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Posted by Radical Notes July 11, 2008 at 11:54 am in Venezuela, Working Class, Marxism
Michael Lebowitz
The following is the keynote address to the annual meeting of the Society for Socialist Studies, Vancouver, June 5, 2008. It was originally titled “Building socialism for the 21st century”. To hear an audio recording of the speech, click HERE.
A spectre is haunting capitalism. It is the spectre of socialism for the 21st century. Increasingly, the characteristics of this spectre are becoming clear, and we are able to see enough to understand what it is not. The only thing that is not clear at this point is whether the spectre is real – i.e., whether it is actually an earthly presence.
Consider what this spectre is not. It is not the belief that by struggling within capitalism for reforms that it is possible to change the nature of capitalism — i.e., that a better capitalism, a third way, can suspend the logic of capital (except momentarily). Nor is it a focus upon electing friendly governments to preside over exploitation, oppression and exclusion — i.e., to support barbarism with a human face. Indeed, this spectre does not accept the premise that you can challenge the logic of capital without understanding it. Very simply, the spectre of socialism for the 21st century is not yesterday’s liberal package — social democracy. Further, this spectre is not a focus upon the industrial working class as the revolutionary subjects of socialism, a privileging whereby all other workers (including those in the growing informal sector) are seen as lesser workers, unproductive workers, indeed lumpenproletariat. Nor does it suggest that those industrial workers by virtue of the difference between their productivity with advanced means of production and their incomes (i.e., the extent of their exploitation) have a greater entitlement to the wealth of society than the poor and excluded.
In the conception of socialism for the 21st century, socialism is not confused with the ownership of the means of production by the state such that (a) it is thought that all that is necessary for socialism is to nationalise and (b) that everything not nationalised is an affront. Indeed, this spectre does not emphasise the development of productive forces without regard for the nature of productive relations (such that gulags, dictatorship and indeed capitalism can all be justified because they develop the productive forces and thereby move you closer to socialism and communism).
Nor, for that matter, does it think of two post-capitalist states, socialism and communism, separated by a Chinese wall; in the concept of socialism for the 21st century, there is no separate socialist principle of “to each according to his contribution’’ which must be honoured. Rather, there is simply the recognition that the development of the new society is a process and that this process necessarily begins on a defective basis — in other words, with defects such as self orientation. Precisely for this reason, this recognition of existing defects, the battle of ideas — an ideological battle against the old world — is central to the concept of socialism for the 21st century.
Finally, socialism for the 21st century is not based upon democracy in the classic sense. By that, I mean that it is not based upon the concept of representative democracy — that institutional form in which rule by the people is transformed into voting periodically for those who will misrule them. All these fall into what I call yesterday’s socialist package.
Marx and the centrality of human development
So, if the spectre of socialism for the 21st century differs from yesterday’s liberal and socialist packages, what is it?
First of all, it is a stress upon the centrality of human development. In this respect, it is a restoration of the focus of 19th century socialists. It is the vision of a society with the goal (according to Saint-Simon) of providing to its members “the greatest possible opportunity for the development of their faculties’’, a goal to which Louis Blanc referred as ensuring that everyone has “the power to develop and exercise his faculties in order to really be free’’ and of a society in which, according to Friedrich Engels, “every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society’’. This vision of human development which is central to socialism for the 21st century was unquestionably Marx’s vision (Lebowitz, 2006: 53-60)
The Young Marx envisioned a “rich human being’’ — one who has developed their capacities and capabilities to the point where they are able “to take gratification in a many-sided way’’ — “the rich man profoundly endowed with all the senses’’ (Marx, 1844: 302). “In place of the wealth and poverty of political economy’’, he proposed, “come the rich human being and rich human need’’ (Marx, 1844: 304). But, it was not only a young, romantic, so-called pre-Marxist Marx who spoke so eloquently about rich human beings. In the Grundrisse, Marx returned explicitly to this conception of human wealth — to a rich human being — “as rich as possible in needs, because rich in qualities and relations’’; real wealth, he understood, is the development of human capacity — the “development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption’’ (Marx, 1973: 325).
Could anything be clearer? This is what Marx’s conception of socialism was all about — the creation of a society which removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. He looked ahead to that society of associated producers, where each individual is able to develop her full potential — i.e., the “absolute working-out of his creative potentialities’’, the “complete working out of the human content’’, the “development of all human powers as such the end in itself’’ (Marx, 1973: 488, 541, 708). In contrast to capitalist society in which we are the means to expand the wealth of capital, Marx in his book Capital pointed to that alternative society, “the inverse situation in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development’’ (Marx, 1977: 772).
The workers’ own need for development — there is the spectre, there is the impulse for a new society. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx projected that in the cooperative society based upon the common ownership of the means of production, the productive forces would have “increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly’’ (Marx, 1875: 24). As he described it in the Communist Manifesto, our goal is “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’’ (Lebowitz, 2003: 202-5). Our goal, in short, cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others are not; we are interdependent, we are all members of a human family. Thus our goal must be the full development of all human potential.
`These ideas live today’
There’s more here than a 19th century view. That these ideas live today can be seen very clearly in the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela. In its explicit recognition (in Article 299) that the goal of a human society must be that of “ensuring overall human development’’, in the declaration of Article 20 that “everyone has the right to the free development of his or her own personality’’ and the focus of Article 102 upon “developing the creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society’’ — this theme of human development pervades the Bolivarian Constitution.
Further, there is something there that you don’t find in the liberal conceptions of human development underlying the UN Human Development Index. This constitution also focuses upon the question of how people develop their capacities and capabilities — i.e., how overall human development occurs. Article 62 of the Bolivarian Constitution declares that participation by people in “forming, carrying out and controlling the management of public affairs is the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective’’. The necessary way. And, the same emphasis upon a democratic, participatory and protagonistic society is present in the economic sphere, which is why Article 70 stresses “self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms’’ and why Article 102’s goal of “developing the creative potential of every human being’’ emphasises “active, conscious and joint participation’’.
This focus upon practice as essential for human development was, of course, Marx’s central insight into how people change. It’s not a matter simply of spending more on education, health and social services. Remember Marx’s early comment on Robert Owen’s conception that what was needed to change people was to change the circumstances in which they exist. Marx (1845) emphatically rejected the idea that we can give people a gift, that if we just change the circumstances in which they exist they will be themselves different people. You are forgetting, he pointed out, that it is human beings who change circumstances. The idea that we can create new circumstances for people and thereby change them, he insisted, in fact divides society into two parts — one part of which is deemed superior to society. It is the same perspective that Paulo Freire (2006: 72) subsequently rejected in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed — the concept that “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing’’.
In contrast, Marx introduced the concept of revolutionary practice — “the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change’’ — the red thread that runs throughout his work. He talked, for example, of how people develop through their own struggles — how this is the only way the working class can “succeed in ridding itself of the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew’’. And he told workers that they would have to go through as much as 50 years of struggles “not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power’’. And, again, after the Paris Commune in 1871, over a quarter of a century after he first began to explore this theme, he commented that workers know “they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historical processes, transforming circumstances and men’’ (Lebowitz, 2003: 179-84).
Always the same point — we change ourselves through our activity. This idea of the simultaneous change in circumstances and self-change, however, is not limited to class struggle itself. It is present in all activities of people — i.e., every process of activity has two products — i.e., joint products — the change in circumstances and the change in the actor. This obviously applies in the sphere of production as well. As Marx commented in the Grundrisse, in production “the producers change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and ideas, …new needs and new language’’. Here, indeed, is the essence of the cooperative society based upon common ownership of the means of production — “when the worker cooperates in a planned way with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species’’.
How far, of course, this is from the idea that what you have to do is build up the productive forces and thereby transform the conditions in which people exist, transforming their being and their consciousness! But what other inferences flow from these principles — the focus upon human development and upon revolutionary practice, that simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change? Let me suggest that these two principles constitute the “key link’’, the key link we need to grasp (in Lenin’s words) if we are to understand the concept of socialism for the 21st century.
Consider, for example, what this means for the process of production. If people are prevented from using their minds within the workplace but instead follow directions from above, you have what Marx described as the crippling of body and mind, producers who are fragmented, degraded, alienated from “the intellectual potentialities of the labour process’’. There’s no surprise that Marx looked forward to the re-combining of head and hand, the uniting of mental and physical labour — i.e., to a time when the individual worker can call “his own muscles into play under the control of his own brain’’. But, more than a simple combination of mental and manual labour within the sphere of production is needed. Without “intelligent direction of production’’ by workers, without production “under their conscious and planned control’’, workers cannot develop their potential as human beings because their own power becomes a power over them (Marx, 1977: 450, 173).
`Protagonistic’ democracy
What kind of productive relations, then, can provide the conditions for the full development of human capacities? Only those in which there is conscious cooperation among associated producers; only those in which the goal of production is that of the workers themselves. Clearly, though, this requires more than worker-management in individual workplaces. They must be the goals of workers in society, too — workers in their communities.
After all, what is production? It’s not something that occurs only in a factory or in what we traditionally identify as a workplace. When we understand the goal as that of human development, we recognise that production should not be confused with production of specific use-values; rather, as Marx noted, all specific products and activities are mere moments in a process of producing human beings, who are the real result of social production. And, that points to the importance of making each moment a site for the collective decision making and variety of activity that develops human capacities.
