On Responsibility
Do we measure the ethics of someone by their intention or their actions? I use this question to explore the social responsibility of truth-seeking and the meaning of imperialism.
Responsibility can be a heavy burden. It requires us to remove ourselves from our comforts and traverse into struggle. Being responsible to friends, family, and partners, for example, could mean being open with feelings and thoughts, something that is difficult to do in a society which encourages us to suppress our feelings and believe that our feelings are invalid. Struggling through insecurities and sharing feelings eases animosity and helps relationships grow — doing so helps us grow. For this, responsibility can help us become better people but it can also change the trajectory of the world.
Social responsibility concerns our relationship with the world. It urges us to have informed opinions rather than thoughtless opinions. While it may seem like many in our society carry thoughtless opinions, it is ignorant to say that their opinions come from thin air. True that a creationist’s opinions cannot stand next to those of evolutionary biologists, but the creationist’s opinions are still informed by knowledge they hold. The biologist, however, carries knowledge of more clarity because the biologist directly engages with the study and practice of biology. In experiment, they apply their ideas and see truth before their eyes, materializing knowledge beyond thought. The biologist engages in struggle to learn when faced with questions of significance.
Our opinions about the world carry significance. Not believing that the oppression of women is real helps perpetuate a culture of sexualized violence. Such an opinion gives the structures of patriarchal power more room to operate in. Similar things can be said of other political opinions. One cannot passively condemn an enemy of the United States without adding to the cultural consent of imperialism. Saddam Hussein was indeed a tyrant but many were not able to criticize the real atrocities and histories which made him a tyrant. Instead they were convinced that the US needed to invade Iraq over claims of weapons of mass destruction which were never found, resulting in the devastating deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. This was a complete defeat of social responsibility. It was to forego struggle and to remain in comfort.
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows […] When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it. Conclusions invariably come after investigation, and not before.
Mao Zedong, Oppose Book Worship (1930)
Currently, one of the more common debates in the Western Left is over China and its relationship with the Global South, particularly Africa. Over the past decades, China has increased its economic influence in Africa, resulting in a multitude of Western-produced scholarly, journalistic, and even propagandic reports of the social, political, and cultural effects of economic relations between African nations and China. Some thinkers conclude a positive assessment and some claim a negative one, even going as far as identifying Chinese relations with Africa as imperialism.
Different ideological factions can hold different definitions and interpretations of imperialism. On the surface level, this will of course cause fundamental misunderstandings and confusion when debating the question of China and Africa. As a Marxist myself, I can say that when I try to formulate geopolitical views, I make use of Lenin, Nkrumah, and their contemporaries’ understandings¹ of imperialism. However, I am not writing to defend Lenin or to even claim that his analysis of imperialism is necessary for properly investigating any geopolitical relationship. While it does help, one does not need to hold Lenin near in order to engage in the struggle necessary to capture informed opinions on geopolitics. Although, it is important to think about the nature of knowledge to understand how to best struggle for knowledge.
In her book “Meeting the Universe Halfway,” Karen Barad challenges the mainstream’s dominant framework of understanding the knowledge: metaphysical. If physics describes the natural world where everything is interconnected, including humans and their histories, metaphysics describes the abstract world such as ideas or principles which exist in isolation to each other, changing independently.
In a case study, she examines the questions of ethics and gives the example of Neils Bohr, a Danish Jewish physicist, and Werner Heisenberg, his German collaborator. With recent ground-breaking discoveries around nuclear physics, science was now capable of researching the possibility of atomic weapons. With the rise of the Nazi Party, Heisenberg, a lifelong nationalist, left Copenhagen to lead development of the atomic bomb for Germany. Meanwhile, as WWII intensified, Bohr escaped to the US after being declared an enemy for descending from a Jewish family and for helping refugees of Nazism. He later went on to advocate against nuclear weapons.
Heisenberg’s ethics and political allegiances immediately came into question. Much like today, a person’s actions are determined by comparing their behavior to a set of defined principles, often determined by those in power and perpetuated through the media they control. Heated debates in the scientific community arose over whether or not Heisenberg should be disavowed. Some argued him to be a Nazi and eventual war criminal, and others argued that he was advancing science for the sake of science. He was either an enemy to humanity or a noble scientist dedicated to the truth of particle physics.
In 1941, while Bohr was still in Copenhagen, Heisenberg famously came to meet his old friend and mentor. What happened next is left to debate and controversy in the scientific community. Speculation ranges widely². Some claim that Bohr and Heisenberg’s ethics on weapon development differed, causing a rift in their friendship after their meeting. Others will say that Heisenberg wanted Bohr’s input on the scientific questions he was investigating while secretly planning to sabotage the final product after coming to understand the scientific principles he was hungry to discover in research. One narrative paints him as a Nazi collaborator and another narrative paints him as a dedicated and apolitical scientist who prevented the Germans from attaining nuclear weapons. Heisenberg wrote of the meeting to his wife:
The conversation quickly turned to the human concerns and unhappy events of these times; about the human affairs the consensus is a given; in questions of politics I find it difficult that even a great man like Bohr can not separate out thinking, feeling, and hating entirely. But probably one ought not to separate these ever.
