Carrol writes: >> I think Lenin's "labor aristocracy" should be thought of as the labor >> _leadership_, not the mass of "high-paid" workers it usually denotes, as >> it does in this thread. It is really a pretty empty term otherwise.
Marvin: > Clearly, from my own reply to Matthjis, I consider it's been viewed more > broadly than that by Engels and Lenin and the revolutionary left. They > thought the reluctance of British "workers" to solidarize with the Irish and > Indian freedom struggles, or the capitulation of the all of the European > "working classes" at the outbreak of WWI, were the product of "national > chauvinism" which extended beyond the leadership level deep into the ranks. It's a mistake to start with individuals or even individual groups of people. The "labor aristocracy" is like the proletariat itself: it's not a bunch of individuals but a social relationship within the structure of capitalist society. Some individuals are more proletarian than others: those with a large amount of savings (not tied up in a house or some similarly illiquid asset) or skilled machinists with a good union contract (in good times) can be seen as on the edge of being proletarian, and on the edge of being petty-bourgeois, even though a rigid application of the standard definition would label them "proletarian." Similarly, some members of the proletariat are more "aristocratic" than others. The "aristocracy" is defined in relationship to the larger, world, proletariat (and in relationship to other classes). The idea is more about the "aristocratic privileges" that a dominant position in the capitalist imperialist system allows some capitalists to shell out as a way of moderating the class struggle, channelling it into more "economistic" (narrow) forms as opposed to broad, class-conscious, forms. Some members of the proletariat (however defined) benefit more than others; some are more "aristocratized." To my mind, it's a lot like the "divide and rule" theory of racism (cf. Michael Reich's RACIAL INEQUALITY). In that theory (which fits Reich's data, BTW), White workers do better than Black workers (compared to the alternative without racial divisions), but the division between them means that the capitalists do better than they would do in the absence of the division. Similarly, in the "aristocracy" theory, some workers do better than others, but the phenomenon generally benefits the bourgeoisie. Marvin: > If were otherwise, the out-of-touch leaderships would have been swept away > by the strong anti-imperialist and antiwar left oppositions in the unions > and socialist parties. > > That's the problem with "crisis of leadership" theory. It is never able to > explain why - if the consciousness of the leadership was in conflict with > the (presumed) more advanced consciousness of the base - the left rarely > succeeded in replacing it. The sharp attacks on the leadership by the left > opposition in the heydey of the labour and socialist movement was not only > on principled grounds, but also - and perhaps more importantly - tactical: > they really did perceive the insurgent masses to be in advance of the social > democrats, and that openly calling for a break with the existing leaderships > would strengthen rather than isolate the revolutionary left. At least, there > was some foundation for this belief and the tactics which flowed from it in > that period, especially in the latter part of WWI and the outbreak of > strikes, mutinies, land seizures, and revolution in Russia and elsewhere. The idea that the labor/social democratic leaderships are the embodiment of the labor aristocracy is just _one_ version of the labor aristocracy theory. Some would say instead that entire sections of the working class (the more elite craft unionists, white collar workers, tenured professors, or whatever) benefited from aristocratic privileges. If we include the labor/social democratic leaderships as part of the working class (rather than as people hired from other classes to represent the working class), then we could see them as one of the sections of the working class that has been "aristocratized." Marvin and Louis point to one version of the labor aristocracy theory: the idea that the working class is potentially revolutionary in the near-term and that the labor/social democratic leaderships are "misleaders" who were preventing the realization of the revolutionary proletarian potential. I'd guess that everyone on pen-l would agree that the US working class isn't potentially revolutionary in the near-term., so that version of the theory is hard to accept as applying to the here and now. But we might say that it's possible that the (White, male) working class in the US -- as opposed to the LSD leaderships alone -- has had aristocratic privileges in the past. In this perspective, the lack of revolutionary or even class consciousness is not totally the fault of the misleaders. As for the role of the LSD leaderships, the version I learned from my friend Bob Brenner (from the left or "socialism from below" section of the "third camp" Marxian traditions) says that these leaderships cannot be seen as mere misleaders, pulling the wool over proletarian eyes. The existence of "bureaucracies" is itself a result of a _pause_ or truce in the class struggle: when the rank-and-file is tired of the struggle, demobilized, etc., they need someone to represent them vis-a-vis the capitalists on an on-going basis. It's impossible to keep having class-against-class struggle for long periods of time, so some sort of labor-union hierarchy or social-democratic party apparatus is needed. Some of the demobilization can be the result of past victories. Then, as long as the rank-and-file is demobilized, the LSD leaderships can be wooed and subtly (or overtly) bought off by the capitalists. They gaina different life-style than the rank and file, often socializing with the bosses and members of the professional-managerial strata (lawyers, mediators, etc.) They gain an interest in preserving their own privileges. They focus on their expertise and the need to keep the dues flowing in to preserve the organization (something that the complications of labor law encourage) rather than on building (widening and deepening) working-class power for the future. Even if they are "progressive," their main focus is on winning marginal benefits as LSD leaders, not as conscious mobilizers of the proletariat. In this view, the LSD leadership do not represent enemies of the proletariat (to be replaced by those of us who have "correct" politics). Instead, they are a group that we can't trust, whose limitations we should be extremely conscious of (at the same time we realize that it's hard to do without them). The point is to make LSD organizations broader in focus and more responsive to the rank and file -- while helping the latter be more conscious of class issues, more foresighted and less economistic. Replacing the current misleaders with correct ones would leave the structure of the organization intact, hardly solving the problem. This "bureaucracy" theory also applies to leftist political parties themselves. Even the leadership of a small and powerless leftist political party may become entrenched, gaining a small amount of power and privilege for themselves. They begin to see themselves as wiser than the membership and able to see what's best for them. This sometimes leads them not to be more conservative (as with the LSD leaderships) but overtly more revolutionary, even triumphalist, fitting with the need to keep the party rank-and-file's spirits up. Friends of mine have had some experience with this, with party leaderships that decided that their members should all get factory jobs to revolutionize the working class. This of course generally led to disaster, especially in a period when the traditional blue-collar factory proletariat in the US was in decline (the 1970s and especially the 1980s). Even more controversially, the theory also suggests something about the late USSR. It wasn't just a matter of the "Stalinist" misleaders taking over and corrupting the Soviet proletariat (as some Trotskyists seem to say as part of the "revolution betrayed" theory). It was also the pause in the class struggle -- partly due to the grossly inadequate degree of international spread of the revolution along with the mixed proletarian-peasant nature of the revolution itself -- that required a bureaucratic government of some sort.This might not have gone in Stalin's crazy direction, but I think it's likely that it would have emphasized nationalism a lot (just as Stalin did). It seems unlikely that it would have lived up to Trotskyist wishes. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
