International Socialists

Their power, our power

The power of the ruling class in capitalist society is abundantly clear, especially with respect to, inter alia, state power, the unequal distribution of power entailed by capitalist relations of production, and the role of the media in manufacturing consent. What is much less commonly recognised is the extent to which capitalist power is ultimately contingent upon the continuing failure of the working class and its allies to act in a united collective manner and exercise a social structural capacity to control society that vastly exceeds that of the capitalist class and state. For this reason it is important to focus, not just on their power, but on our power.

One of the crassest misrepresentations of the classical Marxist tradition is the suggestion that this tradition is pervaded by instrumentalist views of the state in which the bourgeoisie is the puppeteer and the state is the puppet. In stark contrast to the related notions that capitalists always dominate workers, and that the bourgeoisie always dominates the state, the major figures in classical Marxism considered these relationships to be repeatedly contested. The concept of class struggle precisely implies a clash between classes with distinctive interests, powers, and collective capacities. In this respect Marx argued that "The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to inquire into his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits." (12) Hence the rate of exploitation is "only settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labour," a struggle in which "the respective powers of the combatants" is of critical importance. (13)

The potential, latent power of the working class is vastly greater than the power of the capitalist class, because it is workers, rather than capitalists, who are strategically located at the very heart of the economic system. Whether in factories, railways, airlines, shipping and other areas of transportation, construction, banks, shops, supermarkets, restaurants and bars; it is workers who make the "wheels of industry" turn, it is workers who produce the wealth that is so conspicuously unequally distributed. This is why a mass strike by the working class is potentially a revolutionary act - it fundamentally challenges the power of capitalists and the state to govern society.

What prevents workers, the oppressed and students from exercising their potential collective power most of the time is disunity, sustained by the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie, an ideological hegemony that actively promotes, albeit in complex and contradictory ways, nationalism, sexism and racism. In rejecting the possibility of collective social transformation, post-modernism has adopted an air of resignation with respect to disunity, encouraging us instead to celebrate difference. Classical Marxism, while recognising the broad range of divisions within the working class, has traditionally emphasised what we share in common so that we may engage in united collective struggle for a better world. But no matter how many times Marxists argue for this and highlight the strategic centrality of the working-class to any generalised struggle for emancipatory social change, the veracity of such ideas only becomes fully apparent through participation in actual collective struggle.

This is so, firstly, because the potential fragility of capitalist and state power only becomes apparent when this power is successfully contested by the forces on our side of the class struggle - most importantly workers, for the reasons stated above, but also students and/or movements of the oppressed. This is why the WTO protests in Seattle were so important and influential - they graphically demonstrated the potential fragility of the power of the international bourgeoisie and the world's states, while simultaneously dramatically demonstrating the potential strength of our power.

The second reason is that people's consciousness can change extremely rapidly during involvement in collective forms of struggle, even when these are on a relatively small scale. There is a vitally important sense in which this has to be experienced to be fully understood, and so I will take the liberty of citing an example from my own experience that is hopefully illustrative of the dynamics of smaller scale actions. In 1993 I participated in an occupation of the University administration building by around 300-400 hundred students. It was not a particularly large action, but it was the first student occupation of the building since 1971 and this created an air of excitement. The aim was to close down the meeting of the University Council which was about to substantially raise tuition fees. This objective was successfully achieved because the threat of arrest issued by the police was ignored and responded to with a unanimous chant - "We won't go!" This degree of militancy was achieved, not in the space of days, but with a relatively small group of students new to political protest in less than two hours. When students initially entered the building they were nervous and apprehensive and none of them would have been prepared to risk arrest at that point, but the experience of empowerment through noisy collective action in a confined space was sufficient to convert several hundred students from moderates to militants.