Implicit in the emphasis of the concept of socialism for the 21st century upon human development and how that development can occur only through practice is our need to be able to develop through democratic, participatory and protagonistic activity in every aspect of our lives. Through revolutionary practice in our communities, our workplaces and in all our social institutions, we produce ourselves as ‘rich human beings’ — rich in capacities and needs — in contrast to the impoverished and crippled human beings that capitalism produces.
In contrast to the hierarchical capitalist state (which Marx understood as an “engine of class despotism’’) and to the despotism of the capitalist workplace, only a revolutionary democracy can create the conditions in which we can invent ourselves daily as rich human beings. This concept is one of democracy in practice, democracy as practice, democracy as protagonism. Democracy in this sense — protagonistic democracy in the workplace, protagonistic democracy in neighbourhoods, communities, communes — is the democracy of people who are transforming themselves into revolutionary subjects.
How else but through protagonistic democracy in production can we ensure that the process of producing is one which enriches people and expands their capacities rather than crippling and impoverishing them? How else but through protagonistic democracy in society can we ensure that what is produced is what is needed to foster the realisation of our potential?
If there is to be democratic production for the needs of society, however, there is an essential precondition: there cannot be a monopolisation of the products of human labour by individuals, groups or the state. In other words, the precondition is social ownership of the means of production: this is the first side of what President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has called the “elementary triangle’’ of socialism: (a) social ownership of the means of production, which is a basis for (b) social production organised by workers in order to (c) satisfy communal needs and communal purposes.
Let us consider each element in this particular combination of distribution - production - consumption.
A. Social ownership of the means of production
Social ownership of the means of production is critical because it is the only way to ensure that our communal, social productivity is directed to the free development of all rather than used to satisfy the private goals of capitalists, groups of individuals or state bureaucrats. Social ownership is not, however, the same as state ownership. Social ownership implies a profound democracy — one in which people function as subjects, both as producers and as members of society, in determining the use of the results of our social labour.
B. Production organised by workers
Production organised by workers builds new relations among producers — relations of cooperation and solidarity. As long as workers are prevented from developing their capacities by combining thinking and doing in the workplace, they remain alienated and fragmented human beings whose enjoyment consists in possessing and consuming things. And, if workers don’t make decisions in the workplace and develop their capacities, we can be certain that someone else will. Protagonistic democracy in the workplace is an essential condition for the full development of the producers.
C. Satisfaction of communal needs and purposes
Satisfaction of communal needs and purposes focuses upon the importance of basing our productive activity upon the recognition of our common humanity and our needs as members of the human family. Thus, it stresses the importance of going beyond self-interest to think of our community and society. As long we produce only for our private gain, how do we look at other people? As competitors or as customers — i.e., as enemies or as means to our own ends; thus, we remain alienated, fragmented and crippled. Rather than relating to others through an exchange relation (and, thus, trying to get the best deal possible for ourselves), this third element of the elementary triangle of socialism has as its goal building a relation to others characterised by our unity based upon recognition of difference; through our activity, then, we both build solidarity among people and at the same time produce ourselves differently.
And, this concept of solidarity is central because it is saying that all human beings, all parts of the collective worker, are entitled to draw upon our “communal, social productivity’’. The premise is not at all that we have the individual right to consume things without limit but, rather, that we recognise the centrality of “the worker’s own need for development’’. Further, our claim upon the accumulated fruits of social brain and hand is not based upon exploitation. It is not because you have been exploited that you are entitled to share in the fruits of social labour. Rather, it is because you are a human being in a human society – and because, like all of us, you have the right to the opportunity to develop all your potential.
At the same time as a human being in a human society you also have the obligation to other members of this human family — to make certain that they also have this opportunity, that they too can develop their potential. As a member of this family you are called upon to do your share — a concept also present in the Bolivarian Constitution: Article 135 notes “the obligations which by virtue of solidarity, social responsibility and humanitarian assistance, are incumbent upon individuals according to their abilities’’.
Look at the direction that this key link — human development and the simultaneous changing of circumstance and self-change takes us:
- to democratic decision making in the workplace and the community
- to a focus upon building solidarity and new socialist human beings rather than relying upon exchange relations and material self-interest (which Che Guevara — whose 80th birthday would have been today — warned us leads to a blind alley)
- to a new conception of the state as one which is not over and above civil society (i.e., a state of the Paris Commune-type) — i.e., a state which Marx wrote is our own “living force’’, our own power, rather than a power used against us
- and, for that matter, this key link of human development and revolutionary practice leads us to recognise the need for a political instrument which respects the creative energy and revolutionary practice of masses rather than substitutes its own wisdom. In short, a political instrument which embraces the revolutionary pedagogy of Rosa Luxemburg when she argued: “The working class demands the right to make its mistakes and learn in the dialectic of history. Let us speak plainly. Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee.’’
Is the spectre real? Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution
The outlines of the spectre, socialism for the 21st century, become increasingly clear. The question remains, however, is the spectre real? Does it have an earthly presence? Especially, since this vision of the spectre draws so much upon the discourse of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, it is important to ask what the reality is there.
Certainly, socialism for the 21st century has been explicitly on the agenda in Venezuela since Chavez’s closing speech at the January 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, when he surprised many people by saying, “We have to re-invent socialism.’’ At that time, Chavez emphasised that “It can’t be the kind of socialism that we saw in the Soviet Union, but it will emerge as we develop new systems that are built on cooperation, not competition.’’ Capitalism has to be transcended, he argued, if we are ever going to end the poverty of the majority of the world. “But we cannot resort to state capitalism, which would be the same perversion of the Soviet Union. We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything.’’
Without question, there has been progress in this direction. Starting in 2004, oil revenues from the newly recaptured state oil company were directed to new missions which have been providing people with basic prerequisites for human development — education, health care, adequate and affordable food. Important steps, too, have been taken to develop each side of the elementary socialist triangle:
A. Social property: There has been an expansion of state property, which can be a threshold to socialist property (because it is possible to direct state property to satisfy social needs). In addition to the expansion of state sectors in oil and basic industry, to last year’s acquisition of strategic sectors such as communications, electric power and the recovery of the dominant position for the state in the heavy oil fields has been added this year so far a major dairy company and most recently the steel company (SIDOR) that had been privatised by a previous government. Further, the offensive against the latifundia has resumed with several land seizures (or “recoveries’’), and new state companies (including joint ventures with state firms from countries such as Iran) have been created to produce means of production like tractors.
B. Social production: While the government has continued to seek ways to encourage worker-management, in particular by supporting cooperatives and recovered factories, this side of the triangle is the least developed so far. In part, this is because of opposition within the state to worker-management in strategic sectors such as oil and energy, and in part because of opposition from traditional trade unions to co-management structures and workers’ councils. What has been happening is a continued search for forms, and the government has moved from exploring cooperatives as the desired form, to EPS, companies of social production (which made commitments to workers and communities), and now to the exploration of the concept of socialist companies. Everyday, I hear of new ideas in this direction. At this point, this aspect is a work in process. However, it does appear that a previous model of 51% state ownership and 49% ownership by a workers’ cooperative is being replaced by focus upon 100% state ownership with workers’ control. Progress in this area, unfortunately, has been held up by the chaos and intense battles between Chavist trade union currents, and that has been a source of incredible frustration for many — including Chavez. In this process, Chavez continues to exhort the working class to play a leadership role. After this year’s takeover of the dairy producer Los Andes, he argued that “workers’ committees must be created, socialist committees, in order to transform the factory from inside. The workers must know what is happening in the company, participate in decision-making in the firm.’’ And, after the decision to nationalise SIDOR, he announced that the government was a government of the working class. At this very point, the nationalisation of SIDOR after major struggles by the steel workers has re-animated the organised working class; and our institute (Centro Internacional Miranda) has organised roundtables between tendencies and currents that would not have been possible several months ago.
C. Production for social needs: Throughout the country, there are many experiments attempting to link producers and consumers directly — especially in the sphere of agricultural products and in local trading with local currencies. To be able to identify social needs, though, continuing social institutions are required; and the most significant advance that has occurred is the development in 2006 of the new communal councils which are able to identify the needs of their communities. These councils are an extraordinary experiment in bringing power to people in their neighbourhoods — creating an institutional form in which they can diagnose their needs collectively and determine the priorities for their communities. Of course, the idea of participatory diagnosis and budgeting is not unique to Venezuela; that is occurring in a number of communities elsewhere (and the most famous example is Porto Alegre in Brazil). But what is unique in Venezuela is the size of the units in question. Communal councils are formed to represent in urban areas 200-400 families (which can be 1000 people) and in rural areas as few as 20 families. It means that the councils are choosing not distant representatives but, rather, their neighbours, people they know well — and not as representatives but as voceros, spokespersons for the ultimate decision-making body, the general assembly (which, of course, meets in the neighbourhood, thus allowing everyone to participate). In the communal councils you have the embryo for a new state from below. And that was recognised explicitly by Chavez last year when he proclaimed “All Power to the Communal Councils’’. Now, of course, the communal councils are small, and the problems of society go well beyond those that can be resolved at the neighbourhood level. That is understood, and Chavez has called the councils themselves the cell of a new socialist state. They are seen as the building blocks — essential because they are allowing people to develop confidence and capacities in dealing with problems they understand. (Observing the sense of pride in these communities is very moving.) However, it is obviously necessary to begin to combine the communal councils into larger associations in order to deal with larger problems. And that is precisely what is happening now with the creation of pilot projects to combine some of the more advanced groups of councils into socialist communes. The process envisioned is very clearly one of trying to build a new state from below.
So, is this spectre of socialism for the 21st century, with its focus upon human development and practice, real? Clearly, it is not just words. There is truly an attempt to make socialism for the 21st century real. But, can it succeed?
