One of the central tenets of the Communist Manifesto states: "Of all the
classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat
alone is a really revolutionary class". This fundamental proposition of
Marx and Engels is now under serious challenge.
Virtually all pro-capitalist commentators allege that the contemporary
working class, particularly in the developed countries, has been permanently
integrated into the capitalist system.
There has been no successful socialist revolution in an advanced capitalist
country in the century and a half since the Manifesto. The working class does
not even remotely look like seizing power anywhere in the west right now. There
has been nothing resembling a pre-revolutionary crisis in the imperialist world
since the May-June 1968 student-worker revolt in France.
After the collapse of "communism" in the eastern bloc, conservative
commentators have declared the socialist option closed. On top of this, it has
been claimed that even when revolutions have occurred in the 20th century
- e.g., Russia, China,
Vietnam, Cuba -
the working class has not been the primary revolutionary factor. Rather,
it is argued, these revolutions were carried out by predominantly peasant-based
forces.
This apparent tendency led some progressive theorists, such as Herbert
Marcuse and Frantz Fanon in the 1960s, to declare that the western working class
had indeed been integrated into capitalist society, and that, in future, the
revolutionary mantle would have to taken up by "out" groups, such as
students and the unemployed in the west, and the peasantry in the Third World.
Despite all this, it is much too early to write off the revolutionary
potential of the workers. For a start, the last 150 years have been a period of
the most intense struggle between the working class and the capitalist class.
There have been numerous confrontations involving millions of workers in fierce
battles with the employing class.
Nevertheless, the question remains: is the working class willing and able to
fight only for protection of jobs and living standards within capitalist
society, but not for the revolutionary overthrow of that system?
History refutes this proposition. Lenin described the 20th century as a
" period of wars and revolutions". Only the most short-sighted pundit
could ignore the real history of our time: the last 150 years have been a
tumultuous period of wars, revolutionary upheavals and social and industrial
turmoil on an unprecedented scale.
These struggles have not been over merely immediate issues and conditions,
but repeatedly over questions that determine which class will rule
- from the 1848 revolutions
in Europe, to the Paris Commune of 1870, to the upheavals of the 1920s, the
crises of the 1930s and 1940s, the colonial revolutions of the 1950s, '60s and
'70s, and the youth revolt of the 1960s and '70s.
On "peasant revolutions" allegedly displacing the working class,
closer analysis shows this to be a serious distortion of reality. For example,
the Russian Revolution of 1917 was carried out by the working class, with the
support of the bulk of the peasantry. The Russian working class was then a small
minority of the overall population, but it was the key political and social
force in the class struggle, both against the tsarism and against the succeeding
capitalist regime.
The Russian working class was the most powerful, politically advanced and
best organised in the world at that time. The key factor was that it had the
best and most battle-hardened revolutionary leadership in history: the Bolshevik
Party.
In Russia, as Lenin predicted, the "imperialist chain" broke at its
" weakest link". But it didn't break of its own accord; it was broken
by a conscious revolutionary struggle, led by a Marxist-Leninist party, which
wrested the leadership of the working class from reformist forces.
Lenin explained in his 1902 work, What Is To Be Done?: "We have said
that there could not yet be Social-Democratic [revolutionary socialist]
consciousness among the workers. It could only be brought to them from without.
The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its
own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the
conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and
strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation etc.
"The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic,
historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated
representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals ...
"In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-
Democracy [revolutionary Marxism] arose quite independently of the spontaneous
growth of the working-class movement, it arose as a natural and inevitable
outcome of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist
intelligentsia ..."
Following from this, the question of consciously building a capable
revolutionary leadership, with a strong base among the workers, is the key
factor in realising the revolutionary potential of the working class.
Without this leadership, revolutionary crises can arise and be lost, as has
happened many times in this century. Without the development of a revolutionary
leadership, the working class cannot spontaneously develop the revolutionary
consciousness necessary to move outside a trade-unionist perspective, no matter
how intense the attacks by the ruling class or how fierce the battles to defend
living conditions and democratic rights.
Why is the working class the "only truly revolutionary class"?
Because, as the Communist Manifesto puts it, alone of all the classes under
capitalism , "the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They
have a world to win."
Structurally, the working class, which alone creates surplus value, has the
power and ability to overthrow capitalism and create a new society based on
socialised ownership of the major means of production.
The Communist Manifesto explains, "The development of modern industry
cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces
and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all,
are its own gravediggers."
Moreover, "All previous historical movements were movements of
minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the
self- conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests
of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present
society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent
strata of official society being sprung into the air."
What is the nature of this "immense majority" of capitalist
society? It is not only the industrial working class, as the popular
misconception has it. The proletariat are those who own no capital, who
"have nothing to sell but their labour power". (Those workers in
possession of a house or even a few shares in Telstra or BHP are not capitalists
- whatever they may think themselves!)
In his pamphlet Workers Under Neo-Capitalism, published following the
student-worker revolt in France, Marxist economist Ernest Mandel noted the
sociological changes in the working class under late capitalism.
These tendencies include: "Growing integration of intellectual labour
into the productive process; growing standardisation, uniformity and
mechanisation of intellectual labour; growing transformation of university
graduates from independent professionals and capitalist entrepreneurs into
salary earners appearing in a specialised labour market
- the market for skilled
intellectual labour where supply and demand make salaries fluctuate as they did
on the manual labour market before unionisation ... What do these trends mean
but the growing proletarianisation of intellectual labour, its tendency to
become part and parcel of the working class ...
"Neo-capitalism in the long run strengthens the working class as did
laissez-faire capitalism or monopoly capitalism in its first stage.
