, you know, swept away most of the kind of fetters of feudalism and allowed for this immense expansion of productive forces on the basis of capitalist society. Yeah, I mean, Hager was an idealist, that is to say, he saw human history as being caused really by ideas rather than by material conditions or production. However, he was, he did lay the basis for the ideas of Marxism and the ideas in this particular book because despite his idealism, he was revolutionary in seeing human development and ideas as necessary. It's not just a load of bad ideas until the one true idea, which presumably would be his own idea, was discovered, which is what other philosophers have tended to see, but he saw it all as one process and all of these ideas contain the truth with them, they're like a rung on the ladder to the deeper trees and they're therefore necessary for their time. And of course, he's only necessary to then translate into to materials and by putting it on a material foundation as not driven by ideas, although the ideas are important but driven fundamentally by material conditions and production. And I think it's you can see it came from this section, I would just like to give a quote if that's okay, from the book by Engels, but he's talking about Hager's system here, and obviously he's sort of paying at homage if you like. He says, in this system and hearing is it's great merit for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual is represented as a process, i.e. as in constant motion change transformation development. And the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all of this movement and development. From this point of view, the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild world of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgment seat of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible. But as the process of evolution of man himself, it was now the task of intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways and to trace out the inner law running through all its apparently accidental phenomena. That really sums up the whole way we should look at histories is not to just weep at the errors and the horrors as bad as they may be but to understand why these happen there they are part of a process of human development that ultimately none of which is accidental or of course this or that specific event may may be accidental but the general features you know war exploitation and sort of foolish ideas that dominates or that are propagated by the ruling class these reflect a stage of development and does not say that we should be fatalistic about it or without that that's our lot then it can and will be changed because of course the whole point has to quote says is that everything is in change and we can understand that change and we can change it in the right way for the better but not arbitrary not just because we are well now we know the right and all that stuff is just stupid nonsense but it's just get rid of it no because we've understood well why that happened and where what the real possibilities therefore are if we understand them correctly and that's what Hagle brought in even if in a sort of confused upside down way he brought that into to human thinking and and therefore is essential to to to a scientific world view basically yeah and that reminds me of what we briefly spoke about with night before we started recording this idea of ideas being ideas of the past being negated right and developed all the ideas developed on top of negation of the ideas of the past the rational kernel the rational thread remains there it's not like they're being rejected entirely but they are developed on top of them like these wrongs of the other you mentioned or some people try to portray it as a spiral and there was an interesting question that night was telling me was raised in a recent event he he attended the idea of well does that mean the ideas of Marxism will be negated at some point or does does it mean that yeah does it mean dialectic materialism it's not going to apply anymore in the future are we going to be negated at some point what do we think I think like it it's based on an understand like we talk about these dialectical laws right like negation and it can be understood mechanically or sometimes and then it's just this automatic process and that's yeah this negated and then I'm getting negated again and then you know like it's often used when talking about the development of society it's like well if in a classless society emerges out of capitalism or communism is established will that mean be negated again by class society and it's like well not unless we're enslaved by like aliens or something you know like where's the basis you know it that's what we're saying it's not just an arbitrary like cycle you know it's it's definite it's concrete and I think with Marxism it's like precisely because our philosophy is not based on just you know surface level approximations but we slap on the situation it's based first and foremost on the objectivity on understanding things as they really are understanding contradiction to be as Georgina said for the source of the kind of motion and vitality and all things right you know their self movement capitalism's developed the way it has not because someone led it badly but because of its own internal logic and how it's developed contradiction isn't going to go away after capitalism has been has been destroyed yeah the contradiction between classes may be resolved but you still have a contradiction for example between between mankind and nature contradictions between all things that should be understood I always think like all right dialect come to listen what wouldn't negate it formalistic idealism like you know I mean it accurately portrays things as they really are which isn't to say it won't be be deepened and broadened and applied to the new problems that have thrown up through a study of of whatever humanity is studying in 200 years I'm not gonna claim to know what we're gonna be studying in 200 years but yeah I think that's how I'd kind of answer that like we talk about contradiction and and so one of materialism not because that's how we want things to behave like I think Engel says I think he says in this work like the greatest evidence of dialectics is nature itself that is what these have been