In general the larger the scale of the struggle the more likely it is that this kind shift in consciousness will assume an increasingly radicalised and ultimately revolutionary form. This currently being powerfully illustrated once again by the anti-capitalist movement. Of course, the key figures in classical Marxism were acutely aware of the importance of these rapid shifts in collective consciousness, and it is a key theme in their writings, especially after the 1905 revolution in Russia. For example, in Luxemburg's brilliant analysis of this revolution she graphically demonstrates why and how revolutionary working class consciousness develops through participation in mass struggles. Thus in order to overthrow absolutism in Russia "the proletariat requires a high degree of political education, of class consciousness and organization. All these conditions cannot be fulfilled by pamphlets and leaflets, but only by the living political school, by the fight and in the fight, in the continuous course of the revolution." (14)

In a similar vein, Lenin wrote that "The real education of the masses can never be separated from their independent political, and especially revolutionary, struggle. Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will." (15) It is these rapid and dramatic shifts in working-class consciousness that ultimately make revolution possible because it is only in the context of mass struggles that workers and the oppressed can become fully aware, not only of what's wrong with the world, but also of why it is like this, of their collective capacity to change it, and of the socialist and democratic alternative to capitalism. As Trotsky observed with respect to the February Revolution of 1917, "Elements of experience, criticism, initiative, self-sacrifice, seeped down through the mass and created, invisibly to a superficial glance but no less decisively, an inner mechanics of the revolution as a conscious process." (16)

Collective forms of action can also highlight the extent to which a socialist organisation can act as the "memory of the class" - carrying forward knowledge and experience gained in earlier struggles to struggles in the present and future. One of the great strengths of most serious socialist organisations on the far left, a strength frequently overlooked by academic Marxists effectively removed from political practice, is that socialist organisations are repositories and transmitters of a tremendous amount of collective experience from long-term involvement in the unions, on the campuses, and within the various progressive social movements. This is why socialist organisations can generally exert an influence over campaigns out of all proportion to their size.

Socialist organisation is historically of greatest importance with respect to the dynamics and trajectories of revolutionary movements. While genuine revolutions always involve largely spontaneous upsurges of mass struggle, political leadership is critical in determining the ultimate outcome of these struggles. (17) The contrasting historical experiences of the Russian and German revolutions of 1917-18 is the standard reference point in this regard. Whereas Luxemburg refused to break from the SPD and build an independent revolutionary socialist party until revolution had already broken out, Lenin spent years building the kind of organisation that could play a successful role in leading the masses during the revolutions of 1917. As he observed with respect to the "dress rehearsal" of 1905, such an organisation needed to "reveal to [the masses] our democratic and socialist ideal in all its magnitude and splendour, and show them the shortest and most direct route to complete, absolute, and decisive victory." (18)

Their democracy or our democracy?

A recurrent theme of the Seattle protests concerned the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the WTO; like the IMF and World Bank, it is dominated by the governments of a handful of the world's dominant economic powers and by the interests of global capital. While the limits of representative democracy are widely recognised by those participating in the anti-globalisation protests, these bodies are seen as being even more securely distanced from the influence of the majority of the world's citizens. In contrast, following the closure of the WTO convention in Seattle, protesters were chanting: "This is what democracy looks like, this is what democracy feels like!" The contrast evident here between the empowerment experienced by a broad mass of people collectively participating in direct political action and the alienation entailed by highly indirect forms of representation is a long-standing one in the history of democracy.

Two distinctive traditions of democratic theory and practice can be identified with lineages stretching back to classical antiquity. The first originated in Athenian democracy from 508-322BC, was suppressed by ruling classes throughout Europe from the time of the Roman Republic (509-31BC) to the revolutionary overthrow of absolutism in the 17th and 18th centuries, was revived to a limited extent by the radical wings of the English and French Revolutions, and much more fully in the Paris Commune of 1871 and Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The second tradition has its origins in the democratic elements of the Roman Republic, declined with the shift from oligarchic to autocratic rule following the definitive collapse of the Republic and ascension of Caesar Augustus in 31BC, was effectively eliminated during the Dark Ages and feudal era, before being revived in the North Italian city-states from the 15th century onwards, as well as, and more fully, by the moderate wings of the English, French and American Revolutions.

What separates these traditions are the differing weights and values attributed to direct participation and indirect representation, and diametrically opposed views concerning the feasibility and desirability of extending democracy from a constitutionally circumscribed political sphere, to the social and economic spheres. This contrast is not confined to the abstract realm of political philosophy but emerges in full relief only in concrete political practice, and more specifically during collective struggles between the forces of the state and/or employers, on one side, and of workers, students, indigenous peoples, and the oppressed, on the other. In microcosm, this can be as simple and yet as important as the employer refusing to speak to striking workers directly, but only to a union official, or a university vice chancellor likewise only being prepared to speak to one or two individuals rather than a much larger number engaged in a campus occupation.

