Working class/communism

Tahir Wood twood at uwc.ac.za
Tue Jul 2 03:18:34 PDT 2002


The working class thread got into a bit of a tangle, as that discussion always does. I can give a reason for that, which I think has important political implications for those who are communists.

To put it in a nutshell, it is a problem that arises from commonsense notions of categorisation. But advances in cognitive science over the last couple of decades have helped us to think differently about categorisation. The commonsense view is based on a container schema; something is either in the container or it is not (or it is in another container). What we see then is that each individual must be located absolutely within or without the container. But there is actually no container - a class is not a container. What cognitive science now offers us is a whole range of ways of thinking about categories, including cognitive models of various kinds, prototypes, fuzzy sets and the like, all of which could be relevant to this discussion. I would just explore briefly for the moment the question of fuzzy boundaries between categories.

I would say that there is a fairly broad band of strata between the bourgeoisie and the working class, which represents, let us say, the fuzzy boundary between the two fundamental classes of capitalism. This underlies the inevitable discussion of whether or not there is a middle class, a petty bourgeoisie, co-ordinating class or what you will. Why is this a better way of thinking about it? Because there are many individuals who oscillate in their relation to the means of production, and it is an utterly worthless exercise to actually track the oscillation in the class position from day to day of such individuals. What would be examples? A worker who scrimps and save to start a small business, a professor who gets promoted into a senior management position and is now in some kind of hiring and firing position at her university, someone who works in a factory when there is work and when there isn't sells fruit and vegetables on the sidewalk, a clerk or supervisor who is offere! d ! a small share in the business, etc. etc. There are as many possible examples as one could think of. To paraphrase Shakespeare, a man in his life plays many parts - he can be a worker today and (small) capitalist tomorrow and a manager the day after. This empirical stuff would be uninteresting, and is in a sense, except for the fact I think that there is a real theoretical and practical issue in this.

It concerns the role of communists and the location of communists in society. I am going to be controversial here, stick my neck out and say that it is precisely in this band of middle strata that communist thought spreads most easily. The answer is not hard to find: these are people who are both in touch with workers on a daily basis AND have opportunities for education and some moments to contemplate difficult ideas, often during some recess in their working lives, a period at college, etc. (As a corollary I must of course say that these are the strata where ANTI-communist ideas are also most compelling - but that's another thread). Just look at all the most important communist thinkers and leaders - how many of them do not come from a background of either merchant class, petty industrialist, intellectual, clerical, etc.? Yes there are some who come from solidly working class backgrounds and others who come from solidly bourgeois backgrounds, but I venture to say that thes! e ! are far fewer in number. Workers are just too damn busy working to study and the bourgeoisie are too preoccupied with profit and play to care.

The practical significance of all of this, I am becoming more and more convinced, is deep and concerns the relationship between party and class. I am using the notion here of communist party in its original sense, i.e. referring simply to the communists as a group. If communists generally are not 'solidly' working class in the sense I have mentioned, then how do they relate to the class? Lenin gave his most well known answer in What is to Be Done: the party must infuse the class with class consciousness. Here we have our container schema again - the communists are outside the class and must penetrate its boundaries ideologically. This is not at all an un-marxist notion, let me hasten to point out, it enshrines into 'marxist theory' precisely some of Marx's own weakest moments as a theorist. When Marx says "Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win," note that he is not saying "WE workers of the world should unite because WE!

h! ave nothing to lose ....." Why should he have? Although Marx lived a large part of his life in poverty he was never really a proletarian. The poorest parts of his life (which were considerably poor) were spent writing books with the support of his bourgeois friend and patron. Marx was one of those communists that came from the middle strata.

OK so what? Marx was aware at some level of his position on the margins of the class, as my simple example above illustrates, and that is the position, I make bold to say, of most communists. Now what about the class itself? I do not believe that in 'normal' times many members of the working class are communists, except for some deep-seated feelings that the way of the world is not fair, etc. and they do struggle through all kinds of ways as an expression of this and in order to try to better their lives, through strikes, refusal of work, etc.

Now the relationship of party to class can be first of all of two kinds. It can be paternalistic or it can be patronising. The communists may, like Lenin, and Marx in his weaker moments, EXHORT the workers. This involves telling them their true destiny, organising them and generally presenting them with what they ought to do. This is proletarian Jesuitry. It is the clear separation between the flock and its leaders and it is paternalistic.

The second option: This is workerism of a certain kind: here the communist, against all the facts of his own life, argues that only a worker can be a communist, that only workers have revolutionary potential, and the party must consist purely of workers - no 'petty-bourgeois elements'. This paradoxical position of the communist involves tortuous attempts to show that everyone outside the bourgeoisie is actually a worker. In other words the communist must locate him/herself subjectively WITHIN the container of the working class. Withough going into detail here, this is akin to the mistake of workerists such as CLR James et al, opposite to the Leninist error.

But I think of this differently and this is the idea I want to share. I don't think that many communists are IN the class in the sense I mentioned, but nor do I feel their role is to preach from OUTSIDE the class. I do not believe it is the role of communists to organise the class. I believe this error is the source of paternalism in the communist movement, which leads to a paternalistic relationship between party and class after the revolution and ultimately and inevitably to repression (after all we are the ones who know what's good for the workers in the long run....)

Communists have a unique role of developing communism as applied theory and this is their main task. Workers do not have to be organised and THEY DO NOT NEED TO BE TOLD WHAT TO DO. If they are not in a state of revolt that is because they feel that the time is not right or whatever. They are not the canon fodder of the communists. It is their revolution, after all. When workers are in a state of revolt, as happens at certain points (which are NOT predictable), they will reach out for the weapons they need, including communist theory. This applied theory needs to be the sharpest and most efficacious of weapons available to workers. They will not have to be told to use it, they will find it themselves, make an effort to understand it and then know what to do with it. They will become communists when they need to, not before.

I have argued that workers are not 'normally' in a state of revolt, although they frequently resist in covert manners, usually as some kinds of refusal of work. But this is not revolution. It is so tempting, isn't it, for the communists to want to exhort them at such times, or else to choose for them when the moment is ripe for revolt. This is the hubris of the communist, and it is fatal.

Communists can support progressive actions as ordinary people do, go down to the demonstration, the protest or the picket line, not as the generals giving orders, but as ordinary citizens. But their unique role is elsewhere: to push the boundaries constraining communist thought in society. This is not armchair, contrary to what our super-organisers like to say - it gets you hated, ostracised, fired from your job, separated from your partner sometimes, and many other things.

Guess I'll stop there.

Tahir



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list