Strategy in the Class struggle Part 2 The Ultra Right Fiction Here is why focusing our attack or line of march to "attack the ultra right" insures our defeat. The battle has to be through the political middle or winning the middle to the side of class demands of the proletariat fused to the striving of the most destitute of the proletarian masses. Fighting the ultra right means fighting the fringe and reactionary elements as they attack the Obama administration. The Obama administration strategic political line and desire is to defeat its opponents; the "ultra right," as the inherent nature of their sectarian battle for government control. When we focus our attack on the "ultra right" we are fighting the enemy of our enemy. The "ultra right" is not the enemy of the proletariat as such, but rather all of capital. More importantly the worker as the historic political middle are not connected to capital on the basis of the lunatic fringe but on the basis of secure employment that is increasingly less secure. The entire concept of the "ultra right" is a fiction, increasingly used by the black and brown petty bourgeois intellectual as the means to frighten the poverty stricken masses into a fight designed to carry the petty bourgeois into political office. The concept ultra right is totally devoid of a class content or contemporary reality. Class content means a break down of economic fragments of class, their spontaneous behavior as intersection of class interest and our response as communists to this reality movement. The question before the movement is, what is to be done? Real questions call for real answers. This means politicizing every step of the way. It means propagandizing from within the actual struggle – as scattered and disoriented as it is – to push that struggle forward from within, through all its stages, toward its actual conclusion. For instance, in Detroit we have targeted H.R. 676 as the focal point in the battle for the single payer health care system. The sponsor of this bill - John Conyers, is elected from Detroit. Three months ago, Conyers would not support his own bill, but in the past 3 weeks has turn towards supporting and advocating for 676. I have no particular love for Conyers, but he is an extremely astute politician, birthed and nurtured in the art of class politics. John is no ones fools and has outlasted all his antagonists. Actually, John Conyers is of another generation of politicians radically different from the second generation black political official, including the likes of Jesse Jackson Sr. Perhaps, Conyers did not want to place himself in opposition to President Obama during his first 100 days in office. Conyers bill - H.R. 676, has 86 sponsors and was crafted long before Obama came to office. What actually happened was that the pace of the political struggle against a single payer place was accelerated by the Obama administration reaching out to the "ultra right" while trying to attack it rather than focusing on he political middle and winning this to a single payer plan. The right wing of the communist movement followed Obama down this path of defeat while attacking those supporting H.R. 676 as ultra leftist. We can only start where we can start. We need a general vision of the process unfolding and a particular vision and understanding of each concrete struggle. Pushing the movement forward from within is not an arbitrary question. It depends on where it is and where it needs to go. The struggle over how to stabilize the economy sets the terms of the debate for each scattered battle. Bailout laid-off workers and debt-ridden college students? Yes or no? Or, bailout the banks? Yes or no! Nationalize in the interests of private property? Or, in the interests of the people? The next step forward is from scattered defensive battles to unified political battles — with the demand rising from within each scattered battle that the government take over the private resources of the key corporations and run them in the interests of the many, not the few — for the public welfare, not for private gain. Our fight is bound up with winning the political middle to the cause of the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat. As the crisis deepens and its effects spread, government action to protect private property is transforming scattered, issue-based battles into political battles over what the government does and whom it protects. We can already see how government intervention in the auto industry contains a possible seed that could put the government on collision course with the interests of the autoworkers. The current stage of economic crisis has opened the historical battlefield of nationalization. Class interests can be fought out on this battlefield. Leveling our attack against the "ultra right" will ensure our catastrophic defeat , by realigning the political struggle in favor of the administration. Consciousness can be developed along the line of march that is through the political middle. The direction of the outcome, however, is not guaranteed. Whether revolutionaries can accomplish the tasks of this moment depends on whether we connect with people’s thinking where they are reacting to their own catastrophes and fighting to solve their immediate problems – connect with them so we can sum up their needs and demands and put them back out in a way that points forward toward their actual solution. In every current and corner of social life, the immediate needs of people in the cities and towns devastated by the economy opens the door to these battles. In every battle over real and immediate needs, people can become aware of their class interests, how to fight for them, and what it will take to achieve them. Expressed unevenly at first, the common political edge is beginning to emerge within the social struggle of people for what they need. These times call on revolutionaries to drop their separate demands and to do the difficult intellectual work within the battle for the next political step ahead for the actual movement. Revolutionaries’ approach to developing consciousness reflects what philosophy – and life itself – tells us. Growth and development cannot happen unless and until a process goes through all of its stages to reach its