Can socialism for the 21st century succeed?
You might wonder, why am I even posing this question — given evidence that the desire is there and knowledge that the great oil revenues available provide the means!
Three years ago, I gave a talk in Venezuela called “Socialism doesn’t drop from the sky’’, which has been very widely circulated in Venezuela (largely because Chavez has talked about it a number of times on television); it is also a chapter in my book, Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century. One aspect of the title of that essay refers to the obvious point that socialism obviously is necessarily rooted in particular societies — which is to say that it must be developed in societies with particular histories. To understand the possibilities for success in Venezuela, you have to know something about the nature of that society.
Now, I can’t give you a complete, balanced account of Venezuela in the time left. So, I’ll just stress just some of the characteristics which suggest significant obstacles to building socialism for the 21st century in Venezuela.
When you talk about Venezuela, you have to begin with oil. Not only the effect of oil exports upon the hollowing-out of the economy such that local manufacturing and agriculture effectively disappeared as the result of an exchange rate which made it much cheaper to import everything rather than to produce it domestically. It’s an extreme example of what is called the “Dutch disease’’: despite rich agricultural land, Venezuela was importing 70% of its food. So, massive migration from the countryside to live in the cities, e.g., in the hills surrounding Caracas — 80% of the population is urban, maybe 10% engaged in agriculture. And as for industry, it was largely import processing — processing food, assembling cars and assorted other import-related sectors. Oil production itself doesn’t generate many jobs, so we have to think about unemployment, an informal sector (about 50% of the working class) and poverty — extreme social debt and inequality.
Add to that economic effect, the effect upon state and society. Unlike the classic picture of a state resting upon civil society, upon the social classes, in Venezuela, civil society rests upon the state. Contrary to Engels’ sneers at Tkachev, in Venezuela the state indeed has been suspended in mid-air — or, more precisely, suspended upon an oil geyser. Thus, the state has been the supreme object of desire — or, more precisely, access to the state for the purpose of gaining access to oil rents has been a national preoccupation. And, in this orgy of rent seeking within a poverty-stricken society — a culture of corruption and clientalism, parasitic capitalists who don’t invest, a labour aristocracy with trade union leaders who sell jobs, a party system which functions as an alternating transmission belt for elections and access to state jobs, a state which mostly does not work because it is filled with incompetent sinecurists but, when it does, is completely top-down. These are just a few characteristics worth mentioning.
All of this was present in Venezuela when Chavez was elected in 1998. And, you would have to be truly naïve to think that it disappeared when Chávez came to office. On the contrary, it pervades Chavism — the corruption, the clientalism, the nature of the state, the nature of the party (including the new party – PSUV — currently being built), the gap between the organised working class and the poor in the informal sector — it’s all there! And, you will recognise that it is entirely contrary to everything in the concept of socialism for the 21st century.
Socialism doesn’t drop from the sky. It is necessarily rooted in particular societies. And, these two souls which currently beat in the breast of Venezuela are clearly at war. Chavez often cites [Italian Marxist Antonio] Gramsci about how the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born (although he leaves out the part about how a great many morbid symptoms appear at that time). Precisely because of these two opposed tendencies, when I write about Venezuela, I always stress the internal struggle within Chavism as the main obstacle to the success of the Bolivarian Revolution. Obviously, it is not the only obstacle — there is the existing oligarchy, the latifundists (who are the most reactionary and violent part of the opposition), the existing capitalists in their enclaves of import processing, finance and the media (which has been their main weapon) and, of course, US imperialism. Not only was the US complicit in the 2002 coup which briefly removed Chavez and in the oil lockout and sabotage later that year, but it also funds and trains the opposition, orchestrates the international media blitz against Venezuela (currently with the assistance of magical laptop computers produced by its Colombian clients), and it is in the process of bringing the US navy back to patrol the waters off Venezuela.
Imperialism is no paper tiger. And, clearly, solidarity with the Bolivarian process is essential by those outside the country who value the concepts and developments I have described. However, I stress the internal obstacles to socialism within Chavism — the emerging new capitalists (the “bolibourgeoisie’’), the high officials (both from military and vanguardist traditions — it is difficult to see the distinction) who are opposed to power from below in workplaces and communities (and, thus opposed, in this respect, to human development and revolutionary practice), the party functionaries and nomenklatura. Why do I stress this? Because I consider this the ultimate contradiction of the revolution; and, I think the struggle between this “endogenous right’’ (the right from within) and the masses who have been mobilised is the ultimate conflict which will determine the fate of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Who will win?
Who will win? I have to tell you honestly that I don’t know. My daily mantra in Venezuela is “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’’. I can tell you that Venezuela is no place for a revolutionary who suffers from bipolar disorder. There are the days of depression and despair; there are the days of manic exultation. In the end, it will all depend upon struggle, class struggle, and when it comes to class struggle, there are no guarantees.
But let’s assume a worse-case scenario — that the process in Venezuela degenerates, that it proceeds to demoralise its supporters, is defeated in one way or another by defectors, domestic capitalists, the military or imperialism. Let’s assume, in other words, that this particular earthly manifestation of the spectre of socialism for the 21st century is no more.
What will be left? A spectre — but one with much more substance than Marx and Engels could write about in the Communist Manifesto in the mid-19th century. A spectre — but one which is capable of becoming a material force by grasping the minds of masses. A spectre — but one which is absolutely essential to our survival because of another spectre.
Think about this concept of socialism for the 21st century. About the focus upon human development as the goal, upon a democratic, participatory, protagonistic society as the necessary way for the complete development of people, individually and collectively. Think about the idea of communal councils in which people can collectively decide upon their needs, where they simultaneously change circumstances and themselves. Think about democracy in the workplace, about ending the divide between thinking and doing and being able to draw upon the tacit knowledge of workers to be able to produce better. Think in general about this concept of revolutionary democracy which is central to the concept of socialism for the 21st century.
This is not a concept just for Venezuela or Latin America or for the poor of the South. Why is this not a spectre that can appeal to Canadians in their communities and workplaces? Why is there not the potential for a political instrument here that can focus upon these aspects, that can put forward a vision and that can be a medium for coordinating these struggles from below?
I suggest that this is not just a nice wish — it is a necessity. Because there is another spectre out there — a spectre which is haunting humanity, the spectre of barbarism.
Think about capitalism. Its very essence is the drive to expand capital. The picture is one of capital constantly generating more surplus value in the form of commodities which must be sold, constantly trying to create new needs in order to make real that surplus value in the form of money. That constant generation of new needs, Marx noted already in the mid 19th century, is the basis of the contemporary power of capital.
Thus, a growing circle — a spiral of growing alienated production, growing needs and growing consumption. But how long can that continue? Everyone knows that the high levels of consumption achieved in certain parts of the world cannot be copied in the parts of the world which capital has newly incorporated into the world capitalist economy. Very simply, the Earth cannot sustain this — as we can already see with the clear evidence of global warming and the growing shortages which reflect rising demands for particular products in the new capitalist centers. Sooner or later, that circle will reach its limits. Its ultimate limit is given by the limits of nature, the limits of the Earth to sustain more and more consumption of commodities, more and more consumption of the Earth’s resources.
But well before we reach the ultimate limits of the vicious circle of capitalism, there inevitably will arise the question of who is entitled to command those increasingly limited resources. To whom will go the oil, the metals, the water — all those requirements of modern life? Will it be the currently rich countries of capitalism, those that have been able to develop because others have not? In other words, will they be able to maintain the vast advantages they have in terms of consumption of things and resources — and to use their power to grab the resources located in other countries? Will newly emerging capitalist countries (and, indeed, those not emerging at all) be able to capture a “fair share’’? Will the impoverished producers of the world — producers well aware of the standards of consumption elsewhere as the result of the mass media — accept that they are not entitled to the fruits of civilisation? How will this be resolved?
The spectre of barbarism is haunting humanity. And, what is the alternative to it? Yesterday’s liberalism — social democracy — has never understood the nature of capital and offers, accordingly, only barbarism with a human face. And, yesterday’s socialist package, with its promise of more rapid development of productive forces, its privileging of industrial workers and, its premise of a stage based upon a principle that we all must get in accordance with our contribution — this is no alternative to the crisis humanity faces.
Whatever the ultimate fate of the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, its principal contribution has been to restore hope; it has done this by revealing that there is an alternative to neoliberalism and the logic of capital. The alternative offered by socialism for the 21st century points to the need to understand that, regardless of the luck of our birthplaces or our own past contributions, the accumulated fruits of social brain and hand belong to us all. Internationally, its alternative is ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which has created links between Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia based upon solidarity rather than exchange relations. At the core of the alternative offered by socialism for the 21st century is the idea of building a society based upon relations of solidarity — solidarity between producers, e.g., in formal and informal sectors, solidarity between those of the North and those of the South. At its core is the idea of producing consciously for communal needs and purposes and thereby building a society in which the free development of all is the condition for the free development of each.
So, let me conclude with a point that is completely unoriginal but which, so significantly, is being heard more and more these days: the choice before us is — socialism or barbarism.
Let me add, though, that socialism doesn’t drop from the sky — you have to struggle to make it real.
Michael A. Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and director of the Centro International Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela.
Bibliography
Freire, Paulo. 2006. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum).
Lebowitz, Michael A. 2003. Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
Lebowitz, Michael A. 2006. Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century (New York: Monthly Review Press).
Marx, Karl. 1844. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in Marx and Engels (1975b), Collected Works, Vol. 3.
