Marxist update

Class 01 Reading Marx's Capital Vol II with David Harvey

2012-01-29T23:12:00.000-05:00

On Taxes

2012-01-27T19:44:00.001-05:00

For workers, question is not who is taxed, but who taxes
BY JOHN STUDER
All of the bourgeois candidates for U.S. president in the 2012 elections—President Barack Obama and his Republican challengers—tout new tax proposals, which they claim will "stimulate" the economy, help create jobs and aid the "middle class."

Each in their own way seeks support from working people and layers of middle classes. But the working class has no interest in how the capitalist rulers organize to collect revenue for their government. The question is not who is being taxed and how much, but who is taxing.

The capitalists' government does face fiscal problems, and the ruling class generally seeks to avoid raising taxes, which ultimately cut into the surplus they extract from the labor of working people. All their various tax schemes today are coupled with plans to cut social programs working people have come to depend on, including Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

Republican candidates call for simplifying the tax codes, as well as slashing corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy, who they call the "job creators," as a means of boosting investment in production.

Newt Gingrich proposes to offer two tax regimes people can choose between—the current tax system and a "flat tax" of 15 percent on your income, buffered by a $12,000 personal exemption. This is coupled with cutting the corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to 12.5, and eliminating taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest.

Mitt Romney says he will keep the tax rates the way they are now when elected, and then devise a big reform plan, as he says, to "flatten" federal taxes. He would cut the corporate tax rate to 25 percent.

They argue these proposals, heading toward "flatter," simpler tax schemes, will reduce federal bureaucracy and red tape, demagogically appealing to growing distrust in big government and its increasing interference in peoples' lives. The decrease in corporate taxes, they claim, would provide bosses with the means to provide jobs.

The working class has much experience with regressive "flat" taxes. They weigh us down daily in the form of sales taxes, homeowners taxes, taxes on gasoline, alcohol, tobacco, tuition fees, school lunches, road tolls, utility bills, driver's licenses, birth certificates, marriage licenses and so on.

Populist demagogy of 'tax the rich'

President Obama has ratcheted up populist demagoguery calling for increasing taxes on the rich, the "1 percent," with a nod toward the Occupy forces he hopes to harness into his campaign. His aim is to raise the revenue needed to fund an expansive government bureaucracy to do "good works" and regulate workers' behavior, such as with new taxes on soda pop to keep us from getting too fat.

Obama invokes what he calls the "Buffet rule," urging that those with annual incomes over $1 million—less than 450,000 out of the 144 million who filed tax returns in 2010—should pay at least the same percentage in taxes as those with median income.

Warren E. Buffett, Obama's inspiration, is the third richest man in the world as of November 2011 according to the "World's Billionaires" list in Forbes magazine, worth about $39 billion.

(This, of course, is pure demagogy. Buffett and others like him know all the loopholes to evade taxes and can pay all the lawyers and accountants they need. They can afford not to pay taxes. It's their system.)

Workers are barraged with all these tax schemes and urged to choose their poison in order to save "our" economy. But there is no "our" economy, or "our" government. We live under their government, a dictatorship of capital.

Workers have no interest in how the capitalist class organizes to get the money to fund their government. This is the reason the capitalist class levies taxes: to beef up their cops and prisons; to pay for their ever-expanding government; to pay for the profit-producing interest they rake in on their government bonds; to balance their budget. Whatever they need to advance their class interests, which are irreconcilable with those of the working class.

For this reason, communists have no "tax program," urging some taxes be raised and others cut. Communists oppose all taxation on working people. Up until 1943, workers in the U.S. paid no income tax. The first was imposed by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, because the U.S. rulers needed to pay for their drive to dominate the world capitalist order through the slaughter of World War II.

Can't tax our way to political power

The working class needs to chart its own political course. There is no way for workers to tax our way to taking political power out of the hands of the capitalist exploiters. No way to change the government and its class priorities by advocating more taxes on the rich.

This can only be done out of the battles fought by working people to defend themselves and others, deepening class consciousness, leading to a victorious revolutionary struggle for political power.

To do this requires a break with both capitalist political parties, the Democrats and Republicans. We have to do away with all illusions that their system can be reformed to serve us.

Workers know that the rich get away with murder. They also know the capitalists' government bureaucracy is a nightmare for us. But no reform or tax scheme can alter the class nature of the power we face.

It is the labor of working people that creates the massive surplus value that capitalists appropriate and from which they derive their profits and power. Nothing workers get in terms of schooling, medical care, or pensions is charity—it's all produced by us.

A workers and farmers government will not levy taxes on working people. A government of toilers will provide universal lifetime education, health care, and disability and pension benefits by drawing on society's enormous surplus wealth—wealth produced in one and only one way, by the working class.

War at home, war abroad

2012-01-27T19:26:00.001-05:00

Prospects for an election year, prompted by the State of the Union address:

....The drive to war and the destruction of democratic procedures are closely connected to the deep attacks on the American working class that Obama intends to carry out, under cover of plans to "bring manufacturing back" to the United States.

Thus Obama boasted that "tonight, the American auto industry is back. What's happening in Detroit can happen in other industries." As the World Socialist Web Site noted, it is both grotesque and sinister to make Detroit—a shattered city facing a 50 percent real unemployment rate, where starting wages for auto workers went from $28 to $14 after the 2009 auto bailout—a model of economic revival.

In a further move to cut the resources available to working people, Obama announced "more reforms that rein in the long term costs of Medicare and Medicaid"—two crucial health programs on which hundreds of millions of working people depend.

This makes one thing crystal clear, however: the American financial aristocracy will bring manufacturing back to America only if it can make more money than ever, by massively impoverishing the workers.

At the same time, the US is responding to the economic crisis by intensifying its attack on its principal rivals, embodied in Obama's attack on China. Proudly noting that he had brought trade complaints against China at twice the rate of the Bush administration, Obama announced the creation of a new "Trade Enforcement Unit." This would allow the United States to raise even more complaints against goods made "in countries like China."

There is a common feature of Obama's plans for American manufacturing and for US conduct of its international relations: they will provoke such resistance that US imperialism can attempt to impose them only through coercion and violence. Employers in North America are already resorting to a wave of lockouts to push through concessions contracts; on the global arena, Washington openly uses state murder, economic strangulation, and war to achieve its objectives.

In his address Obama reveled in the ability to murder opponents of US policy throughout the world at short notice and without judicial review: "From Pakistan to Yemen, the Al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can't escape the reach of the United States of America."

Obama enthusiastically cited the example of the late Colonial Muammar Gaddafi, the former Libyan ruler and US ally. He was tortured and killed at the end of the siege of Sirte last October, after the US responded to the mass struggles against US-backed dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt by going to war with Libya.

Turning to Iran, which has developed close economic ties to China, Obama threatened the country with a devastating oil embargo and war to prevent it from building a nuclear weapon: "Its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions. And as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve this goal."

As Obama's comments on economic policy make clear, threats against Iran are part of a broader confrontation with China, a nuclear power which is also the United States' largest trading partner and a critical supplier of cheap consumer goods for US working people. The Pentagon is also stoking a military confrontation with China, having placed it at the center of US war planning in this year's strategic review, which shifts the emphasis of US military planning from the Middle East to the Asian-Pacific.

Amid US foreign policy's descent into gangsterism, workers must measure the full significance of Obama's praise of the American military and his comments that US officials at home should "learn a thing or two" from it.

In a comment on rising social discontent in the United States, George Soros, the multibillionaire and donor to the Democratic Party, told Newsweek: "The situation is about as serious and difficult as I've experienced in my career." Citing the likelihood of riots in the US, he added: "It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, will bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States."

In fact, the emergence of serious social conflict will inevitably bring to the fore plans for police-state rule in the United States that are very well advanced. This recently took the clearest form in the Obama administration's passage of this year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA not only allocated $662 billion to the US military, but authorized the US military to seize individuals (both American citizens and foreign nationals) anywhere in the world, and to hold them indefinitely in military detention facilities without recourse to trial.

The coming year will not bring a new golden age of industrial prosperity, but of the deepest social conflict, rooted in the contradictions tearing at the world market. Sensing that the outbreak of mass social conflict in the United States is not far away, the ruling class is preparing itself for an epoch of class battles of unprecedented intensity, in which it will seek to use the most ruthless methods that it has perfected in imperialist wars abroad.

source

CPUSA's long support for capitalist Democratic Party

2012-01-25T01:27:00.001-05:00

Since the CPUSA recycles its political perspectives of unconditional support for the Democratic Party year in and year out, I thought it appropriate to do a little recycling of my own. I think readers will sense the resonance with this year's election season, Newt Gingrich, and rants against "right-wing" freshmen congressman, a la 2010's Tea Party levy sent to the House of Representatives::

Communist Party Backs Warmongering President

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS

In keeping with its long history of class collaboration, the Communist Party USA (CP) has come out early and vocally in favor of the Democratic Party in the November presidential and Congressional elections.

"Ridding the U.S. Congress of the fascist-like wing of the Republican Party and its criminal Contract On America is the greatest challenge our people and our country face," wrote Gus Hall, national chair of the CP, in a recent pamphlet. An article by CP leader Jarvis Tyner in the June issue of Political Affairs, the party's theoretical journal, expanded on this assertion.

From beginning to end, the CP's position is a dead end for working people. For starters, it tries to rope workers into a nationalist framework of what's good for "our country." In a seven-page article, Tyner breathes not a word about the struggles of working people around the world, nor the war preparations the Clinton administration has spearheaded - from the bombing of Iraq in the first days of his presidency to the military intervention in Yugoslavia and the stepped-up economic war against Cuba today.

While subordinating the interests of working people in other countries to support for "democratic" imperialism, the CP also advocates collaboration with the capitalists at home. Tyner declares that if Republican candidates win this year's elections, "their neo-fascist program, `The Contract With America,' will be on the fast track to total implementation."

Tyner stated that this year the Communist Party is "not planning to run a presidential ticket," and rapped Ralph Nader, the pro-capitalist presidential candidate of the Green Party, for "running the wrong campaign, for the wrong office, in the wrong states and in the wrong year."

In drumming up support for U.S. president William Clinton, Tyner applauds the "most outstanding effort" of the trade union officialdom to register voters. He lauds the AFL-CIO officials' "Union Summer," linking it with the union bureaucracy's plans to raise $35 million to garner backing for Democratic Party politicians. This alleged defender of the working people refrained from suggesting the unions mobilize support for any labor struggles taking place such as the McDonnell Douglas strike by 6,700 Machinists in St. Louis.

Tyner calls on Blacks and Latinos to "help guarantee Clinton's re-election and a defeat of the right in Congress." He admonishes Clinton that he "needs to remember" that "winning candidates should [have] a strong position against racism and right-wing extremism." Meanwhile, the Clinton administration sat on its hands for 18 months while more than 70 Black churches were torched throughout the South. He also helped open attacks on affirmative action and voting rights by proposing a "review" of these gains of the civil rights movement.

Clinton has expressed his "support" for Latinos by escalating a crackdown on immigrant workers with police raids in plants throughout the country. A New York Times article described these raids as the "Immigration and Naturalization Service's newly declared war."

Clinton leads shift to right
Tyner and Hall warn of the "fascist danger" of the direction of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and "the Gang of 73 right-wing freshmen." In reality, Gingrich and his cohorts have fallen out of the spotlight in recent months, largely unable to carry through their frontal assault on the social wage working people have won over decades.

Clinton himself has been the point man in the bipartisan move to the right of bourgeois politics, especially in going after democratic rights more so than the Republican administrations that preceded him.

The Democratic president, for instance, signed a broad "antiterrorism" bill into law April 24 that permits the government to deport immigrants accused of terrorism without presenting any evidence. The president had proposed expanding the wiretapping powers of federal agents, but this provision was excluded from the bill by Congress.

Clinton's new law also limits appeals by death row inmates which will lead to a step-up in executions and convictions of Blacks and other working people is expected from this law. This is consistent with Clinton's decision during his 1992 campaign to demonstratively return to Arkansas and witness the execution of a mentally disabled man, Ricky Rector.

While the Clinton administration has led the bipartisan effort in pounding away at democratic rights, Tyner decries the "hypocrisy" of the Republicans. Citing a concern for children, the president signed a bill on May 17 commonly known as "Megan's Law," which requires local notification about persons convicted of a sex offense after their release from prison. The law adds years to a person's sentence without the right to trial and jury.

At the same time, Washington maintains a six-year economic blockade that has starved hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq, and continues to chip away at welfare, Medicare, and Social Security benefits.

"Advocating a vote for Clinton and Democrats for Congress" is "not a pro-Clinton or pro-Democratic Party movement," Tyner intones. But, he adds, "the `lesser of two evils' phenomenon unfortunately, is built into U.S. capitalist politics."

A similar approach is being taken by the Committees of Correspondence (CoC), a centrist regroupment of Stalinists, Trotskyists, and other petty-bourgeois radicals, dominated by forces that split from the CP several years ago. At its second national convention, held in New York July 12-14 and attended by 150 people, delegates debated endorsement of Clinton.

A small number of delegates at that gathering said they would leave the CoC if a formal endorsement of Clinton was adopted. This group favored endorsing Ralph Nader instead. Another delegate declared that "the best kept secret of the convention" was that the vast majority of members were going to support and vote for Clinton. By the end, the resolution adopted did not endorse the Democratic candidate, allowing differences over which bourgeois candidate to support.

Revolutionary leader Malcolm X exposed the electoralist lesser-evil scam of the capitalist parties. Commenting on the victory of Democrat Lyndon Johnson - with the CP's support -

over Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race, Malcolm said, "The shrewd capitalists, the shrewd imperialists, knew that the only way people would run toward the fox would be if you showed them a wolf."

Malcolm added, "Those who claim to be enemies of the system were on their hands and knees waiting for Johnson to get elected - because he is supposed to be a man of peace. And at that moment he had troops invading the Congo and South Vietnam! He even has troops in areas where other imperialists have already withdrawn."

The Communist Party likewise backed President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, taking this counterrevolutionary stance so far as to condemn a 1943 strike by coal miners as a "disruption of the war effort and provocation. [Mine Workers union president John Lewis] wants to throw the country into a home-front war against the President, not against Hitler," as their paper editorialized. In a speech last October, CP chair Hall bragged that "the Communist Party played a key role in rallying the American people for the Second Front" in World War II.

Elections and the class struggle
"Elections in the capitalist system do not operate outside the class struggle," Tyner sermonizes. "During election years, the conflict between the two main contending classes shifts to the voting booths. This is where the interests of the working class and the capitalist class will come into sharp conflict in 1996."

Tyner, a member of the National Board of the Communist Party USA, is trying to justify class collaboration, not class struggle.

"The action of the masses - a big strike, for instance - is more important than parliamentary activity at all times," wrote V.I. Lenin in his pamphlet, "Left-Wing" Communism, An Infantile Disorder. Lenin, a central leader of the Russian revolution, wrote the pamphlet in 1920 to explain how the communist vanguard became steeled in long years of struggle against opportunism and social chauvinism.

"To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and oppress the people through parliament - this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics," Lenin explained in State and Revolution.

"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich - that is the democracy of capitalist society," the revolutionary leader stated.

Lenin insisted, however, that this does not mean communists must not make use of parliament. "The Bolsheviks made better use of it than probably any other party in the world," he said. "Participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the platform of parliament is obligatory for the party of the revolutionary proletariat precisely for the purpose of educating" the working class.

The Communist Party USA does nothing but miseducate and betray the working class with its pro-Clinton stance. Working people need a voice in the elections independent from the capitalist rulers. The only candidates providing one in this campaign are those on the Socialist Workers ticket.

Of Presidental elections

2012-01-24T15:42:00.001-05:00

The 1980 Elections: Reaffirming the Marxist Theory of the State

The Line of March Editorial Board

First Published: Line of March Vol. 1, No. 3, October-November 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.

The great spectacular of bourgeois politics–the quadrennial ritual of the ballot box by which U.S. imperialism's chief executive is designated–is at this moment approaching its grand finale.

For almost a year the attention of the masses has been directed toward the reassuringly familiar stage business of a presidential election, the very terminology of which (trial balloons, dark horses, hats in the ring, balanced tickets, running-mates, etc.) is strongly suggestive of its obligations to the work of circuses. Faithful to the scripts of yesteryear, the 1980 election is playing out its appointed hour upon the stage with a reenactment of those time-honored rites which serve to impart an image of stability and historical continuity to the rule of U.S. capital.

It is not mere poetic license which has led the bourgeoisie's own commentators to describe this process as a pageant. That is the essence of this ballet which begins with the endless rounds of declared and undeclared candidacies, continues with the sweep of the nominating primaries played out against shifting backdrops which range from the snows of New Hampshire to the ghettoes of Chicago, reaches a crescendo with the three-ring circuses called political conventions, and concludes with the high drama of public counting of ballots on the nation's television screens.

What is the purpose of this elaborate extravaganza? Marxists have long noted that insofar as its stated purpose is concerned–determining the question of political power in modern society–it is no more than a charade, a political sleight of hand in which the more things seem to change, the more do they remain the same. But Marxists do not deserve any special credit for making such an observation. One hardly has to be a Marxist to grasp the fact that bourgeois elections do not, in any way, impinge upon or alter questions of power. The general cynicism among the masses toward politics and politicians–a cynicism which runs far deeper than can be measured solely by noting the large numbers of people who do not bother to vote in elections–is itself proof that the futility and corruption of bourgeois politics has become a part of U.S. folklore.

But because bourgeois elections are a charade and do not alter the fundamental relations of power and property does not at all signify that they are without meaning or political significance. And those among the communists who content themselves with merely denouncing the bourgeoisie's electoral process without undertaking to explain the actual political content of each election can hardly be said to be offering vanguard leadership to the working class.

To analyze that content we might well begin by noting Engels' comment that bourgeois elections under the conditions of universal suffrage offer a "gauge of the maturity of the working class." But they offer more than that. These elections also provide an extremely important window into the ways in which the bourgeoisie views its own contradictions. In fact, bourgeois elections are a gauge of the political motion of all classes; and communists, if they are to fulfill their vanguard role in relation to the working class, must be prepared to offer the most advanced explanation of this political motion which all can see but which few fully comprehend. For as Lenin pointed out (What Is To Be Done?): "Those who concentrate the attention, observation and even consciousness of the working class exclusively, or even mainly, upon itself alone are not Social Democrats; for its self-realization is indissolubly bound up not only with a fully clear theoretical–it would be even more true to say not so much with a theoretical– as with a practical understanding of the relationships between all the various classes of modern society acquired through experience of political life."

Of course, the working class does not need the communists in order to engage in U.S. political life. Spontaneously it already does so and even, to a certain extent, as a class. The organized trade union movement is clearly a mainstay of the Democratic Party. Its propaganda work, fund-raising and organizational efforts to bring workers to the polls on behalf of particular candidates play a definite and significant role in the electoral process. And a considerable number of workers do attempt to affect their own conditions of life by participating in the rites of election. In the absence of revolutionary leadership, of course, such activity amounts to spontaneous "trade union politics" and offers no long term prospects for emancipation of the working class.

Unfortunately, the state of the communist movement is such that its leadership at this point is limited almost exclusively to exploration alone. Given the present level of development of revolutionary forces, efforts at actively intervening in the bourgeois election process are qualitatively circumscribed. There is not a single party or organization of the left– using that term broadly–able to combine an advanced line with influence among the masses so that its efforts, whatever they might be, could in any way register some effect on the electoral barometer.

In that sense, the electoral gauge cited by Engels clearly demonstrates that in 1980 the political maturity of the U.S. working class is extremely low, precisely because the working class does not as yet have its own independent political expression.

This is even more conspicuous with the developing anti-revisionist, anti-"left" opportunist trend which is today incapable of mounting even a token independent effort in the elections. Nevertheless, we take up the question of the 1980 elections today from the standpoint of this trend. In doing so, we start with the assumption that it is necessary to rectify the general orientation of the U.S. communist movement toward bourgeois elections, recognizing that we are combatting a two-fold negative legacy: that of modern revisionism and social democracy which sows illusions either about one or another section of the bourgeoisie or the capacities of the electoral process itself; and that of ultra-leftism which, in its most classical form, disdains and will have nothing to do with bourgeois politics and, in a slightly more sophisticated form, participates in the elections in a formal sense by putting up candidates but does not take responsibility for guiding the working class through the twists and turns of independent political activity.

The present article attempts to contribute to the rectification of the communist movement's orientation toward bourgeois politics by making a concrete analysis of the 1980 U.S. presidential election. Its principal focus is on the bourgeois parties since, at the present time, theirs is the only historically significant activity taking place in this arena. Nevertheless, the shadow of the class struggle–both domestically and internationally–hovers over the process and ultimately defines it. We undertake such a task because even in a period when the communists are without a party it is necessary to maintain a close surveillance over the political life of the country. Such surveillance is necessary to the forging of a general line which will provide the basis for re-establishing a communist party in the U.S. Further, the way in which we approach such political questions at the present moment itself begins to establish the theoretical, ideological and political underpinnings for the party's future work in the bourgeois political arena.

In order to make such an analysis of the 1980 elections, it is necessary to reaffirm and amplify some of the basic propositions of the Marxist theory of the state. The first section of this article, then, takes up the theory of bourgeois elections and advances views in an implicitly polemical fashion with other approaches which have currency in the communist movement. The second section analyzes the 1980 election in the concrete, with particular emphasis on the bourgeoisie's rehabilitation of Ronald Reagan, the failure of the liberal challenge in the Democratic Party and the less than meteoric rise and fall of the John Anderson "independent" candidacy. The final section briefly discusses the left and popular alternatives which presently exist, and advances some views on our movement's future orientation toward electoral work.

I. The Role and Significance of Elections in the Bourgeois Democratic Republic.

The particular usefulness to the working class of bourgeois elections– particularly those in which the head of a capitalist state is "chosen" by the electorate–is that for a brief period general attention is focused on the question of political power. Naturally, the bourgeoisie does its best to obscure the question even while seeming to address it. But in doing so, it faces a dilemma.

