From: Charles Brown DISCUSSION DOCUMENT Opening to National Board, March 2000 Class, Class Struggle, and Class Consciousness By Sam Webb, National Chair, CPUSA "History generally, and the history of revolutions in particular is always richer in content, more varied, more many-sided, more lively and "subtle" than even the best parties and the most class conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes can ever imagine." (Lenin, Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, p. 76) Introduction My opening resumes a practice that we began but then suspended prior to the ideological conference. At the time, we said that we should re-start this practice at a later date, but for one reason or another, we never got around to it until now. Hopefully, my opening will get the ball rolling again. An educational/theoretical discussion at every meeting may be too ambitious, but we should do it with some regularity, maybe monthly. In any case, we should make a decision on this matter. Unless we structure theoretical discussions into our agendas and assign comrades to lead them, the theoretical life of the NB will limp. We know from experience that pressing political demands as well as hesitancy among board members to open too often become the excuse to postpone discussions of theory and ideology. This is shortsighted and self-defeating. We are living at a time marked by profound changes in the political, economic, and social landscape on a global level. It is, arguably, a new era in world development. These changes, as you would expect, bring with them new theoretical problems and challenges. In a fast changing world, the pat answer of yesterday is sometimes patently wrong today. Thus, a timely and fresh approach to questions of theory and ideology is imperative. Otherwise, the working class and people's movements easily flounder and opportunities are missed. To some extent, we have examined shifts in world and domestic politics and, more importantly, what's behind these shifts, but much more needs to be done. Hopefully, the resumption of these discussions in the NB will allow us to collectively and energetically further examine in a more systematic way the complex theoretical questions bedeviling the working class and people's movements - in the course of which we will raise our own theoretical level. To insure the most fruitful discussions, we should strive to create an atmosphere that encourages comrades to break new ground, to think outside the box. We need an atmosphere that encourages theoretical exploration and innovation. No one should feel constrained by what they think the 'party line' is on this or that question. Nor, as I said at the NC meeting, should anyone assume the responsibility of ideological guardian of Marxism-Leninism. That is the role of collective bodies and even collective bodies should exercise that function in a considered way. Moreover, we should suspend raising our eyebrows, muttering under our breath, and seeking out sympathetic eyes across the table when comrades make a remark that goes against the grain of our thinking. An excessive zeal for what we understand to be doctrinal purity stifles theoretical inquiry and discussion. It dampens our theoretical imagination and willingness to think about problems in a fresh way. The founders of scientific socialism never claimed, as far as I know, that what they wrote was the last word on politics, economics, or ideology. They never viewed their theoretical innovations, immense as they were, as anything but a foundation for further analysis of a wide range of problems. Lenin once said that Marxism is not a closed and inviolable system while Engels years earlier echoed a similar concern, "The materialistic conception of history," he wrote to a comrade, "has a lot of them nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history ... our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce from them the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, and religious views corresponding to them. But instead too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible and then they deem themselves very tremendous" (Letter to C, Schmidt, August 5, 1890) Marx, of course, shared Engels view. These great minds appreciated the dynamic nature of world capitalism and insisted on creatively and constantly developing their insights and thinking in line with a changing world. Never did they attempt to shoehorn facts to theory. Rather they elaborated and adjusted their theoretical constructs to order to illuminate a fluid and ever changing historical reality. And they did it eagerly and fearlessly. We should try to follow their example in our discussions on ideology and theory in the NB. THEME OF THE OPENING About a week ago, I was in Chicago for a meeting of the National Labor Commission. While there Scott asked me what the theme of my opening to the NB was. I thought a moment, but somewhat embarrassingly, came up blank. Needless to say, this concerned me. After all, I should know what the general line of my presentation is. So I immediately skimmed my very rough notes, hoping that I could cull from them the main thrust of my argument. I wish I could say that I saw the light at once, but that wouldn't be the truth. Nonetheless, after reading the notes a few times, I hit on what I believe is the main theme of my opening. And it is this: I hope to make a case against stiff and rigid concepts of class. In my experience, stiffly constructed concepts of class are never appropriate. And particularly now when political, economic, and ideological life is so fluid, when new opportunities exist to strengthen working class, multi-racial, and all people's unity. What I would like to do is to discuss in order the class struggle, class exploitation and social democracy, class-consciousness, and finally the working class. Part 1: THE CLASS STRUGGLE "The history of all hitherto existing societies," wrote Marx and Engels, "is the history of class struggle." This profound observation by the founders of scientific socialism challenged conventional wisdom. Up until then, the historical process was seen as accidental and arbitrary. If human agency played any role in historical change, it turned on the actions of great personalities and dominant social classes. Marx and Engels, by contrast, turned the historical process on its head. Constructing a new theoretical model, they persuasively argued that historical change was in large measure the outcome of the collective struggle