Marx, Karl. 1845. ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, in Marx and Engels (1976), Collected Works, Vol. 5.
Marx, Karl. 1875. Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Marx and Engels (1962), Selected Works, Vol. II.
Marx, Karl. 1973. Grundrisse (New York: Vintage Books).
Marx, Karl. 1977. Capital, Vol. I (New York: Vintage Books).
Courtesy: Links
Posted by Radical Notes May 12, 2008 at 1:14 am in Nepal, Marxism
[A recent interview with Com Baburam Bhattarai clearly reminds us of Lenin’s defense of the independence of workers’ organisations:
“We now have a state under which it is the business of the massively organised proletariat to protect itself, while we, for our part, must use these workers’ organisations to protect the workers from their state, and to get them to protect our state.”]
1. The first step is, though we have won the election, the reactionary classes are hatching various conspiracies, especially the imperialists. They’re trying to instigate the monarchist forces and the bureaucratic bourgeois class, which is strongly aligned with the imperialists. They’re instigating them not to hand over power to the Maoists. So for that we may have to go through a process of struggle, for which the working class and all the oppressed masses should be prepared. If need be, we’ll have to go to the street to resist this reactionary backlash. Practically, we appealed to them to get prepared. And secondly, after we form the government under our leadership, then we’ll have to provide some immediate relief to the working class and the poor people, those who have suffered all along, they’re suffering from poverty, unemployment, and also discrimination. Families of those martyred. They’re poor people. Their sons and daughters were martyred so they will need immediate relief. And there are others who were disappeared, and those who were injured. That’s one aspect. The other aspect is the real basic poor people, working classes, who need economic relief, immediately. So we are thinking of providing a public distribution system, a network of cooperative stores whereby we can provide basic goods to the working class and the poor people. We want to provide some fund for that. And then, for education and health. Our position has been that education and health and employment should be — and also shelter and food security — these should be the fundamental right of the masses of the people. This we have already promised in our manifesto. And partially it has been written in the interim constitution also. So we’ll try to put it into practice. And for that, we’ll have to prepare a new budget, and appropriate new policy of the new government. The working class and the mass of the poor people should contribute to this process. They should advise our party and the future government, and they should be very vigilant to keep the government in line. If the public and the working class and the poor masses don’t put pressure, then the government may not be able to move in the right direction. There are very bad historical experiences in this regard, you see. So until and unless the working class is very vigilant and exercises its power to control the government from below, there are chances of the government deviating, not implementing what it has promised during the elections.
2. Firstly, our party recognizes that even when we participate in the government, this government is not a fully revolutionary government, it is a transitional government. So we’ll have to compromise with the other classes. But we would like to take the lead. We would like to transform the state from within. For that we have to create pressure from outside. For that our party’s position is that the whole leadership of the party won’t join the government. One section of the leadership will join the government, and the other section of the party leadership will remain outside and continue organizing and mobilizing the masses. So the party will take that route. Many of us will be [in the government]. The main form of struggle will be from within the government, to make the new constitution. But another section will remain outside the government. That’s why all of our central leaders didn’t participate in the elections. We want to organize and mobilize the masses so that they can put pressure on the government. So this is one aspect. And we want to develop certain institutions. Though we haven’t found the concrete form for them yet, we have made some policy decisions. When we put forth the concept of development of democracy in the 21st century, our slogan was that the government and the party should be constantly supervised by the masses, and the masses should intervene at times if need be. This is our policy. But we have not been able to find the concrete form. What will be the way of intervening in case the government deviates? What will be the form of putting pressure, apart from public demonstrations? How will they intervene in the state system? That mechanism we are trying to work out.
Posted by Dipankar Basu March 25, 2008 at 8:34 pm in Working Class, Marxism, Labour, Politics
Dipankar Basu, Sanhati
Abstract: This article attempts to throw some light on the following two questions: (1) How does the classical Marxist tradition conceptualize the relationship between the two stages of revolution: democratic and the socialist? (2) Does the democratic revolution lead to deepening and widening capitalism? Is capitalism necessary to develop the productive capacity of a society? The answer to the first question emerges from the idea of the “revolution of permanence” proposed by Marx in 1850, accepted, extended and enriched by Lenin as “uninterrupted revolution” and simultaneously developed by Trotsky as “permanent revolution”. This theoretical development was brilliantly put into practice by Lenin between the February and October revolutions in Russia in 1917. The answer to the second question emerges clearly from the debates on the national and colonial question in the Second Congress of the Third International in 1920. From this debate what emerges is the idea of the democratic revolution led by the proletariat as the start of the process of non-capitalist path of the development of the productive capacity of society, moving towards the future socialist revolution. Rather than deepening and widening capitalism, the democratic revolution under the proletariat leads society in the opposite direction, in a socialist, i.e., proletarian direction. Promoting capitalism is not necessary for the development of the productive capacity of a country.
This brief historical note has been occasioned by recent attempts to justify the championing of capitalism by a communist party – Communist Party of India (Marxist) – as the vehicle for its industrialization program in West Bengal, India. The justification, which argues for the necessity of capitalism by taking recourse to the distinction between the two stages of revolution, rests on an erroneous reading of international working class theory and practice. While it correctly posits the distinction between the two stages of social revolution, it does so mechanically, formally, and in a one-sided manner; the crucial and related question of the relationship between the two stages is not accorded the attention it deserves. That, in my opinion, is the primary source of error and leads to arguing for the necessity of “deepening and widening” capitalism as against initiating efforts to transcend it. Such a reformist position is of course not new within the international working class movement; in fact it is strikingly similar in several crucial respects to the Menshevik position in early twentieth century Russia as also to the stance of “social democracy” that developed from Bernstenian “revisionism” in late nineteenth century Germany. This position, moreover, is decidedly not part of the Leninist tradition - the Bolshevik tradition that developed in Russia - or any revolutionary tradition within Marxism; this should be immediately obvious from the enormous theoretical and political effort that Lenin put in combating its deleterious consequences for the historical project of the Russian proletariat.
The issue of the analytical distinction between the two stages of the world-historical revolution has been accepted within the international working class movement, at least of the Marxist variety, for about 150 years. With the publication of the Communist Manifesto, this issue was more or less settled among communists. In pre-revolutionary Russia, this distinction was accepted by all streams of Marxists: the Legal Marxists, the Economists and the Social-Democrats. This distinction was never the bone of contention in the fiery debates in pre-revolutionary Russia between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Neither was this distinction a major point of departure in pre-revolutionary China; nor is this distinction the point of debate within the Marxist left in India. Hence, merely positing this distinction anew, a century after it was accepted by the international working class movement, is hardly sufficient for the development of a Marxist theoretical position. Attention needs to be instead focused, in my opinion, on the more important issue of correctly conceptualizing the relationship between the two stages.
It is not merely a recognition of the distinction but the conceptualization of the relationship between the two that distinguishes the various streams of the Left; that is as much true today as it has been historically. I will demonstrate, by a careful reading of the historical development of Marxist theory and practice, that it is the conceptualization of this relationship that has distinguished the revolutionary from the reformist Marxist stream at crucial historical junctures: Marx and Engels from the other socialists during the middle of the 19th century; the Legal Marxists and the Economists from the early Social-Democrats (including the young Lenin) during the last decade of the 19th century in pre-revolutionary Russia; the Mensheviks from the Bolsheviks in later years leading up to and after the October revolution; Lenin (and Trotsky) from the other Bolsheviks between the February and October revolutions.
Before beginning the main story, two clarifications are in order. First, I would like to state more precisely the sense in which the word “revolution” is used, and second, I would like to indicate the two very different senses in which the phrase “social democrat” will be used throughout this paper. Revolution, in this paper, stands for social revolution, a phenomenon which has been defined by Theda Skocpol’s in the following way:
“Social revolutions are rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below… What is unique to social revolution is that basic changes in social structure and in political structure occur together in a mutually reinforcing fashion. And these changes occur through intense socio-political conflicts in which class struggles play a key role.” (Skocpol, 1979)
As Foran (2005) has argued, there are three important characteristics of a social revolution (embedded in the above definition) that needs to be always kept in mind: rapid political change, deep and lasting structural transformation of the economy and active mass participation; whenever I refer to revolution, I will mean the explosive combination of these three elements.
The second point is a terminological clarification regarding the two diametrically opposed use of the phrase “social democrat” in this paper. Social-democrat, with the all important hyphen, will refer to the Marxist revolutionaries in Russia; that is precisely how they referred to themselves and I want to stick to that terminology as well. The hyphen between “social” and “democrat” denotes the indissoluble link between the dual historical tasks of the international proletariat, a theme we will return to constantly throughout this paper. Recall that the first Marxist political party in Russia was called the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP); though Lenin’s April Theses in 1917 had ended with the proposal to change the name of the RSDWP, it was only in 1918 that the party formally started using the term that Marx had preferred: communist.
Social democrat, without the hyphen, on the other hand will refer to representatives of the reformist trend in the international working class movement: Bernstein and his followers, the later Kautsky, the later Plekhanov and the Mensheviks in Russia certainly but also later day reformist socialists in Europe and Asia. Note, in passing, that social democracy has a long history, especially in Western Europe, and is marked by certain unmistakable characteristics which we can easily discern in our midst even today: legal opposition within a bourgeois parliamentary framework, willingness to ally with sundry bourgeois parties, undue and an over emphasis on the need for reforms within the system, indefinite postponement of decisive struggles, the attempt to “manage” the contradiction between labour and capital rather than to resolve it in the favour of labour, etc. The reformist and the revolutionary streams also differ markedly in their understanding of social revolution: for the reformists, revolution will emerge ready made from the womb of history by its ineluctable laws; the role of human intervention, though formally accepted, is relegated to a secondary position. For revolutionaries like Lenin and the Bolsheviks and Trotsky, on the other hand, revolution has to be first and foremost made by human intervention, mass political action riding on the tide of history.
