Dealing with the nuclear crisis in Japan in a previous article [in french : Face au nucléaire, il faut redevenir les enfants du soleil!], we talked about the “Kardashev scale”, and explained that human civilization needed to make a step, going from a « type I civilization” to a “type I civilization.”

As we are the first to say that it helps understanding the socialist revolutionary process on Earth, and as we think it is very important, let’s talk again about it, to stress the importance of it, for our conception of the Earth, humanity and the milky way itself.

The concept says the following : once a civilization developed itself, it is necessary moving from taking the resources of its home planet, going to take the power available from a single star (i.e., for us, it would be the sun).

The first type of civilization would be defined as “type I”, the second as “type II”, and a “type III” exists when energy would be taken from the galaxy itself.

This is the “Kardashev scale”, made by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev.

Why is it important for us ? It is important because, understanding that Earth is a system, a Biosphere as the soviet mineralogist and geochemist Vernadsky defined it, then we must be the caretakers of it.

We have used resources to develop civilization, but we see know that we can not continue it in the same way. It brings death, it is a war against all the living beings on the planet. It is not the continuous and genuine happiness that living beings are seeking.

So, the reasons for the step to a type II civilization is quite easy to see: the lack of resources and the collapse of the Biosphere’s equilibrium (for example climate change), but also the will of ceasing to have a destructive character on Earth.

Following that, humanity faces three options : the first, put forward by bourgeoisie, is that nothing should change. This is merely a class illusion. The second option, a petty bourgeois thinking, consists in going back, which consists in ideologies like “primitivism” or fascism (as “anticapitalist romanticism”).

The third option, the working class option, is going forward, which means : looking for the stars, and beginning with the sun.

When we say, let’s move to a type II civilization, it means : let’s stop the destruction of our planet, of all living beings. Let’s live in peace on Earth, and move forward in taking the energy from the universe itself.

This helps us understanding the socialist revolution and the tasks that go with it. Why that? Well, it shows that in capitalist societies, there are in substance two contradictions : the one between intellectual and manual labor, and the one between contradiction between cities and countryside.

Socialism consists in going beyond those contradictions. The socialist revolution can not be victorious when this is not understood; fascism won in Germany for the evident reason that the great Communist Party of Germany did not understand the meaning of the city-countryside contradiction (the relationship to nature playing an important role in fascist ideology).

That’s why, along with science, i.e. dialectical materialism, we need to uphold morality and culture, i.e. communist morality and culture. And science can not be understood without morality and culture – as Lenin said, “Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality” (V. I. Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic”).

This is easy to see when we read for example Epicurus and Spinoza, Lucretius and Einstein, Ibn Tufayl and Al-Maari, Montaigne or Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac who in the 17th century already had his minds in the stars…

Putting forward a civilization of type II is not science-fiction, it is on the contrary accepting and recognizing the dignity of immediate actuality!