On the one hand, the illusion that such elections can decide the question of power is one of the bourgeoisie's most carefully nurtured myths, the basis for palming off the actual rule of capital as the workings of majority choice. At the same time, however, the bourgeoisie is periodically compelled to remind the masses that capital has imposed stern limits on what the masses may be permitted to choose. Thus the widely expressed complaint among the electorate this year after the Reagan and Carter nominations were assured–"What kind of choice have they given us?"–signifies a certain intuitive perception that someone ("they") determines the parameters of the democratic choice.

But it would be extremely short-sighted for communists to glorify such spontaneously developed perceptual knowledge among the masses. In the absence of a scientific explanation of this phenomenon and a working class political alternative, common sense observations of this sort are more likely to herald a retreat from politics altogether rather than a move toward class maturity.

A. Political Power and the Modern Bourgeois State

To begin with, then, let us reassert some of the fundamental propositions of the Marxist theory of politics and the state. In antagonistic class society based on exploitive economic relations which benefit some classes at the expense of others, political power is the capacity of one class to impose its will on another. The dominant political power of that society is invariably the power of the dominant economic class and is expressed principally through the state. That state is much more than the government; it is the entire bureaucratic apparatus of the state, its code of laws which establish and reinforce the prevailing property relations and the military power to enforce those laws. As Lenin puts it, "The state is a special organization of force; it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class." (State and Revolution.)

But the state is also more than a coercive institution. For the state, which comes into being only with the emergence of antagonistic social classes, and functions as the force which maintains and reinforces the relationship between those classes, is therefore at bottom a social relation. Just as the city-state of the Greeks came into being on the basis of the definite historical class divisions in ancient Hellenic society, so the modern bourgeois state is the expression of the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the other classes in capitalist society; most particularly, of course, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

The chief characteristic of the state is as a public force, seemingly independent of the antagonistic classes, designed to maintain order. But since the state attempts to reconcile class antagonism on the basis of a definite system of actual property relations, the "order" that the state maintains is nothing but the suppression of one class by another. In earlier periods, this public power was relatively weak. "The public power grows stronger, however, in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute, and as adjacent states become larger and more populated." (Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.)

With the growth of public power, represented in the first place by the institutions of coercion (standing army, police force, prisons, courts, etc.), the cost of maintaining the state increases rapidly.

The state has existed over the course of many millenia, ever since the earliest forms of society, which were characterized by the absence of class differentiation, gave way to class society. But it is only with the emergence of capitalist society that the state has become the powerful force we are familiar with today. The bourgeoisie brought into being the modern nation-state which, by encompassing large territories and providing the instruments of violence to enforce bourgeois property relations everywhere in the world that capital ventures, is the necessary political structure for the capitalist mode of production. In this sense, the bourgeois nation-state corresponds to the character of capital as an ever-expanding social relation, one which requires a broad and secure domestic and international market. It likewise corresponds to the competitive nature of capital, which itself requires a medium of mediation that, while in the service of no one sector of the capitalist class is in the service of all. And, most important, the modern bourgeois nation-state corresponds to the broadened and intensified nature of class struggle, ultimately simplified to the struggle between the two principal contending classes of contemporary society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

In all these functions, the bourgeois state is founded upon, reflects and maintains the prevailing property relations of capitalist society. The bourgeois state, therefore, no matter what form it appears in. is nothing but the political expression of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

B. The Democratic Republic

A standard argument of social democracy and of revisionist theoreticians is that there has been a qualitative expansion of democracy unanticipated by the foremost Marxist theoreticians of the past, and that this development requires a revision of the Marxist theory of the state.

First of all, let us more closely examine the assumption underlying the argument. It is undoubtedly true that there has been a considerable expansion of bourgeois democracy ever since capitalism arose historically. A century and a half ago, for instance, access to the ballot was circumscribed by all manner of property restrictions and confined to adult males. (All this signified was that in the period before the bourgeoisie had fully consolidated its political and economic power, it was not about to permit the exploited classes to turn the bourgeoisie's own political instruments against it.)

Since that time, virtually all legal restrictions to participation in the electoral process have been eliminated. No longer are there property qualifications. Women can now vote. In the U.S., all legal restrictions (and a considerable measure of the operational barriers) on the right of Blacks and other minority peoples to the ballot have been dropped. The legal age for voting has been lowered and in many areas of heavy minority concentration, literacy in English is no longer a requirement.

There has also been an expansion of legal rights in areas other than elections. Legally speaking, freedom of speech, press and assembly is today significantly less restricted than it was even 50 years ago.

But is the rule of capital today one whit shakier as a result of this expansion of bourgeois democracy? Has wider access to the ballot in any way brought about a firmer political challenge to the bourgeoisie even within the confines of the electoral system? Radicals may be able to say more inflammatory things in print today than was permitted in the past, but in no way has this development weakened the rule of monopoly.

It is not our intention to dismiss the significance of the gains in bourgeois democracy which have been won. Communists value these on two counts. First, every expansion of bourgeois democracy can be utilized by the working class not as the means of changing society but as the means of changing its own class consciousness. Second, the more bourgeois democracy grows the more does it become apparent that the problem confronting the working class is not a problem of the absence of certain legal rights, but the absence of actual power.

But the fact remains that the growth of bourgeois democracy has taken place solely in the context of strengthening of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Indeed the former would not have been conceded without the development of the latter. Thus along with the expansion of bourgeois democratic rights has come the expansion of the state's police apparatus and the development of a far more sophisticated machinery for repression than ever before. Along with the expansion of voting rights has come the ever greater significance of concentrated wealth in the manipulation of the political process. Along with a broader permissibility of expression has come a much more developed system of ideological controls in the hands of the bourgeoisie. (To paraphrase Anatole France, the law in its majesty permits any group of millionaires or any group of workers to open a steel mill, open a bank, or launch a television network.)

All this is what the uncritical enthusiasts of bourgeois democracy conveniently forget.

In addition, it is completely untrue that the earlier Marxists based their analysis of the bourgeois state on forms of bourgeois rule in which democracy had not yet reached its full flowering. Lenin, in fact, based State and Revolution much more on the model of the democratic republic than the Czarist autocracy. This is likewise the case with Engels' Origin of the Family. Many communists are familiar with this latter work either through the brief excerpts quoted by Lenin in his work on the state or as a work which helps establish the materialist foundation for Marxist writings on the woman question, but do not sufficiently appreciate the extent to which Engels precisely analyzed the workings of bourgeois democracy.

"The highest form of the state," writes Engels, "the democratic republic, which under our modern conditions of society is more and more becoming an inevitable necessity, and is the form of state in which alone the last decisive struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out–the democratic republic officially knows nothing any more of property distinctions. In it wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely. On the one hand, in the form of the direct corruption of officials, of which America provides the classical example; on the other hand, in the form of an alliance between government and stock exchange, which becomes the easier to achieve the more the public debt increases and the more joint stock companies concentrate in their hands not only transport but also production itself, using the stock exchange as their center."

The instructive thing about Engels' remarks is how well they anticipate those developments of capitalist politics which are so often cited as the reason for the need to re-examine the Marxist theory of the state. Far from being dazzled by the "expansion" of democracy which has led many a social reformer to conclude that the way has now been opened to a parliamentary transition to socialism, Engels notes that this form of rule is the "inevitable necessity" for the bourgeoisie. The full flowering of the democratic republic does not alter the tenacity of the bourgeoisie when its power is challenged, however; it merely (we do not mean to understate the significance of this "merely" since it lays the foundation for combining legal with illegal communist work) establishes the conditions under which the actual struggle for power proceeds. Engels likewise anticipates the enormous growth in the state bureaucracy (the rise in the public debt) and the further proliferation of monopoly by which the republican form of the state is ever more readily subject to the control of capital.

What makes the democratic-republican form of government an "inevitable necessity" for the rule of capital? The most common view among Marxists holds that this form provides the best instrument for tricking the masses. And undoubtedly bourgeois democracy performs this trickery well, for it allows the class rule of the bourgeoisie to project itself as the rule of, by and for the people for the first time in history. Legal barriers to formal democratic rights or property ownership disappear under a fully developed bourgeois democracy; so the image of a society not divided into classes can attain the figment of a material base.

The great myth of democracy is that in the democratic republic the ruling class is accountable to the masses. (By this standard, the masses have only themselves to blame if "their" leaders do not perform appropriately.) But the very nature of the democratic republic is to completely mystify the question of accountability. For in no way is capital legally accountable to the working class in terms of its economic decisions: and for every portion of the state apparatus which seems to be accountable to the electorate, there are a hundred other agencies, bureaus and institutions whose function is in no way determined by the elected portion of the state.

But all this deception is not so much the cause as the consequence of this form of rule. The bourgeois democratic republic is not and could not be such a consciously-designed plot by the bourgeoisie. Rather, the bourgeois democratic republic has developed into the best political shell for capital in a complex and historically definite manner.

What must be noted in the first place is that capitalism does not come into the world in its "pure" form, the step-by-step unfolding of the bourgeoisie's ideal social arrangement. To the contrary, it comes into existence in the heat and as the result of intense class struggle. In seeking its own emancipation from the political and economic tyrannies of feudal society, the bourgeoisie opposes the existing political and ideological institutions thrown up by the feudal mode of production. As a result, its ideologists proclaim themselves the apostles of freedom, by which they mean freedom from every form of authority but one, the authority of private property. Thus, the democratic republic, which separates church and state and breaks the hold of the landed aristocracy on the government, becomes part and parcel of the bourgeoisie's rise to political power. (In certain cases, where the prevailing form can be brought under the control of the bourgeoisie–such as England's limited monarchy– capitalism can maintain the outmoded political form and force it to serve the needs of the bourgeoisie.)

Nevertheless. whether in its American constitutional form or' the European parliamentary form, there is indeed a considerable measure of freedom in the democratic republic; for capitalism requires an atmosphere of liberty, meaning the liberty of private wealth to make whatever economic decisions it deems advisable on the basis of self-interest. To guarantee that the fierce competition between the capitalists themselves does not result in unrestrained cannibalism to the detriment of all, the bourgeoisie likewise requires some "neutral" regulator of its common affairs. To assure the relative neutrality of this instrument, the bourgeoisie requires a code of laws and a number of institutions backed up by military force which, while designed primarily to maintain the rule of capital over the workers, also establish checks against any one sector of the bourgeoisie seizing the state apparatus for itself.

Likewise, the democratic republic is most conducive to the existence of a market in "free" labor, that is of workers who have nothing to sell but their labor power. The variety and sophistication of the tasks which this class of laborers must perform requires a general raising of the cultural level of the masses. Free public education is a demand advanced by the workers but which is ultimately readily granted by capital because an educated proletariat is needed to both produce and consume the variety of commodities of which capitalism is capable. At the same time, capitalism's "marketplace of ideas" (the terminology is more than a happy coincidence) reflects both the commodity nature of intellectual life and the fact that freedom of expression is fundamentally the freedom to make available for sale a variety of intellectual products in the bourgeois marketplace.

C. Democratic Elections and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie

Clearly we have hardly exhausted the Marxist theory of the state in noting the above propositions. But these are sufficient for our purpose, which is to demonstrate that the modern bourgeois state is nothing but an instrument of class rule and, in today's circumstances, an incredibly powerful instrument on behalf of the greatest accumulation of wealth in all history. Therefore, to suppose that U.S. finance capital, sitting astride this concentration of political power which defends its economic power, would subject its rule to the vagaries of a popular election is to make the tales of Hans Christian Anderson scientific treatises in applied physics.

In fact, the bourgeois state is quite impervious to the electoral process.

In the U.S. version of this system, the branch of government with the least degree of power–the Congress–is the one most easily penetrated by the other classes. Even within this construct there is a convenient distinction. The House of Representatives functions as the medium for a united front under bourgeois hegemony between monopoly capital on the one hand and small capitalists, the petty bourgeoisie, and the labor aristocracy on the other. The Senate, having much more power, is a more stable institution, not even subject in its majority to the vagaries of a popular vote in any given election.

The Presidency is a much more powerful institution. Through this chairman of the bourgeoisie's executive committee, monopoly capital must take all of the necessary steps to meet the contradictions constantly besetting it. This is the key post. The President's actual powers–those conferred on the office by the Constitution and those systematically appropriated to the office by the most energetic representatives of capital–are enormous, particularly with its direct control over the military and police apparatus and likewise its control of the government's purse. At the same time, there are a series of fail-safes that impose objective limitations on what the president can and cannot do. The entire executive establishment, most of which is not subject to the changing winds of the electoral process, is itself a reflection of the state as a social relation of capital–tied to the giant corporations and banks by considerations of personal career and ideology (and always subject to the displeasure of the most powerful sectors of capital)–which guarantees that in practice all laws and regulations, no matter what their content, are implemented on behalf of capital.

In addition, the judicial system operates as the bourgeoisie's court of last legal resort. Here the very pillars of bourgeois rule, themselves not accountable even in form to the masses, are able to function as the guardians of the bourgeoisie's social contract with the proletariat.

The actual political significance of the U.S. electoral process can only be comprehended in this framework of the actual working of bourgeois rule. In this context, any projection of an election as a device which could alter the essence of class rule becomes an obvious charade. But it hardly ends there. Equally specious is the view that sees momentous issues of policy even within the framework of bourgeois power being determined at the nation's ballot boxes on the first Tuesday of every fourth November. To hold such to be the case is to believe that a U.S. bourgeoisie which has gone to great pains in order to ensure its control over society's legal institutions would permit the masses, through their votes, to settle the complex questions of policy by which capital defends both its power and its wealth.

(Let us, however, be very clear on the fact that the class struggle can and does affect, modify and alter the actual policies which the bourgeoisie pursues and that it is completely capable of wresting significant concessions from capital. But that struggle is not conducted primarily through the bourgeois electoral process, although an election may well turn out to be the form through which the intensity of that struggle is registered and provide the instrumentality for making whatever concessions are deemed appropriate.)

Any review of U.S. political history readily confirms the fact that elections, at least since the Civil War, however much they may be the instrument through which bourgeois policy changes are realized, are not themselves decisive in the formulation of such changes.

Has there been a single U.S. presidential election campaign in this century in which the general course of events would have been significantly altered had the presidential election verdict been reversed? Would the election of Charles Hughes rather than Woodrow Wilson in 1916 have kept the U.S. out of the great imperialist holocaust of World War I in defiance of the compelling needs of U.S. capital for an allied military victory? Would Al Smith have prevented the onset of the depression or been able to deal with the human misery it produced more effectively than did Herbert Hoover? Franklin D. Roosevelt's bold measures to maintain social peace in the early thirties may have drawn the verbal fire of some ruling class ideologists, but the lop-sided election of 1936 demonstrated that monopoly capital was more than satisfied with the accomplishments of the New Deal. Would the Cold War not have been launched, the Taft-Hartley law not enacted or the leaders of the U.S. Communist Party not indicted had Thomas Dewey rather than Harry Truman been President of the U.S.? What would have been different about the 1950s if they had been known as the "Stevenson years" rather than the "Eisenhower years"? Lyndon Johnson, it should be recalled, was elected in 1964 by labelling Barry Goldwater the "war candidate," although plans for U.S. military intervention in Vietnam were already far advanced. The principal issue at stake in the 1968 election was who would end the war in Vietnam, Nixon or Humphrey. The policy decision had already been made by Lyndon Johnson's abdication and a ruling class consensus had concurred in it.

And when in the course of these agonies the bourgeois political process brings to the fore candidates who betray a tendency to become hostage to their electoral base at the expense of the interests of capital, no matter whether their loyalities are accorded to the left or the right, the bourgeoisie has other means for handling the situation. Thus, in 1964 the responsible sections of finance capital, (responsible to their long range class interests), deemed Barry Goldwater an unacceptable candidate. Consequently, they first did everything they could to block his nomination by the Republican Party. When this effort failed, his candidacy was simply undercut, resulting in a massive electoral victory for Johnson. The dominant sectors of the bourgeoisie, represented by Nelson Rockefeller and the "Eastern Establishment," were unhappy with Goldwater for two reasons. First of all, he won the nomination through the efforts of a rightwing political base within the Republican Party and he gave every sign of being more accountable to that base than to monopoly capital itself. Even when the immediate political program required by capital coincides with that of such a base (it could as easily be left-liberal under other conditions), the bourgeoisie requires at the helm of its state individuals who look at the contradictions of the system all-sidedly. Conservatives must indicate their sensitivity to the uses of reform and tactical concession in the interests of social peace. Liberals must demonstrate that they can be tough with the masses when necessary (Kennedy's sponsorship of the modified version of S.I., the criminal reform bill, was designed to meet this political need.) Anti-communists must make clear that they are ready to negotiate with and even make concessions to communist countries when it is in the interests of the bourgeoisie to do so, just as reformers and the architects of more sophisticated forms of neo-colonialism must be prepared to beef up the military budgets and employ the armed forces when necessary. Goldwater was seen as too much of an ideologue to be able to make the necessary accommodations to the bourgeoisie's need for flexibility of response, especially in light of the treatment accorded Nelson Rockefeller at the Republican convention and the designation of an unknown right-wing congressman as the vice presidential candidate. (Ronald Reagan, as we shall see, handled this dilemma far differently and as a result was himself treated differently by the Rockefeller section of finance capital.)

More particularly, the ideological stance and concrete policies associated with Goldwater were deemed inappropriate for 1964. His conservative domestic policies were sure to exacerbate the already intensifying contradictions brought to the surface by the Black freedom movement. Even on Vietnam, the bourgeoisie's consensus was based on the concept of "limited war" for fear that an all-out confrontation with both China and the Soviet Union in an Asian land war was not the right war at the right time for U.S. imperialism; Goldwater, on the other hand, gave no evidence of understanding the nuances involved. In addition, it seemed certain that the only way to make this war palatable to the masses in the U.S. was to have it conducted by an administration committed to keeping the social peace through a "guns and butter" policy in relation to the working class and appropriate legal and ideological concessions to the Black masses. Such a stance was clearly more suitable to Johnson and the Democrats than the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party.

It was this combination of ideological and political factors that did Goldwater in. Ultimately, Wall Street's appraisal of his candidacy was telegraphed by Rockefeller's boycott of the campaign effort and an ideological undercutting of the Goldwater candidacy that produced a massive Johnson victory at the polls.

A similar point is to be made concerning the Eugene McCarthy effort in 1968, in which the responsibility of managing the U.S. defeat in Vietnam was not to be left to a maverick senator from Minnesota whose political history was such that he could not be seen as appropriately accountable to monopoly capital. This was true, even though he had done the system a good turn by anticipating its political needs and offering the masses a lightning rod that would bring their anger back into the bourgeoisie's legal apparatus. The political question at that point was not ending the war, but how it would be done.

The essence of these phenomena, however, cannot be grasped at the empirical level. Nor is the relationship between monopoly capital and the electoral process a simplistic one in which a designated representative of the titans of investment banking notifies the national committees of the two major parties of the names of the candidates they are to nominate.

The process, in fact, much more closely resembles the workings of the bourgeois marketplace. The various political figures who make up the pool of those to whom the reins of state will be entrusted bring their product–themselves–to market over the course of time, attempting to demonstrate through their political careers their capacity to serve the bourgeoisie while maintaining sufficient credibility with the masses (or a significant section) to keep getting elected to office. The likelier candidates build up a fairly sizeable entourage, each of whom has an appropriate stake in the enterprise, over the course of time, so that ultimately the bourgeoisie selects not just an individual but a fairly cohesive team, unified around its leading personality, to whom it will entrust political power. It is hardly an accident that this process has been described as the real American Beauty contest, easily overshadowing in interest and significance the sexist anachronism annually staged along the boardwalk in Atlantic City. The complexity involved is that the parading aspirants are strutting their stuff for two audiences– the electorate (as registered not only in primaries but in popularity polls and general image) and monopoly capital. Since it is monopoly capital's choice which is decisive (the electorate only chooses after capital has winnowed out the field), let us examine its considerations in finding a candidate acceptable.

First, the candidate should be a significant national political figure. While occasionally an "outsider" is deliberately promoted, confining the pool to those who have been in the public spotlight for a lengthy period of time means that those who have made it thus far to the top of the political heap have undoubtedly demonstrated already in a thousand different ways their sense of responsibility and fidelity to the needs of monopoly capital; and indeed, the majority probably are directly indebted to one or another sector of capital.

Second, the candidate should represent a general political/ideological image that is in tune with the particular needs of the bourgeoisie at the given moment. Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes, for the bourgeoisie there is a time for war and a time for peace, a time to grant concessions to one or another section of the masses and a time to take those away, a time to demonstrate the "openness" of government and a time to show the mailed fist. And for each of these times there is a candidate. Thus, in a time of great social unrest, the candidate must be able to represent a means of securing social peace, whether through carefully conceived concessions to the masses, the use of repressive measures, or a combination of the two, depending on the precise combination deemed most advisable at the time.

Ideally, the bourgeoisie would prefer to have its pool of available talent made up exclusively of pragmatic technicians who would simply effect whatever policies are called for with no pretense of having any other views than those that serve the best interests of U.S. imperialism. But the third requirement for a candidate–the necessity to secure a popular base, maintain credibility among the masses, and win elections, requires of every politician, no matter how pragmatic, an image based on a set of beliefs which seem to be independent of the vagaries of the needs of the bourgeoisie. To be sure, these beliefs are rarely if ever operative in office. But they are essential to winning an election and legitimizing the state apparatus in the eyes of the masses.

Not every bourgeois politician with a popular base whose general stand on immediate questions corresponds with the needs of capital is acceptable to the bourgeoisie, however. Here the final requirement is introduced that ultimately separates the amateurs from the professionals in bourgeois politics. That is, while maintaining a sufficiently strong image to keep whatever political base they have in line, the professionals will clearly indicate that they are treating their supporters tactically and dealing with finance capital strategically.

