Mike Ely: On Economic Struggle & Economism Among Revolutionaries
Posted by Mike E on October 20, 2009
Celticfire suggested that this is worth revisiting. It was originally posted six months ago. It is part of a larger discussion of “interests” — what kinds of contradictory interests to people (and groups) have and how do various interests play their role in preparing and making revolution.
by Mike Ely
I remember hearing about a campus meeting, where a student stood up very indignant and confronted the communists in the room:
“Serve the people! Serve the people! You say that all the time. But WHAT ABOUT ME? I’m a people.”
The issue around economism is what is the role of self-interest among the oppressed — how do we understand it? Can people make an emancipatory revolution based on their own self-interest? Based on revenge? Based on getting their “seat at the table”? Or do growing cores of people need to see the interests and suffering of other people and strata, including around the world, and take all that to heart, in a way that perceives a larger “historic interest” for the oppressed generally, and that loses narrower conceptions of “self” and “interest” in that new identification (which is sometimes called “class consciousness”).
There is a world of difference between “We”ve come for what’s ours” and “Serve the People” — and part of the question is how does broader consciousness grip a revolutionary core of people — a core that can drive politics forward. And what specific forms of consciousness should communists be promoting, and how is such the broad transformation of consciousness influenced by communist work.
Here are some notes I made to open the door further for discussion….
1) There are economic struggles and economist politics. And they are not the same things.
Economic struggles are (as the words imply) struggles waged by people over their conditions of life — wages, work conditions, taxes, housing conditions, unionization, job grievances etc.
Economist politics is a long-standing and rather tenacious current among communists that says that economic struggles are the most fruitful focus (for communists!) in organizing people and specifically for raising their political consciousness (toward class consciousness and socialist politics).
2) In fact, Communists have always supported economic struggles — and correctly so. The basic point by Marx is (i believe) valid: i.e. that if workers don’t wage such struggles they will be forced down by capitalism to a mass of broken wretches. And so there is a semi-permanent conflict — as the workings of capitalism relentlessly drive people down, and as the resistance of people is sparked by that.
This correct support for economic struggles has been challenged by a very sterile political trend that (incorrectly) equates virtually any communist participation in economic struggles as “economist” and that (in a confusing way) even sometimes refers to economic struggles as themselves “economist.” And in an extreme form (for example, among the RCP) there has been a newly enforced stand that views virtually any participation in the struggles of the people as “economist,” and views any discussion of the felt needs and demands of the people as “economist.” It is as if concept of economism mushroomed and took over the known political universe. And within a very small isolated bubble of “non-economist” imaginings the main problem is a disassociation from popular struggles. But in the rest of the world, starting millimeters outside that bubble, the main problem is a despair over revolutionary possibilities and a resigned tailing of whatever fragile struggles currently exist.
3) Lenin makes a number of cogent points about economic struggles: that they are an important means of pulling the relatively passive, politically unaware sections of people into social conflict and struggle. He was writing during 1905, when there were many kinds of struggles going on — and even the more politically backward workers were erupting in a frenzy of economic struggle, while in the places of more conscious working class politics the strikes and struggles were taking a more explicitly anti-tsarist and revolutionary political character.
4) Lenin famously argued hard against economist understandings. He thought that, in fact, you can’t draw political “lessons” out of mainly economic struggles, and (by their nature) economic struggles have a powerful pull into the existing system (that the understandings that repeatedly emerge to guide economic struggle don’t break with the system, and are focused on getting “fairness” or “fair days pay for fair days work” within the framework of capitalism. Lenin argued that for oppressed people to get a broader and more revolutionary understanding of themselves and the struggles around them — they need to be engaged in political struggles (aimed at the state and the ruling classes), and they need the agitation and propaganda of communists (which exposes in a clear and materialist way the interconnections of society around them, and the historic possibility of socialism.)
It would be valuable to list somewhere a number of Lenin’s key observations on economism and where he believed communist consciousness actually arises.
5) The Haymarket events (of Chicago in the 1800s that were the basis of the first May First) were political struggle not economic struggle. In other words, the eight hour day movement of the 1870s was organized as a class-wide demand — not against individual employers in a trade unionist way, but as a revolt of a whole class against the rulers of a system.
Marx discusses this movement as an example of the difference between political struggle and economic struggle.
Lenin’s Bolsheviks organized their agitation around three key political demands (the “three whales” as they were called): land to the peasants, an end to the Tsarist autocracy, and the eight hour day. Later in the conjunctures of World War 1, their revolutionary movement congealed around different political demands: all power to the Soviets, and a program of “bread, peace, and land.”
6) I believe that Lenin’s critique of economism is deeply true — i.e. that you can’t pull a radical political consciousness largely out of economic struggles, however militant.
I was lucky enough to be part of what-was-probably the most significant upsurge of struggle among industrial workers in modern U.S. history — the wildcat strike movement of the coal miners in the 1970s — where there was truly elemental, militant, sustained, relentless, often armed struggle over economic matters arising from the people themselves, year after year, in opposition to their employers, their trade union heads, the police, the state government, the feds, the judges, and anyone else who stood in their way. And we tried (as communists with a distinctly left economist politics) to “extract” from these experiences class conscious “lessons” that could become part of a rising political consciousness among the workers. In ways that I hope to write about more, it doesn’t work. The political consciousness of the most radical and active workers was really not a particularly different spectrum from the mass of workers generally — and even the repeated collisions with the state, police, courts, etc. did not itself lead to ruptures with illusions about American democracy and capitalism (even in the presence of rather energetic agitation by the communists).
And the experience of miners emerging from this intense decade of upsurge and voting (in large numbers) for Nixon and then for Reagan is something to think about soberly.
In fact, as we communists came to understand (learning from Lenin’s polemics), the more politically radical workers were not the same as the more militant and active fighters of the economic struggles. And the road to revolutionary class consciousness (in the 1970s coal fields) did not lie mainly through the workers own economic struggles, but through the larger winds of those times (the war in Vietnam, the black liberation struggle, the rise of African liberation, the struggle over women’s place in the family and society). And when we engaged in political work around THOSE faultlines, the communist work we were doing (including within the economic struggles) started to engage more directly with the political life and understanding of the people.
Again there is much to say about this.
7) I think it is true that this deep economic crisis will condition and accelerate all kinds of contradictions in society, including political ones. But that does not mean that the economic struggles of people against the effects of this crisis are now (automatically or naturally) the focus of struggle for the people, or the focus of political work among communists. In fact, the economic crisis may accelerate many other faultlines in this society (the border region, the question of undocumented workers and their legality, the position of women in society, the future of farmers, the activity of students around war….)
Again, some distinctions: there is an economic crisis. There are economic struggles. and there are economist politics and assumptions among communists. I don’t think they are the same thing. Or should be linked in mechanical ways.
In the main, revolutionary politics arise from political confrontations over how society is governed, and from movements among the people that want radical changes in how society is organized…. (that want puerto rico independent, or that want equality for black people in the 1950s, or that demand an end to the military defense of empire, or nuclear threats against the world). And it is true (as in Lenin’s time or in the coalfields) that economic struggles are important, and (in particular) that they play a role of bringing relatively unawakened forces into struggle.
8) I do not doubt that we will see new waves of economic struggle. I have long expected that the undocumented workers in the U.S. will form an increasingly militant movement that merges a trade union demand for better conditions with a civil rights movement for amnesty and citizen rights. that has to do with their conditions, the consciousness they bring from Mexico and other countries, the history of trade unionism in their home countries, the political program of forces working now to congeal the immigrants into a movement…and so on.
9) I think there is an important conjunctural aspect to the development of mass consciousness — that is not particularly elaborated in Lenin’s work. Specifically: There are deep, historic and structural reasons why the oppressed in the U.S. have not given rise to a mass socialist movement. This is not simply reducible to “privilege” or “bribery” — the way some have portrayed have it. It has to do with the mobility in the U.S., the lack of a historic countrywide anti-feudal movement giving rise to social democracy, the division of people into nationalities (and hierarchies of nationalities) that obstructed common struggles of the oppressed in some periods of history, and also the self-selecting of who came to the U.S. as immigrants (as opposed to those who stayed).
So i think there is a conjunctural element in two ways:
a) There are in the U.S. openings for radical politics in period of unusual crisis (or specific forms of immigration) — including the early 1900s, the 1930s, and the 1960s.
b) And then, in such moments, there is the emergence of radical politics (of particular kinds) do with particular forms of common experience — the emergence of the Black Liberation struggle from a specific history of oppression, struggle and decisive events that “light the sky” in a way that impart a common set of political lessons (the mass experience of World War 1, the 1960s Birmingham bombing and killing of Martin Luther King etc.)
There are specific times when people are more open to radical conclusions, and there are historically determined reasons why different groups may be open to one kind of radicalism but not another.
10) I think this current economic crisis will heat up many contradictions — cause governments to topple, accelerate the formation of political movements, cause millions to look around themselves, challenge deep rooted illusions etc. But that does not mean that economic struggles around the effects of the crisis will (inherently or automatically) come center stage. It may be other struggles around other questions that come forward (within a largely charged atmosphere).
In another post I described the fact that economic crisis doesn’t automatically give rise to economic struggle — that was the experience of the 30s and other times. (And there is no law that decrees that the radical shifts in politics brought by crisis are inherently progressive shifts…. the experiences of Nazism in Germany is one of many examples, or Father Coughlin in 1930s U.S.)
