From: "Marvin Gandall" <marvgandall at rogers.com> To: "LBO-Talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: The relative autonomy of the masses (Was: Social
Democrats) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 10:32:02 -0400
Turbulo wrote:
I don't think social democracy plays a treacherous role simply because its leaders are craven or corrupt, which they usaully are. There is also a sociological basis for the way they act. You seem to regard them as well-intentioned pragmatists, who will carry their reformist agenda as far as the balance of class forces realistically permits. I view them less benignly. Leaders of the social democratic type--union officials, party politicians--comprise a social stratum, with definite interests and a definite M.O. Their role as brokers between the capitalists, on the one hand, and workers and other subordinate classes, on the other, sometimes involves real reforms, especially when the lower classes are fed up, and things are threatening to get out of hand. But it means, above all, maintaining the class hierarchy in which they act as brokers. This is why they are so deathly afraid of any mass mobilizations that could go beyond the electoral arena, and why, when the chips are down, they will invariably side with the ruling classes against their base. We don't have to go back to the much revisited Germany of 1918-19, where the Social Democrats in power suppressed the Spartacus rising and murdered its leaders, for examples of how they function. We can see it in France, where Jospin's Socialist government used his tepid 35-hour workweek legislation to distract people from the biggest wave of privatizations carried out by any French government so far. Or in Bolivia, where, it seems, Evo Morales is acting to save a rapidly deteriorating situation for the elite. The fact that we live in a right-wing period, in which the capitalist classes (especially in the Anglophone world) have little use for social democracy and revile even its rhetoric shouldn't blind us to the role it has played historically, and is playing elsewhere even now, in propping up capitalism and selling its neoliberal agenda to the non-capitalist majority. -------------------------------------------------------- I don't think you give enough credit to the working class - including the most conscious part of it which is involved in its unions, social movements and political parties - as the architects of its own misfortune or fortune, as the case may be. This seems to me a common enough error on the left, where the working class is mainly seen as a passive agent easily gulled by the bourgeoisie, either directly or through the current leaders of its organizations. I think this subtly contemptuous view of the masses mainly reflects the isolation of the left from working class organizations and broader milieus, coupled with disappointment that the masses have historically not followed its self-evident advice to expropriate the capitalists and build socialism. Your post is in this vein. You write that the "non-capitalist majority" is being sold a bill of “neoliberal” goods by their “usually craven and corrupt” leaders who act as "brokers" for the capitalist class.
I don't know what your and others' experience in unions and social democratic parties has been, but this verdict directly contradicts my own. I did I not find their leaders mostly craven or corrupt, as my political training had taught me to expect. In most cases, they were energetic activists who had risen through the ranks and loyally built their organizations. They were hostile and suspicious to "big corporations" but this did not make them anti- or "non-capitalist", as you write; they were for making the system more just, democratic and resilient through redistributive taxation and spending - what they called "social democracy". They consciously counterposed it to "socialism" - a system they did understand as non-capitalist, which they identified with the USSR and China.
I didn't think the kind of just and democratic capitalism they dreamed of was possible - still don't - and often thought they were too respectful of the other side's power and not confident enough in their own side. I had ample opportunity from the left to present that point of view. So have many others throughout the history of the labour and socialist movement. It is not as if union and party ranks have never been exposed to Marxist and other left views of the kind expressed on this list. There have always been left-wing dissidents and caucuses at all levels of the unions and union-supported parties, which are still among the most democratic organizations in society, nothwithstanding the demagogy and political manuevering and organizational measures which are an inevitable concomitant of any body where people get to vote on policies and leaders.
In these debates, whether at smaller union local meetings or larger party conventions, the majority of the members in attendance almost always sided with their leaders against the small dissident left caucuses I supported. I don't think it was the superior debating skill of the leadership which swayed them. The left always held its own. Nor was membership compliance secured through threats or bribes, which the leaders did not really have to dispense. In the final anaysis, the right usually won and the left lost because most people are naturally cautious and trusting of their leaders and the prevailing order of things until circumstances jolt them from their complacency and shake their confidence in the status quo.
We don't have enough respect for the pragmatic wariness and independent judgement of people, and mistake it for ignorance. Their main interests are private - their families, personal status, leisure activities - until circumstances force them to pay attention to social issues and the organizations which purport to represent their interests in the public arena. If they buy into what the Blairs and Bushes and Kerrys and Sweeneys are saying, it is not because they are being conned, but because they have confidence their current leaders and the existing system will continue to provide them a standard of living they have becomce accustomed to and which, despite their various discontents, they on the whole endorse. Why should we expect them to break with their leaders and existing organizations on the basis of what, after all, are only abstract promises and policy prescriptions from the left that things can be better? My dad, employing the popular venacular, used to say he "never bought a pig in a poke" and would mockingly ask "was you dere, cholly?" when I'd challenge him about his political choices. In retrospect, I can better understand his instinctive skepticism.
MG