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The Theory of the Senergicons Psico-sociological aspects of the Economic Underdevelopment

Dedication, Foreword and Chapter 19 of The Theory of the Senergicons


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The Theory of the Optimal Distribution of the Income


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2 The Theory of the Optimal Distribution of the Income (Chapters 9 to 16 and 20 Spanish)

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2 The Theory of the Senergicons Chapters 1 to 11

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Toward the Reformulation of a the Contemporary Psychology:



The Theory of the Senergicons
 

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By Walter H. Bruckman
Department of Social Science
University of Puerto Rico
Cayey Campus
January 2000

Copyright © W. H. Bruckman
 

Dedication

Man's true measure is taken not by what he achieves but by what he yearns to achieve.

Anonymous text on a mural at the University of Zulia in Maracaibo, Venezuela

I want to dedicate this work to Ernesto (Che) Guevara and Karl Marx.

In the field of social change we can speak of two types of persons: those who interpret reality and make the theory about it, and those who put the theory into practice. The task of the scientist and the task of the revolutionary complement each other. The revolutionary is the man of action. Both tasks are extremely difficult, which is why you will rarely see one person excelling in both to exactly the same degree.

Of the two kinds of life, the most exciting is that of the man of action who, in identifying himself with the pain of others, gives himself to a cause that is noble. Both characters, however, travel together through history and are almost inseparable. One complements the other. In the back of the mind of every man of action (governor, statesman, politician, guerrilla fighter or revolutionary) there is usually a philosopher or social scientist (most often an economist) whose theories are used to interpret reality and to put forward the objectives or goals for which they will fight.

When the social reality interpreted by the philosopher or the social scientist changes too rapidly leaving the theory lagging behind, or when these theories fail in their interpretation, the sacrifice which the man of action has made in his effort to save some part of humanity becomes useless, for he can then only count on his good intentions and love for his fellow man, but not with a correct analysis of reality, which is what truly allows him to bring about change. So we see that the revolutionary is usually either the driving force behind the ideas of the philosopher or the victim of these ideas. Che himself was no stranger to this situation:

...It should be said that the revolutionary theory, as an expression of a social truth, is over and above any public statement; that is to say, the revolution can be undertaken if the historical reality is interpreted correctly and if the strengths involved are correctly used, even when the theory is not known. It is clear that the adequate understanding of this simplifies the task and prevents falling into dangerous error, as long as the stated theory corresponds to the truth.

Hence the importance for the revolutionary to arm himself with a correct theory or at least to get as close as reasonably possible to the description of reality. Otherwise, the sacrifice will have been in vain.

For me, Karl Marx was one of those theorists who served mankind by developing a theory that allowed the revolutionary to interpret reality. We can agree or not on the applicability of the dialectic methodology to all situations in general. However, we are in agreement with the necessity to analyze social realism based on a dynamic methodology focus. Only when we employ the dialectic term in this sense, can we be in agreement about its general applicability. The most valuable aspect of Marx's methodology is this dynamic focus on the analysis of social reality, a contribution that has not received much correct use. His interpretation of the form in which capitalism functions based on this dialectical methodology, in our judgement, was accurate. With the passage of time, the reality that he described changed and his theories should have been revised by his successors to adapt them to the new realities. Unfortunately, this did not happen. It is not easy to imitate his genius. Other scientists (not identified with the socialist ideology with which Marx, as a man of his time, was identified and which he attempted to promulgate as solution to the misery which the development of capitalism brought about) reinterpreted the great contributions of Marx to adjust them to a changing capitalism. Such was the case of John Maynard Keynes. These theories, for corresponding to the capitalist ideology that Marx struggled against, were converted into theoretical tools to interpret the reality of the apologists for capitalism, which were adverse to Marx and his thinking. As a result, they served to opaque Marx's great contributions and to detract from the just recognition that he deserved.

Marx as well as Keynes was talking about the two faces of the same coin. Marx's work, as he explained how capitalism operated, also insinuated the way in which it could be saved, something he was not interested in propitiating. Keynes picks up this insinuation, reinterpreting the Marxian contribution about the underconsumption in the capitalist system. The Keynesian Theory (and above all his celebrated marginal propensity to consume) was no more than a different way of presenting the problem of underconsumption in capitalism as the cause of economic depressions.

Notwithstanding, this is not the place to do a comparative analysis of both theories. I plan to accomplish that task in a later work. For the present, it is enough to say that, although many aspects of the Marxist theory on the workings of capitalism have ceased to be in effect before the reality of a changing capitalist system, in other aspects it is still timely, even though many years have passed.

The followers of Marx made a poor and deficient use of the dynamic focus in the analysis of the capitalist system after Marx. The theories of neocolonialism and imperialism are examples of this. These theories endeavor to explain the causes of underdevelopment as a problem, not as low productivity in the underdeveloped countries, but as a consequence of some commercial relations that were highly unfavorable for the underdeveloped countries. The developed nations are rich because the underdeveloped ones are poor. One thing is the direct result of the other. As absurd as a proposal so simple and trivial appears to be, it has had and continues to have great acceptance by the radical left wing thinkers.

