Strategy in the Class struggle
Part 1
There are some thing in life I just hate. Missing the lottery by one
number, hitting my knee on the edge of the coffee table and being stuck in
wrong
thinking or using Marx approach like a true believing Jehovah witness.
Somewhere in Marx writings he advances a proposition about the workers
leaping out of the bounds of economic struggle against the employers and
passing
over to political struggle against the regime. Lenin speaks of the workers
transcending the trade union struggle but I am through using Lenin as an
index like a true believer quotes Genesis.
For much of my life I understood the process the working class must pass
through in the following way: a large segment of workers go on strike and at
a certain point the employers call in the police or the state intervenes
and on this basis the struggle of the workers is compelled to leap outside
the employer-employee relations. In fact this is what happened at the Dodge
Truck strike (Local 140) around 1974. The workers struck the plant and the
local Judge literally came to the factory gate handing out arrest warrants
and giving worker sentences on the spot. The next day we issued a leaflet of
condemnation with the headline "Here Comes The Judge," a popular joke line
taken from the old Flip Wilson Comedy show.
The state - judge and police, attacks the workers and the struggle leaps
into the political arena. Or the workers engage the political process seeking
legislation to lighten their load, as in the case of the struggle for the
eight hour workday.
Something different is happening today that conforms to Marx insights but
this "something" is happening on its own basis.
Economic crisis and government action to stabilize the economy are drawing
the American people into politics. We first witnessed this is a big way
with the election of Obama and pondered the meaning of the huge open air
rallies involving upwards of 80,000 people but lacked a political framework to
make sense of events.
The struggle within the ruling class and its political elite, as it seeks
solutions to the economic crisis, rather than open clashes between employer
and employee is having a profound impact on the life of the country. When
the government began to insert itself openly and directly into the
management of the economy, the whole country was pulled into political
discourse —
"leave it to the market," "bailout those corporations that are too large to
fail," "nationalize" – with journalists and students, laid-off and debt-lad
en workers, homeowners and homeless all asking, "Where’s my bailout?"
The national public discourse is on, with socialism being discussed daily.
It is not only the academics, leftists, progressives, and news spinners,
but today mainstream America is awakening to politics beyond elections and
engaging an intense discussion over the attributes of socialism. .
Politics beyond elections? Socialism being discussed in America? Wow, this
is new. "Politics beyond elections" is meant to convey a concept of a
changed reality. "Politics beyond elections," also implies that hence forth,
the
politics before the next series of elections have changed.
For the first time in many generations, we see a public discourse that
opens the door to political struggle over class interests. Whether
revolutionaries can seize this moment to add depth, vision, and class
partisanship to
the intensifying debate depends both on political strategy and on an
approach to work that politicizes from within this broad awakening.
I write from the point of view that attacking the left as "ultra left" and
advocating the left focus on the "ultra right" will educate not one worker
in the politics of class. Further, I assert that attacking the left as
"ultra left" and focusing on attacking the "ultra right" is the sole political
purpose of MSNBC and Chris Matthis, whose targeted enemy is the New
American fascists at Fox news.
Revolutionaries are not free to simply politicize and "revolutionize" at
will. We can do so under definite economic and historical conditions. When
those conditions are ripe, it is critical that we understand those conditions
and seize the time. The financial crisis spotlights society at a critical
juncture. The ruling class cannot protect its property nor stabilize the
economy without the government inserting itself into management of the
economy and instituting nationalization in some form – partial or temporary.
Bailing out AIG and pouring an admitted $800 trillion into the new financial
architecture is a case in point.
At the same time, unless "the government" takes responsibility for the
public welfare, larger and larger sections of the population will go under -
without the basic necessaries of life. Unless the Federal government
guarantees health care for all, millions will suffer and die for lack of money
to
see a doctor. The more than less stable section of the working class will
see more of its incomes going to health care - higher premiums. Every layer
of society, every economic rung on the ladder faces having more and more of
its dollars poured into the health care system. Health care becomes a tough
issue because each economic fragment of all classes have "skin in the
game" and perceives its interest different. Yet, each fragment of classes
needs
the same things: "help."
Each class fragment wants help for itself, with the most destitute of the
proletariat occupying a social/economic status compelling it to fight for
medical care for all in order to meet it basic and elementary medical needs.
A $5,000 medical tax credit - for instance, will not help the most
destitute of the proletarian masses because of its low income level. Here we
run
into the meaning of class analysis. Class analysis ascends from the Ivory
Towers of intellectual thought and is transformed into the material politics
of championing the aspirations of the working class based on its most
poverty stricken sector. When we discuss classes we have to look at what we
are
really talking about. On A Marxist list there is general agreement on the
meaning of class as a property relation. In the world outside our
intellectual door class appears as economic stratification and class sector
behavior.
The main point is that classes are not simply reducible to those working at
the means of production and those owning the means of production. I am of
the opinion that class and class struggle in August 2009 means the
spontaneous motion and movement of economic fragments of classes and their
intersecting interest. From this point of view what is blocking and containing
the
spontaneous movement of the most destitute sections of the proletariat is
not the "ultra rights" but the relative stability of the economic middle,
as it stabilizes the system of capital rule and advances a set of demands
that fall short of the needs of the real proletarian masses.
What follows from this is the need to adjust the demands of the most
poverty stricken sector of the proletariat to intersect with the economic layer
directly above it. Here we have to speak of class demands in a very concrete
way. We have to write and develop a body of literature that speaks to the
concreteness of class as the American experience.
Unless "the government" ensures everyone’s access to the necessaries of
life, like education, public housing, personal energy allotment and clean
running water, private industry will buy up ever-broader components of the
public infrastructure in cities and towns across the country and run them for
the profit of the corporations, rather than the needs of the majority.