In short, every would-be wielder of power in the bourgeois political process must be acceptable to the major sectors of finance capital while maintaining a sufficient degree of credibility among the masses. Of these, the approval of finance capital is principal. Credibility and name-recognition may be important, but there are ways of manufacturing it if necessary (Jimmy who?). The never-ending ballet to balance these considerations constitutes the essential choreography of modern bourgeois politics.

D. How Autonomous the Bourgeois State?

The bourgeois state can never be, ultimately, anything but the form through which capital exercises its dictatorship in society. But as an institution the state takes on a certain life and logic of its own which, at times, may even run counter to the consciousness of the principal sectors of the bourgeoisie.

There are several reasons for this. The first lies in the fiercely competitive nature of capital itself. The state rules on behalf of capital as a whole, but as Marx pointed out, "capital exists and can only exist as many capitals," (Grundrisse), and therefore the task of ascertaining what policy is in the common interests of these many competing capitals is far from a simple one. The solution to it can hardly be tied to the interests of one or another grouping of capitalists and therefore, the bourgeois state, operating on behalf of the capitalists as a class, will of necessity be relatively independent of any one sector of the class.

Second, the intensification of class contradictions under capitalism has resulted in an enormous growth in the public power. The state's coercive institutions today are far more extensive than they were in an earlier age, represented chiefly by the growth of the military establishment and the incredible expansion of the police apparatus. In addition, the art of maintaining the social peace has brought into being a swollen bureaucratic machinery numbering in the millions, charged with carrying out a variety of ameliorative measures designed to calm the masses. It would indeed be surprising if this general expansion of the state apparatus did not provide its principal mentors with additional leverage in the general social dynamic and in their relations with capital itself.

Third, the increasing irrationality of capitalist production has invested the bourgeois state with new responsibilities for intervening in the economy–as employer itself, as caretaker of precarious sectors, as regulator of capitalist cannibalism and as a collective banker of last resort.

Finally, the operational financial and political leadership of the bourgeoisie is rarely identical. Nelson Rockefeller being the exception that proves the rule. But for the most part, the actual holders of wealth do not find it either necessary or convenient to play a direct role in the management of the bourgeoisie's political power.

For all these reasons, the bourgeois state apparatus functions with a measure of independence from the immediate direct dictates of capital. However, the significance of this flexibility, without a grasp of which there can be no firmly rooted understanding of the actual political motion of modern society, has been seriously distorted by much of the communist movement.

The most obvious distortion has been that which oversimplifies the relationship between the state and the bourgeoisie. With a blithe disregard for the many injunctions by Marx and Engels against any tendency toward economic determinism, one common prejudice of the communist movement has been simply to see behind every political development the direct and conscious hand of capital. Such a view ignores two readily demonstrable propositions: one, that the competitive nature of capital means that the bourgeoisie can only infrequently particularize its common class concerns with generally agreed upon policies and personalities; and two, that the bourgeoisie is not an omniscient class with ready-to-hand answers to its array of afflictions.

Accordingly, the state necessarily acquires certain freedom of action in confronting and trying to resolve the numerous contradictions which are the fate of capital.

When the theoretical complacency underlying this distortion is translated into a program of communist politics, its results are pathetic parodies of Marxism which in fact surrender the task of educating and training the working class to an understanding of the actual motion of politics and the class struggle.

Nevertheless, this obvious distortion is not the most serious deviation from the Marxist theory of the state on this question. In fact, such amateurish dogmatism serves principally to provide a convenient foil for the opposite error which, presenting itself as a theory of "the relative autonomy of the state," actually separates the bourgeois state from its class moorings altogether. Such views, essential to the political perspective of Eurocommunism, have been given their most developed theoretical expression by the late Nicos Poulantzas.

According to this theoretical school, while the modern bourgeois state may have developed as an instrument of the capitalist class (and this is by no means universally conceded), its own laws of development have brought us to the point where the massive power inherent in the state is by no means the exclusive property of one or another class. The struggle for state power, according to such theories, can then take place within the state itself; more particularly, the parliamentary struggle for direction of the government can thus become capable of actually settling the question of political power in class society.

Such a view abandons the standpoint of materialism for it invests in the form of political power its essence. Bourgeois parliamentary democracy is held up as the ideal representation of the proletarian as well as the bourgeois state rather than as a historically evolved form based concretely on the political needs of capital. In the real world of politics, such theories distort or ignore the actual workings of the class struggle on two counts: first they fail to grasp the power of capital ultimately to impose its will on the political arena, not through the rhetoric which surrounds it but in the actual results it is able to achieve; and second, they have not understood how the increased internationalization of capital has likewise given bourgeois political power an international character which was more than adequately summed up in the infamous comment by Henry Kissinger in developing U.S. imperialism's response to the election of the Salvador Allende government in Chile: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people."

Speaking in the most practical terms, it is nothing short of ludicrous to assert that the U.S. imperialist state is somehow up for grabs through the bourgeoisie's electoral process. It is certainly true that in the U.S., growth in the state apparatus has given to those who manage it directly enormous power to influence the course of events, as a result of which they now hold an increased measure of leverage in their relations to any particular sector of the monopoly capitalist class. But precisely because of the extent of this power and the size of the state apparatus, the bourgeoisie has seen to it that the myriad threads by which the state is bound to capital have been reinforced a thousand-fold through a system which goes far beyond classical influence-peddling, bribery and corruption.

To a certain extent, the confusion on this question results from the fact that the state in recent times has increasingly become the medium through which the bourgeoisie mediates its concessions to the masses. In an earlier period, the task of buying social peace was largely left to private capital operating through the wage system and philanthropy. But the massive economic concessions required today to maintain social peace are, in many respects, beyond the capacity of the private sector. Welfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, social security, minimal forms of health insurance (Medicaid, etc.), subsidization of education, low-cost housing developments (such as they are) and numerous other reforms are now the domain of the state. Far from indicating any weakening in the bourgeoisie's control over the state apparatus, the "welfare state" actually demonstrates the ever-firmer control of the state by monopoly capital.

The capacity of this executive committee of the capitalist class to represent the interests of the class as a whole at certain key junctures of the class struggle is clearly an advance over the earlier periods when there was much less "science" to the process. And the artful linking of concessions to the coercive apparatus has enabled the state to bring capital itself into line in actions which, while for its own good, are not always perceived that way by the individual proprietors of capital. In addition, the deepened link between reform and repression has enhanced the ability of the state to orchestrate the dialectic between the two while imposing definite limits on the concessions themselves.

At the heart of the process is the fact that the management and administration of the bourgeois state apparatus is itself a point of class definition, made so not by the intentions of those who manage the state but by the social relation which the state expresses.

As a result, the actual relationship which prevails today between the bourgeoisie and its own political representatives is one in which the state is more than a servant but less than an equal partner with capital in determining the various policy questions which confront the ruling class. On matters of tactics, the guardians of the state apparatus enjoy considerable flexibility; on matters of strategy, very little; and on matters of ultimate class rule, absolutely none.

II. 1980: Reagan, Carter, Anderson–or "None of the Above"

For the 1980 presidential elections, the bourgeois electoral marketplace has produced a rather dismal array of commodities. The Republicans have turned to an aging second-rate movie actor whose principal point of ideological identification appears to have been somewhat inadvertently registered by the candidate's expressed doubts on Darwin's theory of evolution. (The more charitably inclined believe that the candidate, who admits to have become somewhat hard of hearing, thought that his questioner was asking about the theory of revolution rather than evolution.)

The Democrats, on the other hand, could find no convenient way to disencumber themselves of a president whose standing with the electorate had sunk to the point where Richard Nixon, on the eve of his pending impeachment, enjoyed a greater measure of confidence among the citizenry. Trying to be a conservative Democrat in the White House, Jimmy Carter has not been conservative enough for the Republicans but has drifted too far right for key sections of the Democratic Party whose base in the working class and among minorities requires a greater fidelity to ameliorative reform than Carter has been capable of offering.

Given what even that Rock of Gibraltar of bourgeois ideology, Time magazine, called a "Hobson's choice" between two candidates who rival each other principally in the extent of their lack of credibility with the masses, it is not too surprising that a third commodity should be offered for sale. Representing no coherent philosophy but his own ambitions, Congressman John Anderson can hardly be faulted for making himself available to the bourgeoisie in a year in which the normal workings of the two-party system appeared to have left monopoly capital with somewhat grim alternatives. But Anderson's offer of himself as a better mousetrap does not appear to have made a dent in the widespread electoral apathy clearly visible among the voters.

As late as midsummer, the New York Times was noting that "the most obvious motto for the 1980 Presidential campaign so far is still 'None of the Above'."

But voter frigidity toward their candidacies is not all that Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan have in common. While each regales the public with dire warnings of the calamities certain to follow upon the election of his rival, the current dilemmas of U.S. monopoly capitalism and the low level of class struggle at home make it rather obvious that the course the U.S. bourgeoisie will pursue over the next four years will not be significantly different no matter who occupies the White House.

A. The Two-Party System: Democrats and Republicans, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable

Every U.S. presidential election is framed by the particular contradictions internal to monopoly capitalism which have come to the fore at a given period. Although no neat categorization into "domestic" and "international" problems does justice to the interpenetration of these contradictions, in general this distinction operates as an effective means for both official political debate and Marxist analysis. In times of rising social turmoil and class struggle, the policies and measures required to restore social peace at home–whether reform or repression–occupy the attention of the bourgeoisie and its political representatives. In periods when the challenge to bourgeois hegemony is located principally in the international arena–whether from inter-imperialist rivalry or the advances of revolutionary forces in other countries–then the attention of the bourgeoisie is riveted on those policies required to repel the challenge.

In 1980, the contradictions confronting the U.S. bourgeoisie are concentrated in two areas: the deteriorating state of the U.S. economy and the rising global challenge to U.S. hegemony internationally. Meanwhile, the U.S. working class, while increasingly disenchanted with bourgeois politics, appears to be characterized more by a state of resignation than one of militancy, a condition which cannot be solely attributed to the absence of a viable left alternative. Of course, the bourgeoisie cannot afford to view the relative calm in the class struggle at home as permanent. The more knowledgeable are aware of the fact that an elaborate (but costly) structure of social reforms, economic benefits, tokenist political concessions and the hold of the bourgeois ideology over the working class is indispensable to the continued maintenance of the present social peace. But the extent to which the price for maintaining this situation can be reduced–not just in dollars but in political matters–is itself one of the principal debates within the bourgeois political structure.

Accordingly, the great "issues" of the 1980 election campaign are focused around economic questions and the state of U.S. foreign policy. But, as we pointed out earlier, the two-party system generally operates in such a way that despite the heated debates over policy and direction that take place during election campaigns, the actual policies pursued by whoever wins the election are rarely different in any significant way. Marxists are hardly unique in pointing out this much. An astute conservative political commentator, Reagan supporter James Kilpatrick, noted as much: "If we look at what the two parties do as distinguished from what the two parties say, the two-party system is a joke."

Nowhere is this more readily apparent than on the two main questions which have come to the fore in the 1980 elections.

Thus, on the question of the economy, the Wall Street Journal (July 1, 1980) notes the judgment of Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ford, that "from an economic policy standpoint, it doesn't make a great deal of difference whether Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter wins the presidential election in November."

Meanwhile, on the other great issue of this election, foreign policy, the correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, Joseph Harsch, points out (July 18, 1980) what is also widely perceived: "This is a good time to remind foreign policy observers in the U.S. and diplomats overseas that they need not wring their hands in despair over the things being said on the American hustings during this current political season. If one did try to forecast the future of U.S. foreign policy from current speeches, one would have to assume that a Reagan administration taking office in January of next year would immediately and drastically alter the course of U.S. policies toward the outer world. In fact, there might be some changes in declaratory policy, but probably negligible, if any changes in actual operating policies."

What gives additional weight to these summations is that the first comes from a Republican whose party has launched an all-out attack on current economic policies and the second comes from an observer of a generally liberal bent on international affairs who would tend to be particularly concerned about any shift toward an "irresponsible" U.S. foreign policy.

Let us, then, more closely examine the actual content of these policies. In relation to the problems confronting the economy, the magic phrase of the moment is "reindustrialization." First popularized by conservative Republican congressman Jack Kemp a few years ago, the term has now been adopted on all sides of the bourgeois political spectrum. What does it mean?

Basically it involves a conscious attempt on the part of government to shore up the deteriorating economic position of U.S. monopoly capitalism in relation to its capitalist rivals and to remove various restraints on capital's freedom of movement won in the course of class struggle over the past decades. The watchwords for "reindustrialization" are "economic growth," "capital formation," "worker productivity" and "tax reform."

The theory behind it all is that the economy can only be rescued from its woes by a cross-class recognition that the well-being of all is dependent on the well-being of capital. The working class will be entreated to join in the writing of a new "social contract" in which economic demands will be subordinated to the common goal of getting U.S. industry back on its feet. As one commentator notes, "without a solid industrial base, there can be no surplus to support environmental needs, the poor, the minorities."

Meanwhile, annoying restrictions on capital such as regulations designed to protect worker safety and the environment would be removed and the agencies responsible for their enforcement (such as it has been) would be dismantled.

A broad array of tax reforms would be enacted. These supposedly would encourage capital formation by lowering taxes on corporate profits and on the wealthy in general so that more money would be available for long term investments. Special additional tax breaks for research and capital investment would be part of the package.

While there are differences between the candidates on exactly how this broad policy would be implemented–differences which speak in part to somewhat different ideological orientations based on the various constituencies to which the candidates are responsive–the general direction of U.S. economic policy will be more oriented than previously to a governmental role designed actively to provide smoother sailing for capital.

Concerning foreign policy, the differences between the candidates are even more miniscule. The Carter Doctrine of more aggressive counterrevolutionary activity in the Middle East and elsewhere, a policy which could well be labelled "The Empire Strikes Back," enjoys an overwhelming ruling class consensus. The principal concern in the U.S. foreign policy establishment would appear to be the prospect of a growing link-up between the anti-imperialist liberation struggles in the colonial and neo-colonial world and the socialist countries. U.S. imperialism's view seems to be that without Soviet "intervention," it can successfully manage most of the contradictions in the empire so that the rule of international capital will be secure even though its political forms may alter.

In such a context, a military edge over the Soviet Union becomes essential. The threat of a last atomic resort against the USSR is seen as the necessary leverage in order to keep the Soviet Union from "meddling" in imperialism's affairs.

The "debate" between Carter and Reagan on this question is a farce. Reagan charges Carter with having weakened the U.S. militarily and waking up too late to the "Soviet threat," when it is perfectly clear that the President has done yeoman service on behalf of the bourgeoisie on this question, having managed the transition from paralysis caused by the Vietnam debacle to a stand of increased military spending and war preparations. Carter, on the other hand, charges Reagan with being "trigger-happy" while flaunting a new U.S. policy of "limited" atomic war (thus greatly enhancing the possibility of an atomic conflict) and readying military provocations in the Middle East.

But if the differences between Carter and Reagan are indeed so specious, what is the election campaign all about anyway? The heat engendered cannot be ascribed solely to the playing out of an already written scenario.

For the working class, the 1980 presidential election in the U.S., like its predecessors, is undoubtedly a stacked deck, one more elaborate charade which can in no way alter or modify either the underlying property relations of the capitalist system or the actual policies that the bourgeoisie will pursue over the next four years. But the precise way in which this deck is stacked, the basis for the political rivalries within the bourgeois camp, the way in which the specter of the class struggle hovers over even such otherwise meaningless exercises in politics as a bourgeois elections–these are all questions which should be of consummate interest to all class conscious workers. For these all provide the window into U.S. politics by which the motion of all classes can be gauged and against which the working class can frame its own independent motion.

Let us, then, more closely examine the actors in this political dumb-show.

B. The Republicans: Reagan Gets the Message

Two things stand out about the Republican Party in 1980: Ronald Reagan has become acceptable to finance capital; and the "new right," the ideological fore-runner of U.S. fascism, has expanded its beachhead in the Republican Party.

The transformation of Ronald Reagan from a candidate who, in 1976, was unacceptable to the key sectors of finance capital into a contender in 1980 who has become acceptable to those same sectors has come about as the result of two closely connected developments: a consensus in the ruling class concerning the policy options it presently deems most desirable which more closely approximates the general ideological image projected by Reagan; and candidate Reagan's conscious repositioning of himself in such a way as to make clear that while he maintained obligations to his political base on the right, his relationship to that political base (and its ideology) would henceforth be tactical and his relationship to finance capital would be strategic.

Reagan, like Barry Goldwater before him, has never been a favorite of the dominant sector of finance capital–sometimes known as "the Eastern Establishment." The titanic battles within the Republican Party over the past 40 years have all essentially revolved around the conflict between finance capital's desire for a "responsible" presidential candidate capable of political flexibility in serving the interests of monopoly and conservative ideologues more concerned with "principle" than results. Wendell Willkie, Thomas Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford–these have been the preferred choices of finance capital in the maelstrom of Republican Party politics while the likes of Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan have always been viewed as outsiders of somewhat dubious reliability–even when their platforms were in no way distinguishable from the favorites of Wall Street.

The reason is simple. Ideologues–even of the right–tend to lose sight of the political realities, especially when the times call for bold initiatives and tactical retreats. Would a Goldwater or a Reagan have been able to wind down the Vietnam War or make the opening to China? Probably not, but Nixon could. Finance capital cannot always prevent some ideologue from capturing a party's presidential nomination; but then it has other means at its disposal, as witness the overwhelming election victories of Lyndon Johnson over Goldwater in 1964 and Nixon over George McGovern in 1972.

Until recently, Reagan was considered unacceptable to the mainstream of finance capital. When the former governor of California decided to make one last try for the presidency in 1980, finance capital once again sought an acceptable alternative. A number of politicians, anyone of whom would have been preferable to Reagan, put themselves on display, among them Howard Baker, George Bush, John Connally and John Anderson. In the end, after each had faltered, a last desperate effort was made to revive the hopes of former President Gerald Ford, but by then it was too late.

The Reagan of 1980, however, had learned something from the past. From the beginning he artfully began to position himself away from his right wing political base. The process required considerable delicacy, because Reagan needed the right to win the primaries, but he also needed to demonstrate his pragmatism to the real power brokers on Wall Street.

By March it seemed as though Reagan's march to the nomination could not be stopped. It was at this time that the investment banking establishment opened a fascinating public dialogue with him, the burden of which was to inform Reagan what it would take to win their approval. Particularly revealing was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (March 13,1980), aptly entitled "Learning to Love Ronnie," itself a clear signal that if he played his cards right, Reagan could get the endorsement of the party's center this time around.

Noting Reagan's growing lead in the delegate count, the Journal posed the following question: "Why do so many people who agree with his positions still find themselves unenthusiastic about his candidacy?" The Journal answers with great candor. The Republican establishment is concerned that Reagan may be another Goldwater, a rightwing extremist.

"In a way," says the Journal, "this is unfair, since the nation has clearly moved toward Mr. Reagan's longstanding positions; Mr. Goldwater's too. . . . But in another way, the concern about Mr. Reagan being 'too far right' comes close to the mark. He is, for example, the current champion of those who view the burning issues of the day as opposing gun control, making abortion unconstitutional and outlawing homosexuality. There is something to be said on behalf of these people; they correctly sense that these issues are raised as part of a broader attack on American society. But a President who spends much time on such issues, or partakes of the simple sloganeering in which they are debated, is not likely to deal very well with the realities of a complex world. And often, as in making the Panama Canal the linchpin of American foreign policy, Mr. Reagan has indulged these supporters rather than educated them. It seems to be happening again in this campaign with the poor Trilateral Commission, a group founded by David Rockefeller to promote American-Japanese-European understanding. . . . In a loose sense, we suppose, the Commission can be used as a proxy for criticizing an Eastern foreign policy establishment that suffered a failure of nerve over Vietnam. But it's ugly when this gets articulated as a conspiracy to sell out the Republic and used in New Hampshire against Mr. Bush, a former member." (Emphasis added.)

From that point on, there was a noticeable although subtle shift in the Reagan campaign. The simple-minded one-liners so much adored by Reagan's rightwing base were still there–("I don't believe that freedom of religion means freedom from religion"; "the U.S. government's present definition of a family is 'any two persons living together'")–but now there was a new tone indicating that ideology wasn't policy and that the concerns of capital might well require other than simplistic answers. To indicate that he recognized the complexities of maintaining social peace, Reagan began more and more to establish his personal affinity with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Increasingly his attack was on governmental waste in the managing of social programs, not on the programs themselves. The Panama Canal receded into the background, to be replaced by the call for renewed military strength. The attacks on the Trilateral Commission were quietly dropped.

By the time of the Republican national convention, the Wall Street Journal was ready with its new assessment of the candidate. "It is plainly to Mr. Reagan's credit that our political system now reaches out to him. . . . Events seem out of control, and in ways very like those about which Mr. Reagan has for so long warned. . . . One would wish for a younger, more experienced and more profound candidate to express the sentiments Mr. Reagan has tapped. But who would it be?" (July 14, 1980) (Emphasis added.)

While these words were being weighed in the centers of finance capital, a parade of "Eastern Establishment" luminaries mounted the rostrum in Detroit to signify that Reagan had passed the test. One after another, Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger and George Bush–much to the apparent discomfort of Reagan's rightwing base–came to formalize the annointment. And Reagan did his part in return, accepting Bush as his vice-presidential running mate, an offering to finance capital that takes on added significance in light of Reagan's age and the definite possibility that, if elected he would be a one-term president.

But while Reagan has thus become acceptable to finance capital, it cannot be said that the most powerful sectors of the ruling class are particularly enthusiastic about this candidate. There still exists a certain uneasiness about Reagan in the ranks of capital, nowhere more evident than in the delicate negotiations which almost brought Gerald Ford onto the Republican ticket. For the "demands" made by Ford's supporters in the heady hours of trying to formulate the "dream ticket" were principally a probing action by finance capital's most responsible representatives (only Kissinger could have played so central a role in such a process) to see how much Reagan's actual political power might be curbed and placed in more reliable hands. In the end, the scheme failed; but the effort itself was the most revealing part of the episode.