Marx: From the Manifesto to the Communist League
In the Communist Manifesto published on the eve of a revolutionary wave in Europe in 1848, Marx and Engels had summarized the materialist understanding of historical development. The struggle between social classes was identified as the motor force of historical change, with the victorious class rapidly reorganizing the whole structure of material production accompanied by changes in the political, cultural and ideological spheres of social life. Generalizing from English and French history, Marx and Engels identified two stages in this world-historical movement: the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the proletarian-socialist revolution. The bourgeois revolution, led by the revolutionary bourgeoisie, in alliance with the oppressed peasantry, would overthrow the feudal order and usher in bourgeois capitalism. The development of capitalism would go hand in and with the growth and development (political, social, ideological and technological) of the proletariat, the grave digger of capitalism; in due time, when the productive forces of society had developed to support a higher form of social organization and when the proletariat had become mature and strong politically, it would usher in the socialist revolution and begin the process of the transcendence of class society.
Quite early on Marx had started realizing the limitations of the strict schema of the two stages of revolution (the bourgeois-democratic to be followed by the proletarian-socialist) that he had generalized from English and French history and that he, along with Engels, had so eloquently summarized in the Communist Manifesto. There are two historical reasons which, to our mind, prompted Marx to question this schema. First, the whole generalization referred to a historical period where the proletariat had not yet entered into political stage; if the proletariat were to enter the historical stage even before the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution that would change the historical dynamics radically. Second, there might be historical reasons because of which the bourgeoisie of a particular country is “weak” and therefore incapable of and unwilling to lead the democratic revolution to completion; and so in this case, the strict schema presented in the Communist Manifesto would again need modification. With the advantage of hindsight we can see that the modifications that would need to be worked out would specifically relate to two issues: the relationship between the two revolutions and the class-leadership in the democratic stage of the revolution.
A close reading shows that even in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels had taken care to allow possibilities of different trajectories, than the one they had sketched, in concrete circumstances. For instance, they had explicitly referred to the potential weakness of the German bourgeoisie and therefore hinted at the possibility of the proletariat having to take the responsibility of the democratic revolution. Once the German bourgeoisie had shown it’s true colors in 1848, whereby it regrouped with feudal elements to keep the proletariat in check and thereby aborted the democratic revolution, Marx had started his decisive move away from the schema of the Manifesto. While maintaining the analytical distinction between the two stages, he drew a much closer link between them. This more nuanced position was explicitly brought to the fore in his address to the Central Committee of the Communist League in London in 1850. Drawing lessons from the recent revolutionary upsurge in Europe and looking to the future, he drew attention of the international working class to the essential continuity between the two stages of the revolution, what Lenin would later characterize as the “indissoluble link” between the two revolutions.
“While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible … it is our interest and task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society but the foundation of a new one.” (Marx, 1850)
The two most crucial, and intimately related, ideas that stand out in this speech are the utmost necessity of maintaining the independence of the proletariat vis-a-vis the liberal bourgeoisie and of realizing the continuity of the two revolutions in practice. Arguing for the creation, in all situations and at all costs, of an independent party of the proletariat, Marx had exhorted the proletariat at the same time to aim for the “revolution of permanence”.
“But they [i.e., the proletariat] must do the utmost for their final victory by clarifying their minds as to what their class interests are, by taking up their position as an independent party as soon as possible, and by not allowing themselves to be seduced for a single moment by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeois into refraining from the independent organization of the party of the proletariat. Their battle cry must be: The Revolution of Permanence.” (Marx, 1850)
This remarkable document, in essence, foreshadows much of what emerged as Bolshevism in late nineteenth century Russia. The tight and indissoluble link between the twin tasks of the proletariat (and hence the indissoluble link between the democratic and the socialist revolutions), the utmost importance of maintaining an independent political position of the proletariat, the utter necessity of avoiding tailism in practical politics, themes that were hammered out later by the Bolsheviks in the heat of the Russian revolution are already present in Marx’s speech to the Communist League. It is clear that Lenin’s idea of an “uninterrupted revolution”, a position he stressed in his debates with the reformists in Russia, and Trotsky’s idea of a “permanent revolution” are both derived from this speech of Marx.
Note however that the formulation of the necessity of the “leadership” of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution is still not explicitly developed by Marx. Revolutionary social-democrats in Russia, reflecting on and reacting to the specific context of the Russian revolution extended the classical Marxist framework by taking the idea of the class-independence of the proletariat, which is already there in Marx, one step further by arguing for its leadership position in the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Legal Marxists and Economists: Early Debates in Russia
The origin of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) can be traced back to a relatively little known “conference” of nine men in Minsk in March 1898. Though none of the nine men played any leading role in the subsequent revolutionary history of Russia, the conference did come out with a “manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party” as a precursor of later-day party programmes. The manifesto unequivocally accepted Marx’s historical account of the two stages of the future social revolution (as worked out by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto): bourgeois-democratic and the proletarian-socialist revolution. More important and interesting from our viewpoint, the Minsk conference manifesto went on to argue that the Russian bourgeoisie was incapable of carrying through the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the end and thus identified the young Russian proletariat as the historical agent on whose able shoulders fell the “dual task” of both revolutions: the democratic and the socialist.
When, therefore, the second Congress - the defining congress of the Russian revolution, the birthplace of Bolshevism as a political stream - of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP) met in 1903 to debate on the party programme, it worked within the framework inaugurated by the conference of 1898. It started with the dual tasks of the Russian proletariat, i.e., the twin tasks of the democratic and the socialist revolution, as an axiom, as a point of departure, as a self-evident historical and political truth; there was no disagreement or debate on this point with the RSDWP. The real debate was on how to define the content of these revolutions and on how to define the relationship between the two; it was the issue of the relationship that was to rend the RSDWP into two factions, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. But before looking at that debate, we must spend some time studying the debates that preceded the second Congress, the debates of the young Lenin with the Legal Marxists and the Economists; a study of the early debates is interesting and useful because many of the positions of the Mensheviks were repetitions of either the Economists’ or the Legal Marxists’ discredited positions, positions against which the whole RSDWP had argued during these early years.
Before the RSDWP could consolidate the political-economic tasks of the proletariat concisely in a party programme, it had to successfully argue against three contemporary socialist trends within late-nineteenth century Russia: the Narodniks, the Legal Marxists and the Economists. The theoretical arguments against the Narodniks were largely, and successfully, carried home by Plekhanov, the Father of Russian Marxism; when Lenin did join the fray, he largely repeated Plekhanov’s arguments and marshaled empirical evidence in favour of the general Marxist point about the development of capitalism in Russia. From this he drew an important political conclusion that separated the Social-Democrats from the Narodniks forever: the proletariat and not the peasantry was to be the historical agent of social revolution in Russia. The development of capitalism in Russian agriculture was, according to Lenin, accelerating the class divisions among the peasantry; the peasantry, as a single, homogeneous social entity was rapidly disappearing and so basing a strategy of social revolution on this vanishing social entity was historic folly. The only stable social class that was emerging and strengthening itself with capitalism and whose interests were in contradiction to capitalism was the proletariat; hence, argued Lenin, the only feasible strategy of revolution could be one led by and in the long-term interests of the proletariat.
As to the other two trends, Legal Marxism and Economism, it was Lenin’s energetic intervention and crystal-clear prose that ripped apart their arguments and exposed their utter hollowness. As Lenin remarked several times later in his life, the debate with the Legal Marxists and the Economists foreshadowed the subsequent, fierce and often bitter, debates between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In both debates, as also his debates with the Narodniks, what distinguished Lenin’s position from his opponents was his consistent, unwavering and uncompromising class viewpoint, the viewpoint of the emerging Russian proletariat.
Lenin’s debate with the Legal Marxists and the Economists (rather than with the Narodniks) is more relevant for our current discussion because this debate related directly to the issue of the correct understanding of the relationship between the dual tasks of the proletariat. The tidy schema of revolution worked out by Marx and Engels in the Communist manifesto was a generalization from English and French history, as we have already remarked. It distinguished analytically between the bourgeois and the socialist revolutions and stressed the historical precedence of the former to the latter. We have already seen how Marx himself modified this schema in the concrete context of nineteenth century Germany; the Legal Marxists, on the other hand, stuck to this schema in a most doctrinaire fashion (foreshadowing the whole history of social democracy and reformism) and with disastrous consequences.
Accepting the Marxist distinction between the two revolutions and the historical precedence of one over the other led the Legal Marxists to argue for the reformist path to the transcendence of capitalism. One of it’s leading proponents, Peter Struve, chastised Russian socialists for concerning themselves with fanciful and unrealizable projects of “heaven storming”; he, instead, wanted them to patiently “learn in the school of capitalism”. The echo of that Legal Marxist injunction can still be heard, via Bernstein’s “revisionism” in late-nineteenth Germany, in social democratic circles in India today! This was, of course, an abandonment of the proletarian viewpoint, as Lenin pointed out. The mistake of the Legal Marxists lay precisely in an incorrect understanding of the relationship between the dual tasks of the proletariat. The democratic revolution was not an end in itself, as the Legal Marxists tended to implicitly suggest, but was inseparably tied with it’s twin, the socialist revolution. It is not that the Legal Marxists did not accept the necessity of the socialist revolution; being Marxists, they had to accept it as later-day social democrats did. But this acceptance came with the caveat that the period separating the two revolutions was so large that in essence one could very well forget about the socialist revolution at the moment and instead engage in activities to “learn in the school of capitalism”.