of millions against their class oppressors rather than the result of either the whims of individuals perched at the top of the social structure or historical accidents. In doing so, Marx and Engels transformed in the realm of theory the exploited and oppressed from an inert mass into makers of history. This insight has provided hundreds of millions in every corner of the globe with a new way to understand as well as influence the historical process. And that is precisely what people have done, sometimes in dramatic ways, including in the US where we have had our own moments when ordinary men and women stormed heaven. With any new concept, however, there is always the danger of misinterpretation and oversimplification. And there is no reason to think that this idea of Marx and Engels is safe from such dangers. To be sure, the class struggle is the main thread in historical development, but it is not the only thread, it is not the only causal factor. The historical process is exceedingly complicated and other struggles leave their imprint on history's record as well. In fact, the class struggle mingles with other social struggles and the relationship is complex and reciprocal. The relationship is not one way, with the class struggle always ruling the roost. Only at a high level of theoretical abstraction does the class struggle appear in pure form, does it dance on the stage of history untouched and untainted by the world swirling around it. Closer to the ground, closer to the actual course of events, the class struggle is embedded in a complex social process in which it structures and is structured by other processes. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, history abhors pure forms, the compartmentalization of social phenomena, neat lines of demarcation and static relationships. Let's face it, the historical process is messy. Marx, Engels and Lenin particularly appreciated the entangling nature of historical development. If it were a choice between complexity and simplicity of explanation with regard to historical change, they almost always chose the former for fear that the latter concealed as much as it revealed. They were suspicious of historical explanations that drained the historical process of variation, discounted new experience, and resisted the modification of theory under any circumstances. By and large, they never gave the same explanatory weight to the elegant phrases that appear in their writings that later Marxists and Marxist-Leninists did. While acknowledging the primary role of the class struggle in the historical process, these theoretical giants allowed for novelty, embraced new experience, and altered their views to changing reality. Historical change for them was not reducible to some sanitized version of the class struggle. "To imagine that social revolution," Lenin wrote, "is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all of its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, To imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up and says, "We are for socialism," and another army lines up somewhere else and says, "We are for imperialism," and that will be social revolution ... Whoever expects a "pure" social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip service to revolution without understanding what revolution is all about." (The Discussion of Self-Determination Summed Up) And on another occasion, he said, "All nations will arrive at socialism - this is inevitable, but all will do so in not exactly the same way, each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rates of socialist transformation in the different aspects of social life. There is nothing more primitive from the viewpoint of theory or more ridiculous from that of practice, than to paint, "in the name of historical materialism", this aspect of the future in monotonous grey." (A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism) Such an approach to theory and ideology would suit us well today given the emergence of new political, economic, and ideological patterns, given the emergence of capitalist globalization and everything that comes in its train. At Seattle and then in Washington a few weeks ago, we participated in a movement whose political potential is staggering. To be sure, it's in its early stages, but it embraces already an incredibly broad array of forces. The forms of struggle employed are creative and varied. Its tone is militantly anti-corporate, and even anti-capitalist among some of its currents, particularly the youth. It thinks in global terms. And, labor is assuming a large and larger role in this multi-layered, multi-level movement. Of course, the movement does not have a single center. Its roots are not deep enough. Its programmatic demands are imprecise. The unique leading role of the working class and labor movement is not fully appreciated. And the enormous strength of the racially oppressed is not yet felt, a weakness that has to be overcome quickly. No matter how you look at this phenomenon, one thing is clear: it's going to test our theoretical and political creativity and flexibility like nothing else has for decades. How we measure up will go a long way in determining what our Party and the YCL will look like in a decade from now. Part 2: THE SYSTEMIC NATURE OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE In our view, the class struggle has its origins in material exploitative practices. It is traceable - sometimes directly, other times in more roundabout ways - to a system of exploitation. The ceaseless accumulation of capital and the exploitation of wage labor are two sides of a single coin. And this inner urge is reinforced and sustained by competitive rivalry among competing capitals. The 'race to the bottom', a race that is the ratcheting downward wages and conditions of workers across the globe, is endemic to capitalism and the TNCs which are capitalism's main structural underpinning at this stage of its development. Left to its own devices, capitalism's logic is to extend in a thousand ways through speedup, overtime, job combination, race and gender discrimination, and so forth the unpaid portion of the workday. Or to put it differently, its insatiable urge is to appropriate an every larger quantity of surplus labor from the working class worldwide. After all, when it comes to exploitation, present-day capitalism has no boundaries. More than at any time in its history, it is nearly a universal system, even penetrating and exercising