The significance of Reagan's candidacy, however, does not end there. For Reagan's triumphal march through the primaries, along with the political platform adopted by the Republican convention, indicates that the rightwing has expanded its beachhead in the Republican Party and has probably become the dominant political force within it. In light of the extent to which the particular political form that suits U.S. monopoly capital the best is the two-party system, this development means that fascism has now secured a more advanced base in U.S. politics than ever before.

Here let us pause for a moment to counter the prevailing prejudice on the left which sees fascism simply as the creature of monopoly capital. Ultimately, the turn to fascism is dependent on the acquiescence of capital. It is likewise true that sectors of monopoly capital are constantly financing fascist-like political groups. But politically, mass fascist movements most often develop somewhat independently of–and sometimes in direct opposition to–the mainstream of capital. In fact, their initial appeal is principally populist, attributing the felt anxieties of the masses to an unlikely combination of communists and bankers. Fascist movements come into being precisely at those historical moments when the crisis of capitalist economics gives rise to a general political, social and moral disorder in society. While this is a period in which the working class becomes most capable of developing its revolutionary consciousness, other sectors of the population–the petit bourgeoisie, backward sectors of the working class and groupings within the ruling class–yearn for a return to stability. Freedom becomes less important than order. Stability is associated with former days of glory when all people knew their place; racial and national minorities "accepted" their lesser status; women were not ony subordinate to men, but all acknowledge that this was the proper order of things; hard work was its own reward; and all decent folks loved their country.

Exploiting these anxieties, fascist movements develop a political base which is not dependent on the approval of monopoly capital, but then make themselves available to capital at a certain moment when the class struggle brings the system to the edge of a political crisis and the dominant sector of capital is then prepared to abandon its own "best political shell" of bourgeois democracy in favor of the more naked repression of fascism.

In this sense, the positioning of U.S. neo-fascists in the heart of one of the two major political parties is an event of considerable historic significance. For under such circumstances, the turn to fascism in the U.S.–if and when it occurs–can be effected with less of a rupture in bourgeois legality and therefore will be aided by the hold that bourgeois ideology has over the working class.

At this stage, U.S. fascism does not yet express itself in an all-sided political program which would entail the dismantling of bourgeois democracy. All this means is that the crisis of U.S. capitalism has not yet matured to the point where the bourgeois political system is unable to contain it. For the moment, the growth of fascism in the U.S. is more an ideological than a political process. (The fascist-like activity of the police, frequently cited as the indicator of the rise of fascism, is actually no more than the "normal" operation of the bourgeoisie's repressive apparatus. To hold otherwise is to encourage illusions about the real nature of bourgeois democracy. From Haymarket to Joe Hill to Sacco and Vanzetti and police assaults on the Black liberation movement in the sixties, the bourgeoisie has never hesitated to use its police power in the most arbitrary and "illegal" fashion while still not abandoning bourgeois democracy as a whole.)

The success of the "new right" in capturing the Republican Party-even though this success has not yet been fully consolidated politically and organizationally–has thus provided U.S. fascism with its most substantial vantage point. It is urgent that this new political and organizational gain of neo-fascism be properly registered by communists. Monopoly capital may not yet be ready to abandon its bourgeois democratic shell and turn to fascism; but it is more aware than ever before that a not unlikely combination of circumstances–the need for armed counter-revolutionary activity somewhere in the world combined with an upsurge in class struggle at home–could mandate a sharp political turn to the right, especially as the bourgeoisie's traditional option of buying social peace through material concessions increasingly comes up against the hard facts of diminished economic options for capital.

Neo-facism in the U.S. has been engaged in a "moral" crusade for almost a decade now, the essence of which is the ideological preparation for fascism. This crusade has been marked by an upsurge in racism (both the militant and intellectual varieties), sexism, anti-intellectualism, national chauvinism, jingoism, and militarism–in short, all of the main ideological characteristics of fascism.

There can be little doubt that American fascism, like its Nazi predecessor, will rely on a deliberate and conscious attempt to scapegoat racially defined minorities (those of "color") as the source of society's ills. Just as the Nazis' anti-semitism ultimately manifested itself as the projection of an Aryan "superman" and massive genocide against non-Aryan peoples, so U.S. fascism is likewise preparing the way for an exaltation of "white supremacy."

The elimination of virtually all forms of legal segregation in the sixties has not changed the objective situation of minority peoples; it has merely made more glaring the actual institutionalization of racism in non-legal forms. In fact, the racist counter-offensive has developed precisely in conjunction with the near-complete realization of bourgeois legal equality for minority peoples. The upsurge of the Ku Klux Klan and the noticeable rise in police brutality toward minority peoples represent a resentment at the gains in the legal arena as well as a pointed reminder that racism is protected and reinforced by the police and "private" paramilitary forces.

In the political arena, the racist counter-offensive has surfaced under the banner of "reverse discrimination" and the demogogic appeal to "white rights." Within this framework, the attacks on social spending (disguised as "tax revolts"), abortion rights, and welfare recipients has had an unmistakable racist content. It is far from coincidence that the neo-fascists have been the leading agitators around these questions. What must be noted with considerable gravity is that in exploiting these issues the fascist right has been able to extend its periphery significantly beyond its own relatively small political base.

Ideologically, we have witnessed a spate of new pseudo-scientific research–in both the biological and sociological fields– which attempts to legitimize racism by breathing new life into long since discredited theories of "racial inferiority."

Accompanying the neo-fascist, racist upsurge has been a sexist ideological offensive. Just as the slogan "Kuche, Kinder, Kirche" (Kitchen, Children, Church) was advanced by the Nazis as the statement of woman's appointed domain, so the U.S. fascists have essentially adopted the same outlook in calling for "a return to traditional moral values" largely based on racist and sexist social arrangements.

The opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment–itself a harmless enough constitutional statement which the principal sectors of monopoly capital have no compunctions about endorsing–is thus not based on any illusion that the ERA would actually bring about women's emancipation. Rather it is, along with the crusade against abortion rights, the reassertion of the legitimacy of traditional modes of authority. Those who see the hand of monopoly capital behind the anti-feminist upsurge miss the point, for under the conditions in which women have become increasingly part of the public labor force, capital does not on principle oppose formal equality between the sexes or the legalization of abortion. The Republican Party, as has been noted by many, had a plank in favor of the ERA in every one of its election platforms for the past 40 years up until this year, and no one would seriously argue that the plank was adopted in defiance of the dictates of monopoly. It was a Nixon-dominated Supreme Court which held anti-abortion statutes to be unconstitutional. (Even the finding that the Hyde amendment forbidding the use of government funds for most abortions was constitutional was managed by the closest of margins, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision.)

The real point is that the racist/sexist counter-offensive is very much the ideological platform of U.S. fascism; and that its relative success in rolling back gains of affirmative action and school integration, effectively blocking passage of the ERA, curbing abortion rights and creating the atmosphere of a moral crusade around traditional family relationships, should alert the working class to the fact that the political strength of fascism is growing.

But these twin developments–Reagan's turn toward the center of monopoly capital and the development of a neo-fascist base in the Republican Party–will remain somewhat in contradiction to each other so long as the dominant sectors of L'.S. finance capital are not yet ready to turn toward fascism. On specific questions–increased military spending, a reassertion of "patriotic" values, etc.–the "new right" and monopoly capital are in tune with each other. But the most responsible sectors of capital are not so ready to jeopardize the social peace by a reckless dismantling of social services. Nor are they ready simply to accept the imposition of an ideological conformity based on Christian fundamentalism which is bound to repel the bourgeois intellectual establishment.

Thus, every move by Reagan to reassure capital of his "responsibility" on these matters is bound to create a measure of dismay in his political base. Likewise, every move by Reagan to reassure his right wing base of his continuing ideological purity is bound to promote a measure of anxiety in the ranks of capital. In fact, such contradictions have already emerged.

The Republican election platform, for instance, is a grand hodgepodge of right wing passions that the bourgeoisie would just as soon do without–ranging from the institutionalization of school prayer to a repeal of the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. Particularly troubling was the platform plank that reads: "We will work for the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life." This attempt to tamper with the principle of an "independent" judiciary cannot sit well at the center of capital, which is not about to permit its political options to be held hostage to such moral absolutism.

More serious–since party platforms are traditionally consigned to the realm of assuaging precisely such ideological ardor–is the flap over Taiwan. Reagan's assertion that he would re-establish political relations with the regime on Taiwan clearly threatens the developing alliance between Washington and Beijing; from the point of view of monopoly capital, unnecessarily so. Wiser heads undoubtedly realize that Reagan's talk is principally campaign rhetoric, a bow in the direction of his right wing supporters. Nevertheless, even as rhetoric, it casts a shadow over the highly valued "China card" which was a key factor in the turnabout of U.S. foreign policy.

Unless Reagan learns how to handle this contradiction more deftly, his candidacy may appear less and less appealing to capital as election day approaches.

C. The Democrats: The Wrong Year for Liberalism

The most significant feature of the Democratic Party's preparations for a renewal of its executive mandate was the failure of the Kennedy challenge. True, a sitting President is not easy to depose, especially in the nominating process. The last time it was done was 96 years ago when Chester Alan Arthur was dropped by the Republicans in favor of James Blaine in the election of 1884. And even then, Arthur had succeeded to the presidency on the death of Garfield and had never been elected in his own right. As it was, the move may have cost the Republicans the election, the first presidential contest they had lost since the Civil War.

But if ever a President looked as though he could be taken it was Jimmy Carter in the fall of 1979. His rating in the polls was dismal and most of the traditional Democratic constituencies – particularly labor and Blacks – were far from enthusiastic about him. But when important sections of monopoly capital joined in the general negative assessment of his presidency, Carter could not help feeling that he was getting a bum rap. In many respects, his achievements on behalf of U.S. imperialism were quite remarkable. For Carter supervised the alteration of the ideological consensus on Vietnam which had cast a chill over U.S. imperialism's capacity for conducting its counter-revolutionary activity. In the Middle East, he succeeded in splitting Arab ranks with his personal organization of the Egypt-Israel peace agreement; despite campaign promises to the contrary, Carter changed the pattern of military spending and promoted sizeable increases in the military budget; more recently, he has managed the turn toward making U.S. military adventures abroad more acceptable.

True, during these years, the U.S. has "lost" Iran, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe and been unable to affect Vietnam's actions in Indochina or the Soviet Union's actions in Afghanistan. But it is highly questionable that Reagan could have done otherwise. Indeed, the very fact that a Reagan-like figure was not President itself speaks to the objective constraints imposed on U.S. policy in the wake of Vietnam.

In any event, justified or not. Carter certainly appeared to be vulnerable. Inflation remained unchecked and, in fact, was on the rise. A recession was looming on the horizon. E1 Salvador seemed to be the next Central American country ready to move left. U.S. capital had taken a series of sharp body blows with the weakness of the dollar, the successes of foreign competitors and the precarious situation of a number of major U.S. companies. There was even the emergence of a new bourgeoisie in the major natural resource producing countries – particularly the oil countries – who, while seemingly closely tied to U.S. and western capital, was taking on a somewhat independent life of its own with who-knows-what unforeseen perils.

As a result, when Teddy Kennedy threw his hat in the ring last fall, it seemed the announcement itself would blow Carter away. But it didn't quite turn out that way, and thereby hangs a tale.

It will be said that Kennedy got off to a faltering start, that he was done in by Chappaquidick, that his move was too calculated. All these explanations miss the point. Kennedy represents that sector of the Democratic Party that the bourgeoisie turns to when the urgencies of the class struggle call for the skills and image of those most capable of buying social peace through the judicious granting of economic and democratic concessions to the masses. And so far as the major sections of capital were concerned in 1980, they had absolutely no need for Kennedy's services.

While there was a flurry of strikes in certain industries and an occasional flare-up of working class militancy, the class struggle was clearly much subdued and the spontaneous movement in an ebb period. The stirrings of an anti-racist movement are beginning to be felt with mobilizations against the Klan, the struggles for affirmative action and. more recently, the appearance of a new political form, local Black United Fronts. Nevertheless, none of this activity is as yet even reminiscent of the mass movements of the 1060s. The anti-nuclear movement is capable of mounting an occasional large-scale mass action, but it does not seem to have been able to touch off that ideological reaction among the masses that is the surest sign of an idea becoming a material force. We should add that the crisis of the communist movement also weakens the capacity of the spontaneous movement to pose the kinds of challenges to the bourgeoisie which, in turn, give rise to liberal alternatives.

Under these circumstances, embarrassments such as Chappaquidick loom much larger than they otherwise would. Nor is there any great outpouring of opinion which, in effect, would say that what this man represents is so needed by the bourgeois body politic that it's simply foolish to allow an unfortunate personal incident to stand in the way of a compelling social need.

All Kennedy had to offer was the reminder that the present social peace should not be taken for granted. Other liberals, more perceptive readers of the political barometer, were already shifting ground. Thus Kennedy's associate, the junior senator from Massachusetts. Paul E. Tsongas, in a keynote address to the national convention of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), noted: "Liberalism is at a cross-roads... If we are to mobilize a new generation to move forward with liberal leadership, we must understand that the average young American is just that – part of a new generation. . . . They have not grown up reading about hungry poor people; they have grown up reading about abuses in the food stamp program. They have not grown up reading about U.S. military adventurism in Vietnam; they have grown up reading about Soviet military adventurism in Afghanistan. They have not grown up reading about the abuse of factory workers by management; they have grown up reading about union rules that place security over productivity. ... If we don't speak to this generation in its terms, liberalism will decline. . . ." (Reprinted in Christian Science Monitor, July 8, 1980.)

The statement by Tsongas is revealing on two counts. First, it offers an insight into the way liberalism may express itself politically in the eighties. Second (and perhaps more revealing) is its implicit assumption that liberalism is the stand of those who are concerned with "social issues" (read: manage the social peace) rather than of those who are themselves directly affected by exploitation and oppression.

Kennedy, on the other hand, is not ready to go quite that far, although he is already making the seemingly obligatory noises about "reindustrialization." While Kennedy would seem to have positioned himself well for 1984, his political future depends on whether or not the bourgeoisie will require his brand of reformism the next time around – and whether or not they estimate that they still have the capacity to pay for it.

But the senator from Massachusetts is not the only one counting on the bourgeoisie needing an eventual turn to the left in order to maintain the social peace and, with it, its rule. This, too, is the great hope of a rapidly rejuvenating social democracy as represented by certain key figures in the labor bureaucracy, such as William Winpisinger, president of the International Association of Machinists, and the forces around Michael Harrington and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC). This tendency hopes to achieve within the Democratic Party what the "new right" has accomplished in the Republican Party. While tactical differences remain, social democracy is gathering its forces to seriously attempt this project: witness the growing likelihood of a merger of the New American Movement (NAM) with DSOC, the support given DSOC by the newspaper In These Times, and the active interest in all these developments on the part of the revisionist Communist Party. These efforts, and the development of U.S. social democracy generally, require careful scrutiny and analysis by Marxist-Leninist forces over the next few years.

Meanwhile, Carter is in a much better position than could reasonably have been expected six months earlier. While Reagan is no longer persona non grata in the highest echelons of monopoly capital. Carter could sign any message directed to the power center of the bourgeoisie "your obedient servant" without a flicker of doubt in anyone's mind that the sign-off was accurate. Much depends, of course, on how well Carter can repair his ties to the masses so that his re-election would appear to be a reinforcement of the bourgeois democratic process. Much will also depend on the extent to which monopoly capital is prepared to make some ideological concessions to neo-fascism in anticipation of the day when those legions may be needed in defense of the system.

D. The Anderson Indifference

One of the chief oddities of the 1980 presidential election campaign has been the emergence of a third major candidacy, that of Congressman John Anderson. He is not, of course, the first candidate to challenge the nominees of the two major parties. The left has traditionally fielded tickets in election campaigns, while dissident candidates to both the left and the right of the bourgeois consensus – such as Henry Wallace in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968 – have staked out claims on significant portions of the electorate. But what makes Anderson different from all other such contenders is precisely his complete indifference to matters of ideology and politics. The Illinois congressman offered himself as a better mousetrap to the bourgeoisie at a moment when it seemed that the ruling class itself might be so unhappy with the normal results of its own political process that the finger of capital might well point in his direction with a summons to history. The fact that Anderson quickly won a high measure of visibility and a sizeable standing in the public opinion polls indicates that significant sectors of capital were seriously entertaining the idea.

In mid-spring when the prospect of being confined to a choice between Reagan and Carter seemed much more dolorous than it subsequently became, not only to the masses but to the bourgeoisie itself, it was quite understandable that sections of capital would take an open-minded stand toward Anderson's candidacy. At the least, Anderson could serve the useful purpose of making the political system appear responsive. So noted the ever-astute New York Times (April 25, 1980): "Whatever one thinks of Mr. Anderson's candidacy at this point, the idea that it is somehow improper warrants prompt disposal. . . . A large body of voters is dissatisfied with a Carter-Reagan choice in November. To deny them an independent alternative risks harming something larger than the two-party system: confidence in the whole political process."

That perceptive scion of the liberal establishment, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., summed up the ruling class dilemma quite bluntly in a Wall Street Journal commentary (May 22, 1980), in which he noted widespread British dismay over Carter's handling of the imperialist crisis. "The U.S. is now being led by a man who is not just muddled but is in some way blind to whole areas of reality" (London Times). "One can now believe practically anything of America's present ungovernment" (The Economist). "Short of having his trousers fall down on Pennsylvania Avenue, President Carter could hardly make any more public blunders than he has done over the last few weeks" (The Guardian).

Schlesinger goes on to comment: "Carter's incorrigible bungling is in fact turning the U.S. into the Inspector Clouseau of nations….As for the prospect of Ronald Reagan as President, this is not a possibility our allies have absorbed, and, when asked to consider it, one they regard with total incredulity."

Back in May, of course, Schlesinger was still trying to make a case for the Democrats to nominate Kennedy. Nevertheless, his judgments on Reagan and Carter were hardly isolated sentiments and. when Kennedy's candidacy clearly faltered, one could hardly fault Anderson for thinking he might have a chance to fill the vacuum. It would also seem that a powerful enough sector of capital (a prime Rockefeller operative, Felix Rohatyn, has been Anderson's principal political adviser) was sufficiently interested in an alternative to Carter-Reagan that an attempt could not be deemed completely hopeless.

It seems pointless for Marxist-Leninists to take seriously any suggestion that Anderson is somehow cut from a different class mold than his rivals. He was the first to plump for "reindustrialization," while the best that might be said for his foreign policy differences with Carter and Reagan is that, like Kennedy, he seems to tilt more to the Cyrus Vance than to the Zbigniew Brzezinski school of U.S. imperialism. As of this writing (early September), the Anderson flurry seems to have subsided. It is clear that he was never more than a fail-safe candidate, kept in the market place to make sure that monopoly capital had an acceptable alternative should events make the Republican and Democratic nominees unacceptable. But that was before Reagan came to terms with Wall Street and Carter had demonstrated a greater measure of political resiliency than had been deemed possible. Now monopoly capital can afford to be indifferent to the Anderson "difference." Should he be needed, he is still in the running and, in that capacity, serves the useful purpose of providing a lightning rod for public discontent with Carter and Reagan.

Like every other bourgeois politician, his destiny depended on the needs of monopoly capital. What the bourgeoisie required of him in the spring of 1980 was that he position himself to receive the call if it was made. As that possibility receded, so did his candidacy, ready to be revived at a moment's notice should that be needed, but more than likely destined to conclude as a trivial footnote to the 1980 elections.

III. (Not Much) Thunder on the Left

The glaring weakness of the U.S. left is nowhere more dramatically revealed than it its overwhelming irrelevance to the 1980 elections. With a cynicism toward the nominees produced in the bourgeois marketplace so widespread that it is even a factor in the "alternative" candidacy of John Anderson, the inability of the left to serve as a magnet for the popular discontent is a telling commentary on the crisis of the U.S. communist movement.

The chief culprit in this sorry state of affairs is the CPUSA, since it is that party's degeneration, characterized by its adoption of a right opportunist general line, which is chiefly responsible for the disarray on the left. This is particularly marked because the CPUSA was once a vital force in U.S. politics. It had the capacity not only to run its own candidates, but to influence the pace and content of the contests and – through left-liberal formations in which it played a leading role – actually to influence the outcome of particular elections.

The anti-revisionist movement, which has been in existence for almost a quarter of a century, has rarely even bothered to develop a strategy for electoral work. In 1980, despite a plethora of "revolutionary" communist parties, this trend cannot even be located in any examination of the elections.

The left presence in the 1980 elections can be measured chiefly in three ways: through the campaigns of the revisionists and various Trotskyists: through attempts at broad-based radical coalitions: and through calls for organized abstention.

The call for a boycott of the 1980 elections can be quickly dismissed as a political absurdity. There is absolutely no significance to such a call unless the left can demonstrate that the abstentionism which ensues is the result of its own organized efforts. For the point of such an action is to demonstrate to the bourgeoisie and the working class itself the capacity of communists to organize the political activity of the working class. Any sizeable abstention from the 1980 elections that might take place could in no way be attributed to the call by certain small left groups for a boycott.

In fact, in the absence of a clear-cut demonstration that such a boycott was achieved on the basis of an advanced political consciousness in the working class, the effect of a mass disaffection from politics is actually more negative than positive, for it then represents a retreat from politics rather than an advanced expression of politics by the workers.

The candidacies projected by the CPUSA, the Socialist Party, the Workers World Party and the Socialist Workers Party can hardly be seen as having any substantive political significance in 1980. Any vote registered by these candidacies is much more likely to be the expression of a spontaneous protest against the major party nominees than a reflection of the influence of one or another of these groupings among the masses. While as an indication of protest and generalized "left" sentiments such votes have a positive aspect, the fact that the political views of these groups stand in contention with Marxism-Leninism within the left means that the long-range interests of the working class could hardly be served by any of these parties' expanding their direct influence as a result of their electoral work.