Though the Economists took a different lesson from the neat schema of the Communist Manifesto as compared to the Legal Marxists, they arrived at the same practical conclusions. For the Economists, it was important to draw a sharp distinction between the economic and the political spheres. In their opinion, workers were only concerned with economic issues, issues of wage and work, that directly effected their daily lives; they were not concerned with political issues, issues of political freedom and governance and power. The political sphere, according to the Economists, was the sole preserve of intellectuals; since, moreover, the current conditions called for a bourgeois-democratic revolution, socialist struggles, i.e., struggles for the capture of state power by the proletariat, were pushed into the indefinite future. Juxtaposing a sharp distinction between the economic and the political with their reading of the schema of the Communist Manifesto led the Economists to suggest that socialists should restrict themselves “to support[ing] the economic struggle of the proletariat and to participat[ing] in liberal opposition activity”. What was ruled out was an independent political party of the working class, which axiomatically ruled out revolutionary political activity.
In an early piece on this issue in 1898, Lenin made clear the correct Marxist understanding of the matter and distinguished the social-democrats sharply from the Legal Marxists and the Economists:
“The object of the practical activities of the Social-Democrats is, as is well known, to lead the class struggle of the proletariat and to organize that struggle in both its manifestations: socialist (the fight against the capitalist class aimed at destroying the class system and organizing socialist society), and democratic (the fight against absolutism aimed at winning political liberty in Russia and democratizing the political and social system of Russia). We said as is well known. And indeed, from the very moment they appeared as a separate social-revolutionary trend, the Russian Social-Democrats have always quite definitely indicated this object of their activities, have always emphasized the dual manifestation and content of the class struggle of the proletariat and have always insisted on the inseparable connection between their socialist and democratic tasks — a connection clearly expressed in the name they have adopted.” (Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 2, p. 327)
The inseparability of the dual tasks of the proletariat derives, according to Lenin, from the following two facts: first, the proletariat can only emancipate itself fully, and thereby society, through political liberty. Hence, it supports the struggle for political liberty against absolutism and feudal oppression as its own struggle, as the political bed on which will grow the socialist struggle. This is the reason why the class conscious proletariat supports every revolutionary movement against the present social system, why it supports the struggle of progressive classes against reactionary classes and strata in general. Second, among all the classes and strata fighting for democracy, the proletariat is the only thoroughly consistent, unreserved, staunch and resolute supporter of democracy; it is the only class which is ready to take the fight for democracy to its end, to its natural culmination, to its full completion. Every other class, by its very position within the class structure of society, can only provide qualified support to the struggle for democracy; their democracy is half hearted, it always looks back, as Lenin put it. An understanding of the social-democratic party as “deriving its strength from the combination of socialist and democratic struggle into the single, indivisible class struggle of the … proletariat” remained the hallmark of Bolshevism right through the tumultuous days of the victorious October revolution.
It is this insistence on the uninterruptedness of the twin revolutions that found expression in the Bolshevik formulation of the proletariat as the leader of both the revolutions; and it is the recognition of this historical role of the proletariat that informed the refusal of the Bolsheviks to relinquish the leadership role to the bourgeoisie, to become its political “tail”. It is the same dogged insistence, so strikingly consistent, that led to the split with the Mensheviks in 1903.
Two interesting and important things emerge from these early debates. First, some of the ideas that were to dominate the subsequent debates of the Russian revolution, the ideas moreover that would separate the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks (the revolutionaries from the reformists) and would separate Lenin (and Trotsky) from the rest of the Bolsheviks between the February and the October revolutions, were introduced within the Russian working-class movement at this juncture. It is these ideas, among others, that would be refined, deepened, enriched and applied with uncanny consistency in the subsequent history of the Russian revolution. Second, that an eclectic, half-hearted, formal and mechanical acceptance of Marxism can be combined with utterly reformist politics came to the fore with rare clarity in Russian history for the first time during these early debates. As later events demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate to this day, formal acceptance of Marxism can often be combined with reformist politics.
A closer reading of international working class history demonstrates that acceptance of Marxism alongside reformist practice is already hidden as a possibility in the formulation of the “dual tasks” of the proletariat. It must be recalled the formulation of the “dual tasks” found its way into the programme of the RSDWP in the distinction between the minimum and the maximum programmes. The minimum programme referred to the set of measures that could be implemented within, and without challenging, a bourgeois democratic setup. Following the Communist Manifesto, these included abolition of private property in land, a progressive income tax, abolition of inheritance, free education for all and other such concrete measures of bourgeois reform. The maximum programme, on the other hand, enshrined revolutionary aspirations, the overthrow of capitalism and the beginning of socialist construction. The distinction between the minimum and maximum programmes thus provided space for reformist politics by a gradual and subtle decoupling of the two programmes and shifting the emphasis on the former.
“One of the unforeseen effects of this division [between the minimum and and maximum programmes] was to attract into social-democratic parties a large body of members who by conviction or temperament were more interested in the minimum than in the maximum programme; and in countries where some of the minimum demands had in fact been realized, and others seemed likely to be realized in the future, through the process of bourgeois democracy, the parties tended more and more to relegate the demands of the maximum programme to the category of remote theoretical aims concentrate party activities on the realization of the minimum programme.” (Carr, 1952, p. 17-18, emphasis added).
Lessons of 1905: Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
Though the dispute between what later came to be known as the Bolsheviks (“the majority”) and the Mensheviks (“the minority”) during the second congress of the RSDWP in 1903 seemed to rest on an issue of party statute, i.e., what should be the qualification for party membership, later events made clear that deeper issues of theory and practice were involved. As the bitter debates following the split in the party were to make clear, the schism in the RSDWP really rested on different ways of understanding the relationship between the dual tasks of the proletariat in concrete, practical terms. This followed quite clearly from the diametrically opposite political lessons the two streams drew from the failed revolution of 1905. The difference can be most clearly seen if we organize the discussion around the following two questions: (1) relationship of the two revolutions, and (2) the role of the peasantry.
The Mensheviks adhered to the cut-and-dried formula about the strict sequence of the two revolutions that they picked up in a doctrinaire fashion from the Communist Manifesto. For the Mensheviks, the bourgeois revolution had to come first and so far the Bolsheviks were in agreement with them. The doctrinaire understanding of the Mensheviks, their intellectual sterility, came to the fore when they went on, from this correct premise, to insist that it was “only through the bourgeois revolution that capitalism could receive its full development in Russia, and, until that development occurred, the Russian proletariat could not become strong enough to initiate and carry out the socialist revolution” (Carr, 1950, p.39). In other words, the two revolutions must be separated by an indefinite period of time during which capitalism needs to develop, flourish, and display its bourgeois magic.
In effect, therefore, the Mensheviks never fully agreed with Lenin’s 1898 formulation of the “indissoluble link” between the two revolutions; in fact their position was a regression even from the position worked out by the first Congress in 1898 in Minsk. That is why they could insist on allowing capitalism in Russia to receive it’s “fullest development” and only then initiating the struggle of the proletariat for socialism. The immediate and practical implication of the Menshevik understanding was what Lenin termed political “tailism”, i.e., allowing the proletariat as-a-class to become an appendage to, a follower of, the bourgeoisie in the democratic revolutionary struggle instead of forcibly usurping the leadership position for itself.
The Menshevik position followed from an incorrect class analysis of Russian society; their chief error was to neglect the emergence of the proletariat on the historical scene and to take the cue from the Marx of the Communist League to re-work the schema of the Manifesto. Thus, on the eve of the revolution, one of their leading spokesmen could say:
“If we take a look at the arena of the struggle in Russia then what do we see? Only two forces: the tsarist autocracy and the liberal bourgeoisie, which is now organized and possesses a huge specific weight. The working mass, however, is atomized and can do nothing; as an independent force we do not exist; and thus our task consists in supporting the second force, the liberal bourgeoisie, and encouraging it and in no case intimidating it by presenting our own independent political demands.” (quoted in Zinoviev, 1923).
This is precisely where Lenin differed sharply from Menshevik class analysis and politics; Lenin’s analysis of the the 1905 revolution started in fact with the recognition of the entrance of the Russian proletariat on the historical scene. From this fact he drew the conclusion that Marx had hinted at in his speech to the Central Committee of the Communist League in 1850: the bourgeoisie was neither willing nor capable of completing the bourgeois-democratic revolution. This was both because it was weak (lacking in independent development) and because it realized that completion of the democratic revolution carried within it the danger of the proletariat’s political ascendancy. Thus, completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, as a prelude to the consummation of the socialist revolution, fell on the shoulders of the Russian proletariat. The tight link between the two revolutions, a position that Lenin had already worked out in 1898, was reiterated once again:
“From the democratic revolution we shall begin immediately and within the measure of our strength – the strength of the conscious and organized proletariat – to make the transition to the socialist revolution. We stand for uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop half way” (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 237)
According to Lenin’s analysis, two important conditions had to be satisfied for the Russian proletariat to complete its dual historical tasks: (1) successful alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry, and (2) victorious socialist revolutions in European countries. It was on the crucial question of the alliance with the peasantry that Lenin differed sharply not only from the Mensheviks but also from Trotsky (who had otherwise worked out a position very similar to Lenin’s). For both the Mensheviks and Trotsky, the peasantry was a repository of reaction; while Trotsky arrived at this incorrect conclusion on the basis of his experience of the 1905 revolution, the Mensheviks adhered to this position out of their doctrinaire understanding of Marxism. Lenin, on the other hand, realized that though the peasantry was not revolutionary in the Narodnik sense but it’s force could still be harnessed for the revolution because at that juncture it was less interested in protecting private property than in confiscating the land-owners’ land, the dominant form of rural private property (Carr, 1950).