This is not a small problem. Having an opinion on Heisenberg has grand implications on scientific ethics and the borders of white supremacy’s ideologies. Was Heisenberg an enemy to have assassinated for the sake of the humanity? Do his actions imply that great scientific advancements don’t need genuine love for humanity to be discovered? Does this mean that the quest to understand the natural world can accept sacrifices? The most common way to address these questions of great social impact is to avoid formulating them to begin with. We can never know the intentions of Heisenberg without ever being Heisenberg ourselves. Even Heisenberg can’t know his own ethical position. This is not far beyond scientists all over the US today, who advance science under Department of Defense funding and contribute to exploitative pharmaceutical, data, surveillance, and weapons industries³. Most people consider news and politics through similar realms of intention because immaterial metaphysics is the dominant mode of knowledge production under capitalism. Unfortunately, because the abstract knowledge of Heisenberg’s intentions cannot be proven, it is impossible to have a decision on him solely based on intention.
But is having any knowledge of Heisenberg possible? Contrary to the metaphysical approach, there also exists a scientific view of the world where one observes and understands the universe through physical, or material concepts. Now, I don’t want the reader to jump to conclusions. I’m not going to conclude that everyone’s understanding of China and Africa is reached ‘unscientifically’ because even the method of science, or at least science as it’s commonly practiced in the contemporary day, still leads to an incomplete picture of the universe.
But first, let us come to understand how we can use a scientific approach to formulate a judgement on Heisenberg and his contributions to Nazi Germany’s nuclear technology. We can’t measure or question his intentions, however, we can ask questions which have implications in the material world. Was his work funded by Nazis? Did his research have negative implications in the world? If he cared only for science, couldn’t he have researched in one of the Allied nations? The answers to these questions help paint a clearer picture of Heisenberg and most would feel comfortable forming an opinion on the man. I know I do. However, this method also has its pitfalls, or more specifically, limitations. Before I critique the scientific framework of finding knowledge and introduce a third and more comprehensive method, I want to return to thinking about imperialism.
Earlier, I wrote that multiple definitions of imperialism exist and thus sow confusion. Let us understand these different definitions and see what methods of knowledge they require to be used in theory. The word imperialism first arose in political discourse during the 1870s in Britain as a slander called imperialist. It was used as a pejorative to describe advocates of Britain becoming a force which brings “good and civilization” to the rest of the world. This stance was contested by “Little Englanders,” anti-nationalists who worried about a rising capitalist greed which was not intent on solving the problems already existing in Britain. Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State of the Colonies, said “I should think our patriotism was warped and stunted indeed if it did not embrace the Greater Britain beyond the seas." This understanding of imperialism was promoted as a political project to bring “advanced civilization” across the world. In the face of the US and a rising Germany, some in the British ruling classes told their toiling workers: if imperialism will exist anyway, it might as well be led by British.
This definition of imperialism, of course, falls into a similar trap as trying to understand Heisenberg’s underlying metaphysical morals and intentions from an external position. Here, we turn to the next definition of imperialism. The expansionism of empires throughout history is undoubtedly defined as imperialism by many. Rather than a political definition, this is a colloquial definition understood by most people with no background in political struggle. Nevertheless, it is a real definition which should be addressed. From age old roots, the word imperialism comes from the Latin word imperium, meaning supreme power. Carrying the definition of a supreme power’s expansionism, imperialism can now be used to describe empires across all time and space such as Rome, the Triple Alliance (Aztecs), Mongols, etc.
To review, like Heisenberg’s unknown intentions, defining imperialism as Britain's “exporting of civilization” intentions gets trapped in a metaphysical and unknowing debate. Thus, this highly specific definition of imperialism is not useful. However, while it is difficult to answer questions of intention, two sides of the problem were quite clearly outlined in the British-specific definition of imperialism: colonization for “good” vs. colonization for greed. In the case of defining imperialism by general expansionism, two explicit sides are not clearly outlined. While each empire can be specifically analyzed, relying on a generalized definition of imperialism as expansionism makes it difficult to apply it in each specified case without somewhat altering the definition. For example, Roman imperialism would be characterized very differently than Mongolian imperialism and the concept of “expansionism” would not be enough to understand the conditions, politics, and economies of both empires in the same way. This definition of imperialism lacks a way to handle specifics. What if someone makes the claim that Empire X colonized the economy a land but didn’t settle in it? Are they expanding? If they are not physically expanding, does it count as imperialism? Neocolonialism is of course a form of imperialism. The lack of being able to deal with specifics in a general definition leads to an impasse again. A word which can change depending on who is using it is not a useful word.