a considerable influence on the economic polices and life of the countries of socialism. But its global dominance has not ushered in an era of peace and prosperity for the world's people. Indeed, mass impoverishment of hundreds of millions, widening race and gender inequality, the ravaging of entire nations and regions, the explosion of child and contingent labor, the massive displacement of unionized workers from the production process, and intensified racism and national chauvinism are the hallmarks of unrestrained markets and global capitalism. Given the exploitative nature of capitalism and its miserable effects, it's easy to agree with Marx, "The main issue," he said in a speech to the Central Committee of the Communist League, "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." (Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, 1850) That's sweet to my ears and, I'm sure, yours, but not surprisingly, social democratic and center forces in the working class and democratic movements look at these matters differently. Exploitative practices, they would argue, exist, in fact on a growing scale. But they do not trace these practices to a system of exploitation, to systemic sources. Instead, social democratic and liberal ideologues blame myopic corporations that accent short-term profits and shareholder capitalism, greedy business people, and misguided public policy for the present predicament. While acknowledging adversarial relations between capital and labor, they claim that disputes can be resolved within the framework of capitalism, albeit in a more benign and worker friendly capitalism than the present one. Labor, they say, should have a seat at the table and the playing field should be level. In short, the class struggle in their eyes is episodic and accidental rather than a permanent, organic, and fundamental feature of capitalist society. This ideological fault line distinguishing communist and other left forces from social democratic and center currents within the labor movement (and other movements for that matter) should not preclude unity of action around issues of common concern however. Our main enemy is not social democracy. In fact, we need a more nuanced attitude toward social democrats in the labor movement. Today's social democratic and social democratic influenced trade unionists are not the same as the social democratic elements that inhabited the top floors of the House of Labor during the Cold War years. The latter were right social democrats - virulently anti-Communist, implacably class collaborationist, and deeply racist and male supremacist. Until recently however we had a tendency to lump the different tendencies of social democracy together into one reactionary, monolithic and unchanging heap. Such attitudes tended to obscure differences within social democracy that in the end count for a lot from the standpoint of class and democratic struggles against the TNCs and the extreme right. This habit of lumping had its origins in the sectarian polices of Communist movement in its formative period. But that error was given an extended lease of life in 1928 when Stalin announced his class against class policy. Given the prestige of the Soviet Party and of Stalin himself, the young communist movement pursued their sectarian policies with a new vigor to the point where social democrats were turned into social fascists. And this policy continued until the time of the 7th World Congress. At that historic gathering Bulgarian Communist Georgi Dimitroff, taking a diametrically different position from the previous policy, argued for unity with social democratic workers and their leaders who were, he maintained, changing under the weight of the fascist threat and the worldwide economic crisis. We should carefully study Dimitroff's speech, especially in light of the changes taking place in labor's ranks, including among social democratic minded leaders and workers. Under the impact of globalization and the assault of the extreme right, this section of the labor movement is shedding not all at once, but shedding nonetheless, concepts that held them back from mass struggle. This shift is dramatically enlarging the possibilities for broad unity and radical change. Already, the struggle for economic justice, for racial and gender equality, for immigrant rights and cross border solidarity, for a revitalized labor movement are on a higher ground. Moreover this shift is also widening the opportunities for communists to make unique contributions to the class struggle, provided, of course, that we quickly adjust our tactics to the new conditions and currents of struggle. Part 3: CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS Class-consciousness is a cause and consequence of the class struggle. It is as much a way of acting as it is a way of thinking. It is made and unmade. It is not a hereditary trait, but rather it is constructed in the course of struggle. Class-consciousness is not a neat and tidy concept. Class conscious workers have a lot of rough edges. Even contradictory ideas co-habit in the their heads, but the main thing is what ideas dominate at any given moment. Class-consciousness does not inexorably follow from one's position in a social system of production. If it did then socialist revolution would have happened a long time ago. We don't invent class-consciousness anymore than we invented fresh winds in the labor movement. Yes, we have a hand - and a unique hand at that - in its formation, but we are not the only hands stirring the pot. Class-consciousness is conditioned by other objective and subjective factors as well. The working class itself, to borrow a phrase from E. P. Thompson, the great British historian, has a hand in its own making. Between social being and social consciousness is the realm of struggle. And in this realm - not apart from but in close connection with the communist and left forces - the working class makes itself into a social force, capable of leading a broad people's movement and contending for political power. In this regard, did Lenin shortchange the working class in "What Is To Be Done" when he wrote that working class by its own efforts could only develop trade union consciousness? This seems too stiff, not open ended enough for me. A few years later his formulation is more expansive. "The working class" he writes, "is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic (meaning socialist minded in the context of pre-Revolutionary Russia) and more