Thus, Lenin arrived at an elegant formulation of the role of the peasantry in the revolution. The proletariat, in alliance with the whole peasantry would complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution and overthrow feudalism, absolutism and the monarchy despite the vacillation, or even opposition, of the bourgeoisie. This would immediately lead to the next stage of the revolution, where the proletariat would have to split the peasantry along class lines, ally with the landless labourers and the poor peasantry against the rich peasants and start the transition towards socialism.
This second point, where the urban proletariat had to ally with the rural proletariat was an immensely important practical point. Between the February and October revolutions, where Lenin discerned precisely this transition from the bourgeois-democratic to the socialist stage taking place, the utmost importance of an independent organization of the rural proletariat was repeatedly indicated. For instance in the third of the Letters From Afar written on March 11(24) 1917, which discusses the issue of the proletarian militia, he says:
“The prime and most important task, and one that brooks no delay, is to set up organizations of this kind [i.e., Soviets of Workers’ Deputies] in all parts of Russia without exception, for all trades and strata of the proletarian and semi-proletarian population without exception…for the entire mass of the peasantry our Party … should especially recommend Soviets of wage-workers and Soviets of small tillers who do not sell grain, to be formed separately from the well-to-do peasants. Without this, it will be impossible … to conduct a truly proletarian policy in general…” (Lenin, 1917, in Zizek, p. 41)
In a footnote, he adds: “In rural districts a struggle will now develop for the small and, partly middle peasants. The landlords, leaning on the well-to-do peasants, will try to lead them into subordination to the bourgeoisie. Leaning on the rural wage-workers and rural poor, we must lead them into the closest alliance with the urban proletariat.” Note that in Lenin’s formulation, the idea of an “agrarian revolution” as the axis of the bourgeois-democratic revolution is not explicitly there; the experience of the Chinese revolution would be required to extend the classical Marxist framework further by explicitly theorizing the nature and complexities of the agrarian revolution in a semi-feudal, semi-colonial social formation as part of what Mao called the new democratic revolution. This constant and critical engagement with received wisdom is the hallmark of a living revolutionary tradition.
Revolution at the Gates: Between February and October 1917, and Beyond
The February 1917 revolution in Russia caught all the socialists unawares; neither had they planned for it nor had they participated in it. This was true as much of the Mensheviks as of the Bolsheviks. The revolution had given rise to a situation of “dual power”: a Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie and the landlords and a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants (in the form of soldiers) in the form of the Soviets. The crucial question that again divided the revolutionaries from the reformists was a correct understanding of the relationship between the two.
For the Mensheviks, the problem was resolved in a rather straightforward manner. In keeping with their schematic reading of Marxism, they saw the task of the proletariat at the present moment to be one of supporting the bourgeoisie and helping it complete the democratic revolution; hence they argued for the Soviets supporting the Provisional Government, pushing for democratic reforms from behind rather than leading them, in short aiding in the “fullest development” of bourgeois capitalism till such time that it [capitalism] exhausted all it’s progressive possibilities and the proletariat became mature and strong enough to make the final bid for power. All the Bolshevik leaders, including Stalin, accepted the Menshevik position in essence. It was left to the political genius of Lenin to break through this reformist consensus.
Exiled in Switzerland and getting news about Russian development only through the bourgeois press, Lenin had already started developing the essentials of revolutionary understanding about the transition from the first to the second stage of the revolution; his Letters From Afar give indications of the direction of his thinking. To the complete astonishment of his followers, the first public statement that Lenin made immediately after his arrival in the Finland station in Petrograd in April 1917 was to hail the proletarian-socialist revolution and not to dish out homilies for the bourgeois-democratic revolution! When he presented his April Theses within party circles the next day, outlining a program for the transition to a socialist stage of the revolution, he was completely isolated. Bogdanov is said to have constantly interrupted his speech with shouts of “Delirium, the delirium of a madman,” and not one Bolshevik other than Kollantai spoke in favour of his plans. When it was published in the Pravda, the editorial team distanced itself from the argument by attributing it to an individual and not to the Party.
Between the February and the October revolution, Lenin applied with ferocious consistency the theory that he had developed so painstakingly in his debates with the reformist Mensheviks. Formulations of the indissoluble link between the two stages of the revolution and the associated idea of the leadership of the proletariat (in alliance with the peasantry) in the democratic revolution, which he had argued for tirelessly over the years were now about to be realized in practice. The fact that the proletariat and the peasantry (in the form of soldiers) had established an independent, revolutionary site of political power in the form of the Soviets was the crucial signal to Lenin that the bourgeois-democratic revolution had been completed and that the transition to the next stage was underway. Since there could not be two powers in the State, only one of the two – proletarian or bourgeois – would survive in the ensuing struggle that he could foresee. The task of the proletariat, therefore, was to start preparing for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and transferring all power to the Soviets, and not to stand up in support of the bourgeoisie, as the Mensheviks argued. Waiting for the “fullest development” of capitalism, as reformist doctrine suggested, was tantamount to ensuring that the Soviets got crushed by force like the Paris Commune in 1871.
Note that in Lenin’s insistence on the completion of the bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolution there is no place for the discourse of productive forces or the development of capitalism. It was not that capitalism had flourished and the productive forces had developed adequately in Russia between February and October 1917 to warrant the call for a socialist revolution; that was obviously not the case as the Bolsheviks were acutely aware. It was rather the case that the establishment of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry was envisioned as an alternative path of development, a non-capitalist framework of social relations for the development of the productive forces. It is of course not true that the democratic revolution establishes socialism; its social and economic content remains bourgeois, but with the proletariat at the helm of affairs, a transition towards socialism is initiated, the movement is imparted an unmistakable socialist, i.e., proletarian orientation.
In the context of imperialism, questions about the character of the two revolutions, about the role of communists in them and about the question of the attitude towards capitalism in the colonial and semi-colonial countries had been discussed threadbare in the Second Congress of the Communist International in July 1920. Even though there were disagreements between Lenin, the official rapporteur on the “national and colonial question”, and M. N. Roy, who presented his own theses on the question, they came out with one striking agreement: where the working class was victorious and able to establish its political hegemony, it could lead the country (essentially the peasant masses) onto the path of socialism without the intervening capitalist stage of development. Presenting his report to the Congress on July 26, Lenin summarized this point of agreement as follows:
“… are we to consider as correct the assertion that the capitalist stage of economic development is inevitable for backward nations now on the road to emancipation and among whom a certain advance towards progress is to be seen since the war? We replied in the negative. If the victorious revolutionary proletariat conducts systematic propaganda among them, and the Soviet governments come to their aid with all the means at their disposal – in that event it will be mistaken to assume that the backward peoples must inevitably go through the capitalist stage of development… the Communist International should advance the proposition, with appropriate theoretical grounding, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.” (Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 244, emphasis added).
The essence of the democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat is the inauguration of a non-capitalist path of economic and social development. As Lenin points in the same report that we have just quoted from, forms of socialist organization, i.e. Soviets, can and should be formed not only in a proletarian context but also in a context marked by “peasant feudal and semi-feudal relations”. It is obvious that these institutions would impart the socialist orientation to the whole movement, would form the seeds of the future socialist society, seeds moreover nurtured, supported, defended and deepened in a still predominantly bourgeois society. To insist, as some have done recently, that the task of the proletariat during the democratic stage of the world historical revolution is to work for deepening capitalism, instead of forging a non-capitalist path of development through Soviet forms of organization, is to turn 150 years of international revolutionary working class theory and practice on its head.
Conclusion
The Menshevik position about the “fullest development” of capitalism being a necessary condition for the launching of the socialist struggle finds echoes in India today with the insistence on the development of the “most thorough-going and broad-based” capitalism being the precondition for initiating the socialist struggle. While it is hardly surprising that such a position finds political expression in inveterate “tailism”, what really is rather more difficult to believe is the accompanying ahistorical rhetoric of “different” capitalisms. It almost seems to have been asserted that we can choose among the different varieties of capitalisms being offered by history, limited only by our powers of imagination. Which one do you want comrade, history seems to have asked? Well, the social democrats answered, we want the one which is technologically progressive (leads to the fullest development of the productive forces) and also looks after the welfare of the workers and peasantry (through social reforms and huge expenditures in health and education and nutrition). Does the march of history and the development of the structural contradictions of global capitalism at the beginning of the twenty first century afford us the this luxury, this luxury to choose between capitalisms, between good and bad capitalisms? One is reminded of how Marx had chastised Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy for wanting capitalism without it’s socio-economic ills. The social democrats in India seem hell bent on committing the same mistake all over again.
References
Carr, E. H. The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Volume One. The Macmillan Company. 1950.
———— The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Volume Two. The Macmillan Company. 1952.
Foran, J. Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions. Cambridge University Press. 2005
Lenin, V. I. Collected Works. Fourth Edition, Progress Publishers. 1965 (various volumes).
Marx, K. Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League. March 1850, in On Revolution, The Karl Marx Library, edited and translated by Saul K. Padover. McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1971.