Often the collapse of economic conditions makes it harder to win short-term demands from individual employers — and that simple reality affects the decisions of workers to take up that kind of action. In many cases, it is the lifting of the crisis that opens the floodgates of economic struggle (that was certainly a big element in the U.S. experience).
And the emergence of such a movement would be an important development for the U.S. (and for communists). Just as early Maoists sent organizers into the coalfields, and the autoplants, and the garment shops and so one…. so we should consider becoming part of such a wave of resistance as it emerges.
But we should do that with a rather sharp and communist appreciation of the dangers of economism — which have played themselves out graphically in the 1930s and then again in the 1970s. Major sections of the new communist movement picked up the economist politics of the old 1930s CPUSA, and tried to implement them again in the 1970s. And the results were different, but disastrous both times. And the lessons affirm Lenin’s basic point.
And the chalenge before us has been before us for quite a while: HOW exactly should we do COMMUNIST political work among the people, among the people rising in various forms of struggle. How do the events of today potentially give rise to revolutionary political consciousness and what are the ways of accelerating and organizing that process of political change?
Jose M said
I think this is one of the key questions facing communists and the creation of a radical movement.
We are living in world wrecked by imperialist war, environmental degradation, economic crisis, communist revolution (Nepal and India), and I think it is criminal to ignore these issues and focus on more immediate and tangible struggles of the people.
When I engage others in this question, I constantly get branded as an “authoritarian” who believes that workers can’t come to a communist understanding by way of waging “their own” struggles. And, if that’s what makes me authoritarian, so be it.
Because I don’t believe working people can develop their capacities to become masters of society by strategically focusing on workplace and immediate survival demands. Yes, they are “their own” struggles in the sense that they pertain to their immediate economic interests. And yes, communists should support these struggles, and sometimes lead them (with a tactical/strategic vision in mind), but how isn’t the Nepali revolution “their own” struggle? Do we view people as forever self-interested? Or do we struggle and strive for a new understanding based on internationalism and the need for worldwide revolution?
Theoretically, I think I have basic grasp of what Mike is talking about. But, when it comes to practical realities, I fail. I want to study and understand how what Mike talks about relates to specific struggles. I’m not expecting a ready-made response, just some discussion at least.
Take for example, the immigrant rights struggle. Before college, I lived in a small city in CA with a history of farm worker’s struggle. Cesar Chavez, infamous farm worker leader during the 1970s, is revered and deeply respected. I attended marches and meetings with these workers and volunteered in after-school programs for their children (because they worked such horrible hours).
And what keeps wracking me (because I can’t apply the theory)is how we can change the struggles they wage (around better working conditions and political/economic rights for workers) towards a revolutionary framework. We can’t ignore the conditions they struggle over by labeling them economist. But we also can’t drop out revolutionary orientation and subordinate our vision to their demands. How do we connect our vision of a radically better world with the particularities of latin american immigrants and their struggles?
thanks for piece, Mike.
Miles Ahead said
Mike, could you explain this further from your perspective. I don’t quite get it.
And like I said in another thread, I think we have to consider not just the global economic crisis, but the fact that capitalist/imperialist governments are not able to rule, politically, in the same way.
Comrade Jose M: did you mean that Cesar Chavez was “infamous” or “famous”? As to the farmworkers’ great struggle, basically for a union at the time, it also became clearer to all their millions of supporters that this was a righteous struggle against national oppression.
Mike E said
I posted the followoing in March in a discussion of these points.
* * * * * * * *
First: I think that these events have not yet revealed to us the forms of struggle that they will hatch.
We are in a time of rather remarkable crisis — a global economic depression at a time when, for the U.S., two major war continue with extremely sticky problems of extraction. The election of Obama has given rise to the greatest degree of expectation and even patriotism I have seen among oppressed groups in my lifetime — and it is unclear (here too) what forms of struggle the “rising expectations” will generate, and what trajectories of disillusionment and radicalization might present themselves.
Second: I don’t think that the struggles triggered by great crises always bear the name of that crisis on their banners. That was my point about raising the bonus march — communists tried to lead eviction struggles and radical unionization campaigns in the opening years of the great 1930s depression. But in those years it was the struggle over World War 1 bonuses that led to serious streetfighting in washington DC, and government soldiers attacking the poor.
Third: I think we should be cautious about assuming some linear relationship between economic crisis and widening economic struggles among the people.
In the 1930s the communists (and other radicals) generated occasional flashes of struggle (over evictions in NYC, or over the horrific cutbacks in the Harlan coal field wars). And the mass movements that broke out often took highly particular forms.
The San Francisco general strike came in 1934 — four and a half years into the depression (and after the “turning point” of the depression which is variously marked between 1931 and 1933). As the depression was lifting (and then later as the economy entered the Roosevelt militarization) a virtual unionization frenzy took hold — represented historically by the Flint sit-down (36-37), or the unionization of steel.
(For a look at the timing of the depression in the 1930s)
In other words — the slogan “Hard Times are Fighting Times” which was once raised by some communists in the 1970s, was not nearly as true as it may appear on the surface.
I am NOT saying this to argue that (in some mechanical way) that history will today (in 2009-2012) follow patterns made by the Great Depression almost a century ago. But I am trying to inject some realism and historical perspective — to dampen the rather mechanical assumptions that there is a direct link between crisis and struggle.
Another example: The experience of coal miners in the U.S. over the twentieth century was great waves of layoffs due to rationalization and mechanization — essentially cutting the numbers of coal miners in each generation to about a third of what they were in the previous generation. From over a million at the opening of the twentieth century to just over 150,000 a couple decades ago. After World War 2, the miners went through an intense cut — as the mines mechanized in new ways, and as the coal industry lost the railroads as a major market (the U.S. domination in the world gave impetus to diesel fuel use thru trucking etc.) In other words, for the coal miners (though not other sections of the working class in the U.S.) the depression seemed to reappear after World War 2. However those 1950s (which were truly bitter in the coalfields) saw little struggle — infact the great slump and depopulation of the region gave rise to some of the most corrupt tradeunionism imaginable (associated with Tony Boyle), and an industry of sweetheart deals and payoffs. And it also gave rise to outmigration — as former miners moved to detroit, or pittsburgh, chicago, to make a life in industrial sectors that were expanding.
It was only as the late sixties arrived, as the coal industry picked up, as international oil crises emerged, as a new Vietnam-era generation of workers was hired, that a true explosion of struggle happened (and into the decade of the 1970s, the coalfields were rocking with illegal strikes, radical movements of various kinds etc.)
In other words, it was the return of economic bustle that helped trigger the eruption of pent up frustrations, and that gave rise to waves of struggle. The unjust suddenly became intolerable — exactly because the opportunity for something else seemed to present itself. Similarly for Black people, it was the experience of Black migrants in the North, and the radical changes of urban working class life, that made the old rural southern madness of Jim Crow suddenly so utterly intolerable to so many after its long awful century of domination).
The material underpinnings of this are not that complicated: the shock of depression makes it harder for many spontaneous forms of struggle to take place… when companies are closing, it is often hard to win strikes (if the goods are not in demand, if the companies are unable to make easy concessions, if people are more fearful of mass firings etc.)
There has been a rising movement of immigrant workers in the U.S. demanding (in various forms and with increasing force) that their situation be legalized, and that they be left in peace to work. there had been signs that workers coming from Mexico might reproduce (in the U.S.) the trade union movements that sections of them had seen in Mexico — generating a new movement that combined elements of the civil rights movement and an economic justice movement of the least paid workers. (Something similar happened in the 60s with the emergence of the Farm Workers union of Cesar Chavez.) But what will now happen to these potential movements as many immigrants are being forced back to their home countries by the massive layoffs (coupled with the insufferable persecution by ICE raids)?
Will we see a scissors effect between “rising expectations” among some black people and the crushing weight that depression will bring to the lowest sections of the working class — producing new struggle? Or will this unprecedented terrain shape responses in ways we will find surprising and unexpected?
And what about both the white sections of the working class and the sections that have historically been unionized in basic industry:
The plans for the autoworkers (under the Obama administration’s “reorganization”) is assumed to revolve around demands that the whole industry now adopt the standards of its non-union southern tier — accompanied by unconscionable cuts in workers retirement etc. What will this produce? It has to be said that the “tearing up of the old social contract” has been going on over several decades now — with very little struggle or resistance at all. The system of “collective bargaining” set in place in the 1950s was torn up (marked by Reagan’s crushing of Patco in the early 1980s, and Thatcher’s breaking of British miners), and whole sections of the country have been allowed to undergo a “rusting” — as major sections of industry pursued low-wages. Textile, shoes, steel, auto, rubber, electronics — the labor intensive parts of the production process have been increasingly internationalized, with major effects on the once-”stable” sections of the working class who had expected steady improvements.
My point is that none of this is obvious or clear — and it is certainly not automatic that the struggle that emerges in the midst of such a crisis takes on traditional or expected forms (like trade unionism). It might. But it is certainly not a give.
Fourth: i do believe Mao’s remark that “where there is oppression, there is resistance.” And I believe that a massive event like this crisis will deeply mark the lives and political alignments of people. Change is coming.
And i think that such a crisis will SHAPE politics — but that this doesn’t mean that politics will now revolve around the crisis (and demands that speak to the crisis). On the contrary, the crisis becomes a cooker within which all kinds of contradictions heat up, many of which have little direct apparent connection to the economic mess.
