Capítulo 2. Base teórica
4. Desarrollo del software de detección de emociones
4.2 Entrenamiento del modelo
Complexity increases the instant we probe beneath the surface of communism, however.
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A. Rise
It is very easy for an absolutistic system to crucify progress through a premature
sanctification of the status in quo. The Republic of Plato illustrates such a threatened stagnation.
Because the slave was deficient in nous, he was predestined to remain within his rank. Social stratification was settled on philosophical, not activistic, grounds. In the medieval
feudal-agrarian society the infallibility of the church was used as a strait-jacket to hold the social order in line with the will of a religious and political hierarchy. Instead of offering the
peasant an opportunity to use his free powers for progress, the wretched one was comforted with the pious word that through faith and obedience his lack of earthly blessings would be
compensated many fold in heaven. "If we turn to the peasant and his aspirations, the darkest side of the Middle Ages is revealed. For him, strictly speaking, there could be no ideal;
Christian resignation was his lot and human contempt."5
Modern man thumps his chest in pride,
pleasantly assured that the system of capitalistic enterprise affords all men a plenary opportunity to express their creative freedom. But Marx
responds by showing that within the captitalistic structure itself necessary contradictions lie.
These contradictions in turn set class against class, until in the end a ruthless exploitation of the weak results.
Among the most important contradictions of the capitalistic system, special mention may be made of the three following:
First contradiction: The conflict between labour and capital . . . . .
Second contradiction: The conflict between the various financial groups and the different imperialist powers in their competition for control of the sources of raw material, for foreign territory . . . .
Third contradiction: The conflict between the small group of dominant 'civilized' nations, on the one hand, and the
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hundreds of millions of persons who make up the colonial and dependent peoples of the world on the other.6
Marx and Engels appeared on the world scene at an hour when the newly emerging bourgeois class was in the process of refining a philosophy of life to defend its interests. Both the weakness of capitalism's internal structure and the need for an effective system of checks and balances began to protrude. Growing pains were in
evidence everywhere. And in the process of
such a growth no few mistakes in strategy were committed — the very errors communistic
minds later exploited.
With a burst of enthusiasm the bourgeois individual declared himself free from the limitations which had shackled social life hitherto. With ingenuity and resolution the world could be conquered. Yet, out of this optimistic view of creative, historical
possibilities there emerged a nest of new
inequalities. Intoxicated with success as creators of a new destiny, the bourgeoisie soon ossified
into a hardened class of self-sufficient
overlords, converting their initial gains into an occasion for accumulating securities at the
expense of their inferiors. Capital was hoarded and monopolies developed. The rallying
vitalities of "free enterprise" and "capitalistic
progress" were presumed to cover a multitude of sins. Workers clustered around the centers of
industry, separating themselves from the soil which gave them birth. And before long the gap between the capitalistic employer and his
workers was so wide that a new class of
exploited, underprivileged people emerged:
the proletariat. Marx and Engels took notes on all this.
The bourgeois fortress seemed impregnable. It defended its pretensions by a laissez
faire optimism grounded in Hegelian philosophy. Hegel managed an easy
sanctification of the status in quo by defining the real as the rational and the rational as the real, and by viewing history (from one
perspective) as the autobiography of God.
History is the endless
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march of Spirit in search of freedom. Freedom is consciousness, and absolute
self-consciousness is God. This meant "a
sanctification of things that be, a philosophical benediction bestowed upon despotism, police-government, Star Chamber proceedings and censorship."7 Hegel tried to close the gap between mind and matter by identifying
movement in logic with movement in history.
Beginning with the logical category of being (thesis) and proceeding
to becoming (synthesis) through
non-being (antithesis) he moved through the entire span of rationality, until all ended in
the Weltgeist. Each logical triad led necessarily to the next, and that to the next, until the
absolute was reached.
But Hegel failed to convince Marx. By coming to problems through the concrete situation, Marx sensed that the result of
Hegelianism — however internally consistent its philosophical method might happen to be — was an intolerable sanctification of the
privileges of this new middle class.
Hegel is the interpreter of the tendencies of a semi-conservative bourgeoisie;; what he sets himself to justify is not the future nor the past, but the present. Like all doctrinaire conservatives, he stops the evolution of the world at the present moment, to which he gives absolute value as the definitive and perfect result of rational evolution.8
Marx complained that Hegel failed to
penetrate to the efficient causes which produced the actual changes in history. Hegel never
understood that concrete activity (not the
progression of logical categories) is the catalytic agent in change. This was serious, for it spelled the difference between progress or defeat for the proletariat. There unquestionably was a
profundity in the theoretical structure of the dialectic, for progress does emerge out of the
tension of contrarieties. But the cause of change is not so simple a matter as either Spirit seeking freedom or the relating of abstract, logical
categories.
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A study of actual history assured Marx that social contradictions are neither logical nor bloodless; they are real struggles between real people. To be practical and convincing,
therefore, a philosophy of history had to be impregnated with a vital dynamic which man could control. An activism is called for.