Skocpol, T. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge University Press. 1979.
Zinoviev, G. History of the Bolshevik Party. New Park Publications. 1974 [1923].
Zizek, S. (editor), Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917, V. I. Lenin. Verso. 2002.
Posted by Radical Notes March 24, 2008 at 11:29 am in Working Class, Marxism, Labour
1.
These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labour more or less to its minimum limit. Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.
At the same time, and quite apart form the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wages system!”
After this very long and, I fear, tedious exposition, which I was obliged to enter into to do some justice to the subject matter, I shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions:
Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities.
Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages.
Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
VALUE, PRICE AND PROFIT, 1865
2.
Trades’ unions. Their past, present and future
(a) Their past.
Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The force of numbers, however is broken by disunion. The disunion of the workmen is created and perpetuated by their unavoidable competition among themselves.
Trades’ Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades’ Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediences for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the Trades’ Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades’ Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades’ Unions were forming centres of organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades’ Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for superseding the very system of wages labour and capital rule.
(b) Their present.
Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades’ Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wages slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements. Of late, however, they seem to awaken to some sense of their great historical mission, as appears, for instance, from their participation, in England, in the recent political movement, from the enlarged views taken of their function in the United States, and from the following resolution passed at the recent great conference of Trades’ delegates at Sheffield:
“That this Conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the advisability of becoming affiliated to that hody, believing that it is essential to the progress and prosperity of the entire working community.”
(c) Their future.
Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless [French text has: “incapable of organised resistance”] by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large [French and German texts read: “convince the broad masses of workers”] that their efforts, far from being narrow — and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions.
Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council, 1866
3.
The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point.
On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight-hour day, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.
Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i.e., the political power of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against and a hostile attitude towards the policy of the ruling classes. Otherwise it will remain a plaything in their hands, as the September revolution in France showed, and as is also proved up to a certain point by the game Messrs. Gladstone & Co. are bringing off in England even up to the present time.
LETTER TO FRIEDRICH BOLTE, 1871
Posted by Pratyush Chandra July 6, 2007 at 10:22 am in Marxism, Politics
A few months back, a comrade associated with a communist organisation in India circulated a question - “Are there no possibilities of outside-party movements now?” This question is already internationally debated, prominently within a large section of radicals, who have either been part of the party based movements or have struggled fervently against what could be called the party’s tendency to “substitute” the spirit of self-emancipatory struggles through its organisational conservatism and control. However, this question has been reframed in various ways, especially as, “Is there any possibility of party movements now?” The issue has become all the more relevant in the context of recent revolutionary upsurges in Latin America, given the rising scepticism among the traditional left and jubilation among the non-party/post-party left.
Recent arguments and endeavours for building a unified revolutionary party in Venezuela to spearhead the Bolivarian transformation beyond the present stage have once again brought to focus the issues of party, party structure and its relationship to movements. In India, where the ‘communist movement’ despite its splintering has been a decisive force both within state politics and radical politics, the question has become significant with mushrooming of diverse varieties of movements independent of party influences. Also, I believe, this question of party and beyond party has always been a central concern in socialist and working class movements the world over (many times as discussions over the dialectic of spontaneity and organisation).
I
Any “yes-no” answer to the above-mentioned question is bound to be refuted by counter-examples. In fact, a crucial part of the answer to that question lies in understanding movement, party and party building as processes, in their fluidity, not as fixtures imposing themselves on the spontaneity of the masses. If a party is organically linked to a movement, then it perpetually recreates itself in the moments of that movement. A revolutionary party is nothing more than an organisation of the militants of a revolutionary movement. You can have a group-structure (well-organised or loose) prior to any movement, but until and unless it refounds itself within the movement, it generally polices the popular energy.
There are innumerable examples of movements throughout the world that can claim to be partyless or above/beyond parties - prominent among them are the Venezuelan, Argentine and Zapatistas in Mexico, anti-globalisation movements etc. However, there are numerous groups, even traditional party structures operating within most of these movements - but none of them individually can claim these movements to be ‘theirs’. What is a movement which is not more than a party? But in the very “organisation” of all these movements, we find a continuous party building process or rather processes going on in the attempts to give definite expressions to the goals and visions of the movements.
So, in my opinion, to put it rather schematically, what we witness in the formative processes of a movement is that groups or group-structures (it is immaterial whether they call themselves parties or not), with their own prior movemental experiences come into contact with mass spontaneity - where they are either reborn as groups of “militants” trying to give expression to the movemental needs and goals or they come as predefined structures shaping the movement according to their own fixed needs and goals (for example, to win elections etc).
When I say they “come”, it does not mean that these groups are not there. But their there-ness is defined by the consolidation and institutionalisation of their prior experiences, gains and failures. During these latter processes, these groups either congeal as having interests which are now accommodated within the system or they are ready to unlearn and relearn during the course of new struggles of the oppressed and the exploited. In the first case, they are there as part of the hegemony or as its agencies (conscious or subconscious), and in the second case, they are “reborn” as groups or parties of militants, of organic intellectuals - intellectuals organically linked to the working class, as Gramsci would put.
On this perpetual making and remaking of the organisation and party within and with relation to movements, Marx made a very interesting observation in his letter to Friedrich Bolte (November 23, 1871), where he recapitulates the role and problems of the First International:
“The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point… [O]ut of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.”
It is important to remember and grasp the dialectics of Marx’s dual assertion about the need of a communist party, on the one hand, and what, as Engels asserted in his 1888 preface of the English edition of the Communist Manifesto, “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself”. The latter was already there in the General Rules of the First International (”That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”). In his Critique of Gotha Programme too, while criticising the Lasalleans, Marx says, “The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men’s Association.” Marx clearly rejects here any substitutionist tendency, which has been rampant within the workers and peasants’ movements in India and elsewhere, as the ‘vanguard’ organisations attempt to “possess” movements. A striking example is the following quote from the party programme of the largest constituent of the parliamentary left in India:
“The people’s democratic front cannot successfully be built and the revolution cannot attain victory except under the leadership of the working class and its political party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).”
In the above-quoted letter to Bolte, Marx made a very illuminating remark on the function of sectism within the working class movement, which can be a lesson for all of us today:
“The International was founded in order to replace the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle. …The Internationalists could not have maintained themselves if the course of history had not already smashed up the sectarian system. The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary. Nevertheless what history has shown everywhere was repeated within the International. The antiquated makes an attempt to re-establish and maintain itself within the newly achieved form.”
As the most recent and clear example of “the antiquated” making an “attempt to re-establish and maintain itself within the newly achieved form” are, what Michael Lebowitz calls, the “glum faces” in reaction to Chavez’s call for a unified party in Venezuela. To resist the replacement of “the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle” at the time when the working class has attained maturity is “essentially reactionary”.
In India, too, at the grassroots level the labouring classes have time and again come together and demonstrated their will and energy to move beyond the systemic logic, but the presence of the “antiquated” becomes a hurdle in transforming this solidarity into a decisive challenge to the system. This hurdle is perpetuated by schematically subordinating the working class consciousness (dubbed “economistic”) to the “politics” of parties. The party becomes an organisation above class rather than “the organisation of what already exists within the class” (Mario Tronti), in other words, as the organisation of class capacity. Hence the issue of class seizure and control of production apparatuses and means of production as a challenge to capitalist hegemony transforming the social relations is relegated to a secondary level, while the issue of ensuring formal political consolidation and stability in a competitive setup becomes the end of party politics. The issue of posing class alternatives to capitalist regime of accumulation is sidelined in the process of the “accumulation of power”.
However, this “antiquated” cannot be fought by wishing away the notion of “party”, it can only be done by viewing party building as a process with all its contradictions and as a continuous class struggle, including against internalised hegemonies - against labour aristocrats and party bureaucrats.
II
In West Bengal (in fact, everywhere in India) the working class and the poor peasantry have outgrown the traditional left. This is not something new and to be lamented upon. It always happens that organisations develop according to the contemporary needs of the class struggle, and are bound to be institutionalised, and even coopted, becoming hurdles for further battles, not able to channel their forces for new exigencies of class dynamics and struggle. This happens so because in the process of a struggle, a major segment devoted to the needs of this struggle is caught-up in the networks it has established for their fulfillment. It is unable to detach itself from the fruits of the struggle, therefore losing its vitality and is overwhelmed by the existential needs.
In the name of consolidation of movemental gains, what is developed is a kind of ideologisation, a fetish - organisation for organisation’s sake. This leads to the organisation’s and its leadership’s cooption in the hegemonic setup (obviously not just in the formal apparatuses) which in turn due to struggles has to concede some space to new needs and aspirations. In fact, this is how capitalism reproduces itself politically. And this is how societal hegemonies gain agencies within radical organisations, and are organisationally internalised - developing aristocracies and bureaucracies.
Two important points regarding the recent agitations in West Bengal can be fruitful for us in understanding the above-mentioned dynamics:
1) As prominent Marxist-Feminist historian Tanika Sarkar says, “an amazing measure of peasant self-confidence and self-esteem that we saw at Singur and at Nandigram” is a result of whatever limited land reforms the Left Front (LF) initiated and is in the “very long and rich tradition of the Left politics and culture”.
2) The price of state power that helped sustain this was the cooption of the LF in the hegemonic policy regime, which is neoliberal for now. So the vested interests that developed during these struggles and cooption led to a situation where “[b]eyond registration of sharecroppers and some land redistribution, no other forms of agrarian restructuring were imagined.” Also, “industries were allowed to die away, leaving about 50,000 dead factories and the virtual collapse of the jute industry”, as com