To give an example: As the world economy shrinks suddenly, all kinds of countries shift from being “politically fragile” to being “politically unstable.” Previous contradictions that wracked them (over regionalism, or religion, or urbanization, or stagnations) will suddenly heat up in a whole new unfavorable context. Governments will topple — but not necessarily to forces that wave the banner “This crisis pisses us off, get out of town!”
I have always thought that when crisis like this hit the great american middle class, they would “go mad.” That their profound personal self-absorption and de-politization would give way to frenzied political movements that reflected the profoundly low political level of their participants. Many of the people being shaken up today have very little political tradition or framework or knowledge to fall back on. And we should expect all kinds of movements. (In fact the U.S. has been a special home for crank movements — from the Henry George movement, to the “cross of silver” populism, to Garvey’s Back to Africa, to the 1950s conspiracy movements against floride and communism. These are times when the 9/11 conspiracy types may give official politics a “run for the money” — and where radicalism is anything but a hindrance.
And I’m also saying that there are real possibilities that sections of the people will produce powerful struggle along major faultlines in society — but that it is hard to predict where or how those will erupt.
I’m saying both that there are real opportunities here for revolutionary and communist politics — and for the first serious public discussion of socialism in decades.
Fifth: How will revolutionaries “relate” to the struggles that emerge. Well, it depends. It depends on the nature of those struggles. And on how rapidly we succeed in regrouping. It depends on whether we develop (through study, investigation and debate) common ways of acting.
We need to be deep “among the people.” the emerging revolutionary movement needs to strain every fiber to connect with the most conscious and radical elements of the new generation. We need to be there when people throw themselves into decisive conflicts, and we need to be there as fighters and participants.
But what is NOT needed is for revolutionaries to transform themselves into faceless activists for the cause of the moment — the world does not need fifty more antiwar activists, or a hundred more union organizers, or (still less) vote gatherers for the Obama wing of the establishment.
The people need revolutionaries and communist to be revolutionaries and communists — to represent the future within the present. To bring out what is unknown and unseen. To represent more than is commonly understood, and precisely point out that without socialist revolution all this will remain.
Sixth: There will inevitably be a great deal of struggle (and renewed interest) in society over ideas.
The smirk has been wiped off the face of Free market economics. All kinds of capitalist triumphalism, their stance of inevitability and permanence, the casual assumption that ‘things get better’ — these things have been knocked for a loop.
That is why I would argue strongly against politics that leaves energetic agitation over socialism out of the picture. People of many kinds are awakening to political life — the collapse of many private dreams have a whole generation looking around in a critical and discontented mood for the first time. Many are not inclined to listen patiently to old stories about “capitalism the best of all worlds” — or to believe that the market’s blindness somehow produces the greatest social good (through aggregations of highly selfish individual decisions).
And we should be very impatient about any suggestions that urge us to make our communist and socialist politics invisible. It has always been wrong to subsume radical politics within the tame left-liberal wings of official politics. But in a crisis like this, it is borders on criminal.
I believe many people are going to be LOOKING for radical and even extremist politics, and they will find them. And it is our responsibility to make sure that there is (in society) a clear, unapologetic, substantive, convincing, and shockingly radical argument for a massive social transformation — from capitalism to socialism. A pole.
All the mockery of “selling newspapers” or “putting out slogans,” all the mockery of “just so stories about the cultural revolution” are exactly wrong. Yes, we should criticize the shrill, tin-eared methods of groups like the RCP. Yes, we should be IN THESE TIMES, not wandering around like dazed missionaries from some past era. Yes, we should use the media and methods of these times, not the nineteenth century newspaper culture of those who have self-isolated from the rapid changes…
As a kid, i remember an activist of the Socialist Labor party who was standing out in front of a bookstore near my house, selling pamphlets of his party. I bought one called “questions and answers on socialism” — and it became my bible for the next six months. I clutched it like a lifeline to a forbidden world of ideas. I read it and reread it. I shared it with friends. I tucked it into my backpack as I went hiking in the summer. It was a basic piece…. not subsumed in micro-discussion of any personal grievances (tuition, or even the war)… it was a discussion of SOCIALISM. And connected precisely with my increasingly urgent question: where should people go to get out of the madness that defines this whole society.
We need pieces like that. We do need irresistible agitation and propaganda! We do need powerful arguments for socialism and scathing indictments of capitalism (per se!) — that are creative enough to go viral. (And we can do much better than the SLP did.)
celticfire said
Mike’s post is both interesting accurate, and I appreciate the vivid demonstrations he has used.
A minor point of deviation:
Mike says
I’m not sure I agree with this as someone who was radicalized by the Seattle WTO protests in 1999. There was a generally rising feeling that we were part of something globally that was presenting resistance to the re-writing of the social contract.
From my subjective experience as an activist during that time and after, it feels like 9/11 was the event that changed that feeling. But even then the wars that followed were met with more resistance than Vietnam saw (more numbers, more places, etc.)
This is not a problem of how we write our own history, especially in fighting globalization, but as a method, we should be critical of efforts that we turned out with tremendous effort, and did not lead where we wanted to go. The lesson learned obviously, is that we can not simply will-power social change as much as we can levitate the white house while tripping on LSD.
It’s almost like saying slavery was met with little resistance, when we know there was significant though irregular resistance to that institution. Like a certain Chairman said, where there is oppression there is resistance.
OldNorth said
The Relations of Production come to mind. Spelling out what socio-political actually means comes to mind. Alienation, exploitation and Oppression come to mind. Who owns the means of production. Why these economic conditions exist.
Are the laws we function under written to protect capital (dictatorship of the bourgeois)? or written to protect Labour? (D of P)
A social revolution. A political Revolution changing the nature of class domination and creating a state to protect a different class (ours).
“Keep politics first” Mao suggests. Economic questions can be answered with Political (social) answers.
Social Democracy, that is ending exploitation, oppression and alienation trumps Civil Democracy. Voting does not mean democracy so long as the current relations of production exist. If the boss has control over me whilst I am in creative mode, i.e. at work, then we are not in a democracy.
A Red can explain why and how an economic bind is political as its core. Reforms yes. Reformism no.
Tell No Lies said
This is a very important discussion. And like Jose I struggle with what it means in practice. I have a few thoughts and questions though:
1. How exactly do we distinguish between economic and political struggles? I think most so-called economic struggles actually sit somewhere on a continuum between struggles over narrow self-interest and struggles for others. I think here of the struggles against tuition hikes and budget cuts at public universities like CUNY. While every single student who participated in those struggles had some degree of self-interest at stake, in my experience that is not what motivated most people to fight. What motivated them the most was concern for the minority of their fellows who were going to be pushed out of school and for the next generation of students whose prospects would presumably be even worse if someone didn’t fight now. The role of immediate self-interest in all this was very particular. The fact that everyone had an interest was important because it broke down lots of the normal barriers that stood in the way of people talking about politics. It served more as an excuse to talk about the larger issues of how society was run and by whom that are actually always present in peoples lives even if they are not well articulated. Similarly, in the context of the dominant individualist ideology of US society, having a self-interested reason to participate in the struggle gave some people ways to rationalize the sacrfices they were making in terms of time, money, and grades. Now of course there were always organized forces arguing for and carrying out economistic appeals to self-interest. And this I think is the crux of the matter. Its not whether or not to participate in (and not simply support) these struggles, but rather the political perspective one brings to ones participation.
2. This brings us to the complex relationship between interests and ideology. Here I just want to suggest that this is not as simple a distinction as it at first appears. Most struggles that most people participate in are not actually struggles for bare bones survival that they are literally forced into, even when we choose to frame them as if they are. They are rather struggles in which a choice is made to draw a particular line and to say “we won’t tolerate X.” The point here is that even the seemingly most basic “interests” are ideologically constructed and involve a choice to emphasize one aspect over others. This is important to any effort to draw out the political side of any supposedly economic struggle. When workers go on strike to increase their own wages, the seemingly most narrowly self-interested sort of struggle, there is ALWAYS present in that struggle an effort to enlarge the scope of what constitute a dignified human existence for all. Which is to say that the act of defining a struggle as one around narrow self-interest is itself an act of bourgeois ideology.
3. Implicit in much of this discussion is an assumption about the relationship between revolutionary leadership and the masses that I think is fundamentally mistaken. The main reason to participate in the economic struggles of the masses is NOT that these struggles are the most likely to bring the masses around to revolutionary politics. Rather it is through participation in these struggles that revolutions are able to really sink roots among the masses and begin the process of really putting the mass line into practice. So long as the main work of revolutionaries is parachuting into situations at the moment they heat up, the “from the masses” side of the mass line will be hopelessly underdeveloped. The problem in this, of course, is that sinking roots involves making an assessment of where to sink them in anticipation of future upheavals and such assessments are more likely than not to be wrong.
Jose M said
Thanks for the insightful post, TNL. It allows me to question what I’d previously said and get deeper into these crucial issues.
I think you bring up an important question. As has been said before on Kasama (don’t recall who exactly said so) capitalist oppression manifests itself in a diverse and ever changing manner ALL THE TIME. There are literally countless issues we can immerse ourselves in and attempt to lead and influence. But the issue is: which struggles do communists pour their energies into? I agree with TNL in that all economic struggles contains broader and deeper implications. But, don’t all struggles? This is certainly not an excuse to excuse economic struggles (far from that), but to begin a discussion into what communists should focus on. We can’t be everywhere. If we plan to develop political work, it needs to be after an appraisal of how that struggle can advance revolutionary consciousness/organization.
I want to keep as a open a mind as possible on this question. My “bringing up” as a maoist so to speak didn’t come with too much of a critical/analytical framework with which to judge our current and previous understandings.