This objective necessity of nationalization opens the decisive battlefield
over whose interests the government will serve. Will the public demand
nationalization in the interests of the common good? Will the class that works
until its labor is no longer needed struggle for its interests to be served
and protected? Or will nationalization continue to serve the interests of
private corporate investors, the class of people that accumulates wealth
based on others’ toil and their growing debt? The $800 trillion given to the
non-banking financial institutions could have been better spent as direct
injections into the society infrastructure and needed things like medical
care.
I am deeply aware that a layer of the workers morally feel it is better to
teach a man to fish, rather than to give him a fish because giving him a
fish means he eats for one day, while teaching him to fish means he eats for
a lifetime. The problem is that the $800 trillion was not directed toward
giving fish or teaching anyone how to fish. Then, the capitalist politicians
demand that we the people "pay" for this $800 trillion giveaway.
On this historical battleground over whose interests nationalization will
serve, our class can be educated and formed politically – with the
consciousness and capacity to fight in its own class interests.
This battle is already conjuring up forms that are rooted in American
history. At critical turning points, when the populace had to pay for the
disruptions in the economy and the free market monetary system, it aimed its
anger at "the banks" or "Wall Street." In controversies over the Bank of the
United States in the early 1800s, over the gold standard in the late 1800s,
and over financial regulation during the early days of the New Deal,
American politics was about finance.
The current crisis is resurrecting American anger at the financial elite.
Unfortunately, along with that anger comes the danger of racial and
anti-immigrant agitation reminiscent of other turning points in American
history.
New ideology and political direction will not spring forth spontaneously
out of layoffs, loss of health and retirement benefits, or foreclosures. This
time around, there is no way forward for private property except to
protect and expand the power of those who accumulate wealth off of financial
speculation and the expanding debt of the working class. This time, the anger
at the financial elite can also be a channel through which American politics
gets infused with a sense of class interests and how to fight for them
politically.
A decision has to be made. Shall the economic middle of the working class
fight to stabilize itself in opposition to and without militant demands for
the most poverty stricken of the proletariat? To do such means the bottom
is the degree to which you will be pushed. If homelessness is accepted as
the bottom that is the degree to which you and your family can be pushed,
then you are destined to sink lower and lower. The fight has to be pushed from
an awareness of the need to raise the bottom of the social and economic
ladder to a point that you do not desire to be pushed. This approach is
called class politics. Everything above this "bottom" should be based on the
individual laboring and inspiration of the individual within a cooperative
society.
Strategic opening
Political strategy aims at achieving or maintaining political power. It
operates within the subjective side of the movement – the conscious side of
the developing movement. Key to strategy is identifying your enemy’s weak
points. Even this nascent stage of the process reveals a critical point of
ideological vulnerability.
What is the enemy’s weak point? If the weak point within the system and the
political class is not the "ultra right" then why would one focus their
political literature and attacks against the "ultra right?"
Today’s crisis and government action are pulling people from all walks of
life into motion. But one section holds the potential to pull all others
forward. The stably employed, mid-American workers have been the targets of
appeals by political campaigns. They have played the pivotal role in decisive
ideological shifts in the history of the country.
Appealed to as a "middle class," this sector has been the key to the
capitalists’ political strength. Although the capitalist class is less than one
percent of the population, it has been able to control the entire population
by controlling 30 to 50 percent through good jobs, benefits, and
privilege.
With jobs and benefits already lost to technology and mobile capital, the
middle-income section of the population ("the political middle‘) is
diminishing. Lou Dobbs has built his entire television career the political
middle
and anti-immigration rhetoric. The financial crisis drastically speeds up
the process of destruction of the economic/political middle. This
destruction is not due to bad management but is the natural result of the
working of
the free market system under the impact of the technological advance and
revolution. The big fish eats the little fish means all the fish in between
gets eaten.
How fall are you willing to sink? For every 500,000 that becomes unemployed
and sink lower, one person and their family escapes upward. Educated and
organized workers are being forced out of the system and into antagonism to
capital. This rude awakening from the American Dream turns what used to be
a political strength for the capitalists into their potential political
vulnerability.
This section is not only tied to the capitalists economically, they are
also attached to the capitalists culturally and psychologically. A section of
these workers think things out like little bitty capitalists. Rapidly
shaken from their secure situation, these workers can be agitated for fascism.
Or their awakening can become the catalyst for the development of a class
thinking and fighting in its own interests.
Here is our line of march rather than attacking the "ultra rights."
Previously entitled, newly dispossessed, this section of the population can
be politicized rapidly to set the tone of the national political
discourse. Direction depends on consciousness. Our focus need to be on the
political
middle. Just as this political middle was swung to Obama, it can be swung
to fascism in the blink of an eye. There is a materialist explanation for
why the initial impulse of these workers is to swing to the right. These
workers are attached to the capitalists culturally and psychologically, but
they are workers - wage laborers, and there spontaneous tendency is to seek
work - rather than "a government hand out," or to recreate and reestablish
the wage labor form, or reestablish their connection with capital. When
promised the ability to "once again work" with dignity these workers listen
and
believe.
The lower section of the proletariat knows better as a lower economic
section. These workers know that the upper economic layer of workers exist in
relationship to their poverty and low wages. Likewise the upper economic
layer of workers fully understand that their status is based on them not
becoming the lower sector which is why these workers learn trade and send
their
children to school and high education. The problem is that these means no
longer work and allow escape from the economic bottom. The system is in crisis
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from
_http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_
(http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm)
_______________________________________________
Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