drawn out and I'd say as well right like you know in regards to Marxist ideas there have been countless attempts as you really said like 200 years really of attempts to disregard Marxist ideas to unseat them to come up with something and no one has yet come up with anything that invalidates Marxism or has proven Marxism to be correct but the ideas that have come after Marxism have just been returns to something older but to slightly repackaged you know these people that would be making this kind of comment they themselves haven't been able to come up with anything fundamentally new but just worse versions of of past ideas and Marxism is is different from that in the sense it has come from the best of what came before it but elevating it to a higher level as you say like what Daniel was saying about Hegel you know turning the progressive parts of Hegel this you know the discovery of all of these laws in society and things in their motion in their movement but getting the connection right between ideas in the material world of ideas really being derived from material reality this this was a huge progress in philosophy and ideas and you know one since you know no one since Marx angles then in Entropsky have been able to unseat Marxism as as a valid idea and the material conditions that brought Marxism into being haven't gone anywhere right like everything the the great Marxists were writing about everything you know they were they were talking about in regards to the development of capitalism the contradictions you know in society between the classes if anything that has all just intensified since they were writing so I'd say if anything like instead of becoming less valid or less essential Marxism is just becoming more valid more essential to have a serious study and understanding of yeah I often thought that I said Marxism being superseded and you know we are historical materialists who would be absurd if we said that Marxism was the end point of all human thoughts and nothing will ever supersede it it won't be affected in any way and of course the main point on that is in a future society there will be a need for different ideas because there will be different things happening we can't anticipate that in advance we can't anticipate the details of what communist society would be like the possibilities that it would open up in all kinds of ways so there be new situations to write about that's that's really the main points so yes it is not this sort of fixed truth this this eternal truth but at the same time we should be careful with that because it's it's it can make it sound as if it's not really true and it's it's just a passing fad or something it's good enough for now but ultimately it will be wrong it's it's a more nuanced question than that I mean look at sort of Darwinism and evolution Darwin's ideas have been improved upon because of course since his day there's been you know lots more research on the basis of his ideas a lot of money and you know and in this way it's a kind of clearer example than Marxism because being a being like a natural science there is study that universities and other institutions money can be plowed into and real studies of like genetics which of course Darwin didn't know about can be done and therefore lots of the theory of Darwinism has been fleshed out and deepened and slight corrections to some of his ideas have been made which of course doesn't really happen with Marxism I mean we continue to study the class struggle and you know and develop Marxist ideas in relation to historical dooms that's true but there aren't like hundreds of universities all around the world plowing money into like re Marxist research although Trump and his friends might think that's the case but it's so easy so of course in that respect is it's not that Darwinism is a clear example of how the same ideas can be kind of developed but without contradicting them because that's the point the basic idea of Darwinism that is that you know of natural selection and that the species develop and change and they're not fix full time and the mechanism of that is the pressure of the environment basically that's a very simple idea and it's not it can't really be improved upon of course exactly how that happens and what kind of you know forms of life can emerge from it is something that requires a lot of study but the basic idea is correct and I think that will be correct for all time I don't think that in the thousands years will suddenly be like well actually Darwinism wasn't really true in fact for something else no that is true I think the the basic ideas of Marxism are historical materialists and I what we've been talking about the development of the means of production are the basis and the driving force in the long run are the ultimate, most important course of all development, social development, and the ideas ultimately reflect the class interest and the class struggle is the motor force of big changes in society. I don't think that that will be improved on, although obviously in a classless society, the class struggle won't be taking place. But of course, the forces of production will still be decisive. We won't enter into some heavenly realm where ideas now are everything and material production is nothing. Material production will always be material being, so that will always be the key thing. So in that respect, Marxism, I think, will never be improved at all. I don't-- that idea is just correct. But of course, that's a very vague and general-- or sort of vague. It's a very general idea. And its application in real history is very, very complex. And the more we go forward in time, conditions will change. Ultimately, the class struggle will cease to exist when you live in a communist society. And also resources can be thrown at studying it in the way that they aren't under capitalism, because of course, they don't want to study. They want to accept that Marxism is true, so they don't really study it officially. And if all those things take place, then of course, Marxism will be changed and developed, and we may not only call it Marxism eventually. So it's a kind of yes and no answer, really. Yeah. Like with most questions. I wanted to add to that as well. Dan's point on evolution may be think of it. But in terms of the development of scientific ideas, and like Marxism itself as a