The Need to Develop More Rigorous Analyses of Common Problems of the Working Class

John Clarke, former major organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), recently posted the following on Facebook:

John Clarke

I saw a religious message on social media the other day that led me to ponder questions of reasoning and analysis. It suggested that a lack of physical evidence for the existence of Heaven was of no consequence because no one has seen tomorrow either, yet we all expect it to arrive.

Of course, the formulation disintegrates as soon as you move beyond the bald assertion. We have a very clear understanding of how the passage of time on this planet is divided into days and to-morrows have been arriving on cue for a considerable period. The one that we expect to encounter after today isn’t a certainty but it’s highly probable and certainly not speculative. Heaven, on the other hand, is a faith based proposition that can’t be deduced from evidence or any method of calculation.

The point is that such an obvious absurdity seemed to make sense to the person circulating it because we live in a society where methods of thinking are generally at a very low level. There are at least two major factors at work in this. A division exists between those who perform manual labour and those who engage in intellectual pursuits. Most people are simply not given the opportunity to develop the ability to form complex logical constructions from the phenomena they encounter. This is especially true of questions related to human society.

At the same time, the class interests of those who rule this society impede the development of thought. Scientific forms of reasoning have developed under capitalism but their consistent application is constrained. It is impossible to run a society based on the exploitation of the many by the few without avoiding inconvenient truths. Hence, the intellectual development of even the intellectuals, let alone the mass of people, is stunted.

If, as I suggest, forms of thinking reflect the nature of the society we live in, a challenge to this oppressive and exploitative system will require forms of analysis that clearly break with the ruling ideas. A working class movement to change society must literally think on a higher level than the existing order is prepared to tolerate.