In my opinion, I think we need to do investigations to decide which faultline struggles we should immerse ourselves into. I think there are broad political issues facing the US and the world which desperately need communist leadership because I think they can be instrumental in developing revolutionary consciousness. Such struggles (be it anti war, immigration, or others we may take up) can be the best education the people get when it comes to understanding the world and what needs to be done.
I like TNL’s point about all struggles being on a continuum between self-interests and for others. The CUNY example clearly takes on two in an important manner. But, what about Nepal? How does self-interests come into play, if at all? I’m participating in a debate on RL with someone who rejects the idea of using nepal and other revolutionary struggles in developing a communist movement in the US. This comrades believes it isn’t useful in organizing around the maoist revolutions in asia because american workers don’t percieve it to be in their interests. And I wonder: where’s the internationalism and understanding of common class interests?
But this is something I need to continue thinking about. Clearly things are more complex and dynamic than I previously held.
Chuck Morse said
TNL writes: “The problem in this, of course, is that sinking roots involves making an assessment of where to sink them in anticipation of future upheavals and such assessments are more likely than not to be wrong.”
This very honest comment by TNL reflects a basic lack of confidence in Marxism as a tool for social analysis. . . You have big problems if your social theory is likely to be wrong about when and where social conflicts are to occur and, it my opinion, it would make more sense to confront those problems directly than to lose yourself in labyrinths of strategic conjecture.
Tell No Lies said
Chuck,
That Marxism as it exists is unable to produce the sort of reliable predictions that some once thought it could is in my view undeniably true. That, however, is not all that we ask of tools of social analysis. Just as or even more important than being able to make predictions about the future is being able to coherently explain the past and the present. This doesn’t offer the same sort of certain recipes for future action that many would like, but it is actually none the less a powerful aid in struggle. The question I have for you Chuck is whether you think there is an alternative body of theory that IS able to make such predictions reliably. If not we have to then ask whether such a predictive capacity is even possible, what body of theory best serves our other needs, and what are its weaknesses that need to be addressed.
Apparently for you Chuck, Marxism is a fixed set of propositions rather than a method that informs a living body of theory. So whenever one of those propositions is contradicted by experience or whenever some Marxists acknowledge this you expect us to just give it all up. While it is certainly true that many Marxists treat Marxism in this manner and that some of them participate in discussions here, you seem oblivious to the overall thrust of the site which is to struggle AGAINST that sort of ossified reading of Marxism and to reconceive revolutionary theory and not at all in a way that assumes that there is a correct Marxist answer to every question or that is at all hostile to really listening to the insights of other bodies of though. In other words you are engaged in a pitched battle with a strawman.
You are too smart for this. This cramped “I told you so” approach is beneath what you really have to offer. Instead of taking predictible potshots at positivist 2nd/3rd Int’l official Marxism in all its early 20th century dogmatic scientism, why don’t you try to make some positive contributions that help us move forward in discussing the kind of theory we need rather than reiterating critiques of the the kind most of us have already rejected to one degree or another. You clearly care about such a project or you wouldn’t come here. Nobody really cares that you don’t call yourself a Marxist.
Eddy Laing said
So can you back this up a bit further and consider the diverse and specific events and cognitive leaps that led you to this inquiry (“of the madness that defines this whole society”)?
While your overall argument is especially important at this time (that “what is NOT needed is for revolutionaries to transform themselves into faceless activists for the cause of the moment”), it seems in your enthusiasm you may be overstepping the specificities of how we become aware.
As I recall, Lenin urged the RSDLP to expose the wide range of outrages and abuses of the state and capital not only in order that the workers might develop a sense of its systemic nature and the need for socialism, but also because in the sweep of a complex society, and especially when the substrate of that society is tearing along its sharp internal contradictions, there are indeed multiple possible ‘pathways’ that might lead to such cognitive and practical leaps.
All that is not to say that we cannot investigate and analyze social relationships in their motion of development. I think we certainly can and that’s what our larger ‘organizational’ task is to do. But just as my concern over this semester’s tuition does not lead me to question the history of class society, neither does someone simply wake up one day and say to him or herself, ‘shit, where can I get some socialist literature!’
Mike E said
[moderator note: this comment was made into its own post and thread.]
Mike E said
Eddy writes:
That is hard to deny. We agree.
My view is that people learn from the unfolding of events, from their own collective experience in political struggle and from the work of communists (including the circulation of communist analysis and theory.)
This is how I describe it above:
I don’t think it is a matter of “oppression plus communist agitation.” We need to dig into the ways specific history frames the politics of large numbers of people (including the unique history of the U.S.), we need to look closely at how conjunctural moments affected radical receptivity, and how people learn lessons in large numbers.
(For example, after the 2000 tied election, a whole generation came to believe that (a) their votes can make the difference, and (b) third parties like Nader can have disasterous affects. Other examples can be given of people learning more radical lessons from experiences — like Kent state, or the killing of King etc.)
Chuck Morse said
TNL, I think you misunderstand my motives here: I’m really not trying to take potshots. We both agree on the need to rethink revolutionary theory, but we differ on the extent of rethinking necessary. You (as I understand it), believe that marxism retains its validity as a method, despite its practical inadequacy for revolutionaries (it’s ability to tell you where to “sink roots”). I, on the other hand, do not believe that marxism is valid (as a method or otherwise). I certainly respect and value the insights of many marxists—including many who frequent this site–I just have a different sense of how deeply we need to rethink things.
Tell No Lies said
I’d just like to add a thought on the problem of assessing where to sink roots. It seems to me that there is an inherent and unavoidable tension in all this between the need, on the one hand, to be flexible before events and to be able to relate to new upsurges in unexpected places, and on the other to actually actually have real roots among the masses. The twin dangers in this are getting trapped in places where nothing is happening and you get sucked into keeping alive the bureaucratic remnants of previous upsurges and the opposite phenomena of revolutionary ambulance chasing.
I don’t think there is a tidy solution to this tension. Rather I think it demands constant and creative engagement. What I do think is that the common practice of many revolutionary groups of ripping people out of the context in which they were radicalized and thrusting them into another is often a destructive one. While it is important for revolutionaries to gain a breadth of experiences and while it is sometimes neccesary to concentrate forces in places where we presently have few, it seems to me that the purpose of these moves is often precisely to break people off from their organic ties to a place in order to secure their loyalty to an organization and that the result of this is to weaken our ability to apply the mass line deeply.
Tell No Lies said
Chuck,
Your rejection of Marxism doesn’t make your sense of what needs to be reconceived neccesarily any deeper. It may just make it less coherent. Its impossible to really tell though without you actually staking out any positive position. What method of analysis do you think IS valid? Is there any? And what method do you use to come to that conclusion?
Chuck Morse said
Well, I think the best way to judge marxism is according to the standards that it set for itself: it set out to be a guide for building communism and a means for comprehending the historical trajectory of capitalism. In my view, it has failed on both counts.
Your claim that revolutionaries (Marxists presumably) don’t know where to “sink roots” suggests that you agree with me on both counts but, even if you don’t, there is nothing oblique about my methods.
Tell No Lies said
Saying “there is nothing oblique about my methods” is an oblique method of answering a direct question: What method of analysis do you think IS valid?
Chuck Morse said
TNL, as I said in my post: “I think the best way to judge marxism is according to the standards that it set for itself” or, to use more technical language, immanent critique.
Tell No Lies said
Groovy, immanent critique of Marxism seems entirely justified. But what is your methodology when it comes to analyzing the REST of social reality?
Tell No Lies said
As for the critique of Marxism I think your characterization that “it set out to be a guide for building communism and a means for comprehending the historical trajectory of capitalism” frontloads the question.
Does Marxism really set out to be a guide for building communism? Certainly Marx makes no such pretensions. What he has to say on the nature of communism is actually quite thin, certainly compared to his critique of capitalism. The same can be said for most Marxist thinkers to follow Marx. The question of the construction or realization of communism is generally considered too distant to actually theorize in much depth. Personally I regard this as a weakness of Marxism, but I don’t think its accurate to claim that it has set out to be a guide in this respect. What I think many Marxists after Marx HAVE sought to engage theoretically has been the conditions and problems of socialism, that is to say the transitional stage between capitalism and communism. And here I think the results while contradictory are quite rich.
As for “comprehending the historical trajectory of capitalism” I think here you are on firmer ground. Marx and many of his followers make lots of predictions of this sort, a great many of which I freely acknowledge have proven wrong or at least horribly incomplete. But here the word “trajectory” really limits the ambitions of Marx’s critique of capitalism and subsequent works built on its foundations to the sort of predictive claims that are (predictably) the weakest. Is Marx’s analysis of the struggle over the length of the working day or the organic composition of capital a failure? I don’t think so. And it is precisely these sorts of features of his critique of capitalism that I and many other Marxists find most powerful and useful in engaging contemporary social reality. Have you read Capital? It certainly contains a bunch of predictions, but most of these are essentially asides and quite immaterial to the core arguments Marx developes which I would maintain have stood the test of time remarkably well and should still be the first place one goes in attempting to develop an analysis, for example, of the present global financial crisis. Marx may not have predicted the rise of derivatives markets or hedge funds, but he gives us very powerful tools for understanding them.
Eddy Laing said
Mike wrote:
If your point here is that not all events are rationalized (effect everyone) in the same way, it ought to be taken as a given. BUT of course it is NOT taken broadly as a given, since doing so requires active reflection; fully reflective thinking is not ‘common sense’ in the current world. (i.e. it is not the dominant ideology or world-view.)