To further describe the weaknesses of this scientific approach (I say scientific because the questions posed to understand “Empire X” were not metaphysical), we can return to Heinsenberg. We posed some basic questions in the scientific framework to understand the ethics surrounding his decisions. For example, one could ask if Heisenberg’s research was being funded by Nazis. This still only questions one side of the problem, and further, does not understand the problem as a whole. Yes, the Nazis were funding his research. To complete the question, we can ask if he was working for Nazis because he couldn’t find funding elsewhere. Now both sides of the problem are addressed. To be funded by the Nazis also means to not be funded by anyone but the Nazis. The concept of positive does not exist without negative. A capitalist cannot be defined without defining a worker. Both sides of a dialectic must be understood and it doesn’t stop there. We also have to study the two sides of a dialectic as a singular whole. If Nazis were funding him and he could get funding from elsewhere, why didn’t he? This is to understand both sides of a problem, and the problem as a unified whole. Now we reach a point of understanding that goes beyond scientific, it becomes dialectical. The scientific way will ask a question, record the result, and induce a conclusion. This process repeats until a general theory can be put together. However, each observation is studied in isolation. The dialectical way looks at both sides of a question, its particularities, and then the question as a whole in its relation to its environment to produce one comprehensive answer.
Lenin did this when he defined imperialism. Further, he learned to take a dialectical approach to the world by studying Marx who, in recording the ways capital and class operate, had come to discover dialectical materialism in the process. Engels went on to take this principle and explore its uses in the natural world and greater philosophical implications. Stalin recorded some explicit principles of dialectical materialism after studying Marx and Lenin. Finally, Mao formally described the Marxist epistemology, or the Marxist theory of knowledge: all matter in the universe is in motion, everything is connected, man is a product of nature and thus his histories and ideas are too connected and in constant motion, everything exists in contradiction. To truly know something means to know its opposing particularities and it itself as a whole. Most importantly for a theory to become knowledge, it must be put into practice. If the understanding of a thing can be used to make a change in the world, then it is knowledge.
I want to finish my criticism of how knowledge is acquired by returning to the question of China and Africa. Rather than offering my position, I will pose questions which give room to gain true knowledge on the topic, through the dialectical method:
In what ways does China benefit from its relations with Africa? In what ways does China lose from its relations with Africa?
In what ways does Africa benefit from its relations with China? In what ways does Africa lose from its relations with China?
Does China benefit in the same way through each of its relationships with African countries? Does each African country benefit in the same way from its relationship with China?
Was violence used to establish these relationships, if so why? Were peaceful means used to establish these relationships, if so why?
In what way do these relationships affect the global economy and thus US imperialism? In what ways to these relationships strengthen US imperialism?
Who are you studying to answer these questions and what is their relationship to the US, China, and Africa? Because bias can exist from any of these three sides, are you reading an analysis from all sides to find inconsistencies?
One can go on. In an age of heightening US aggression in East Asia, one’s position on China is critical. The US explicitly outlines its “Pivot to Asia” as their new imperialist struggle. To formulate a position on China based on questions which operate in the realm of metaphysics is not only irresponsible but also dangerous. It is clear that it is impossible to hold a principled position on this topic without having a clear answer to all of these questions with answers grounded in both science and dialectics. Finally, one does not need to trust Lenin’s definition of imperialism to pose these questions and seek trusted answers. I will end with one final note. Answering these questions requires rigorous study. This is why you will find a pile of books next to a committed Marxist at all times. But why does a non-Chinese and non-African person have to spend so much time studying China’s complex relationship with Africa when the principal enemy, the US empire, continues to operate in Africa and increase aggression on China? How well do you understand the US’s relationship with Africa and China? What is your responsibility?
Notes
¹In general, Lenin would define imperialism as a specific stage of capitalism where monopoly dominates commodity production and finance capital, where export is the primary source of profit, and where the division of the world is complete. Nkrumah extended this by describing the advancements of colonial tactics by monopoly capital. Samir Amin described differences between imperialism in Lenin’s time and now while still maintaining the same mode of analysis.
²The famous meeting of Bohr and Heisenberg has many speculations surrounding it. A popular play was even produced to tell the story.
³From Against Empire by Michael Parenti: “Then there is the distortion of U.S. science and technology, as 70 percent of federal research and development (R&D) funds goes to the military. Contrary to Pentagon claims, what the military produces in R&D has little spin-off for the civilian market. About-one third of all American scientists and engineers are involved in military projects, creating a serious brain drain for the civilian sector”
Resources on Dialectical Materialism
Maurice Cornforth — Materialism and the Dialectical Method
Mao Zedong — On Contradiction
Huey Newton — Introducing Revolutionary Intercommunalism