The purpose of his own social theories was to provide that knowledge of social tendencies which would most effectively liberate revolutionary action. Philosophy is not retrospective insight into the past; it is prospective anticipation of the future. It explains why the present is what it is in order to make it
different. So often an expression of social quietism, or a means of individual escape, philosophy must now function as an
instrument of social liberation. The social world is not inherently reasonable as Hegel claimed. It must be made reasonable. In the words of his well-known gloss on Feuerbach, 'Until now
philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point is to change it."9
Marx studied the socialistic movement in France in its immense effort to confer "on the mode of appropriation the same collective
character as the mode of production."10 But he felt that his experiment in socialism would not succeed because of the immature philosophical basis upon which it was reared. Being
insufficiently class-conscious, the proletariat in France were premature in their attempted
revolution. Since the contradictions in
capitalism had not yet appeared, the proletariat grasp of the place of class struggle in
emancipating men from the yoke of injustice was inchoate. Informed with an abiding
rationalistic optimism, these doctrinaire
socialists naively thought that convincing men of their need for social change was tantamount to effecting the change itself. Marx felt that a more realistic means must be resorted to if
social changes are to pass from paper to act. The
"reasonableness of the new order" is a very undialectical expedient.
Engels spent several profitable years in
England, during which time a keen interest in the problems of
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the laboring class developed. England had long been enjoying the fruits of the industrial
revolution, so it was natural that she was the
locus for the more obvious abuses of capitalism.
Contrary to what philosophers might say, the actual struggles in history grew out of conflicts inherent in the social pattern. Classes warred on each other for social and economic security.
Here lay the missing clue to the construction of a genuinely dialectical philosophy of history.
In England, then economically the most highly developed
country, any one could see that the true explanation of political struggles resided in the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It was also unmistakably clear that this struggle between working class and bourgeoisie was based on the economic position of the two classes, on the fact that the
bourgeoisie was in possession of all the means of production and piled up riches upon riches, which the working class, lacking means of production, was dependent solely on the sale of its
labor power. Thus, here was the most obvious place to study the materialistic explanation of historical events.11
The new left-wing leaders received a cold reception from liberal bourgeoisie the instant their revolutionary doctrines leaked out. Intent on maintaining self-security through a
sanctification of their own vested interests, the bourgeoisie resisted the intruders. This merely served as a barometric warning to the radicals of the impending storm ahead. In reply, they
became even more radical.
B. Crystallization
Feuerbach supplied a radical, materialistic philosophy of the supersensible. He heaped barbed ridicule on the notion that there is a
trans-temporal realm of normative truth. Such a stratum is nothing more than an unwarranted and fantastic conversion of sense knowledge.
Since man extends his own petty virtues to
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theology is simply anthropology. Man worships himself. Feuerback needed overhauling, to be sure, for he was informed with non-dialectical elements which impeded a thoroughgoing
activism; yet his materialism enjoyed a
convincing this-worldly emphasis. "Marx and Engels took from Feuerbach's materialism its 'inner kernal,' developed it into a scientific-philosophical theory of materialism and cast aside its idealistic and religious-ethical
encumbrances."12
A synthesis resulted. From Hegel came the
framework of dialectical tension, while from the materialistic heritage came a down-to-earth
application. Thus, the name given to the
finished philosophy: dialectical materialism. "It is called dialectical materialism because its
approach to the phenomena of nature, its conception of these phenomena, its theory, is materialistic."13 Progress emerges out of
tension, and the tension is created by a conflict between classes. The pattern of society, and thus
the meaning of history, is fundamentally
determined by the contradictions inherent in class ideology.
A comprehensive triad forms the basis of the social dialectic: the thesis is the exploiting class (bourgeoisie), the antithesis the exploited class (proletariat), and the synthesis the final fruit of class struggle (classless society). At the end of the short reign of the proletariat there emerges that utopian social order (described by Lenin in The State and Revolution) in which formal equality is converted into actual equality: "From each according to his ability and to each
according to his need." The transition from
inequality and injustice to equality and justice is not automatic, or even easy, passage. "On the contrary,
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such a transition usually takes place by means of the revolutionary overthrow of the old relations of production and the establishment of new
relations of production."14 Power must meet power if justice is to be established. Only
realistic means can mediate the contradictions which arise in class struggle. There are always periods of violence as one system of
organization gives way to another, for the
abiding order is entrenched so deeply its roots must be dynamited. "Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power."15
To recapitulate: Since freedom in economic struggle is compounded with both the pride of the heart and the inequalities of men, it follows that injustices will inevitably emerge within the social order. And when given a full opportunity to mature, these inequalities blossom into
contradictions. The owners of the tools of labor gain greater and greater power over these tools, until finally so much machinery and capital is controlled that even the workers themselves become tools. The capitalists are the exploiting class, the proletariat the exploited class. This
contradiction can only be resolved through the expedient of forceful pressures and (if
necessary) violent revolution. The
entrenchments of capitalism must be blown up for only force can dislodge force. Communism labels this structure of emerging contradictions, plus the overcoming of them by directed force, the dialectic of history. And the dialectic
ismaterialistic because the ideal is always a reflection of the concrete, never vice versa.
This materialism is historical; it explains the movement of history essentially by the transformation of production and not by an alternation of philosophical, political, or religious
conceptions which are but the ideological forms assumed in men's consciousness by the real motives of their actions. And this historical materialism is dialectic; it shows
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that the movement of history is linked to the development of the relations between the forces of production and the social
forces.16
Marx claimed he turned Hegel "right side up again" by returning to a more realistic
understanding of the relation between form and process.
The classless society is a goal commensurate with the freedom of man, for perfect
brotherhood exhausts the height to which man may soar when progressively defining perfect social relations. Hence, both freedom and
involvement cooperate in the unfolding of the dialectical tensions. Freedom finds means to release justice, while involvement profits from new-found security.