than 10 years of Social Democracy (meaning the communist and socialist movement) has done a great deal to transform this spontaneity into consciousness." And on another occasion Lenin has this to say regarding the political capacities of the working class, "Marxism differs from all other socialist theories in the remarkable way that it combines complete scientific sobriety in the analysis of the objective state of affairs with the most emphatic recognition of the revolutionary energy, revolutionary creative genius, and revolutionary initiative of the masses" Now no one should think that I'm suggesting that we suspend our efforts to deepen and extend the class and socialist consciousness of the U.S. working class. To the contrary, such efforts are crucial if the working class and labor movement is to secure through dint of effort its position as a leader of the people's movements at every stage of struggle. What I am suggesting, however, is that no one should underestimate the political and fighting capacities of our nation's multi-racial, multi-national, male-female working people. Experience tells us that the US working class brings its own understandings, insights, know-how and sensibilities to class and democratic battles. It is a quick learner and an able teacher. I never liked the concept that says that the working class is the motor of the revolutionary movement and the Party its leader. Such a mechanical construction, which, as you probably recall, was contained in book that we discussed in a recent NB meeting, is not only mistaken, but harmful. It implies that the Party is detached from the working class movement rather than an integral and militant section of this movement. Moreover, it can easily lead to huge mistakes and distortions at every phase of the class struggle, including in the building of socialism. Part 4: THE WORKING CLASS AND CONCENTRATION In the Communist Manifesto, it says, "the only really revolutionary class is the proletariat." What should we infer from this passage? Are Marx and Engels suggesting that no other social grouping has revolutionary potential? Are they saying that coalition politics and socialism are incompatible? Are they arguing that only our nation's working people are going to board the bus of Bill of Rights socialism? I suppose that a new reader of Marx might draw this conclusion from the passage above. But it would be a mistaken interpretation of Marx and Engels. In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels write that the 'lower middle class' is becoming revolutionary' in view of its impending transfer into the proletariat." Many years later in the Critique of the Gotha program, Marx assails LaSalle, its author, for writing that apart from the working class, all other groupings in society are, but "one reactionary mass." Marx says that this is 'nonsense.' He goes on to write, "Has one [LaSalle] proclaimed to the artisans, small manufacturers, and peasants during the last elections: relative to the working class, you form only one reactionary mass? For Marx the struggle for democracy and socialism consists in winning allies to the side of the working class. Lenin perhaps was even more emphatic about the absolute necessity of this. Do we have a similar strategic point of view? Do we envision that the winning of socialism will be a labor-led coalition affair? For good reasons, we do. For one thing, the opportunities for broad coalitions have seldom been better. One of the notable features of the past few decades is the growth of new social movements. To labor's traditional strategic allies like, for example, the African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American Indian peoples, we have to add a broad array of social groupings that are emerging as new political actors on the stage of struggle at home and abroad. For another thing, there is no other path that will steer us to socialism. Whoever thinks that these gigantic concentrations of economic and political power now bestriding the entire globe can be successfully challenged by the working class on its own is seriously mistaken and does damage to the socialist cause. Of course, the converse is equally true (and we have to convince other social forces of this)- no serious assault on the TNCs and their system of capitalism stands a ghost's chance without the working class assuming a leading position in such a struggle. In any event, we must develop broad and elastic concepts of struggle. This is where politics begins in this new century. Now some might think that the growth of the working class and people's movement is the prelude to the burial of our policy of concentration on mass production workers. This however would be a hasty and wrong conclusion. Our focus on mass production workers is a viable and necessary policy - indeed more viable and necessary But like everything else it has to adapt itself to new developments, namely the extreme right danger, the upsurge in the labor and people's movement, the new stage of global imperialism, the unevenness of the economic expansion, the new racist offensive, the feminization of poverty, the changing composition of working class, and so forth. Our concentration policy, therefore, should not be narrowly conceived. We should not see mass production workers leading a insular existence. Instead we should see this section of our class mingling with their class brothers and sisters at Boeing, marching in New York against police brutality, lobbying California governor Gray Davis to support the Cesar Chavez holiday, rallying in Washington for women's right to choose, and walking shoulder to shoulder with student, environmental, and other activists. In short, workers in mass production industries should help to lead a much wider movement for radical change in conditions that are new and unique. To express it differently, mass production workers, to quote Lenin, who seemed to have always something trenchant to say, "should fight with all the greater energy and enthusiasm for the cause of the whole people, at the head of the whole people." This brings me to the end. I don't know if I have convinced you of the need for less stiff concepts of class. But maybe that is not the most important thing anyway. Perhaps, the most important thing is that we are all stimulated to think about these questions even if we don't see eye to eye. Discussion Documents CPUSA Home _______________________________________________ Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