scientific idea, could also be improved upon it. This is-- there's a difference between adding to something and developing it and disregarding and invalidating it, because the development of Marxist ideas didn't just end with Marx and Engels. Like Lenin and Trotsky themselves, for example, they wrote loads, a huge wealth of materials that were written by them. And this is because as capitalism developed, they needed to apply the method of Marxism to a new situation. And that's something that's very important, like us ourselves, right? We're constantly analyzing the world around us and developing our own perspectives and our own ideas on using the Marxist method on the basis of, as things change and develop. Just off the top of my head, Frick's-- a big one would be Lenin writing his masterpiece on imperialism, which is something that, you know, when Marx and Engels were writing themselves, capitalism hadn't developed to its imperialist stage. This is something-- being a concrete reality needed a lot of further examination. So Lenin knew the necessity of developing an understanding of capitalism in its imperialist stage, and he wrote his brilliant text on it. And lots of different things have happened and changed since Marx and Engels were writing. And those things need to have been developed and studied using the Marxist method. But I'd say that's very different from saying that something's no longer relevant, right? But it's adding to the wealth of materials, of Marxism, that we already have, and bringing it to life with kind of a new analysis of a new situation. OK, just also add to that. Obviously, of course, after them is Ted Grant, as well, who provided an analysis of proletarian bonapartism and a lot of the kind of regime set up in the post-war period, which again, he could only do because of him understanding very well the Marxist method. It brings to mind, like, I think, in the recent article that went out on what is Trumpism, right? Like Donald Trump's a very good example of a very contradictory phenomena. And of course, you can't really understand something like that by just reaching into a bag of labels, of is he a bonapartist? Is he a fascist, a dictator, or whatever? I think there's a line in it that says, "Fonomenar is the best term for it." He should be understood on its own terms. It's a concrete question, based on how this is developed, the actual conditions, and the USA, and so on. The takeaway that we should get from books like this, of course, is the historical part of it. And we should understand that history. But also, the method used to reach these conclusions, same with capital, right? Like, even after capitalism has been abolished, capital is still going to be a very valuable text, because it is such a brilliant exposition of the dialectical method of understanding society, right? And that doesn't just mean that Marx wrote a big book on capitalism, and it only applies to that. Of course, you have to draw out the laws of each system on its own terms. You can't just apply them uniformly. But if you have the correct method, which reads books contain, then you can apply new phenomena as it's thrown up, as Daniel was kind of touching on. And on that note, our producer is telling me that we are reaching almost 50 minutes mark. But before we wrap up, I think we should really touch a little bit more on chapter three. There's one thing that-- one of my favorite quotes, really, from the text, is actually in chapter three. It's this one where Engels is explaining that capitalism is becoming almost like a force of nature, raising itself above humanity. And he says, active social forces-- not just capitalism, but active social forces in general-- work exactly like natural forces, blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand and reckon with them. And it's just such a remarkable example of dialectics on a grand, almost like, cosmic scale of human history, because if you think about it, the entire development of humanity, of our societies, of history stems from the fact of-- you mentioned before, I think, now I struggle with nature. I was struggled to free-- I was free from the necessity of survival. And we try to develop better tools, better ways of producing things. And that resulted in development of these social forces, which in the first place they were supposed to free us from nature. But now they raise themselves almost to that level of being this oppressive force. This blind, I think Marxist, I think, in Communist Manifesto, the comparing capitalism to this kind of sorcerer that has lost control of its own spells. And I think that's a very, very important point to make that we are actually as communists, as Marxists. We want, for the first time, to liberate our species, actually the real freedom of humanity will only be achieved once we can catch this genie and put it back into a lamp, right, and make it work for humanity. On that note, that leads us very nicely to our next episode on the state and revolution where we're going to discuss how to actually do that, how do we actually rest, control over that big colossal force of capitalism, dismantle it, and make the productive forces create by itself humanity for the first time ever. But yeah, on that note, I think we're going to wrap up unless there's anything else you guys wanted to say. OK. Well, thank you very much for your time. And yet, just for our listeners, as always, we're going to be linking well, reading going to the text in the description. For context, normally, when I read the Socialism Utopian Scientific, I'm in several reading groups at the moment, for each chapter, we take at least two hours of discussion. So this one brief hour of asking a chat here in this studio is no any enough. As you could see, we had to get a short, really, without-- we could have gone so much deeper into chapter three or chapter two for that matter. There's so much more to say. So we would like to really encourage everyone who's listening to try doing something like this for themselves. And as we mentioned in episode one, as well, we've got a special discount code for you. If you'd like to get yourself a copy of Classics, Volume 1 and 2, you can go to www.werebooks.co.uk. And you can use discount code Classics, Promo, which should give you 15% off our books. Well, that's it for this time. And we'll see you in two weeks time.