Most interesting, perhaps, has been the inability of broader coalitions on the left to strike fire this year. The most conspicuous failure has been that of the newly formed Citizens Party headed by its presidential nominee, environmentalist Barry Commoner. The hodge-podge of Utopian socialism and unfocused reforms projected by the Citizens Party has little chance of gaining credibility among the masses. With no significant mass base in any sector of the working class, without a galvanizing set of burning issues around which mass discontent could coalesce, and without a sense of reality in its projection of what it would take to reorganize society, the Citizens Party is a formation that is hard to take seriously.

In its own way, the Citizens Party is victim of the crisis in the communist movement. For it would take the long-range revolutionary perspective of the communists to develop a credible mass tactical initiative in the bourgeois electoral process – not only this year, but in the future.

The best the left has been able to do along these lines in 1980 was to mount a people's "alternative" convention and demonstration in New York City to coincide with the Democratic national convention. Clearly this was a useful action; but in the absence of a solidly based perspective on future political work that could develop a mass base around a leading mass line, it is hardly anything more than that at the present time.

In short, in 1980 the left has little more to offer in the framework of the bourgeois electoral process than a few isolated outposts which, while politically compromised as permanent institutions of the working class, can function as magnets for registering a vote of protest.

It is important to be brutally frank about this situation. In doing so, we make no pretense that we, or the anti-revisionist, anti-"left" opportunist present time – at least by way of direct intervention. What we can and should do is bring into all of our work the most advanced analysis of the actual state of the bourgeois elections of which we are capable. Under the most favorable conditions, such a task would be at the heart of communist intervention in the electoral process; today, such a task is particularly directed at the communist movement itself as part of the need for a thorough rectification of that movement's general orientation toward its role in U.S. politics.

In this sense, it is appropriate to use the occasion of this commentary on the 1980 elections to project some views on the way in which the communists must orient themselves toward bourgeois politics in general as an important aspect of carrying on the class struggle in all arenas.

To do so it is necessary to recognize, as Marx noted, that "the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living," and that we are the inheritors of a legacy consisting as much of reformist illusion and semi-anarchist prejudice as of Marxism-Leninism.

Let us deal with the legacy of semi-anarchist prejudice first. This tradition uses as its departure point a readily obvious fact, namely that bourgeois elections do not in any way settle the real questions of power in society. This much is true, but to stop there and go no further is the surest sign of idealism and amateurishness. For understanding the objective limitations to bourgeois elections is only the first step in determining what the strategy of communists should be in this important arena, taking into account those limitations.

Such considerations are of little concern to those who bide their time and wait for more ideal arenas of class struggle to engage their attention – despite the fact that the working class itself is a long way from ignoring this political process. Idealists, however, have little difficulty in airily dismissing the significance of bourgeois elections in general and militantly calling for mass abstention from the process. (Since there is already a considerable measure of mass alienation from bourgeois politics, it thus becomes easy for these "boycotters" to claim an easy victory, as though their demand for a boycott of the election process was actually responsible for the low voter turn-out. Communists can hardly afford too many such cheap triumphs.)

Invariably accompanying this high-sounding call is the view that the communists have discharged their responsibilities to the masses after a properly militant denunciation of the elections has been intoned in the organ published by their sect, usually highlighted by the revelation that the candidates in the field are nothing but hired hands of the capitalist class. According to this vision of politics, the communists have exhausted the range of possibilities open to them by registering an appropriate sense of shock at the perfidy of bourgeois politicians and parties.

In defense of these views, abstentionists are prone to note that Lenin (in State and Revolution) went to great pains to highlight the previously cited comment by Engels that "universal suffrage is the gauge of maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state." Lenin ended the quotation at that point because his target in the polemic at that time was the earlier revisionist illusion that the working class could actually take power through a parliamentary process. Unfortunately, too many in the communist movement likewise end their grasp of the electoral question at that point. It would be better if they had gone back to the original and taken note of Engels' further commentary. Let us, therefore, quote the passage in full, underscoring that portion usually omitted:

The possessing class rules directly by means of universal suffrage. As long as the oppressed class – in our case, therefore, the proletariat – is not yet ripe for its self liberation, so long will it in its majority recognize the existing order of society as the only possible one and remain politically the tail of the capitalist class, its extreme left wing. But in the measure in which it matures toward its self emancipation, in the same measure it constitutes itself as its own party and votes for its own representatives, not those of the capitalist. Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the modern state; but that is enough. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage shows boiling point among the workers, they as well as the capitalists will know what to do. (Origins of the Family)

As an analytic description of the actual motion of working class politics, this comment by Engels has been verified a hundred times over. The problem of the U.S. working class is not that it fails to recognize that it has interests which stand in opposition to those of capital. Even the leadership of the AFL-CIO recognizes that much, as witness its periodic invocations of the rhetoric of class militancy. The real problem of the U.S. working class is that for a variety of reasons, among them the hold of anticommunism and the successive weaknesses of the communist movement, it is incapable of imagining socialism as anything but a Utopian vision, at which point pragmatism takes over and advises that material short-term gains are far preferable to long-run fantasies.

Those who have no patience for such frivolities as bourgeois elections "forget" that indispensable though the vanguard may be, it is the working class itself which must make revolution. And to arrive at that point, the proletariat must learn its politics both at the level of broad theory and through the conscious scientific summation of its own experience. The task of the communists is not to prevent the working class from taking independent political action, including activity in the bourgeois electoral arena; rather it is to help guide such activity, explain its significance and help train the working class in the process. But the idea that communists might actually enter into the electoral fray – getting on the ballot and running candidates for office themselves as well as taking responsibility for guiding the spontaneous political activity of the class – still tends to be treated by some as an aberration smacking of original sin. Such a stand naturally delights the revisionists, who appreciate having the left sector of the electoral arena virtually to themselves except for Trotskyists and such political anachronisms as the Socialist Labor Party.

In the long run, of course, the revisionists pose a far greater menace to the working class movement than do these small-minded sectarians – although the immediate legacy of the communist movement in the U.S. is so marred by "left" opportunism that for a period we will have to give this deviation a certain concentrated attention. But where the infantile "leftists" succeed at nothing so much as achieving their own isolation from the working class, revisionists and social democrats, immersing themselves in the ideological spontaneity of the proletariat, ultimately do far greater damage. For they tell the working class that the bourgeois electoral process can be the practical path to socialism and, in so doing, delay that much more the political maturation of the working class, which will be realized only when it begins to act in every arena as a class for itself.

For communists, the decision on whether or not to participate in bourgeois elections is a tactical question. It can never be anything more, although in saying as much we do not in any way minimize the significance of tactics as the practical expression of the twists and turns of the class struggle. In the long run, the task of communists is to help train the working class to understand the futility of the electoral process as a means of coming to power. But the proper vantage point for making this critique is, in most cases, participation in the electoral process itself.

Whether under various conditions the communist movement can best accomplish this task by itself running candidates or by taking responsibility for organizing broader mass forms that will help break the two-party monopoly on bourgeois politics is a question which must await a more concrete analysis based on the party's overall revolutionary strategy, although the very posing of the question indicates that such a tactic may well prove appropriate.

As to direct communist participation in the elections, we do not see this solely or even primarily as a means of doing socialist propaganda work, although such work is useful. Rather, we see communist participation in these elections based on the understanding that in all their political work, communists speak as the most advanced section of the working class. Their role is to give voice to both the long-range and shortterm demands of the working class through every available political avenue while simultaneously educating the working class to the fact that its revolutionary aims can never be achieved through the bourgeoisie's legal processes.

To fulfill this role, communists must assume responsibility for the politics of the working class, not only by offering the proletariat its most advanced perspective, but by giving leadership to the spontaneous political movement which the working class generates on its own.

The Gingrich petri dish

2012-01-22T00:49:00.001-05:00

Secularism and the American Constitution

By Charles Bogle

In recent years, Supreme Court justices, politicians and religious figures have advanced the argument that the Founding Fathers based the US Constitution on God’s word. Some have asserted that the Founding Fathers meant for the Constitution to be understood as a Christian document of governance for a Christian nation.

The attack on the principle of separation of church and state has not come only from the Republicans. In the 2000 presidential election, the Democratic ticket was vocal in advancing a religious foundation for American politics. Speaking in Detroit on August 27, 2000, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman said of the First Amendment: “[T]he Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” His presidential running mate, Al Gore, promised, if elected, to “precede every major executive decision with the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ ” George W. Bush has “out-faithed” Gore by beginning each cabinet meeting with a prayer.

In a 2002 speech before the University of Chicago Divinity School, Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia cited Romans 13:1-4 to support the death penalty and establish God’s authority in affairs of state: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.”

In Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote: “We must reestablish that our rights come from our Creator.” Current House Majority Leader Tom DeLay states unequivocally that “there’s no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution.” (dailydelay.blogspot.com, March 1, 2005).

Dr. James Dobson, leader of Focus on the Family, argues that “The Ten Commandments represent our historic spiritual heritage on which all law is based.” (“Restoring the Foundations: Repealing Judicial Tyranny,” family.org). In the same article, Dobson claims that “our Constitution states that we are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights,” erroneously attributing to the Constitution a phrase found only in the Declaration of Independence.

Christian Coalition and 700 Club leader Pat Robertson agrees with DeLay that “There is nothing in the US constitution that sanctifies the separation of church and state.” (“Voices of Extremism: The Radical Right in Their Own Words,” www.notso.com).

These assertions are false, as an informed reading of the Constitution’s intent regarding the separation of church and state proves. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The assertions of DeLay and Robertson that there is no mention of the separation of church and state in the US Constitution is true only in the sense that the words “separation of church and state” are not used. But the Amendment was clearly intended to establish just such a separation.

In fact, this principle was already plainly indicated in the original articles of the Constitution, which predated the first 10 amendments, or Bill of Rights, by three years. (The Constitution was ratified in 1788; the Bill of Rights in 1791.) Article VI, Section III articulates the principle of separation of church and state by banning religious tests for holding public office. It states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Dobson’s claim that the Constitution posits the Creator as the source of our inalienable rights runs up against one formidable problem: neither the word “God” nor the word “Creator” appears in the document.

The clear intent of the Constitution is confirmed by the writings of the two Founding Fathers who were most responsible for establishing the rationale for separation of church and state, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Jefferson, a Deist who favored a federal government with limited powers, and Madison, a Christian and Federalist, wrote passionately and convincingly from the Enlightenment point of view that human rights are determined by secular, natural laws, and not by any god or religion.

In 1777, Jefferson drafted a proposed Bill for Religious Freedom in Virginia that would guarantee the legal equality of all citizens of any or no religious persuasion in the state of Virginia. In this bill, Jefferson argued that “our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.” (The Portable Thomas Jefferson, p. 252). It was not God, then, who gave us our rights, as Scalia, Gingrich, Dobson, and Robertson would have us believe, but rather our ability to reason freely, without constraints from either state or religion.

Jefferson’s arguments in Notes on the State of Virginia, written in 1781, advanced the theme propounded in his 1777 bill that reason and free enquiry are our only guarantees against “error.” In “Query XVII,” Jefferson responded to the Virginia common law, circa 1777, which charged that a non-Christian person, or a non-believing person, is punishable by “incapacity to hold office or employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military.”

He did so in the following manner: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god” (The Portable Thomas Jefferson, p. 285). This does not sound like someone who believes that government should favor religion over non-religion, or declare one religion—i.e., Christianity—superior to others.

Just as he argued that it is an error to constrain or dictate religious thought, Jefferson, in the same Query, cited the case of Galileo to argue that constraining or dictating scientific thought is equally erroneous. “[F]or affirming the earth was a sphere,” Jefferson writes, “Galileo was forced to abjure his error.” Of course, this “error” later became fact.

As Jefferson reminded his readers, it “is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith.” He continued: “[I]t is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself” (The Portable Thomas Jefferson, p. 286).

In this remarkable passage, Jefferson argued that reason and critical inquiry must be held superior to any government or religion, and should therefore remain unfettered.

Jefferson was minister to France during the Constitutional Convention and therefore was not a signatory to the document. However, the Virginia 1786 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, which was based on Jefferson’s 1777 Bill for Religious Freedom in Virginia, is widely regarded as “the template for the secularist provisions of the federal Constitution” (Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Susan Jacoby, p. 19).

A brief overview of the history of the 1786 Act establishes that (1) the debate over the separation of church and state was contentious and of the utmost concern to the contestants, and (2) the decision to lay down the principle of separation of church and state was a highly conscious, purposeful one.

At the time of Jefferson’s 1777 bill, the Episcopal Church was the official church of Virginia. Before the Revolutionary War, freethinkers and dissenting evangelical Protestants (who, as a dissenting, minority church feared the consequences of single, official church) had opposed the establishment of an official church, but the exigencies of the war took precedence over this matter.

Following the war, with the work of establishing a new government at hand, the freethinkers and evangelical Protestants renewed their opposition to the existence of an official church. But another position was advanced at this time. In 1784, Patrick Henry proposed a bill in the Virginia General Assembly that would have assessed taxes on Virginia citizens for the purpose of supporting “teachers of the Christian religion.”

Thus, regarding the question of an official state church, there were now three positions: (1) the state should support a single, Christian church; (2) the state should support churches in general, so long as they were Christian; and (3) the state should not support any church or religion.

Like Jefferson and the other supporters of the third position, Federalist James Madison, the “chief architect and chief defender of the Constitution” (The Enlightenment in America, Henry F. May, p. 96), did not believe “the state government should be in the business of supporting Christianity” or any other religion (Jacoby, p. 19).

Madison presented his arguments for the third position in his “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessment” (1785), which, according to Susan Jacoby, “should be as familiar to students of American history as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution” (Jacoby, p. 19).

Madison asked rhetorically, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christianity, in exclusion of all other Sects?”

In addition to arguing for religion to be free of government control, Madison argued that government also must be free of religion: “If Religion be not cognizance (sic) of Civil Government, how can its legal establishment be said to be necessary to Civil Government?” (Jacoby, p. 20).

Madison’s “Memorial” played a highly significant role in forming an alliance between the freethinkers, who believed that religion should have no influence on government, and the various nonconformist Protestant sects, who, while not agreeing with the freethinkers’ Enlightenment rationalist view, came to see that their own and other dissenting denominations would stand a better chance of surviving if government noninterference with religion were ensured. With the alliance formed, the Virginia 1786 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom easily passed.

The 1786 act unequivocally lays down a secularist foundation for representative government. It states: “Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

As Jacoby notes, “...the important point for secularists was that no Virginian—in contrast to the prevailing practices in other states—would have to affirm his belief in any god to run for public office or claim civic equality” (Jacoby, p. 24).

“The prevailing practices in other states” offered non-secularist options for the Constitutional Convention, which opened in 1787, to consider as its model for the federal document.

The Massachusetts constitution of 1780, for example, displayed the state’s Puritan background by guaranteeing legal equality for Christians only, and even then, Catholics were forced to renounce “papal authority” before they could hold public office. Sixty-three Massachusetts towns were even more restrictive: they wanted to guarantee legal equality to Protestants only (Jacoby, pp. 25-26).

The New York State constitution guaranteed legal equality to Jews, while denying such equality to Catholics. Maryland did not grant equality to “Jews, freethinkers, and deists,” but it did grant full civil rights to Catholics and Protestants (Jacoby, p. 26).

While there were those who favored the semi-theocratic systems established by these and other states, in the end, the Founding Fathers chose as their model the 1786 Act for the Establishment of Religious Freedom, which came to be known as the Virginia plan, because they intended for the Constitution to be a secularist document.

As the Founding Fathers’ choice clearly indicates, Jefferson and Madison were not alone in viewing the separation of church and state from the perspective of Enlightenment secularism. Indeed, the pervasive atmosphere of the Constitutional convention was, according to Henry F. May, “a blend of rationalism and empiricism.” Among the more conservative delegates, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania held “that we should be governed as much by our reason, and as little by our feelings, as possible” (The Enlightenment in America, Henry F. May, p. 97).

In addition to Madison, influential Federalists such as John Adams and George Washington “fully shared Jefferson’s views on the separation of religious and civil affairs” (Jacoby, p. 27). Even the “omission of God was not a major source of controversy at the Constitutional Convention” (Jacoby, 29).

There was intense debate over whether or not to include reference to God or Jesus Christ in the course of the Constitution’s ratification by the states. The Reverend John M. Mason, a New York Federalist, cited the lack of any mention of God in the Constitution as “an omission which no pretext can palliate” (Jacoby, p. 30). A Boston opponent of ratification predicted ruination for the United States if God were not mentioned in its Constitution.

At the state ratification conventions, a number of members were appalled by the clearly secularist intent of the Constitution and proposed religious amendments to establish God or Jesus Christ as the source of governmental power. In the end, however, these proposals were rejected by those who insisted that the document be an explicitly secular one, and that the foundations of the new republic be secular.

This intention was even more evident during the debate over the Bill of Rights. Before deciding on a series of amendments to the Constitution, the House of Representatives originally agreed to revise the wording of the preamble to the Constitution to clearly state that government was constituted for the benefit of the people and derived from their authority alone. (Emphasis added).

Ultimately, this idea was rejected on the grounds that the original phrase “We the People” was evidence enough of the popular basis of the Constitution (The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, p. 175).

The intensity of this debate over God and his authority undermines the claims of those on the religious right who argue today that the Founding Fathers simply forgot to mention God or took for granted his authority. As Jacoby concludes, “[T]he founders knew exactly what they were doing, and so did their fellow citizens on both sides of the issue” (Jacoby, p. 33).

The Constitution was based on the belief that if human beings are allowed to think freely, they will come to understand and master the natural world, including society. Could mankind aspire to a greater or nobler achievement? Why, then, is the religious right and its main political ally, the Republican Party, lying about the Constitution and the authors’ intentions? What purpose do these lies serve?

The crisis of capitalism has fostered the collapse of the traditional bourgeois-democratic means of answering, or at least diverting, the legitimate concerns and protests of working people. In Europe and the US, the major political parties, representing the ruling financial elite, can barely pretend to respond to the concerns of the majority of the population.

Whether it be on the war on Iraq, the loss of jobs, or the dismantling of social reforms, the gap between the people and their elected representatives has never been greater. This has created a genuine concern within ruling circles regarding how to keep working class resentment and anger from turning into a conscious recognition of the need to struggle for revolutionary change against the capitalist system.

In the United States, the decay of democracy has taken the form, given the collapse of the trade unions and the political putrefaction of American liberalism, of an ultra-right minority, basing itself on the most reactionary religious ideologies, accumulating enormous power. Under conditions in which bourgeois democratic forms of rule are breaking down, and the working class has yet to understand its revolutionary tasks, this ultra-right minority has come to exercise a virtual veto power on the policies of the government.

With the help of a cowering complicit media, the Christian right is promoting the most backward conceptions to use against any form of opposition based on rational, scientific and humanistic principles. This, then, is the source and purpose of the lies about the US Constitution.

Instead of being educated as to the document’s intellectual and ideological roots in the Enlightenment tradition of science, reason, and democratic self-rule—notwithstanding its somewhat shamefaced ratification of chattel slavery—the American people are being told that their democratic rights are the consequence of a Christian God’s beneficence.

What better way to convince a population that they not only do not possess the innate powers to materially improve their conditions, but there is as well no need to make the attempt? What better way to foment a hysterical movement against a future, organized working class resistance to the disastrous policies of the ruling elite?

In 1784, the Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen wrote, “[W]hile we are under the tyranny of Priests...it will ever be in their interest to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith” (Jacoby, p. 18).

Today, the American bourgeoisie, which long ago repudiated the legacy of its struggle, when it was a revolutionary class, against feudal obscurantism and monarchy, brings forward the most right-wing forms of religion in an attempt to justify social reaction and prevent the working class from grasping, on the basis of scientific socialism, the objective laws of the class struggle and the lessons of its own historic experiences.

Books consulted for this article:

Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Henry Holt & Co., New York, NY, 2004.
The Portable Thomas Jefferson, Viking, New York, NY, 1975.
Thomas Jefferson: Writings, The Library of America, New York, NY, 1984.
Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America, Oxford University Press, 1978.
Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, W.W. Norton & Co, Inc., New York, NY, 1963.

'Enemy is on Wall Street, not in Iran'

2012-01-22T00:38:00.000-05:00

RSU Theory - Gregory Lucero: Revolutionary Analysis on Occupy Wallstreet

2012-01-20T01:17:00.000-05:00

U.S. Political Economy Explained

2012-01-19T20:28:00.001-05:00

from Товарищ Х

U.S. Political Economy Explained via brief info-graphic
http://youtu.be/iFaGz8blpPI

A political economy of cruise ships

2012-01-19T13:47:00.000-05:00

Death toll likely to rise in Italian cruise ship tragedy

By Stefan Steinberg
19 January 2012

As divers continued the exploration of the wreck of the cruise liner Costa Concordia six days after the ship capsized, hopes dimmed of finding any more survivors. The number of deaths confirmed as of Wednesday was eleven. At least 23 passengers and crew members are missing.

When the ship hit rocks close to the Tuscan island of Isolo Giglio last Friday, it was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew.

Experts have warned of an environmental disaster should the ship break apart and leak its estimated 50,000 gallons of fuel into the waters around the island and the Tuscan coast.

Reports on the circumstances surrounding the incident point to grave negligence on the part of the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino. He is alleged to have steered the ship too close to the coastline to allow passengers to wave to inhabitants of the island. According to the management of Costa Cruises, which runs the Costa Concordia, the course of the ship had been correctly logged and maps on the liner indicated the proximity of dangerous rocks adjoining the island’s cliffs.

Schettino is also alleged to have broken the basic code of seamanship, which demands that the captain remain on board a sinking ship until all passengers have been safely removed. Instead of staying at his post and directing the evacuation of the ship, Schettino is alleged to have given a false message to passengers, concealing the fact that the hull of the liner had been breeched, and then quit the ship in a lifeboat.