Why is this so? There are various reasons. One, important in our judgement, is the following: the theories of neocolonialism and imperialism penetrate easily because they evoke strong ethnocentric emotions and, in addition, they make themselves not responsible for their problems. It is a psychological phenomenon. Everything that evokes one's own country and its struggle against the enemy, real or imagined, produces strong emotions and, as a consequence, impacts profoundly. When the established analysis or theory accurately describe the realities, such exacerbated passions serve to produce heroic feats, such as the independence of the American nations, or the resistance to the invasion of a country, like the one staged by the British and the rest of Europe in the face of the German invasion. Notwithstanding this, when the analysis or theory established to arouse ethnocentric emotions does not describe reality, these sentiments and emotions become consumers of much energy and are responsible for a great loss of time in the struggle of the countries to get out of their condition of poverty. They serve as traps that keep them on a treadmill that can never lead them anywhere. Such is the case of Latin America and of all the Third World countries.

The loss of time and energy is a serious consequence of the absence of a correct theory of reality, but the greatest loss is that of those exalted men who, because they did not have the guidance of a correct theory, sacrificed their lives without seeing their ideals realized.

The revolutionaries, who employed the Marxist theory on the form in that the capitalism works (which with the passage of time had lost force) as a tool to interpret the reality and to prescribe the solutions, saw their efforts lost. Such is the case of the Cuban, Russian and Chinese revolutions and their dead converted into useless sacrifice, as was the case with Che, among others.

It is because of this that I wish to dedicate this work to the two people who have had the greatest influence on me: Che and Marx. The question will be asked about how two persons whose political and economic thinking differ from mine could have influenced me. Che and Marx are men of their times and as such were subject to the horizon marked off by the knowledge that prevailed in that time. Marx, for example, criticized the exploits of Simon Bolivar in America, accusing him of representing the interests of the bourgeoisie, possibly with reason, but even so this does not keep his analysis from being mistaken. No one is so perfect nor so inspired as to be right in everything. In the case of Che, he believed that the causes of Latin American underdevelopment rested with North American imperialism. He was wrong, but so were many important Americans who thought the same way. Said Che:

What is underdevelopment?

...Colonial, semicolonial or dependent countries. We are countries with economies distorted by imperialist action, which has abnormally developed the industrial and agricultural branches needed to complement its complex economy. The "underdevelopment" or the distorted development, involves dangerous specifications in raw materials, which they maintain with the threat of hunger to all our countries.

The figure of Che, like so many others, is not spoiled a whit for having erred in these matters, for, just as it is implied in the words in the mural of the University of Zulia, and that it serves as epigraph to this dedication, the greatness of men is to be measured by the nobleness of the ideals pursued and the purity of the soul. Che himself knew this. With the intuition that great men have, he recognized that no matter how correct or inspired the work of a man is, his human condition does not make him infallible in all he says or does. And yet, reasons Che, this does not spoil his work, nor does it reduce its importance, nor should it be the reason for not studying it seriously:

Marx, as thinker, as investigator of social doctrines and of the capitalist system which he was born into, can evidently be criticized for certain errors. We Latin Americans can, for example, be in disagreement with his interpretation of Bolivar or with the analysis that he and Engels made of the Mexicans, taking for granted certain theories about races and nationalities which would not be admissible today. But great men, discoverers of luminous truths, live despite their small faults, and these only serve to show that they are human, that is to say, beings that can incur in error even with the clear conscience of the height reached by these giants of thought.

In the figure of Che we see the man of action, the politician, feel the pain and the injustice of the dispossessed, look at his surroundings, arm himself with the ideological tools that he understood were the most advanced of his time, and willing to give his life for humanity.

In the figure of Marx we see the scientific man, committed with the action, who sacrifices his life, and even his family, in order to leave a better world to humanity, by means of a scientific analysis of reality.

In the most difficult moments of my life, I evoke the figure of Che in the middle of the jungle plagued by torturing needs, mosquitoes, humidity (as it affects an asthmatic person), without food, water, etc., fleeing enemy bullets in the middle of an asthma attack; and I am consoled by his image, thinking that my luck is not so bad, no matter how serious my condition is. I see in him the figure of Christ. He who after two years that must have seemed a thousand, of great sacrifices in the revolutionary war of Cuba, who had everything: fame, the recognition of his contemporaries, a place in history, an important post in the government, a family, and he left it all to go to a martyrdom in Bolivia for love of humanity.

The life of the theorizing scientist is very monotonous and boring. He does not have the emotion and the intensity of the man of action, whose function it is to put theory into practice. More than Walter Bruckman, I had liked to be the Che


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