actual and ultimate conclusion. The first stage is well on its way. The financial and economic crisis is rapidly destroying the material basis that connected this decisive section of the working class to the capitalist class. The next steps: breaking loose from the politics and ideology of the class enemy, uniting the scattered defensive battles, and developing into a political force that can fight for its actual interests and aims. Science, politics, art This approach to revolutionaries’ work within this political moment, then, rests on the distinction between science and the art of politics – and embraces the importance of both. A scientific understanding of society and social change is indispensable to revolutionaries’ work. It allows us to see what is new and how the foundation of society is changing. It gives us the view of the overall line of march of the revolution, the material conditions in which that is unfolding, and the actual and ultimate results of the objective movement. Just as military battles are not won by convincing the combatants of the laws of physics, likewise it is not possible to "apply" science directly to the practical struggle. Science points to the political, strategic, and tactical considerations and conclusions that make it possible for revolutionaries to keep the struggle on course, moving step by step, to its actual conclusion. Political struggle depends on the art of politics. The art of politics is to rely on the objective to accomplish the subjective – that is, to rely on the changes in material conditions to accomplish a stage of the consciousness. The current awakening and widening struggle present the opportunity to develop consciousness of class and political interests. Everything depends on thinking, creative revolutionaries. In Detroit it is vital to be creative and transcend the politics and ideology of race theory as the salient feature of the struggle. Characterizing capital attacks as racist without a clear economy logic can only disorient the mass of workers and prevent them articulating a clear and precise class outlook and class demands as a rallying point for the entire American working class. The mass of proletarians in Detroit already know they are black. What they do not yet know is their historic role in the American Proletarian revolution. New situation, new possibilities The history of the American left has alternated between two equally unproductive approaches to work. One approach imitates the mass movement and makes specific demands into a question of principle. The other tries to win the reform movement to "revolutionary" – and usually ideological – positions or principles. This flip-flop and over emphasis’s on "historical questions" of principle was understandable in the past because history was not yet going where revolutionaries wanted to take it. In the 1920s and 1930s, the country was still industrializing. Even during the Depression, the capitalist system was expanding. In the 1950s and 1960s, an expanded capitalist system with imperialist super-profits, also carved out from a war torn Europe, could grant civil rights and access into the system for women and ethnic minorities. The objective social motion was to become part of an expanding system. That is not the motion today. Social motion today is shaped by the growing objective antagonism to capital, not the fight to reform and expand it. The capitalist system of exchange and entire economic system has broken down. An objectively revolutionary movement has begun. Bit by bit, it is being forced to direct its demands politically and this motion is proceeding faster than anything I have experienced. Revolutionaries in the U.S. have never really faced such a moment – the capitalist system in the process of destruction, a fundamental rupture of the system of exchange, the resulting discussions within the ruling class over how to stabilize the market and protect private property, all sections of society drawn into political discourse and activity, and a politically pivotal section of the working class whose actual interests are poised against the capitalist class and the government. No practical economic and social problem can be addressed except in the political battle over what the government will do and what class it serves. The revolutionary process is also at a critical juncture. The government and corporations are inseparably intertwined and intermingled. They are poised to control a class whose struggle increasingly takes a political form. That class can go no further until it learns to fight politically in its own interests. Thousands of well-connected, thinking, creative, and active revolutionaries are today grappling intellectually, politically, and practically with this question. They are experts on their fronts of struggles, skillful leaders in their organizations, and tireless teachers of their constituencies. They know that in order to coalesce the movement needs more than increased hardship and an ultimate general goal; it needs direction as to how to get from hardship to ultimate aim. The challenge before revolutionaries today is a big one, and the stakes are high. Political struggle is beginning in this country. To step up to the tasks of the day, revolutionaries on all fronts need to talk with one another about science and analysis, strategy and politics – the meaning of this political moment and how to politicize this awakening and push the process ahead. The anger and awakening are spreading rapidly – setting the objective basis for consciousness to catch up in waves and leaps. Revolutionaries need to unite their energies to accomplish their responsibilities and to answer the call of history. The workers cannot leap to class consciousness if we do not talk about class and class demands and why huge sections of the economy must be ripped out of the free market relations. Limiting this discussion to the color factor in Detroit and/or the striving of the petty bourgeois political leaders of the city will trap the proletariat in mediocrity. Gearing our attacks against the ultra right rather than on the critical issue of survival and neighborhoods maneuvers us into fighting the enemy of our enemy.
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