However, if you mean that either factor in your equation is not required (‘oppression’ or ‘communist agitation’) either directly or indirectly, then I think you’ve attempted to denature social practice (either removing experience or reflection).
Society is not fully external to those who reside in it (although capitalist social relationships appear to be so). Likewise, history does not simply ‘frame the politics of large numbers of people.’ History and politics (and history is politics over time) are ‘made’ by (the collective acts of) people. In class societies, this has been been done to date generally under the direction of a minority ruling class but never by the ruling class, mainly by the ‘masses of people’.
So while it is simplistic to formulate revolution as the product of ‘oppression’ multiplied by ‘agitation’, in fact history illustrates episodes wherein cumulative effect of experience and reflection bring together groups, strata and classes of people together to act in concert toward a shared, perceived objective. (with varying degrees of willfulness; in other words, with ‘programmatic’ unity, but not a complete ‘ideological’ unity.)
How these shared understandings are developed is exactly the problem before us.
Mike E said
Eddy writes:
I guess clearing up misunderstandings is an important part of this discussion.
But (to be clear) I certainly do not mean that you can have revolution without “oppression” or “communist agitation.” In fact the heart of what I was arguing for is the importance of communist work (including articles, speech, theory etc.) for the emergence of a mass revolutionary and socialist consciousness.
Eddy writes:
Yes. And this is not automatically (or inherently) a revolutionary or communist “bringing together.” People are often brought together on other bases. And in the U.S. there has been a particular gab between communist politics and where the “cumulative effect of experience and reflection” have brought people.
So I agree with you that “How these shared understandings are developed” is a problem before us.
And, beyond that, I think we have a particular problem of how to promote and shape communist politics so that they can interact with the actual people produced by the actual conditions.
therebelwaltz said
I hope this won’t be seen as antagonistic or aggressive, it’s just my honest reaction. I should point out that I’m not a frequent reader of Ely’s stuff, but I have read him before…
First of all, class consciousness in the Marxist sense is not a generic awareness of all the suffering of all the groups in the world. It’s a consciousness of the shared struggles that you have in common with others who are in the same position relative to the means of production as you. So it actually is a form of self-interest, albeit the highest, most effective form. And it’s a completely economic thing.
Secondly, an honest question: if you really believe this is the key to revolutionary politics–
growing cores of people need to see the interests and suffering of other people and strata, including around the world, and take all that to heart
–then why aren’t you recruiting communists from country clubs?
The whole history of society is the history of class struggles. The idea that class position strongly conditions one’s social outlook (in aggregate/class terms it practically determines social outlook) is a central part of a histmat philosoophy. Again, if this is not the case, then why aren’t you out there trying to make ideological communists out of literal capitalists?
Mike Ely has taken the Marxist idea that the worker-capitalist antagonism is the first class struggle in history to produce a classless society rather than a new form of class society and twisted it beyond recognition, into something unbelievably idealist.
In fact, of the points dealing directly with “economism”, the only points I agree with are 2 & 3; 2 because it criticizes the RCP, and 3 because it contradicts what the article overall is saying.
4) Lenin famously argued hard against economist understandings. He thought that, in fact, you can’t draw political “lessons” out of mainly economic struggles
This is true, of course. Marx said many times that communists point the way forward for proletarians, not the other way around:
“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement…
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.”
…and (by their nature) economic struggles have a powerful pull into the existing system (that the understandings the repeatedly guide economic struggle don’t break with the system, and are focused on getting “fairness” or “fair days pay for fair days work” within the framework of capitalism.
This is flat out false. The line from economic demands to political demands is short and direct (although it requires class leadership). Engels sure didn’t see a contradiction, in fact he used the slogan of “a fair days wages for a fair days work” as a springboard to convince workers of the need for revolutionary political demands:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/05/07.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/05/21.htm
7) I think it is true that this deep economic crisis will condition and accelerate all kinds of contradictions in society, including political ones. But that does not mean that the economic struggles of people against the effects of this crisis are now (automatically or naturally) the focus of struggle for the people, or the focus of political work among communists.
Right, because an overlending crisis, or a burst speculation bubble, only has the immediate potential to make people question the financialization of the economy, and to say that we should shift our focus back to the “real economy” (i.e. production). It doesn’t have any implication for people’s outlooks as to how that production is best carried out (in a capitalist way through private ownership of industry, or in a planned socialist way through workers’ control). This kind of economic crisis is a totally different thing from shop floor struggles over wages, etc. Even capitalists are pissed off about the irresponsibility of the banks; most of the capitalist class is annoyed with the practices of the financial sector of the capitalist class, and is calling for their regulation by government.
The crisis of healthcare has significantly more potential to make people question the capitalist commodification of everything, including our very health, and it even seems to be ready-made as a political (not just an “economic”) demand.
there are historically determined reasons why different groups may be open to one kind of radicalism but not another.
Finally he says something Marxist, instead of using communist as a catch-all term.
there is no law that decrees that the radical shifts in politics brought by crisis are inherently progressive shifts…. the experiences of Nazism in Germany is one of many examples
Nazism was a middle class movement, not a working class movement. This doesn’t prove anything.
Chuck Morse said
TNL, my characterization of Marxism’s aims in comment #16 is just a restatement of The eleventh thesis on Feuerbach (“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”) Marx embraced both goals outlined here. I’m not sure why you take issue with this.
I have read a lot of Marx (including Capital) and there is no doubt that he has a ton to offer. That’s definitely not something that I need to be convinced of.
My purpose is not (in your words) to take “potshots” at Marxists: I am interested in recognizing lines of continuity with and departures from the old revolutionary ideas. We have to do this in order to outline and understand our contemporary tasks.
You seem to have a pragmatic approach to Marxism, treating it as “tool in your toolbox” that is, in your words, likely to be inadequate for politics but important to analysis.
While there is a lot be said in favor your approach, it has little to do with Marxism. There is no such thing as a Marxist social analysis that fails to identify the revolutionary agent(s) and, likewise, an ad hoc, pragmatic approach to theory is totally contradictory to Marx’s premises.
You remind me of David Harvey, who calls himself a Marxist while also saying that a new “new deal” is the best that we can hope for (i.e., Marxism in theory, social democracy in practice). I guess that may be the sort of “Change you can believe in,” but count me out.
Mike E said
hmmmmmm. Chuck, I think this discussion is valuable… but I also think we can get stuck in just one aspect of it.
You seem to insist that marxism is what Marx said and thought — which fixes Marxism in a way that (inevitably) dates it.
We on the other hand, assume that Marxism is a body of ideas that has developed (radically) over 150 years — and will continue to develop radically.
The result of that difference is not hard to find:
You fix marxism in the 1800s, and deduce that it is riddled with outdated ideas, and is therefore itself outdated.
We see marxism as a developing synthesis (with a considerable history of self-negation and transformation on key matters), and therefore respond differently when we encounter outdated ideas within Marxism’s confines.
Part of it seems to be connected to your view of Marxism as a “doctrine” — i.e. literally defined-at-birth by a set body of ideas. But if you see our social theory as a process of investigation and development (similar to scientific thinking about the natural world) — then change is inevitable and welcome, and the result is merely a deeper understanding of the set of problems.
I am not just against seeing Marxism “as a doctrine” — but I’m convinced that any set of “doctrines” (however true or cutting edge at the beginning) would inevitably have a half-life.
Since the time of Marx, capitalism turned to modern imperialism, colonialism rose and fell, production has changed in unimaginable ways, the bourgeois nation state (which was just being established in his time) has become deeply affected by the growth of international interconections of many kinds, the class structure of the whole world has changed — and perhaps most important, we now have a century of experience with attempts at socialist transformation. And on top of that, there has been a busy busy century of human investigation into all kinds of spheres (ecology, psychology, military affairs, genetics, evolution…. on and on).
If we fixed Marxism with Marx, how could it not be an aging and quaint doctrine from an earlier era?
But if we applied (with both continuity and rupture) the methods and insights of a Marx — in creative ways to our subsequent experiences — why does our marxism need to be outdated?
Personally, i think there is a recurring problem with fixing a set of theories to specific human names. Why would we keep calling evolutionary biology “Darwinism”? That may have been breathtakingly accurate after his books were published, but it is more contradictory with time (after genetics, after new debates about the locus of selection etc.)
Let me speak to one of your issues: Is there a teleological component in Marx? Yes. and in subsequent communists to. (Mao speaks of “on to inevitable victory.”) I think we can shed that, without shedding Marxism. We can see “laws of motion” as trendlines and tendencies within matter, without going over to misleading theories of historical mission. Is it still Marxism…. I think so, but it is (of course) no longer the identical marxism (and shouldn’t be).
And I think we should speak about “communist theory” (and mean by that what has previously been called Marxism, or Leninism, or Maoism, correctly understood in dynamic change and content).
And i think you are making some un-justified leaps.
the fact that we may not know where the next wave of struggle will erupt (LA? San Juan? Birmingham?) — doesn’t mean that we can’t identify revolutionary agents. Or that Marxism is not precious to social analysis, and to politics.
You seem so eager to insist on your point, that you read the remarks of others through your own prism.
Mike E said
The Rebel Waltz writes:
I don’t have time (at this precise moment) to respond. But I want to acknowledge the comments of The REbel Waltz, and point out that it expresses (well) the differences between (what I wold consider) an economist view and a communist one.