A tape has emerged of a conversation by a local coastguard official, who angrily demands that Schettino re-board and take control of his sinking ship. Schettino is currently under house arrest and is expected to face a number of serious charges, including manslaughter.

A report in Der Spiegel indicates that Schettino’s skirting of the picturesque island in order to provide a scenic thrill for passengers and on-lookers was by no means exceptional. According to the article, the mayor of Isolo Giglio, Sergio Ortelli, wrote an email last August to a captain employed by Costa Cruises thanking him for passing close by the resort island. The mayor praised the captain for providing an “unequalled spectacle” that had become an “indispensable tradition” enjoyed by “the country’s most beautiful island for years.”

After initially claiming that the reaction of Schettino had been appropriate, the management of Costa Cruises announced on Sunday it was convinced that human error on the part of the captain was the major factor in the disaster.

If the reports on the behaviour of the captain are confirmed, there is no doubt that he was guilty of severe negligence. However, the manner in which the company rapidly lined up behind all those seeking to pin exclusive blame for the disaster on the captain suggests a damage control exercise designed to cover up broader economic and commercial issues.

There are huge sums of money at stake. The rise to prominence of the US-based Carnival Corporation, of which Costa Cruises is a subsidiary, epitomizes the explosive growth of the holiday cruise line industry. The company was founded in 1972 by Ted Arison and initially ran just one ship between Miami and Puerto Rico. Today, Carnival Corporation is the world’s largest cruise line operator, with 101 ships and 85,000 employees. Its ships carry a total of eight million passengers, and in 2010 the company reported revenues of $14.5 billion.

Following the capsizing of the Costa Concordia, Carnival Corporation shares slumped and company executives expressed fears of a drop-off in bookings at a crucial time of year for the industry.

The expansion of the cruise line industry has been accompanied by a rapid growth in the size of individual ships. In recent years, cruise liners have doubled in size from 80,000gt to over 160,000gt. The latest generation of ships can carry more than 6,000 passengers and 1,800 crew members. The number of decks has been increased to expand cabin capacity. Bulky leisure facilities, such as multiple swimming pools, reduce the stability and manoeuvrability of the vessels in operation.

Many of the photos of the capsized Costa Concordia prominently show its row upon row of decks plus a huge slide leading into one of the ship’s swimming pools.

A number of the more recently built “mega ships” have been constructed with a relatively shallow draft, enabling them to approach close to land and avoid the use of tenders.

Concerns about the safety of modern cruise ships have been raised on a number of occasions by professional bodies. In 2000, the secretary general of the International Maritime Organisation (the United Nations agency that sets safety standards for shipping) cited 12 passenger ship accidents in the previous six years and concluded: “… in retrospect we can see that it was to some extent a matter of luck—good weather, calm seas, and other ships in the vicinity, for example—that very few lives were lost.”

The International Center for Cruise Research registers nearly thirty major incidents involving cruise liners since the start of the current century, including the grounding of the Norwegian Crown off the coast of Bermuda in 2006 (in 1999 another ship owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines collided with a container ship in the English Channel), the fire aboard the Star Princess on route to Jamaica, also in 2006, and the explosion onboard the Queen Mary 2 off the coast of Spain in 2010.

A number of Maritime organisations and specialist web sites have also drawn attention to the problems of regulating the rapidly expanding industry. Extensive legislation does exist to cover the transport of passengers by sea, but there is considerable pressure on companies and ships’ crews to cut corners in order to maximise profits.

The training of the liner crew has also been raised as a contributor to the scale of the casualties. While the training of officers and key crew members on the deck and in the engine room of a modern liner is extensive, a large proportion of the crew conducting more menial forms of work receive only minimal training with regard to safety procedures. Many of these crew members are low-paid workers from Asian countries, who are often not fluent in the language used by passengers. A repeated complaint of passengers able to escape from the Costa Concordia was the lack of expertise on the part crew members to provide adequate assistance in an emergency.

Beyond the role played by the captain, an examination of the broader issues involved in the capsizing of the Costa Concordia suggests that it was an accident waiting to happen.

All Eyes On Longview: An Injury To One Is An Injury To All

2012-01-19T13:31:00.001-05:00

from Товарищ Х

[The following is an open letter from Insurgent Notes.]

All Eyes On Longview: An Injury To One Is An Injury To All
http://insurgentnotes.com/2012/01/all-eyes-on-longview-an-injury-to-one-is-an-injury-to-all/

January 14, 2012

Dear friend(s) and comrade(s):

We are writing to inform you about a very serious class confrontation developing on the northwest coast of the United States, in Longview (Washington state).

In that small city, an international grain company, EGT, owned jointly by three firms (US-based Bunge North America, Japan-based Itochu and Korea-based STX Pan Ocean), spent $200 million constructing a new state-of-the-art grain terminal.

While the construction was underway, EGT indicated that it would continue to employ the 225 members of ILWU Local 21 in Longview, in keeping with the solid unionization of west coast American ports since the 1930s by the ILWU (International Longshore Workers Union).

Instead, when the construction was completed, EGT turned to a “rogue” union, General Construction and Operating Engineers Local 701, with the intention of displacing the ILWU with a “sweetheart” contract saving the company (according to its estimates) $1 million a year in labor costs.

The breaking of Local 21 will undoubtedly be a prelude to further attacks on the ILWU up and down the west coast, with automation another battering ram. Clearly, the bosses and the state are out to pit ILWU workers against Occupy militants in order to isolate and weaken both. They recognize and fear the demonstrated power of joint Occupy/ILWU action.

In spite of that threat, the ILWU International called for confining the protest to EGT and Longview and for not shutting down other ports. They will tell the longshoremen to cross Occupy picket lines everywhere except Longview. On January 6, ILWU thugs attacked a meeting of Occupy Seattle that was planning solidarity actions with Longview.

Local 10 oppositionists, including former officers and rank-and-filers, declare that they will shut the Port of Oakland down if the ship attempts to land. In fact, the thugs who attacked the January 6 Occupy Seattle meeting did so just when retired Oakland longshoreman and Local 10 opposition leader, Jack Heyman, told the meeting that the ILWU rank-and-file in Oakland, Portland and Seattle had voted with their feet to honor the Occupy picket lines and close those ports on December 12, Occupy’s West Coast port shutdown, and would do so again when the grain ship docks at Longview. Whether or not this will happen, against the intense pressure being brought by the state and the bosses, with the complicity of the ILWU International and several Local presidents, remains to be seen.

After months of standoff, on September 7 of last year, riot police escorted a train to the EGT terminal, arresting 19 people. On the morning of September 8, hundreds of longshoremen entered the terminal and destroyed the grain delivery. Later that day, longshoremen in five neighboring ports, including Seattle (Washington) and Portland (Oregon) wildcatted in solidarity with Longview.

Since that confrontation in early September, 220 of the 225 members of Local 21 have been arrested. The local president has been arrested six times and his arm broken by police. Both private thugs and police have created an atmosphere in Longview reminiscent of the 1920’s coalfield wars. The thugs are jumping longshoremen on the street and the police are dragging union members from their homes in the middle of the night.

A new ship is due to arrive in Longview to load a grain shipment some time in the next two weeks. It will be escorted by ships of the United States Coast Guard as well as helicopters; further police and private goon forces will be present to militarize the town. Under the new national security law signed by President Obama on New Year’s eve, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) anyone committing a “belligerent act” against the United States can be imprisoned indefinitely without charges or trial on the orders of the president. US ports are already semi-militarized by “Homeland Security”, with longshoremen required to show no less than three electronic “smart card” IDs to enter their workplace every day, and are subject to background security checks. It hardly requires a leap of the imagination to envision the possibility of linking militant labor action to “terrorism.”

It is essential that this attack on workers on the west coast of the United States receive maximum international attention and active solidarity. While the date of the arrival of the ship is still a secret, Occupy forces in the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland and Seattle are organizing caravans for a convergence on Longview when the date becomes known. Elsewhere in the United States, Occupy is planning demonstrations at Coast Guard offices and at the offices of the three corporations which jointly own EGT.

International support, starting with longshore workers in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, is also essential. In 2001, five black longshoremen in Charleston (South Carolina) were facing years of prison on trumped-up charges after police charged their picket line. Once dock workers in Europe announced that they would not handle ships going to or from Charleston, all charges against the “Charleston 5” were dropped.

Something similar, on an even grander scale, is necessary today.

Insurgent Notes urges everyone receiving this to join the struggle, either by preparing to join the convergence in Longview, or participating in the actions closer to them against the United States Coast Guard or Bunge, Itochu and STX Pan Ocean.

The Longview confrontation will be the latest, and hardest test to date of the ability of the forces which shut down west coast ports on November 2 and December 12 to continue to mobilize mass support. Key to its success will be a serious, class-wide alliance of rank-and-file dock workers, the much larger numbers of unorganized truckers in the ports, and the casualized mass which forms the radical wing of Occupy. Turn this defensive struggle into an offensive one now!

Scandal

2012-01-18T15:28:00.001-05:00

Communiqué of the Freudian Field, January 16, 2012

E. Roudinesco and "Seuil" convicted of defamation

Elisabeth Roudinesco and Seuil were convicted of libel by the 17th chamber of the High Court of Paris, in their respective capacities of author and publisher of the book, 'Lacan, against all odds'.

This book alleged that in fact the last will of Lacan concerning his funeral was not met: "Although he (Lacan) expressed the wish to end his days in Italy, in Rome or in Venice and would have wished for a Catholic funeral, he was buried without ceremony and in the privacy of the cemetery of Guitrancourt." As a result, Judith Miller, daughter of Jacques Lacan, who took care of his funeral, considered herself defamed.

In his judgment, delivered on the 11th of January, the judge admitted the defamatory character of the remarks and rejected the defendants' explanations:

"By its lapidary formulation, its construction and the words used, the sentence: "While (…) he would have wished for a Catholic funeral, he was buried without ceremony and in the privacy of the cemetery Guitrancourt", cannot in any way be interpreted as an expression of "a point of view", or a "hypothesis", even if "reasonable", for showing up a "paradox", a mere "wish attributed to Lacan (…)", a "dream" of "great Catholic funerals" that Jacques Lacan "one day" uttered "with bravado". "This phrase" by its brevity, its composition and the opposition on which it is built between the wish expressed by Jacques Lacan, presented as a certain and objective fact, and the opposing reality of the funeral", meaning that "a wish of Jacques Lacan was not respected by those in charge of organising the funeral."

The court then considered whether the author of the incriminating words could take advantage of her good faith. He has found that in 1993, E. Roudinesco had raised the same question in the following terms: "Lacan was an atheist, though, out of bravado, he had once dreamed of great Catholic funerals". This formulation, said the court, "should not in any way be confused with the statement, as concise and as conclusive, that is subject to these proceedings". Considering the fact that the author "did not have a serious piece of information to support her" on her remarks, the court concluded that "the benefit of good faith cannot be granted to E. Roudinesco".

The author and editor were sentenced to pay one euro in damages to Judith Miller, and 6000 euros for legal costs.

Defending Lenin from E.P. Thompson

2012-01-17T17:42:00.000-05:00

Lenin as Philosopher

By Peter Fryer

Since the time of its publication in the British Trotskyist journal Labour Review (September-October 1957), Peter Fryer’s “Lenin as Philosopher” has been barely available to English-speaking students of Marxism and, to our knowledge, was never translated into another language. The International Communist League has long used Fryer’s article as an educational tool for our own party and youth comrades, and we are pleased to now make this cogent explanation of dialectical materialism available to a broader audience.

As Fryer makes clear at the outset, his article is a polemical defense of Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin’s writings on dialectical materialism against an attack by the historian E. P. Thompson, who later wrote the renowned book, The Making of the English Working Class (1963). In defending Lenin against Thompson’s depiction of him as a crude economic determinist, Fryer relied heavily on Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks, largely compiled during an intensive period of study, following the onset of World War I, of the German philosopher of the dialectic, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).

In August 1914, the contradictions generated by four decades of capitalist-imperialist development erupted in the horrific carnage of the first interimperialist world war. The Second International, pledged to oppose the war but rotted out by a quarter of a century of relatively peaceful capitalist development, collapsed in ignominy. Forced to take refuge in neutral Switzerland, Lenin undertook his study of Hegel to better understand and intervene into a world marked by cataclysmic change. Lenin wrote of Hegel:

“As the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, and the richest in content, Hegelian dialectics was considered by Marx and Engels the greatest achievement of classical German philosophy. They thought that any other formulation of the principle of development, of evolution, was one-sided and poor in content, and could only distort and mutilate the actual course of development (which often proceeds by leaps, and via catastrophes and revolutions) in Nature and in society.”

—“Karl Marx,” July-November 1914

In the notebooks based on his studies, published in Volume 38 of the Collected Works, Lenin declared, paraphrasing Engels, that he was trying to read the idealist philosopher “materialistically: Hegel is materialism which has been stood on its head” (“Conspectus of Hegel’s Book The Science of Logic,” September-December 1914, Philosophical Notebooks).

In those tumultuous war years, Lenin made a number of theoretical and programmatic advances that were indispensable to the success of the October Revolution in 1917 (e.g., whether the revolution in Russia should be proletarian or bourgeois!). In describing this period of theoretical rearming, Lenin’s wife and close collaborator, Nadezhda Krupskaya, wrote in her 1930 memoir: “Struggle and studies, study and research with Ilyich were always strongly linked together” (Reminiscences of Lenin [Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959]).

Some four decades later, Fryer’s study of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks, too, took place against a backdrop of political turmoil. In 1956, Stalinist Communist parties around the world were shaken by two events: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” about Stalin’s terror, followed by the Soviet military suppression of a workers political revolution in Hungary. In Britain, over 7,000 members walked out of the Communist Party (CP), including Thompson and fellow historian Christopher Hill. Fryer was then the correspondent in Hungary for the CP’s Daily Worker. His truthful dispatches, contradicting Stalinist lies that the uprising was counterrevolutionary, led to his expulsion from the CP. He then turned them into the best single account of the Hungarian Revolution, Hungarian Tragedy, published in late 1956 (see “Chronicler of Hungarian Revolution: Peter Fryer, 1927-2006,” Workers Vanguard No. 883, 5 January 2007).

The Hungarian uprising decisively refuted the notion of the Stalinist bureaucracy as a new ruling class, powerfully confirming the program and analysis explicated in Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed (1936). A brittle caste resting parasitically atop proletarian property forms, the bureaucracy split vertically, with 80 percent of the Hungarian ruling party going over to the side of the revolution. Fryer led the way for some 200 former British CP militants and intellectuals, including Brian Pearce, Cliff Slaughter and Tom Kemp—as well as a layer of industrial workers led by Brian Behan—to be won to Trotskyism and the group led by Gerry Healy.

E. P. Thompson chose another path. After leaving the CP, Thompson launched the magazine New Reasoner, whose first issue (Summer 1957) contained his manifesto, “Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines.” Thompson aimed most of his fire at Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908). The late 19th century had seen a wholesale assault on materialism associated with the German philosopher Richard Avenarius, who coined the term empirio-criticism, and the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach. They denied the existence of material reality independent of sensory experience or observation. In his thoroughgoing defense of materialism (and science!), Lenin pointed out that Machian idealism denied objective criteria to judge scientific truth, or the means to distinguish between science and religion or quackery. Indeed, empirio-criticism, popular even among some Bolsheviks in the dark days of tsarist reaction after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, took the form of “socialist” spiritualism or “god building.”

Taking out Thompson for his attack on Lenin’s philosophical writings, Fryer stressed that dialectical materialism “is above all else a tool in the hands of the working class for use in refashioning society, and whoever blunts the keen edge of this tool, no matter how slightly, is doing a disservice to the working-class movement.” As Fryer indicates, he had to make use of the 1955 French edition of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks (a section of which first appeared in French in Cahiers de Lénine sur la dialectique de Hegel [Paris: Gallimard, 1938]), which had not yet been translated into English. Therefore, it was Fryer who introduced this seminal work to the English-speaking world. The complete edition of the Notebooks (Volume 38) came out in English only in 1961, prompting a series of three articles by Cliff Slaughter in Labour Review (Spring 1962, Summer 1962 and Winter 1962-63). Slaughter’s articles, which later appeared as a pamphlet titled “Lenin on Dialectics,” are inferior to Fryer’s earlier polemic. By then, Fryer was persona non grata. He had quit the Healy group in 1959 when it launched the Socialist Labour League (SLL), disgusted by the bullying of members and the lack of political debate.

The founding cadres of the Spartacist tendency were impressed from a distance by the SLL’s nominal orthodoxy, represented by its 1961 document The World Prospect for Socialism, but were unaware of Healy’s methods and his history of adaptation to the Labour Party “lefts.” And the orthodoxy of the SLL, which later declared itself the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), was increasingly belied by opportunist practice. By 1967, the Healyites had come out for Mao’s intra-bureaucratic “Cultural Revolution” in China and for a classless “Arab Revolution.” The Healyites’ political banditry would find full flower in their conciliation of oil-rich Arab despots, their grotesque hailing of the 1979 execution of 21 Iraqi Communists by the Ba’athist regime and their anti-Soviet provocations against British miners’ leader Arthur Scargill on the eve of the miners’ heroic 1984-85 strike. All this was overseen by a brutal internal regime, leading to the spectacular implosion of the WRP in 1985 (see “Healyism Implodes,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 36-37, Winter 1985-86).

In addition to his literary contributions to Marxism, Peter Fryer left behind a rich and varied legacy of other writings, including books such as Mrs Grundy: Studies in English Prudery (New York: London House & Maxwell, 1964) and Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984). We reprint “Lenin as Philosopher” as it first appeared in Labour Review, with only minor stylistic changes. As a result the passages cited by Fryer from the works of Marx, Engels or Lenin may differ slightly from the versions published in the Marx/Engels Collected Works and the Lenin Collected Works, which Spartacist normally cites.

In the first issue of The New Reasoner there is a discussion article by E. P. Thompson called “Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines.” One section of this article, entitled “Questions of Theory,”[1] includes a reference to Lenin’s philosophical work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. The author seeks to show that several of the features of Stalinist ideology have their roots in Lenin’s contribution to Marxist philosophy—that they can be traced to “ambiguities in the thought of Marx and, even more, to mechanistic fallacies in Lenin’s writings,” these “fallacies” being due to “his concern with the first premise of materialism.” Lenin is accused in particular of holding a “passive,” “automatic” theory of knowledge, of losing the concept of human agency in a “grotesque” “determinism,” of transforming the Marxist view of the relationship of freedom and necessity into a theory whereby man’s “‘freedom’ becomes slavery to ‘necessity’,” and of being so “absorbed in philosophical nuances” that he “removed the cause of social change from the agency of man to the agency of economic necessity.” Thompson’s attack is summarized in these words: “Lenin’s inspired political genius was not matched by an equal genius in the field of philosophy.”

In my opinion Thompson is here waging, under the cloak of correcting Lenin’s “mechanistic fallacies,” an all-out assault on the philosophy of dialectical materialism. It is an assault on the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge, on historical materialism, on the Marxist conception of human freedom and how it is won, and, not least, on the dialectical method. Many such assaults have been made in the past, and one of the first duties of Marxists is to meet them. This is not an academic question of preserving the purity of an immutable doctrine, but a class duty, for dialectical materialism is above all else a tool in the hands of the working class for use in refashioning society, and whoever blunts the keen edge of this tool, no matter how slightly, is doing a disservice to the working-class movement. The working class needs a consistently materialist world outlook because only such an outlook can show it what its historical tasks are and how it can perform them. The entire history of the fight for materialism against idealism demonstrates that the slightest concession to idealism, under whatever fashionable and novel guise it presents itself—positivism, pragmatism, empirio-criticism, or even socialist humanism—has its own fatal and compelling logic, which leads inevitably into the swamp of subjectivism and solipsism. Between the various shadings of idealism there are no impassable logical barriers: the only barrier is that between dialectical materialism and all other philosophical trends and schools, which in the last analysis serve the interests of exploiting classes by helping to justify, disguise and perpetuate their rule.

To E. P. Thompson, who has been waging a sturdy and admirable battle against Stalinism, these may sound “hard” and dogmatic things to say. But when we are discussing materialism and idealism and their irreconcilability, we are in the realm of basic principles, where the requirements of the class struggle impose the need for complete clarity, firmness, consistency and partisanship. It would be in the highest degree improper to transfer eclectically methods which often have an important place in the political struggle—concessions, detours, alliances—to the philosophical field, for fear of being accused of “dogmatism.” This would help neither the fight against Stalinism nor the fight against capitalism, both of which require the utmost firmness on principles and the utmost flexibility on other matters.

Besides that concern with the first and other premises of materialism which should animate every Marxist one further consideration has prompted the writing of this article. Not only must Marxist philosophy be defended from its revisers, but Lenin’s immense and extraordinary contribution to it must be defended and fully appreciated, for Lenin the man of action cannot be properly understood in separation from Lenin the philosopher. How far some of Thompson’s remarks spring from the fact that there is as yet no English edition of Lenin’s remarkable Philosophical Notebooks I do not know, but it is hard to see how he would have written in the way he did if he had been at all familiar with this fundamental work.

I. The Theory of Reflection

According to Thompson, the first fallacy in Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is “the repeated lumping together of ideas, consciousness, thought and sensations as ‘reflections’ of material reality.” He adds in parentheses: “But a sense-impression, which animals share with men, is not the same thing as an idea, which is the product of exceedingly complex cultural processes peculiar to men.”