"Historically, it makes the working class grow both numerically, and in
respect to its vital role in the economy. It thereby strengthens the latent
power of the working class and underlines its potential capacity to overthrow
capitalism and to reconstruct society on the basis of its own socialist
ideal."
In short, modern capitalism has increased the revolutionary potential of the
working class: the problem is how to realise that potential.
The modern working class in "normal times" is not a static
phenomenon, but a changing series of overlapping categories, which interact,
compete to varying degrees and engender different layers of consciousness:
employed and unemployed, organised in unions and unorganised, skilled and
unskilled, males and females, "locals" and migrants.
The ruling class uses this differentiation to bolster its divide-and-rule
strategy. The Manifesto notes the shifting dialectic of the national and
international class struggle: "Though not in substance, yet in form, the
struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national
struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle
accounts with its own bourgeoisie."
Nevertheless, in the final instance, "The working people have no country
... united action ... is one of the first conditions for the emancipation
of the proletariat."
The working class has developed on a world scale, and the revolutionary
centre of the class struggle is always shifting. Marx and Engels noted the shift
of centre from England to Germany and France in the latter 19th century. Engels
glimpsed the possibility of the revolutionary role of the Russian working class.
More recently, we have seen changes in the structure of capitalism
internationally, with the rise of the so-called tiger economies, primarily of
Asia.
The current collapse of the Asian tigers foreshadows massive working-class
struggles in countries like South Korea and Indonesia, where the development of
a new working class has fundamentally strengthened the revolutionary potential
of working people in that region -
and on a world scale.
On the other hand, changes in the international structure of capitalism since
the Manifesto have created new barriers to the realisation of the workers'
revolutionary role. Imperialism, the product of monopoly capitalism, created the
objective conditions for the development of opportunism (or reformism/Labourism)
as a predominant force in the workers' movement of the advanced capitalist
countries.
A resolution adopted by the founding Congress of the Third International in
1919 explained: "The general course of economic development had given the
bourgeoisie in the wealthiest countries the opportunity to tempt and buy off the
upper layers of the working class -
the labour aristocracy -
with crumbs from its enormous profits. The petit-bourgeois `camp
followers' of socialism swelled the ranks of the official Social- Democratic [or
Labour] parties and gradually altered their politics in a bourgeois direction.
"From the leaders of the peaceable labour movement, the heads of the
trade unions, the secretaries, the editors and officials of Social Democracy
there developed a caste -
a labour bureaucracy with its own selfish interests, essentially hostile
to socialism."
This labour aristocracy provided the social basis for the development and
continuation of reformist parties such as the ALP, which have generally
maintained an iron grip on the political leadership of the working class in the
advanced capitalist countries ever since.
As the Russian Bolshevik leader Gregori Zinoviev noted in his 1916 work, The
Social Roots of Opportunism, the Australian Labor Party was a prime example of
this phenomenon:
"The reactionary role of the `socialist bureaucracy' appears nowhere so
ostentatiously as in Australia, that veritable promised land of social
reformism. The first `Labour ministry' in Australia was formed in Queensland in
1899. And ever since then the Australian labour movement has been a constant
prey of leaders on the make for careers.
"Upon the backs of the labouring masses there arise, one after another,
little bands of aristocrats of labour, from the midst of which the future labour
ministers spring forth, ready to do loyal service to the bourgeoisie."
Nothing much has changed in 80 years on this front! And the political control
exercised by the Labor leaders over the Australian working-class movement is the
key obstacle to the development of a revolutionary consciousness among the
workers in this country still today.
How can this reformist control be overcome? What conditions are necessary to
turn the revolutionary potential of the working class into actuality?
Industrial militancy occurs on a cyclical basis in all countries
- e.g., most recently, French workers over public service cuts
in 1995 and French truck drivers in 1997; the crucial United Parcel Service
strike in the US in 1997; the regular militant struggles of South Korean
workers; the August 19, 1996, workers' demonstration in Canberra against
anti-union laws.
This militancy will grow stronger in response to the deepening capitalist
economic crisis, sparked by the Asian economic meltdown, and the consequent
escalating attacks by the ruling classes in every country. However, sporadic
militancy which occurs as a regular part of the industrial struggle must be
organised into a force -
a "class struggle left wing".
An example of this would be the Militant Minority Movement of the 1930s in
this country, which led workers and unemployed campaigns during the Great
Depression.
The lessons of previous struggles must be retained and fully learned from,
and a new leadership, steeled in battle, developed. This need highlights the
role of revolutionary, as distinct from militant, trade union organisation.
Lenin wrote in What Is To Be Done?: "Social Democracy [in this case
revolutionary socialism] leads the struggle of the working class not only for
better terms for the sale of labour power, but also for the abolition of the
social system which compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the
rich".
This involves the broadest political struggle, on all levels, international
and local: "Working class consciousness cannot be genuinely political
consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases, without
exception, of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter what class is
affected".
Revolutionary consciousness and trade union consciousness are interrelated,
but can be counterposed at crucial times. There is nothing eternal about the
trade union struggle. But in most western countries, and in Australia, the
primacy of union struggle in the initial instance has been handed down to us by
our history.
The challenge facing Australian workers is, in a period of intense attack on
basic trade union and democratic rights, to defend and extend the unions
- and at the same time to prepare the ground for raising the
struggle to a new, more advanced level.
This new stage involves directly taking on the class rule of the capitalists,
refusing them the right to exploit our labour power at will. It means, in the
end, taking the power out of their hands, and establishing a new, socialist
society based on common ownership and control of production, and a just and
humane social order.