In my view, class consciousness is not “consciousness that you are in a class” — but consciousness of the historic collision of classes going on, and the possibility of the proletariat emancipating all humanity.
People wage struggle based on narrow interests (the workers in my shop or industry…. the workers of my region…. etc.) but they don’t make socialist revolution from that perspective (or, if they do, it doesn’t end up emancipating all of humanity).
I also think that the Rebel Waltz’s question…. about why we don’t then recruit in country clubs is worth considering.
The communist movement can (I believe) draw its social strength from a base of support among the oppressed (including those defined as working class or proletarian). But it is hardly drawn from them exclusively (and never has been). It is not a “working class movement” in some mechanical or exclusive sense.
Lenin talked about drawing communists from all strata in society…. and certainly that experience is not limited to Russia. (In other words, any real-world communist movement does draw radicals from relatively elite spheres… colleges… etc.)
Anyway… there is much to say about Rebel Waltz’s thoughtful comment. I would love to hear others comment, and hope to return to this myself.
Chuck Morse said
Sure, Mike, much of what you say is very reasonable, but I think that there are two problems with your argument.
First, although I think you would agree that Marxism has boundaries–that it is a distinct thing and not some other thing–your perspective does not acknowledge those boundaries or integrate them into the discussion. I believe that that is a mistake and those boundaries are very important for an analysis of the doctrine (or tradition).
Second, if you define Marxism as a changing, evolving body of ideas then it is, as such, always relevant to the same degree in the same way to society (because it changes with society). This argument assert that Marxism is important not because it advances specific ideas/practices, but as a metaphysical “voice of the oppressed.”
In my view, Marxism is much more discrete–thus potentially more powerful but also risky–undertaking.
therebelwaltz said
Mike, sorry for the awkward mix of first and third person perspectives in my last post. It was originally written as a response to a comrade and friend who had copied and pasted me your article, that’s why it talks about you in third person.
I appreciate the response and hope to get others.
Zack said
“People wage struggle based on narrow interests (the workers in my shop or industry… the workers of my region… etc.) but they don’t make socialist revolution from that perspective”
Well obviously, if it’s just regional/industry/shop based… but isn’t that really spontaneous struggle without communist leadership?
“(or, if they do, it doesn’t end up emancipating all of humanity)”
Interesting. Why not?
***
Reason I ask is because I think Therebelwaltz makes some good points… can’t: “do growing cores of people need to see the interests and suffering of other people and strata, including around the world, and take all that to heart” be twisted into just liberal moralist emotionalism? (with all the current capitalist-framed examples of that)
therebelwaltz said
Exactly Zack; I see it as very similar to the left-liberal/Green perspective of “reclaiming our democracy”, or the Naderite idea of “civic arousal”. The reason these appeals will never produce anything is because they’re not grounded in any objective, material conflict, the way Marxism is.
Eddy Laing said
Chuck Morse wrote:
Perhaps that’s the stumbling block. You seem to be approaching social theory as a set of algorithms rather than as real theory. While a formula can be useful to explain regularly occurring conditions — the area of a circle, for example — the same is not true of human society. Quite obviously human society undergoes continual transformation in minor and major ways.
But secondly, as a general theory of society, historical materialism does not ‘change with society’; the subject of study — society — continually changes. The overarching merit of historical materialism is its description of the major theaters of those changes (economic, political and ideological social relationships), and hence our need to actively transform ALL of them.
As has pointed out, those sets of social relationships are in ongoing processes of transformation (in ‘modern’ times primarily under direction of the capitalist classes, as well as by revolutionary people in their struggles). British capital was transforming itself before his eyes even as he wrote Capital (as Marx and Engels noted). All of which not only obviates ‘rules of revolution’, but in fact partly illustrates the need for one of two ‘most radical ruptures’ (traditional ways of thinking) we need to make in order to revolutionize society.
Chuck Morse said
Eddy, I think we probably agree.
You argue that historical materialism (i.e., Marxism) does not change with society and I think that is correct, in so far Marxism is a fairly discrete, internally coherent (though flawed) body of ideas.
However, I think that Mike believes that Marxism does change with society.
So, then, I don’t know….
Eddy Laing said
Chuck, I don’t think we agree much, if at all.
As I wrote, you seem to confuse ‘theory’ with formulae, and as I also pointed out, the two are quite different. Beyond that, I don’t think you display a very sound understanding of Marxism, either, which you cloak in rather vague phrases, such as ‘flawed body of ideas,’ lacking any specificity.
You want to reduce ‘Marxism’ to a set of rules (or to the even more reified ‘thing’). As I read Mike, he has (also) argued that such a reading is erroneous (in various dimensions).
boris max said
I don’t think this is right. The proletariat and the peasantry are most definitely not “in the same position relative to the means of production,” yet much of communist theory and practice since the time of Marx has been devoted to developing the alliance between these two sectors of society. So, even in this very limited sense (the worker-peasant alliance), class consciousness is not the self-referential economic consciousness of proletarians, but the political understanding of what has to be done to develop a historic bloc *under the leadership of the proletariat* in the struggle for power.
Look at Marx’s writings on Ireland. Or, his comment to Engels that, “The whole thing in Germany will depend on whether it is possible to back the Proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasants war. In which case the affair should go swimmingly.”
As Mao said, “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.” This can be contrasted against the Lassallean formulation that Marx criticized in his piece on the Gotha Programme, “The emancipation of labor must be the work of the working class, relative to which all other classes are only one reactionary mass.”
Class consciousness in the Marxist sense is not a generic awareness of all the suffering of all the groups in the world. It is a *particular* awareness of the particular condition and motion of indeed *all* of the classes in the world, with a view towards the abolition of classes.
If historical materialism was defined as “being determines consciousness,” then historical materialism would have to be rejected. I think it is clear just looking around the world, or talking to people in the day to day, that class position does not practically determine social outlook. In US society, social outlook among all strata, including oppressed strata, is overwhelmingly the social outlook of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Flag-waving, white chauvinism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. This problem has to be understood in terms of ideology and how it contributes to reproducing the relations of production.
The line from economic demands to political demands is not short and direct. A good illustration is the history of the (white) workers’ movement in the US in the 19th century and its failure to take up the struggle against slavery and for Reconstruction. One of the main expressions of economism in the US (perhaps the single main expression) is the downplaying of the particular oppression of Black people and the particular situations faced all oppressed nationality people (within and outside US borders) in favor of lowest-common-denominator economic struggles.
The Rebel Waltz said
BorisMax said: “I don’t think this is right. The proletariat and the peasantry are most definitely not “in the same position relative to the means of production,” yet much of communist theory and practice since the time of Marx has been devoted to developing the alliance between these two sectors of society.”
Right, and that’s exactly what it was: a class alliance. Temporary, expedient, and opportunist.
Lenin–or Marx, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme quote that you cite–was not positing that the peasantry is a historically progressive class. They were simply arguing against the ultra-leftist, workerist notion that the working class must remain totally independent of all other classes; instead, the only class that the working class should retain total political independence from is the ruling (capitalist) class. All other classes are fair game for an alliance (although only productive classes like the peasantry would seem to be a good prospect for a revolutionary alliance; the lumpenproletariat, as Marx noted, is more likely to be apolitical or to be co-opted as the “bribed tool of reactionary intrigue”).
In fact, even the capitalist class has been seen, by Marx and subsequent Marxists, as a potential ally in the fight to overthrow feudal privilege and establish the system of free competition, in which the fetters on production are destroyed and the proletariat can grow in both numbers and strength.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks also allied themselves with Kaiser Wilhelm II’s government during their efforts to overthrow the Provisional Government. Stalin’s government signed a pact with the Nazis. These are more extreme examples of the same principle, that the working class (or the established workers’ state) can and must ally itself with any class that is willing to join it in its historic mission to overthrow capitalism.
Peasants are not oppressed by capitalists, and have neither the inclination nor the ability to overthrow capitalism. They have the inclination and the ability to overthrow semi-feudal systems of land ownership, and that is what makes them a valuable ally of the working class in socialists revolutions that occur in countries with mixed capitalist/semi-feudal agrarian economies, such as Russia in 1917, or Latin America (with it’s latifundia system of land ownership) up until quite recently.
As for why peasants do not form a revolutionary consciousness on their own, Marx addressed this in the 18th Brumaire, section VII.
I know you are not really suggesting that Marx thought anything less than that the working class was *the* only progressive force in history which could and must overthrow capitalism. If you consider yourself a non-orthodox Marxist or not at all a Marxist, that’s perfectly fine, and we can certainly agree to disagree on Marx’s continued relevance (although given the time that has passed and the fact that a majority of the world’s population now lives in cities, and that this trend only shows signs of continuing, I don’t quite understand why you’d consider *this* the time to abandon Marxism for a revolutionary philosophy that places a greater emphasis on peasant classes).
We can agree to disagree, but still I think it is a bit dishonest of you to pull isolated, out-of-context Marx quotes to support your position, if in reality you do not consider yourself a Marxist. From my reading of other articles on this site, and from your saying that historical materialism must be rejected, I would assume that most Kasama supporters (forgive me if this is not you) probably do not self-identify as Marxists. And as an example of your rather dubious quoting of Marx: you quote his rejection, in the CotGP, of the extremely simplistic idea that all non-proletarians form “only one reactionary mass.” But surely you did read the rest of Marx’s reply to this idea, and you realize that he goes on not to reject the unique status of the proletariat as the only revolutionary anti-capitalist class in an industrialized economy, but to AFFIRM this, simply in a more nuanced fashion that allows for class alliances. In fact, he goes on in his reply to quote approvingly what he and Engels had earlier written in the Manifesto:
“Of all the classes that stand face-to-face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.”