It is important to understand that Thompson is here attacking not merely Lenin’s views, but those of Marx and Engels too. This, of course, does not in itself make Lenin right and Thompson wrong, but it must be made clear that Lenin’s theory of knowledge is no different from that of Marx and Engels, and that when Lenin writes that “mind is secondary, a function of the brain, a reflection of the external world,”[2] he is not adopting some new terminology.[3]

Levels of Consciousness

Now Thompson, in the very act of accusing Lenin of “lumping together” ideas, consciousness, thought and sensations as reflections of material reality, himself loosely “lumps together” four disparate categories. Consciousness is a generic term for the relationship of animals (including men) with the external world that is brought about by the activity of the brain; it includes sensations, the elementary form of consciousness, perceptions (which Thompson unaccountably omits)—the fitting together of sensations into a complex but concrete representation of the complex relationships of complex objects—and ideas, which reproduce the properties and relations of things in abstraction, and which are, as Thompson says, specifically human.[4] Thought is the name we give to this higher form of consciousness, where ideas are produced and manipulated.

Thompson’s description of ideas as “the product of exceedingly complicated cultural processes” is over-simplified and misleading. In comparison with the activity of animals many specifically human processes are undoubtedly complex. But there are manifold levels of complexity in human cultural (and other) processes, and corresponding to these there are a great many levels of abstraction in ideas (and hence in language), from elementary ideas (and words) that directly reflect the relationship of the thinker with other men and with objects and that relate to concrete activities and things directly perceptible by the senses, through concepts of varying degrees of abstraction, reflecting activities and things not directly perceptible by the senses, and their properties and relations, right up to such highly abstract and often far-fetched, illusory, mystifying, fantastic and inverted reflections of men’s social relations as religious, philosophical and political concepts and their elaboration in ideologies. But neither the abstract nature of ideas nor the apparent remoteness from reality and “false consciousness” of ideological illusions make them any less reflections of material reality.

That ideas as well as sensations and perceptions are reflections of material reality is not a materialist dogma; though science has still much to find out about the brain all that it has found out so far serves to confirm the materialist theory of knowledge; and fresh proof is always being added. Anyone who wishes to show that ideas, as distinct from more elementary forms of consciousness, are not reflections of the objective universe, is not merely abandoning the materialist view of the relationship between object and subject; he is abandoning science. He is free to do so—but it is surely incumbent on him to explain in what sense ideas are not reflections of the objective world, how such ideas arise and what function they perform.

The Contradictory Nature of Concepts

Thompson’s confusion on the question of the relationship between the more advanced and the more elementary levels of consciousness tends in particular to blur one important aspect of their relationship, an aspect seemingly paradoxical but of great importance in understanding the nature of concepts and the genesis of philosophical idealism. At one and the same time concepts are closer to the objective reality they reflect and more remote from it than are sensations and perceptions. They are closer to objective reality because they reflect, with of course only approximate accuracy, the essential, internal relationships of phenomena, their laws of motion. Yet they are more remote because between nature and the abstract thought which reflects it there operates a series of mediations—language, technique, etc.—which, far from rendering concepts any less a reflection of reality, are indispensable for this reflection. These mediations express both the power of social practice and also its limitations, its relative lack of power at each given stage of social development. From this flows the dual, contradictory character of conceptual consciousness, in which are intermingled the true and the illusory, the scientific and the mystical, the known and the unknown (or rather yet to be known, and therefore guessed at, dreamed about), that which is tested and proved a million times a day and that which is fantastic and chimerical. Men’s power to change their world progressively crystallizes out and perfects the scientific element in their concepts; their relative helplessness on the other hand gives rise to the tendency of abstract ideas to fly away from reality and weave themselves into marvellous, internally consistent systems of myth and illusion, from which the real world and real relationships of men to nature and men to men are then deduced. This mediation of human consciousness implies that the subject can never fully embrace the object, that concepts can never give a full, total, direct reflection of reality, can never contain the whole richness of the properties, qualities, relations and contradictions of the objective world. Theory need never be exactly “grey”; but the most exact, splendid and exciting theory can never glow with the warmth, colour and immediacy of sensations and perceptions, whose content is the appearance, the phenomenon, not, as with concepts, the “calm reflection”[5]of the phenomenon in its essence, in its laws.

The contradiction within concepts themselves between the element of knowledge and the element of fantasy and illusion runs through the history of human thinking, and will do as long as class or caste preconceptions require the maintenance of systematic deception and self-deception of people. It is a contradiction which is continually being reinforced by the gap between the subjective reflection of reality in concepts and the objective reality they reflect. If concepts were anything other than reflections of reality then this seed of the conflict between materialism and idealism that has dominated and shaped the entire history of philosophy could neither have existed nor germinated.

Consciousness as Creator

The dialectical materialist view of the origin of ideas would indeed be mechanistic if it vouchsafed to ideas no active role in life. But dialectical materialism sharply opposes the view that ideas are a mere epiphenomenon, a useless froth on the surface of human activity, playing no more part in the direction of human affairs than the steam plays once it comes out of the locomotive funnel. When Thompson uses the words “passive” and “automatic”—“passive mirror-reflection of social reality,” “passive ‘reflection’,” “automatic ‘reflection’”—he is doing a grave injustice to the Leninist theory of knowledge, which places enormous stress on the active part played by ideas.[6]

Many quotations could be given to show that Lenin saw the process of the reflection of reality in the human brain, not as something “passive” and “automatic,” but as a complex, contradictory, zigzag, dynamic process, in which a capital part is played by human practice; in which the mind passes from the reflection of the appearance of things to the reflection of their essence, their inner laws of motion; and in which knowledge tested and corrected in practice becomes more accurate and more profound. I will confine myself to five quotations.

“Knowledge is the process by which thought endlessly and eternally draws nearer to the object. The reflection of nature in human thought must be understood, not in a ‘dead,’ ‘abstract’ fashion, not without movement, WITHOUT CONTRADICTIONS, but in the eternal PROCESS of movement, of the birth and resolution of contradictions.”[7]

In other words, consciousness is not a stereotype or mirror-image, but the dynamic reflection of a dynamic universe, which, if it were not reflected, would not be knowable. The dialectic of knowledge is

“an endless process of the deepening of men’s knowledge of things, phenomena, processes, etc., proceeding from appearance to essence and from essence less profound to essence more profound.[8]

“When the (human) intelligence grapples with a particular thing, draws from it an image (= a concept), that is not a simple, direct, dead act, it is not a reflection in a mirror, but a complex, twofold, zigzag act....[9]

“Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But it is not a simple, direct, total reflection; this process consists of a whole series of abstractions, formulations, formations of concepts, of laws, etc.—and these concepts, laws, etc....embrace relatively, approximately, the universal laws of an eternally moving and developing nature. Here there are really, objectively, three terms: (1) nature; (2) man’s knowledge=man’s brain (as the highest product of nature) and (3) the form in which nature is reflected in human knowledge; this form is the concepts, laws, categories, etc. Man cannot seize=reflect=reproduce nature in its entirety, in its ‘direct totality’: all he can do is eternally draw closer to it by creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of the universe, etc., etc.”[10]

And lastly—and least “mechanistic,” “passive” and “automatic” of all!—“Human consciousness not only reflects the objective world but also creates it.”[11] From Lenin the author of “mechanistic fallacies” this may sound startling; but from the point of view of dialectical materialism it is as little an “idealist fallacy” as Lenin’s insistence on the secondary and derivative nature of ideas is a “mechanistic fallacy.” There is no contradiction here. Lenin is calling attention to the part played by human practice in the development of knowledge—and by knowledge in the development of human practice.

Practice and Knowledge

Social practice—production, experiment, industry, class struggle—is both the source and the criterion of knowledge. There is, according to Marxists, a sequence something like this. On the basis of their social practice, their immediate, direct experience in changing parts of material reality (and so changing themselves) men elaborate ideas, partly a true and accurate reflection of reality, partly a false and inaccurate or distorted reflection of it. On the basis of these ideas men then improve their practical activity, so testing and correcting their ideas, and sifting out truth from error, knowledge from illusion. This improved practice gives rise to further ideas, which approximate more closely to objective reality, to the essence of things—which are, in a word, more scientific. This is a never-ending process, in which consciousness develops through acting on the universe which gave rise to it, hence through changing the universe, hence in a sense through creating the universe.

It is social practice which enables men to pass from sensations and perceptions to ideas, since only our activity in changing material reality makes it possible for us to gain knowledge of it, to dig below the superficial aspect of things to their essence. It is ideas, thought, knowledge, which permit men so to shape and organize their practical activities as to change material reality more successfully and more fruitfully.

The word “reflection,” as used by Lenin of human consciousness, signifies active reflection, penetrating through social practice deeper and deeper into the inexhaustible vastness and richness of reality, and offering to thinking men the possibility of bringing reality more and more (but never completely) under their conscious control.

It might be asked why such a theory is called by Marxists the “theory of reflection,” since this terminology gives critics the opportunity to talk about “passive” and “automatic” “mirror-images,” about “the passive connotation sometimes attached by [Marx and Engels] to the concept of ‘reflection’.”

First, the word “reflection” is the proper word because it draws attention to the most essential aspect of consciousness. Without an object to reflect there could be no reflection. Without a material universe there could be no consciousness.

Secondly, understood dialectically, the word “reflection” as applied to consciousness signifies the specific form that the universal interaction and mutual dependence and determination of phenomena take in the case of organisms with a nervous system. Marxists mean by reflection in general not merely a subjective process in human consciousness, but first of all the unity and interdependence of every aspect of the infinite universe with every other aspect, the reciprocal interaction of everything with everything else. Every particle of matter is connected with the rest of the universe in manifold ways, at different levels of organization of matter, and reflects by its different forms of motion—mechanical, physical, chemical, etc.—and by its obedience to the laws of these different forms the whole of the universe which environs, conditions and determines it. With the transition to living matter, this property of “reflection” takes qualitatively new forms, connected with the relationship of the living organism with its surroundings: new forms, which nevertheless continue on a higher plane, on the plane of consciousness, this universal interaction and interdependence. Where Lenin uses the word reflection he is using it in its deeper, dialectical sense.

II. Social Being and Social Consciousness

Thompson finds that “Lenin slipped over from Marx’s observation ‘social being determines social consciousness’ to the quite different (and untrue) statement that ‘social consciousness reflects social being’.” The use of the term “reflection” as an “observation upon the way in which men’s ideas have been determined by their ‘social being’ in their history” does not, he says, “follow from the first premise”—i.e., that “sense-impressions ‘reflect’ external material reality which exists independently of human consciousness.” “Because a sense-impression may be described (metaphorically) as a ‘reflection’ of material reality, it by no means follows that human culture is a passive mirror-reflection of social reality.”[12] Thompson suggests that Marx and Engels “tended...to enquire very little into the problem of how men’s ideas were formed, and wherein lay their field of agency.”[13]

This is rather confused. To begin with, Thompson seems far from sure whether he is criticizing Marx or attempting to play off “partially true” Marx against “untrue” Lenin. It must be said that the latter is not a very fruitful undertaking. The suggestion that Lenin “slipped over” from an observation of Marx’s—“social being determines social consciousness” (the actual quotation is: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”[14])—to the “quite different” and “untrue” observation of his own, that “social consciousness reflects social being” is demolished instantly when we pick up the book from which Marx’s observation is taken and read a little further. Soon we find Marx writing about the “ideological forms in which men become conscious of [the] conflict [between forces of production and relations of production] and fight it out.” We cannot, Marx adds, judge of a period of social transformation by its own consciousness; “on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life.”[15]

Again, because Marx and Engels held the same opinion, and employed the same method of studying history, as Lenin, does not imply that they and Lenin were necessarily right and Thompson is necessarily wrong—but that Lenin “slipped over” in good company.

Marxism and Culture

While historical materialism views social consciousness as the reflection of social being, it should be pointed out that no Marxist has ever suggested that human culture is “a passive mirror-reflection of social reality.” This is a caricature of Marxism. It is perfectly true that in a letter to Mehring in 1893 Engels made clear that he and Marx had been bound to lay the main emphasis on the derivation of ideology from basic economic facts and that in doing so “we neglected the formal side—the way in which these notions come about—for the sake of the content.”[16] But this is something quite different from their having suggested that art and literature passively mirrored social reality. On the contrary, Marx went out of his way to stress “the unequal relation between the development of material production and art”:

“It is well known that certain periods of highest development of art stand in no direct connexion with the general development of society, nor with the material basis and the skeleton structure of its organization.”[17]

Marx, Engels and Lenin did indeed see human culture as a reflection of material reality, but as a reflection in the dialectical sense, not as a direct, immediate, mechanical, automatic, passive reflection. Certainly Lenin wrote an article called “Leo Tolstoy as a Mirror of the Russian Revolution”—but almost every line is a refutation of the “mechanical” and “passive” view of artistic reflection and a striking affirmation of its profoundly contradictory nature.

“Can you use the term mirror of something which obviously does not reflect phenomena correctly?... If it is a really great artist we have before us, his works are bound to have reflected at least some of the essential aspects of the revolution.... The contradictions in Tolstoy’s works, views, teachings and school are glaring indeed.... On the one hand we have the brilliant artist who has produced not only incomparable pictures of Russian life but also first-class works of world literature. On the other hand we have a country squire acting the fool in Christ.... On the one hand we have a ruthless criticism of capitalist exploitation...on the other hand we have the fanatical preaching of ‘non-resistance to evil’.... The contradictions in Tolstoy’s views are really the mirror of those contradictory conditions in which the historical activity of the peasantry was placed in our revolution.”[18]

To Marxists there is in fact a constant and complex interaction among all the elements of the ideological superstructure, and, not least important, a constant and often extremely powerful reaction of men’s ideas on the social and economic causes which give rise to them. The suggestion that because Marxists deny any independent historical development to ideological spheres they therefore deny them any effect on history was described by Engels as “fatuous.”[19] He attributed this idea to a lack of understanding of dialectics, to a metaphysical conception of cause and effect as rigidly opposite poles, to a “total disregarding of interaction.” It is equally fatuous to suggest that Marxists believe that works of art are no more than a reflection of economic needs and processes. If so they would surely have a higher regard—to take one obvious example—for Zola, the Left-wing writer, who believed that a good novel could be written by the methods of a journalist, who consciously carried realism to the point of naturalism, to the point of “the direct, mechanical mirroring of the humdrum reality of capitalism,”[20] than for Balzac, the royalist, the legitimist, the reactionary. And Lenin would surely have had a higher regard, say, for Mayakovsky than for Pushkin. Marxism would indeed be an impoverished and sterile dogma if it had no more understanding of the process of artistic creation than Thompson gives it credit for.

The Illusions of the Epoch

Thompson’s denial that social consciousness reflects social being prompts immediately the questions: what does social consciousness reflect if it does not reflect social being? What is the content of social consciousness, whence is it derived, what part does it play in life, if it is not essentially the expression in ideas of the social practice carried on by men in a given set of social relations? Or has the mind of the ideologist, the philosopher, theologian, legal theorist or artist, some special spring from which flow rich and wonderful ideas that do not reflect some real aspect of the objective world? Are ideologies spun out of ideologists’ heads? If so, how? And how is their peculiar character to be explained?

Thompson makes no attempt to answer these questions. Yet he does not hesitate to bring grist to the mill of all the many opponents of Marx and Lenin who oversimplify or vulgarize their views when he suggests that Lenin deduced the reflection of social being in social consciousness from the physiological fact that consciousness reflects being. Marxists have in fact made this generalization—the only consistently materialist generalization about the origin of ideologies—from a detailed, concrete study of social consciousness as it has evolved at widely different periods of history. If Marx’s and Lenin’s own writings are studied it will be seen that there are no “ambiguities” in the thought of the one, or “mechanical fallacies” in that of the other, on this question.

An examination of the history of human thinking shows that social practice, as determined by each specific set of social relations, is reflected in ideologies, not consciously, deliberately and accurately but spontaneously and often in an inverted fashion. Spontaneously, because ideological illusions constantly and irresistibly well up in men’s minds out of the soil of their social relations. The ideologist seems to himself to be operating with “pure” concepts; very often (and this is the more frequent, the more remote a particular ideological sphere is from the economic structure of society) the thought material with which he works contains little that is new, but is largely traditional material taken over from his predecessors; it is because its connexion with the real relationships in his own or earlier societies is unknown to the thinker that we speak of his “false consciousness.” We do not thereby reproach him. He does not, generally speaking, set out to build a system of false ideas with which to deceive the exploited masses—or where he does he himself is just as profoundly deluded by fundamental preconceptions of whose real roots he has no inkling. Each generation of thinkers finds in existence a set of production relations without which society could not exist, which are independent of the will of the men who make up that society and of the ideas in the minds of the thinkers. These relations appear, not as historically determined and transitory, but as eternal and immutable. And again and again they colour the thought of the philosopher or artist, however original and brilliant he may be, stamp his work indelibly with the peculiar flavour of an epoch, seep into the remotest and most fantastic channels of thought. The characteristic illusions of each epoch[21] are at bottom the refraction of the social relations of that epoch through the prism of the ideologist’s mind.

In this process of refraction reality is inverted. Men fancy that they have created their social relations in the image of their abstract ideas, and that their actions, institutions and conflicts are the practical expression of these abstract ideas. Social being seems to be the reflection of social consciousness. The harsh facts of class exploitation and class domination are disguised and sweetened by a vast body of illusory ideas which portray the existing state of affairs as just, heaven-decreed and permanent.

If it is “untrue” that social consciousness reflects social being, then a long series of the most dramatic instances of correspondence between the development of ideology and the development of social relations is crying out for interpretation, explanation and analysis. To work, Comrade Thompson! Let us have your explanation of the philosophy of Heracleitus of Ephesus if it is not in essence the ideological reflection of new-born commodity production. Let us have your interpretation of the divine hierarchy of Thomas Aquinas, if it is not ultimately the reflection of the feudal hierarchy of his time. What is the mechanical materialist view of the world as a collection of discrete material particles interacting according to the laws of mechanics if it is not essentially a reflection of the need of the rising bourgeoisie for the smashing of feudal ties and the development of a free market? How are the materialism and humanism of Spinoza to be understood if not as the most logical and most profound expression of the interests of the revolutionary bourgeoisie of Europe’s most advanced capitalist country in its struggle against feudal superstition and obscurantism—so logical and profound that the class for whom he spoke repudiated him? What was the basic content of Puritanism if not a reflection of a conflict in contemporary society in the minds of the revolutionary bourgeoisie of England?

Did Lenin Neglect Human Agency?

But historical materialism does not stop there. It seeks to show, in each specific case, how these ideological reflections are functionally involved in the further development of the social structure which gave rise to them, often determining to a very great extent the form of a particular social transformation and the speed with which it takes place.

Thompson accuses Marx and Engels of tending to neglect the problem of the field of agency of men’s ideas, and he implies that Lenin neglected it still more. This is a truly amazing charge. What on earth is What Is To Be Done? about if it is not a polemic against those who bowed to the spontaneity of the Labour movement and belittled the role of socialist ideas? Lenin took up arms precisely against those who said that the spontaneous movement of the workers gives rise to socialist ideology. On the contrary, he said, socialist consciousness must be brought to the working class from outside. “Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”[22] If Lenin “lost” the concept of human agency and underestimated the role of human consciousness why did he spend his entire life building and educating a revolutionary party instead of sitting back and letting the revolution make itself? Perhaps Thompson is referring to some other Lenin: perhaps the Lenin he attacks for “slipping” into the “fallacy” that “a passive ‘reflection’ [can] initiate, plan, make revolutions” was a harmless fellow “absorbed in philosophical nuances” and no relation to the man who spent thirty eventful years disproving in practice his namesake’s alleged “fallacies.”

A Case of Quotation-Carving

In order to make some semblance of a case against Lenin, Thompson is not always careful in his use of quotations. In one passage in particular he not only quotes from Lenin’s summary of an argument of Engels without making clear that the thought is Engels’; he follows this by carving up a quotation from Materialism and Empirio-Criticism in such a way as to omit words which specifically take into account and answer the very objection which Thompson raises! Here is the passage from Thompson in full (a) in order to be fair to Thompson and (b) in order to demonstrate his technique of quotation-carving:

“(4) From this [i.e., from the statement that ‘social consciousness reflects social being’], he slipped over to the grotesque conclusion that ‘social being is independent of the social consciousness of humanity.’ (How can conscious human beings, whose consciousness is employed in every act of labour, exist independently of their consciousness?) (5) From this it was a small step to envisaging consciousness as a clumsy process of adaptation to independently-existing ‘social being.’ ‘The necessity of nature is primary, and human will and mind secondary. The latter must necessarily and inevitably adapt themselves to the former.’ (S.W.11, p. 248). ‘The highest task of humanity is to comprehend the objective logic of economic evolution...so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness...in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible’.” (p. 376)

Two quotations, two examples of carving. The first quotation (S.W.11, p. 248) is from a passage in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism where Lenin is summarizing an argument in Anti-Dühring and explaining its epistemological premises, and doing so quite fairly. The words immediately following the quotation chosen by Thompson are: “Engels regards this as so obvious that he does not waste words explaining his view.”[23] Here is one of the “grotesque,” “mechanical,” “clumsy,” “emotive” fallacies that Lenin “slipped over” into—yet we find that, after all, it is only a paraphrase of something that Engels regarded as a commonplace of the materialist world outlook.

The second quotation, which Thompson splits into two without making clear he is doing so, leads him to ask a question, which I have emphasized above. Now here is the full passage from Lenin, with the words omitted by Thompson restored and emphasized:

“Every individual producer in the world economic system realizes that he is introducing a certain change into the technique of production; every owner realizes that he exchanges certain products for others; but these producers and these owners do not realize that in doing so they are thereby changing social being. The sum-total of these changes in all their ramifications in the capitalist world economy could not be grasped even by seventy Marxes. The paramount thing is that the laws of these changes have been discovered, that the objective logic of these changes and their historical development have at bottom and in the main been disclosed—objective, not in the sense that a society of conscious beings, men, could exist and develop independently of the existence of conscious beings (and it is only such trifles that Bogdanov stresses by his ‘theory’) but in the sense that social being is independent of the social consciousness of men. The fact that you live and conduct business, beget children, produce products and exchange them, gives rise to an objectively necessary chain of events, a chain of development, which is independent of your social consciousness, and is never grasped by the latter completely. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical a fashion as possible.”[24]

Note how Thompson’s question is answered in the words he himself omits. Note how Lenin makes it absolutely clear that he is not talking about the crude idea, the “trifle,” that “a society of conscious beings, men, could exist and develop independently of the existence of conscious beings,” that “conscious human beings, whose consciousness is employed in every act of labour [could] exist independently of their consciousness”—which is the way Thompson picks up and brandishes this “trifle,” for all the world as if Lenin had never mentioned it.