In practice, the way that the clash between representative and participatory democracy is played out revolves around the question of whether to seek reforms of existing social relations and political institutions or their transcendence. This is an old question resurfacing in new forms in the current anti-globalisation movement. To seek the democratisation of bodies like the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and so forth, or their abolition? To seek fair trade rather than free trade? Or to advocate the vision of genuinely democratic workers' (and peasants') governments redistributing the world's food and resources on the basis of need rather than profit?

There is an old question resurfacing in new forms here - reform or revolution? This question is one of the most commonly misunderstood and misrepresented on the left because it actually relates to, not only the ultimate goal of the workers and progressive movements (reformed capitalism versus socialist democracy), but also to the entire array of strategic and tactical questions raised in the short term by struggles for reform as well as the industrial class struggle. For example, how does one place the most pressure on a government to increase state funding for public health, housing, welfare and tertiary education - by lobbying parliamentary representatives and working through existing political parties, or by organising large scale protests, occupations and industrial action? Or to cite another example from a recent industrial dispute on the New Zealand waterfront - to stage "peaceful pickets" unsupported by widespread industrial action in order to dissuade the scabs from working, or to close the entire waterfront down with industrial action and mass pickets to keep the scabs out and maximise the pressure on the company hiring the scab labor?

It can be argued in this regard that revolutionaries, far from abstaining from the struggle for reform, are actually the best fighters for it. But they do insist that ultimately reform is not enough - it can, as Marx pointed out, succeed in improving the terms on which the worker is exploited, but it will never end that exploitation. A world of equality, democracy, and truly sustainable environmental practices can only be achieved through the overthrow of capitalism and creation of socialism.

At a more general societal and historical level every time that subordinate classes rise against their exploitation and oppression the question emerges in its most complete form as to whether society is going to continue to be ruled from the top down, even if "democratically," or instead from the bottom up through the direct participation of the masses in the governance of society. Trotsky observes in this respect that:

The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events. In ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business - kings, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime. The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny. (19)

During the course of 1917 the conflict between these very different traditions of democratic practice assumed the form of dual power - workers' and peasants' soviets or Provisional Government? Soviet democracy or representative democracy? Without denying the important differences between Russia in 1917 and the advanced capitalist societies today, any genuinely revolutionary upheaval in these societies that creates directly democratic institutions such as workers councils, will thereby create a situation of dual power in which a fundamental conflict is likely to emerge between these institutions and those of the parliamentary state. The outcome of this conflict will depend to a considerable extent upon the role that socialists play in leading the forces of the revolution against those of the counter-revolution.

Of course, however inspiring it may be, the international movement against global capitalism is still far from assuming revolutionary proportions. But it is already raising the vital question of whether or not there is an alternative to capitalism and representative democracy. Those who are capable of reading classical Marxism in an open-minded, rigorous and intellectually honest manner will acknowledge that the radically democratic vision of socialism that is it at the heart of the classical Marxist tradition still constitutes, in an intellectual sense, the most fully developed alternative to the existing system. Historically, soviet or socialist participatory democracy, in which the majority is directly involved in the self-governance of society was never fully realised in Russia. This kind of radical democracy will be vastly easier to establish and maintain in the twenty-first century, given the economically, culturally, and scientifically advanced conditions created by contemporary capitalism, than it was in the relatively under-developed conditions prevailing in Russia during the First World War.

In socialist participatory democracy control over production and distribution is achieved through the institutional mechanism of a network of councils and assemblies that combines elements of centralization (e.g. with respect to major investment decisions) and decentralization (e.g. decisions within the workplace). (20) Accountability of delegates is ensured by the right of recall, frequency of elections, regular mass assemblies, the extension of liberal democratic citizenship rights, the democratization of the judiciary, and the establishment of a popular militia (if necessary) to defend the revolution. Such a system of democracy can only be achieved through elimination of all major forms of exploitation, inequality and oppression and this, in turn, necessitates the overthrow of capitalism. This is also necessary in order to reduce the average hours each person needs to spend performing productive labor and in order to ensure that there is adequate provision of, and equal responsibility for, childcare. By creating more "free time" socialism ensures, not only that participatory democracy can work, but also that individual liberty, diversity and self-development is maximised. This is the "democratic and socialist ideal in all its magnitude and splendour" that constitutes a feasible and desirable alternative to capitalism.