BorisMax said: “class consciousness is not the self-referential economic consciousness of proletarians, but the political understanding of what has to be done to develop a historic bloc *under the leadership of the proletariat* in the struggle for power.”
Yes, it is the self-referential economic consciousness of proletarians, insofar as is necessary to give Marxism a basis in an objective, material conflict (that between the working class and capitalist class). The fact that Marx allowed for alliances between the working class and other classes in their pursuit of a revolution does nothing to change this. In fact, alliances are by their very nature self-serving; a person, a nation or a class makes an alliance because of the expected benefit to itself of this alliance.
If you revise your statement to “class consciousness is not MERELY the self-referential economic consciousness of proletarians”, then I’ll agree. Even reformist “Labor” parties believe in the self-referential economic consciousness of proletarians. But I would love to see you produce a single Marx quote to support the sentence as stated, without the “merely”.
The Rebel Waltz said
And once again, I would like to ask you: while rejecting Marxism and it’s basis in the objective conflict between proletariat and bourgeoisie, what would you replace it with? Or in the place of a detailed theory of class conflict, do you simply sit around hoping that a sufficient number of “the people” will somehow be angered to the point of revolution (revolution to estblish what, one can only guess, since we don’t know what classes we are talking about and therefore don’t know what kind of system would be in their interests)?
Ely’s article seems to argue against “economism”, but not for anything.
Jose M said
The Rebel Waltz’ posts are an example of methods we should try to avoid. His premises relies, more than anything, on what Marx said. After all, if Marx said it, it’s all good right?
The Rebel Waltz said
Jose, your post could have been made by a right-wing anti-socialist trying to discredit Marxism. You might want to think about that.
Also, my posts don’t assume Marx was right any more than BorisMax’s do when he quotes Marx. What are you talking about?
borix max said
Clarification bit: I’m not part of the Kasama project, just a reader of the Kasama site.
And (re: Jose M’s post), yes, I think we should not just look at what Marx said, but it might be important to do so when the actual complexity of his work is being reduced to something like “being determines consciousness,” and then this reduction is used as the premise for political arguments.
I wrote:
The argument here is that historical materialism is more complex than “being determines consciousness,” not that historical materialism should be rejected. Consciousness reflects back on being. Ideas come from social practice, but also become a material force in their own right which changes social practice. The economy is only determinant “in the last instance” (whatever that means). We need to understand how ideology works. See Engels:
The Rebel Waltz wrote:
How does the economic consciousness of proletarians lead to an understanding of the need for class alliances? Of the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat in transition to a classless, stateless society? It doesn’t – economic consciousness is trade union consciousness – consciousness that workers need to band together to sell their labor in the marketplace for better terms. And in the US, this has often been accompanied by vicious anti-immigrant and imperialist politics.
Class consciousness, on the other hand, is communist political consciousness. Communist political consciousness is possible because of the changes in the world that have brought the proletariat into existence and corresponds to the larger historic interests of this class (as Mike E said in his piece), but I don’t think we can attribute any more of a “basis” to Marxism than that. Ex: what was Marx’s basis? What was Engels’ basis? We have to look at the complex interaction between economy, politics, and culture, in which the economy is only determinant “in the last instance.” And, ultimately, we have to develop a deeper theory that gets beyond descriptive phrases like “determinant in the last instance” (as Althusser recognized). Thinking in terms of orthodoxy and non-orthodoxy doesn’t help us a bit in setting out on that road.
Or, going back to the example I mentioned, did the economic struggle of white workers in the 19th century around wages and working conditions lead to an understanding of the need to abolish slavery and fight to the end in Reconstruction (by decisively breaking up the slave system through land reform), the revolutionary task of the day? No, it didn’t, and this opportunity for laying the future groundwork for proletarian revolution was lost (due among other reasons to the bad politics of the leaders of the workers’ movement).
The Rebel Waltz wrote:
This is more of an aside, probably not the best place to get into it, but I just wanted to say that I think the significance of the fact that a majority of the world’s population now lives in cities should not be exaggerated. The expansion of urban slums around the world is tied to the continued existence of semi-feudal relations in the countryside in many places (see, for example, the book Philippine Economy and Politics, or even how the revolutionary process in Venezuela where 90% of the population lives in cities has to balance the immediate struggle for social welfare in the slums with the more long-term struggle for land reform). Imperialism has not and will not through its own natural operation eliminate the problem of land hunger and the need for land reform. And recognizing this does not mean one is abandoning Marxism.
The Rebel Waltz said
BorisMax, one thing we agree on is that the social being–>social consciousness part of historical materialism is not a mechanistic or immediate thing. I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I believe otherwise. Social consciousness, even on the aggregate/class scale, can significantly deviate from what social being might have led us to predict. And this deviation may, in fact, be much greater than Marx would have ever predicted. That said, it is a deviation, and the underlying material conditions being the same, a class of people will always return to a consciousness that reflects their objective position in the longer run.
When I asserted that on the aggregate/class scale social position “practically determines” consciousness, I certainly did not mean that it does so in a mechanistic or short-term way. Otherwise, we would not be able to explain the continued existence of capitalism, particularly in the most industrialized countries (which Marx believed, according to most, would experience a socialist revolution first). I did mean that social consciousness was anchored to an objective social position, and would inevitably return to it in time, however far it might stray.
If I understand Engels’ use of “in the last instance” (and it’s possible that I’m reading my beliefs into his words), he meant that it is ultimate determining factor, and that all other factors (like ideology) are fleeting by comparison. I believe he meant that, ultimately, ideologies which aren’t actually in line with the true material interests of a class ultimately shrivel away because of that very fact. This may take a very long time, but it happens.
Boris wrote: “How does the economic consciousness of proletarians lead to an understanding of the need for class alliances?”
Apparently, we are using “economic consciousness” in different ways. You are clearly using it in Ely’s way. I am using it in the sense that socialism is in the “economic interest” of proletarians; that socialism is virtually definable as THE (ultimate, long term) economic interest of the proletariat. (see next comment)
Boris wrote: “economic consciousness is trade union consciousness”
Well, it is the job of communists to make this no longer be the case. At least, of Marxist communists. It’s not exactly an impossible task, since objective, material conditions make the case for us: it is in the economic interest of workers to control their own surplus labor. There is nothing ideological about this, it’s just a fact.
If I did not believe that socialism was in the material interests of the working class, I would not be a communist; I would consider my socialist philosophy to be completely susceptible to right-wing criticisms of “utopianism”, and I would have no defense against such charges.
Boris wrote: “And in the US, this has often been accompanied by vicious anti-immigrant and imperialist politics.”
I am a firm believer in recognizing the importance of imperialism in any socialist analysis. I agree (not to the word, but certainly in the overall message) with Lenin’s theory on this. I don’t think that it makes Marxist class analysis irrelevant–neither did Lenin–it just adds a new and extremely important factor to take into account.
In fact, I agree that we may live in an era where anti-imperialist struggle from the imperialist-oppressed countries is a necessary prerequisite for revolutionary class struggle in the imperialist countries. It has proven quite difficult since WWI, if not impossible, to get the U.S. working class to adopt a revolutionary program when they clearly identify so strongly with nationalism and with the fact that they form a part (if the lowliest part) of “the greatest country on earth”. I don’t disagree with any of this, nor do I ignore it.
But again, this just requires an adjustment of how we use Marxist class analysis in the present era. It certainly doesn’t say that the proletariat has no revolutionary potential, or that Marx was ultimately wrong; it always has revolutionary potential. Always–as long as capitalist production exists.
Boris wrote: “Class consciousness, on the other hand, is communist political consciousness. Communist political consciousness is possible because of the changes in the world that have brought the proletariat into existence and corresponds to the larger historic interests of this class (as Mike E said in his piece), but I don’t think we can attribute any more of a “basis” to Marxism than that. Ex: what was Marx’s basis? What was Engels’ basis? We have to look at the complex interaction between economy, politics, and culture, in which the economy is only determinant “in the last instance.””
Yes, we do have to look at this interaction, clearly. But it is equally important to understand the material reasons for why proletarian consciousness is not what we predicted it to be in the industrial countries (I think this is what Lenin’s theory does). And there are material reasons for this (imperialism is a huge one). If we ever put politics, culture and ideology on the same level as material interests, then we are in effect replacing Marxist materialism with Hegelian idealism. I think Ely’s article crosses that line. When you begin looking for other groups than the working class (like students) to primarily conduct agitation within, then you have definitely crossed that line. And I’m not saying that anyone isn’t free to do so, if they truly believe that Marxism is dead. But count me out.
By the way, I only think that Ely is explicitly saying what most other communist groups, however “workerist” their official philosophy may be, are already doing in practice. Many Trotskyist groups spend their time selling their newspapers to students and anti-war protesters, and preaching to these groups about the need to build a revolutionary *labor* party in the U.S. It’s a rather sad thing to behold. I appreciate that Ely is at least honest about things, more or less saying that “we are lost” and don’t know among which groups we should agitate (“sink roots”), so we will just wait and see who becomes revolutionary and then side with them. Instead of leading, we will follow.
As for your example of the working class movement and its relation to the abolitionist movement, I really don’t know too much about it and I can’t comment, sorry.
———-
Jose, when Boris says, “We need to understand how ideology works. See Engels:”, I expect you will accuse him of treating Marx and Engels as infallible…I mean, right? In the name of fairness.
The Rebel Waltz said
The “we are lost” was not a direct quote, btw. Just my idea of a paraphrase.
borix max said
Re: post 40
Hmm…The Rebel Waltz, I would say that the kind of separation you make between material conditions on the one hand (objective position, true material interests) and consciousness and ideology on the other is actually a philosophically idealist view. It is idealist because it assumes a consciousness that exists outside of the material conditions, when actually consciousness is a product of matter and operates within matter. A shorthand phrase like “Being determines consciousness and consciousness reflects back on being” doesn’t get to the whole reality, which is that consciousness is internal to being. Ideology has a material existence.
You said that a class will always return to consciousness reflecting its objective position in the long run, ideologies not in line with true material interests shrivel away after a long time – I don’t know about that. Is there really an original class consciousness that coincides with the objective position of a class? Is it just a temporal question – the more time passes, the more true material interests will be revealed? Was there some point in time when consciousness was aligned with objective position and when we can say “that was when the deviation began”? It doesn’t seem like this is how reality actually works.
“If we ever put politics, culture and ideology on the same level as material interests…”
Do material interests even exist apart from politics, culture and ideology? The word “interest” in itself implies the functioning of consciousness.
anon said
“You want to reduce ‘Marxism’ to a set of rules (or to the even more reified ‘thing’). As I read Mike, he has (also) argued that such a reading is erroneous (in various dimensions).”
Well if your object is marx as part of an ideology then I’m afraid you are talking about reifications. That’s the very nature of political gangs and their ideologies.
The ultra left franco-italians who abandoned ideology and focused more on a more vibrant communist theory in which marx was relagated to being a tool would be an example of changing with the times though again they we’re not ideologues.
The Rebel Waltz said
BorisMax and others: I’m going to bow out now and digest what we’ve talked about. Thanks for the stimulating conversation.
Jose M said
rebel waltz:
thanks for chiming in comrade, we appreciate it. Do you see what I mean when I talk about the level of discussion in RevLeft and there here in Kasama?
Sorry I couldn’t contribute more to this, but I plan to later on.
AndreiMazenov said
Totally going off topic- or should I say back on topic- but I have to ask a rather simple but important question:
Where do we find our “balance” between economic struggle and communist agitation? We need to get more into this particular.
If we’re going to participate in economic struggles, how do we not get “sucked into” economism but still help with the struggles?
Example: there is currently a struggle going on within my own university concerning raising the costs (substantially) of transportation expenses at my school: parking permits, train and bus passes, etc… things which could have a dire effect on many students, including myself. However just, I find it hard to figure out my role as a Communist within it.
We can’t obviously fall back into the RCP’s nay-saying, but it seems that we’ll need to walk a very fine line at this point- until we see economic struggles becoming very radicalized.
The Rebel Waltz said
Jose,
I think there is some very high-level discussion at RevLeft (some of it still over my head), but I agree, there is also a lot of low-level stuff. I have been guilty of contributing to both, haha.
Thanks for inviting me to post my comments here, though. I don’t have any desire to smugly post my criticisms on some other site where the author(s) can’t respond and just leave it at that.
The Rebel Waltz said
I don’t know if anyone is still following this discussion, but here is a perfect example of how economic demands (a teachers’ strike for a raise–and a mundane, happens-every-year, supposedly predictable strike at that!–can lead to rapid political awakening and widespread mobilization in support of political demands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Oaxaca_protests
chegitz guevara said
“Economism,” as it was originally used, meant holding the struggle back to merely economic demands. “Economists” didn’t see the economic struggle as the best one to bring about revolution, they saw it as the only struggle and that revolution was irrelevant. The original economists, ala Bernstein, openly opposed talk of revolution, as distracting from the “real” task. Some of those whom Lenin targeted in What Is To Be Done?, even went so far as to say that revolutionaries were exploiting the workers for their own goals.
What about those who are revolutionary in their minds, but “economist” in practice? I’m not going to name names, but some organizations still mouth allegiance to the revolution, but that’s the only word you ever hear from them on the subject. Everything else is building trade unions and petty bourgeois electoral parties (at best) or the Democrats (at worst). Clearly we can consider such organizations as “economist.”
The real difficulty is in discerning groups which are constantly calling for revolution, but still acting in a reformist way, from actual revolutionary groups engaging in struggles for reforms.
Jacob Richter said
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=438
The struggle for socialism, communism, etc. is ultimately an economic struggle and not a political one. The political struggle is also not one of identity politics, Green politics, and such, but rather for class independence and workers’ rule.
Broad economism is where the first struggle is deemed to be the political struggle and immediate economic struggles are deemed to be the only economic struggle.
Cameron said
What country is that big ‘serve the people’ banner from and what is the demonstration about?
Andrei Kuznetsov said
In order to jump start this exchange more, I’d like to ask the question I asked a few months back (but was never really elaborated on):
Where do we find our “balance” between economic struggle and communist agitation? If we’re going to participate in economic struggles, how do we not get “sucked into” economism but still help with the struggles? How do we not get caught up in SWP-style politics, but not fall back into the RCP’s nay-saying?
Jan Makandal said
The historical role of the proletarian revolutionary is to define the form of organizations needed to not only fight capital but also most importantly to defeat it. As long as we are talking of forms of organization, we are talking of the need to have a political line. The political line, the form of organization needed, and the class ideology of the proletariat must be constructed from the autonomous struggle of the working class. The working class must find and define, autonomously, in its struggle, its historical role in class struggle. There must be a fusion of proletarian revolutionary theory with proletarian revolutionary movement. As long as we are talking of revolution and radical change, Communism is the most advanced form and most advanced radical tendency of proletarian revolutionary ideology. Communism questions the form of private property on which the capitalist societal organization is based.
The working class, in it struggle against capital/surplus value, needs to accomplish two tasks: wage its autonomous struggle at the revolutionary level and at the mass level. It must unify the people’s camp under its leadership while keeping its autonomy organically.
The mass level is the level where the workers and the masses wage their tactical battles against capital. This level’s aim is to wage popular democratic struggle, this level does not aim to defeat capital but rather to weaken it. The economic struggle of the workers is efficient and advantageous as long as it is preserved from reformism. Periodical resistance of the working class against wage reduction, wage adjustment and the struggle for more wages are linked to the system of wages and are being provoked by the fact that labor is assimilated to goods and is under the same principles that regulate the general movement of cost/value. The key question is in the continuous struggle of capital and labor when the latter will be able to defeat capital.
We must understand that in the economic struggle, power is in the side of capital. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to elevate wages but rather to lower it. The main objective of capital is to lower the value of labor to the lowest level possible. Workers can’t abandon resistance against all the dirty tricks of capital and give up all efforts to gain rights to ameliorate their social conditions. If workers gave up their daily struggle against capital they would also give up to the much bigger struggle against capital.
Class struggle at the level of economic struggles is a school of struggle for the working class. The class struggle waged in production by the capitalist class is what makes the labor process a process of production of surplus value, one of the material bases for the existence of the capitalist class. It is also the class struggle waged by workers in production that lessens the tendency of maximum profit by the capitalist class and guarantees the existence of the working class.
This is the basis of proletarian theory as well as the basis for the tactical class struggle battle of the working class. The struggle of the proletariat begins with the economic struggle and must permanently build on those struggles. The political battle of the proletariat will achieve its objective until wages are abolished.
By the way, the internationalist way to support international struggles is to organize the working class and the masses here in the belly of the beast.
Economism is a deviation of the revolutionary level of the proletariat…
R said
Isn’t (economism) the relation of particular to general? Certain particular struggles manifest themselves and are brought to resolution within the general conditions.
As in Chicago where the violence surges, reverends are brought out, saying, jobs, job training, etc. etc. and then things settle back to the same level once the TV lights go out.
But in the end it is wage labor. It is the creation of surplus value and capital that determines this epoch — the generality we live under. It is not just because, Marx and Lenin say it’s true, they discovered that fact. Built upon by Luxemborg, Bukahrin, etc etc.
It might be well and good, in fact necessary, that socialists discuss and generate polemics about Badiou’s philosophy, but without the balance of say discussing, Keynesian economics, or the Austrian School aren’t we lacking? Those competing philosophies of economics appear to be the fight that is currently being waged by the bourgeoisie. Even “America in Decline” seems dated in explanation of the capital movement and the relation of the imperialist powers amongst themselves and towards the third world.
Stalin gave an excellent report to 19th ? cc of the CPSU(b). In it he lays out the general economic conditions in the world at that time. Based on this goes on to say aren’t the western powers strong enough to contain the fascists. Concluding yes they are but would rather “appease” themselves all the way to Moscow. The generality of his assessment was indeed correct. The particular methods employed towards the development of heavy industry, socialism in one country, etc. are debated to this day.
It would be interesting for Mike to revisit the coal fields, for I suspect that although men are still being killed in the pursuit of profit, I doubt that there are as many working in the same fields. There have been changes in productivity of labor through the use of technology. Computers, communications, robotics, container shipping have made great changes with there application. In the U.S. with millions unemployed and 70% of the economy devoted towards consumer spending, what exactly is the relationship of the worker towards the means of production?
My question then is: isn’t our understanding of the dialectic of general to particular (in the US) is too heavily weighted towards the study of particular issues? As “all that is solid melts into the air, all that is holy is profaned…” doesn’t that present an opportunity to understand better the workings of imperialism currently and the application of socialism?