Conclusion

The growing movement against global capitalism has significantly altered the political terrain upon which the intellectual battles between right and left are being fought. It is too early to suggest, as some have, that Seattle constituted a world-historic turning point. Most importantly we have not yet seen the kind of upsurge in the industrial class struggle that characterised the period from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. But it is the case that after many years of having to respond defensively to successive waves of intellectual bombardment, the classical Marxist tradition is likely to experience a revival if there is a revival of the international workers movement and the progressive social movements. This is because it is engagement in "practice and the comprehension of the practice," that, more than anything else, convinces large numbers of people that classical Marxism still has much to offer those struggling for a better world in the twenty-first century.

Anderson once observed that "the first and most fundamental of its characteristics has been the structural divorce of [Western] Marxism from political practice. The organic unity of theory and practice realized in the classical generation of Marxists before the First World War, who performed an inseparably politico-intellectual function within their respective parties in Eastern and Central Europe, was to be increasingly severed in the half-century from 1918 to 1968." (21) Thus far one of the most inspiring and important features of the anti-capitalist movement has been the extent to which it has been prompting a reunification of theory and practice. Lenin once wrote with respect to the 1905 revolution that "undoubtedly, the revolution will teach us, and will teach the masses of the people. But the question that now confronts a militant political party is: shall we be able to teach the revolution anything?" (22) While the recent anti-capitalist movement has not assumed an overtly revolutionary form, it has already helped to re-educate many committed socialists. The question is whether or not socialists have anything to offer the movement, and if so, then what. In this respect, it is the classical Marxist tradition, kept alive during the 1980s and 1990s by a broad range of socialist organizations on the far left together with a small number of relatively isolated intellectuals, that has more to offer than the major schools of academic Western Marxism. This is not only because of its organic link between theory and practice, but also because it constitutes a rich intellectual tradition providing crucial insights with respect to the key questions of concern to contemporary activists. At the most basic level activists today need to understand what's wrong with the world, why it is like this, how we can change it, and whether there is a feasible and desirable alternative. And it is precisely this set of questions to which those in the classical Marxist tradition have been providing answers for more than 150 years.

If socialist intellectuals and activists want to contribute positively to the anti-capitalist movement then they will have to firmly reject the unjustified discard of key elements of the classical Marxist tradition that are more relevant now than ever, such has Marx's theories of exploitation and crisis, the strategic conception of the revolutionary potential of the working class, the political vision of socialist participatory democracy as the alternative to capitalism and representative democracy, and the crucially important principle that theory must be tested, and developed through, the experience of political practice. We need, now more than ever, a Marxism that retains these crucial elements of classical Marxist tradition, and that is also willing and able to connect with those, new to the struggle, who want to put them into practice.

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References

12 K. Marx, Wages, Prices and Profit, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1973, p.6.

13 K. Marx, Wages, Prices and Profit, p. 74.

14 R. Luxemburg, "The Mass Strike," 1970, 172; see also Geras, 1986, pp.119-120.

15 V. Lenin, "Lecture on the 1905 Revolution," in Lenin, On Trade Unions, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970 (1917), p. 304.

16 L. Trotsky, HRR, p.151.

17 Of course there were fierce debates within classical Marxism on this point, see Geras, 1986, pp.145-215.

18 V. Lenin, Two Tactices of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, in Selected Works, vol.1, p.542.

19 Trotsky, (HRR, p.xvii.)

20 (Callinicos, 1991, 110-118, Mandel, 1986a).

21 Considerations on Western Marxism, 1974, p. 29. It is ironic that Anderson's intellectual and biographical trajectory has confirmed the soundness of this observation.

22 Lenin, Selected Works, vol.1., 1967, p.458.