If Lenin’s philosophical writings have to be mutilated and tampered with in this way before his lack of philosophical genius and his “fallacies” can be demonstrated, may this not indicate that the “fallacies” exist only in the imagination of the critic? No one would wish to suggest that Thompson has deliberately falsified what Lenin wrote—but he seems to have reread a difficult text in haste in order to find confirmation in isolated sentences of his impression that this text contains the seeds of Stalinism. This impression has no real foundation, as Thompson himself would, one hopes, admit if he were to read Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and the Philosophical Notebooks with the care they deserve.

The example Lenin gives here is one of great interest and dialectical beauty. Of course, he is saying, the men who produce and exchange are conscious. No one but a fool (or a “trifler”) would carry on the argument at that level. But they are conscious only of the appearance of the activities they are engaged in. The essence, the objective laws which govern the ultimate results of their productive and commercial efforts are hidden from them (precisely because human consciousness does not give an immediate mirror-reflection of reality!) and can only be brought to light through scientific research. It was this scientific research which Marx carried out in Capital. Here, through the “force of abstraction,” the essential laws of capitalist economy are revealed, the transition from appearance to essence, from phenomenon to law, is accomplished, and human consciousness is deepened, enriched and made more scientific as a result. No one but a fool or a “trifler” would suggest that men are anything but conscious of the appearance of their economic activities; no one but a fool or a “trifler” would suggest that, before science has probed below the surface, they are anything but unconscious—or at best conscious in the most rudimentary and sketchy way—of the essential “social being” (value, surplus value, etc.) which exists independently of this limited consciousness. Whoever has not grasped the importance of this transition “from appearance to essence and from essence less profound to essence more profound”[25] has not begun to appreciate the richness, complexity and scientific value of dialectical methodology—and is destined to be misled again and again by impressionism.

III. Necessity and Freedom

The core of Thompson’s attack on dialectical materialism is his attack on the Marxist conception of human freedom and how it is won. Once again, there is the attempt to separate Lenin’s views from those of Marx and Engels. Marx is talking “common sense”; Lenin “slips” into “mystique”:

“Marx’s common-sense view that man’s freedom is enlarged by each enlargement of knowledge (‘Freedom...consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature which is founded on knowledge of natural necessity.’ Engels) is transformed into the mystique of man’s freedom consisting in his recognizing and serving ‘the objective logic of economic evolution’: his ‘freedom’ becomes slavery to ‘necessity’.”

One or two preliminary points. First, we have already shown that one of the quotations from Lenin on which Thompson relies is in fact a paraphrase of Engels. But Engels “slipped” a good deal, it seems. For, secondly, here is a bit more of the quotation from Anti-Dühring, only the concluding sentence of which is given in parentheses by Thompson:

“Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves—two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man’s judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined.”[26]

Ponder that last sentence, Comrade Thompson. Here is “common-sense” Engels calling us “slaves to necessity”!

And thirdly, in the phrase “his ‘freedom’ becomes slavery to ‘necessity’,” Thompson himself “slips,” alas, into the most blatant anthropomorphic superstition. His choice of words betrays the image in his mind: of human beings “enslaved” to natural laws as if to laws of governments, and pining to be “free” of them. To Thompson the path to freedom, it would appear, lies through ending this “slavery”: to Marxists the path to freedom lies through acknowledging the existence of objective laws, getting to know as much as possible about them, and adapting social practice accordingly. No amount of...“emotive” talk about “slavery” can alter Comrade Thompson’s own dependence on, and the determination of his activities by, a range of objective laws: mechanical, physical, chemical, biological, physiological, social, etc. In practice he is bound by these laws twenty-four hours a day; he calls this “slavery.” Well, let us be frank: Marxism does not admit the possibility of leaping outside the sphere of action of objective laws, of violating them or becoming “free” from them. To Marxists such “freedom” is neither possible nor has it meaning. Yet Marxism alone shows the way to the achievement of real human freedom. Let us try to see why.

Necessity

The category of necessity is closely bound up with those of essence and law. “Law,” says Lenin, “is the reflection of the essential in the movement of the universe.”[27] The law of a process of natural or social development states approximately the objective regularities, essential relationships and necessary connexions in that process. Scientific laws sum up more or less precisely the causal processes operating in events, tell us what characteristics a particular phenomenon is bound to manifest by its very nature and express the inevitability of its development in a particular way under particular conditions. The materialist recognition of the objectivity of being and its laws is, not yet freedom, but the requisite for all real freedom.

It is of course perfectly true that men act with conscious aims and intentions. But no attempt to explain human history in terms of the conscious aims and intentions, wills and desires of men will advance our understanding very far. Man’s aims clash, and something happens which no one had intended, desired or foreseen. Therefore any scientific understanding of social development has to start from the “inner general laws”[28] which ultimately govern both the development of human society and the aims and intentions, ideas and theories, in people’s heads.

“People make their own history. But what determines the motives of people, of the mass of people, that is: what gives rise to the clash of conflicting ideas and strivings; what is the sum-total of all these clashes of the whole mass of human societies, what are the objective conditions of production of material life that form the basis of all historical activity of man; what is the law of development of these conditions—to all this Marx drew attention and pointed out the way to a scientific study of history as a uniform and law-governed process in all its immense variety and contradictoriness.”[29]

To be free is not to violate the laws of nature and society, which is not possible. Men are no more the miracle-workers that idealists make them out to be (when they hold that freedom is really independence of the human will in relation to the laws of nature and society, or when they deny that there are any objective laws) than they are the puppets or robots that the mechanistic materialists take them for (when they hold that necessity is quite outside the reach of social practice, that human consciousness cannot take account of it and utilize it, that man is in effect a prisoner of objective laws).

To be free, according to dialectical materialism, is to act in accordance with objective laws. Every step forward in the knowledge of these laws is potentially a step forward in the conquest of freedom. Just as men enlarge their freedom in proportion to their knowledge of, and therefore their power over, nature, so men also enlarge their freedom in proportion to their knowledge of, and therefore their power over, their social life, as they foresee more and more precisely the effects of their social activity instead of being at the mercy of laws which, “blind” and unreckoned with, lead to economic crises. To the extent that men plan their actions with knowledge of the factors involved, they are in a position to win real freedom.

The supreme example is the working-class struggle for socialism. Is the working class helped by ignorance of economic laws? Is it not rather by acquiring knowledge of its real situation that it becomes capable of revolutionizing society and so winning freedom, since by its very class position it is in itself objectively the dissolution of capitalist society?[30] Is it, in other words, such a terrible thing to tell the working class that its highest responsibility is to adapt its consciousness to the objective realities of economic development “in as definite, clear and critical fashion as possible”?[31]—to equip itself, that is to say, with knowledge of the history and workings of the capitalist system and its own tasks in the struggle for that system’s overthrow? A strange kind of humanism which, at the same time as it stresses the importance of human consciousness, turns its back on this fundamental requirement of any successful working class struggle: that it should be consciously based on knowledge of the realities of society, on the laws of social change. A strange kind of humanism which would disarm the working class by advising it not to acquire such knowledge.

Lenin points to the road to freedom for the workers. Enrich your consciousness, he says, with as accurate knowledge as possible of the laws of social development. Don’t listen to him, cries Comrade Thompson; he wants you to adapt yourselves clumsily to “economic stimuli”; he is absorbed in philosophical nuances....

Lenin knows full well that the level of consciousness of the working class does not depend automatically on its class position. He knows that the ideological superstructure of bourgeois society fosters all kinds of illusions to sap the workers’ confidence in their strength, to make them think they cannot do very much to improve things, to make them support the capitalist system. He knows that socialist theory depends on knowledge of the essence of capitalism, not its appearance, and that this profound knowledge can only be brought to the working class from outside, by Marxists. Therefore he calls on communists to seek to “adapt” the “consciousness of the advanced classes” to the facts of historical development, i.e., to teach them, to educate them, to persuade them to “adapt” their consciousness to...the truth. “Such a pattern might be built within an electronic brain,” complains Comrade Thompson, professing, in the best tradition of English empiricism, his outrage at such a grotesque, mechanical fallacy, at such absorption in philosophical nuances....

Freedom

To gain knowledge about things it is not enough to sit and contemplate them. We have to put them in the service of man, submit them to his needs and aims, work on them, change them. We get to know the laws of nature and society, not by divine inspiration, but by acting on them. And our knowledge of necessity, derived from our practical activity, applied, tested and made more accurate in further practical activity, is the indispensable premise and pre-condition of human freedom.

Of itself, knowledge of necessity is not enough automatically to confer freedom on us, as Thompson at one point seems to think (“Marx’s common-sense view that man’s freedom is enlarged by each enlargement of knowledge”). It is as yet only the theoretical expression of our relationship to necessity. When, however, we enter into practical relationships with necessity, when we utilize our knowledge in human practical activity, we win freedom thereby.

“Until we know a law of nature, it, existing and acting independently and outside our mind, makes us slaves of ‘blind necessity.’ But once we come to know this law, which acts (as Marx pointed out a thousand times) independently of our will and our mind, we become the masters of nature. The mastery of nature manifested in human practice is a result of an objectively correct reflection within the human head of the phenomena and processes of nature, and is proof of the fact that this reflection (within the limits of what is revealed by practice) is objective, absolute and eternal truth.”[32]

Freedom is thus men’s power to satisfy their needs and achieve their aims, based on knowledge of what their needs and aims are and how they can be satisfied and achieved. Men are unfree to the extent that they are ignorant of and therefore unable to control the factors which affect the satisfaction of their needs and the fulfilment of their aims. They are free to the extent that they know what these factors are and therefore in practice consciously control them.

Freedom is a specifically human attribute, which is won by men as social beings. In primitive times men faced natural forces blindly, and were therefore at the mercy of nature. They achieved freedom gradually in struggle, winning knowledge of necessity scrap by scrap and applying that knowledge in further struggle to win more knowledge, freedom and material progress.

Throughout class society men have faced their social relations rather as early man faced natural forces. For the most part social forces have appeared to be completely outside human control, and great social events, wars and revolutions and the collapse of empires, have presented themselves as catastrophes no less terrible and uncontrollable than natural calamities. Despite the tremendous increase in knowledge of natural laws in the past hundred years, bourgeois science has now for the most part despaired of foreseeing, explaining or controlling the wars and crises which periodically shake capitalist society to its foundations.

Again, men’s progressive mastery over nature has been of only limited benefit to the masses of the people, because of their lack of social freedom. As long as society is dominated by successive exploiting classes it is possible neither to put forward in its full complexity nor to solve the problem of men’s relationship with nature. An obsolete social system is hampering the proper application of human scientific and technical knowledge, utilizing advanced productive forces for profit and destruction and standing in the way of progress. The road to freedom lies through the overthrow of this system. It is the historical task of the working class, armed with the scientific knowledge of its real situation and tasks which is provided by Marxism, to end the social relations of capitalism which are acting as a fetter on the free development of the productive forces and as a barrier to their utilization for the free satisfaction of human needs. By carrying through the socialist revolution, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, building a socialist society and going forward to communism the working class wins social freedom—men’s complete mastery over their own social organization—and makes possible gigantic strides forward in their conscious mastery over nature.

Thus, far from eliminating man and his activity, dialectical materialism shows how human society is necessarily developing; why men act as they do and think as they do; how freedom can be won; and which is the social force which, properly organized, equipped ideologically and led, can win it, so advancing the whole of humanity “from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”[33]

IV. The Dialectical Method

In his reference to Lenin Thompson does not employ the word “dialectic.” (Elsewhere he puts it in inverted commas, in a context where the meaning is equivocal, but where he seems to be equating dialectics with “soul.”) His attack on the dialectical method is never made explicit: but it is implicit in his whole attack on Lenin as philosopher. The theory of knowledge he opposes is a dialectical theory. The theory of ideologies he opposes is a dialectical theory. The theory of freedom he opposes is a dialectical theory. And since Lenin’s outstanding contribution to philosophy was in the field of the dialectical method, Thompson’s disparaging reference to “philosophical nuances” can scarcely be interpreted as anything but a reproach to Lenin for his “absorption” in dialectics. To Lenin, dialectics was “the valuable fruit of the idealist systems...that pearl which those farmyard cocks, the Buchners, the Dührings and Co. (as well as Leclair, Mach, Avenarius and so forth), could not pick out from the dungheap of absolute idealism.”[34] Comrade Thompson, alas, does not recognize pearls when he sees them. But Lenin regarded dialectics as indispensable for the working-class movement if it was to understand and make use of the contradictions of capitalist society. It is not accidental that Lenin’s central philosophical study was a long, almost page-by-page commentary on Hegel’s Science of Logic, in which the method which Hegel enveloped in idealism is set right side up, worked through and digested from a materialist standpoint and revealed in all its intricacy, suppleness and above all precision, as the only method by which human thinking can fathom the complexity and many-sidedness of the eternal process of becoming.

It is not accidental that Lenin plunged into this study of Hegel in the autumn of 1914, at the very moment when the contradictions of capitalist society had come suddenly and explosively to the surface (and when the Second International had collapsed in opportunism and betrayal). Almost isolated in his opposition to the imperialist war, Lenin sought in the “philosophical nuances” of Hegel the method by which events could be judged, not from their superficial aspects, but from their essential contradictions, leaps in development, revolutions, negations, transitions beyond the limit, transformations into the opposite. Lenin found in Hegel, understood materialistically, adequate philosophical justification for his judgment, to be so strikingly confirmed three years later, that the conditions for proletarian revolution had matured.

These notes on Hegel reveal, in a way that none other of Lenin’s works reveals, the innermost workings of his mind as he chews over the thought of a profound and difficult thinker and extracts the vital juices.

The compass of the present article will not allow more than a sketchy and inadequate reference to the heart of the Philosophical Notebooks: the concept of contradiction. In the fight against Stalinism this concept, as elaborated by Lenin, has threefold importance. Stalin’s well-known booklet Dialectical and Historical Materialism has more fundamental, and more serious, philosophical flaws than those Thompson discusses in his article (since Thompson concentrates on the section on historical materialism) and it needs, strangely enough, an acquaintance with Lenin’s “philosophical nuances” to understand and expose them. First, the section on the dialectical method stresses the struggle of opposites, but ignores their identity. This is of particular importance in considering the categories of dialectical logic which, despite their basic epistemological importance, are ignored by Stalin: this is the booklet’s second flaw.[35] And thirdly, there is no mention in it of the negation of negation, possibly because it might have been felt in 1938 to have awkward political implications (Zhdanov even invented in 1947 a new dialectical law, presumably to replace it—the “law” of criticism and self-criticism).[36] The conception of contradiction set forth in the Philosophical Notebooks shows how essential to a proper understanding of the dialectical method are these three aspects of that method neglected by Stalin.

Identity of Opposites

To Lenin dialectics was “the theory which shows how opposites can be and habitually are (and become) identical—under what conditions they transform themselves into each other and become identical—why the human mind should not take these opposites as dead and rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, changing into each other.”[37] Applied subjectively, this suppleness, flexibility, elasticity of dialectical thinking became eclecticism and sophistry; applied objectively, i.e., reflecting the universality and unity of the material process of becoming, it was the precise, dialectical reflection of the eternal development of the universe.[38] The identity of opposites was “the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society).”[39] This side of dialectics, Lenin pointed out, usually received inadequate attention: the identity of opposites was not a sum-total of examples but a law of knowledge and of the objective world.[40]

The identity of opposites is of course an abstraction, and an abstraction of an exceedingly high level: one of the most general laws of universal becoming. The word “identity” is here used not in the ordinary sense, but in a special, philosophical sense, which includes the notions of unity (or inseparability) in a single process, mutual penetration, mutual dependence, transformation of each into the other. The identity of opposites implies that the existence and development of each opposite is the condition for the existence and development of the other; that under certain conditions every property or aspect turns into its opposite; and that in the case of the categories both contradictory aspects are interwoven throughout the universe at every level of motion of matter. Lenin saw the identity of opposites as conditional, transitory and relative, the struggle of opposites as absolute, in the sense that development and motion were absolute. Development was the struggle of opposites; this conception of development furnished the key to the self-movement of everything in existence, to the leaps, breaks in continuity and transformations into the opposite, to the destruction of the old and emergence of the new.

The Categories of Dialectical Logic

“There is before man a network of natural phenomena. The savage does not separate himself from nature. Conscious man does separate himself from it, and the categories are the degrees of this separation, i.e., of man’s knowledge of the universe. They are nodal points in the network, which enable him to know it and assimilate it.”[41]

Thus does Lenin show that these most abstract of concepts, the categories of dialectical logic (i.e., of the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge) are derived from and linked with the whole of the concrete, material universe. Shamefully neglected by Stalinism, ostensibly because of their “difficulty” but in reality because they expose the wooden schematism of Stalin’s famous exegesis, the categories are indispensable for any genuine dialectical thought, investigation and research. We cannot think properly and precisely, we cannot grapple with changing reality, without them. And it was Lenin who more than any other Marxist developed this fundamental aspect of the dialectical method, and who left us indications drawn from his own experience as a student on the method of studying it in a way that discloses the elements of all the dialectical categories already present in any proposition or phenomenon.

“To begin with the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., with any proposition: the leaves of a tree are green; John is a man; Fido is a dog, etc. Here already we have dialectics...the particular is the general.... Consequently, the opposites (the particular as opposed to the general) are identical: the particular exists only in the connexion that leads to the general. The general exists only in the particular and through the particular. Every particular is (in one way or another) a general. Every general is (a fragment, or a side, or the essence of) a particular. Every general only approximately comprises all the particular objects. Every particular enters into the general incompletely, etc., etc. Every particular is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of particulars (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of objective connexion in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the appearance and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a number of attributes as CONTINGENT; we separate the essence from the appearance, and juxtapose the one to the other.

“Thus in any given proposition we can (and must) disclose as in a ‘nucleus’ (‘cell’) the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general.”[42]

Of all the categories Lenin seems to have considered as most important, richest and most fruitful those of appearance and essence (with which are closely connected those of phenomenon and law). The identity and struggle of appearance and essence as two aspects (or “moments”) of material reality takes us at once right to the heart of the dialectical method, as a method of thinking about processes in a way that will give us more, and more precise, knowledge of their inner relationships and laws. The appearance at one and the same time hides the essence and reveals it, for “the appearance is the essence in one of its determinations, in one of its aspects, in one of its moments.”[43]

This thought is clear when we ponder over it a little. In analyzing any phenomenon we pass from superficial, perceptual knowledge, knowledge of its appearance, to knowledge of its essence; this in turn becomes for us an appearance which both hides and reveals a still deeper essence. Often the solution of a political or organizational problem—e.g., the analysis of a situation, the elaboration of a policy, the concentration of forces, etc.—turns on discovering concretely how and why at a given stage the essence of a particular process is manifested through certain events and masked by others. When we gain knowledge of the essence we can understand the appearance in a new light. Lenin gives an example: “the movement of a river—the foam on top and the profound currents below. But the foam also is an expression of the essence.”[44] Each essence, each law, each necessity he discovers is for man a degree in the infinite process of acquiring more and more knowledge of the universal process of becoming in its unity, interconnexion and interdependence.

It would be wrong to suppose that Lenin merely picked out from Hegel what was useful without developing his thought in a materialist fashion. The dialectic of appearance and essence, for instance, is more concrete and more dynamic, and hence more dialectical, in Lenin’s hands than in Hegel’s. To Hegel appearance and essence were in a state of logical coexistence. To Lenin they were in continuous dynamic interaction. At times the essential contradictions suddenly find expression—dramatically and explosively—in the appearance, as, for instance, when capitalist society is shaken by wars and revolutions. At other times the appearance is the arena of slow and gradual changes behind which the essence remains latent. Lack of understanding of this dialectical interaction is at the heart of much of the present confusion about events in the USSR in the minds of commentators and interpreters who see only the appearance of things, who misunderstand it, and who are therefore frequently thrown off balance by some new and unexpected turn of events.

The Negation of Negation

The law of negation of negation (“A development that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis...a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line”[45]) is fundamental to a correct understanding of the profoundly contradictory nature of development through stages, of the emergence of the new contradiction from the old, and of the subsumption, the transcendence, the “overcoming and at the same time preservation”[46] of the old in the new. “Abolished” by Stalin, this law obstinately continues to operate in nature and society, even in the Soviet Union.

Lenin saw negation as the most important element in dialectics:

“Neither barren negation, nor purposeless negation, nor sceptical negation, nor vacillation, nor doubt are characteristic or essential in dialectics—which of course contains, as its most important element even, the element of negation—no, negation as a moment of interconnexion, as a moment of development which preserves the positive, i.e., without any vacillations, without any eclecticism.”[47]

Understood dialectically, negation is not mere empty negativity, the annihilation or destruction of something, but “is equally positive...is something definite, possesses a determined content whose internal contradictions lead to the replacement of the old content by a new, higher content.”[48] The old is surpassed when it has produced the conditions for the new, when its internal contradictions have pushed it beyond itself, as it were, have driven it to its “negation”; its own development leads to its negation; however the advance that has been made in the old stage is not destroyed but subsumed, “transcended,” overcome and preserved in the new.

The concept of negation is, so to say, the point where the dialectical laws of the identity and struggle of opposites and of the transformation of quantity into quality intersect. A process is said to be negated when the struggle of opposites within it drives it beyond its qualitative limit. It is often said that “everything contains the seeds of that which will destroy it.” It is more accurate to say “of that which will negate it”—and probably more accurate still to say “everything contains its own negation.” For the negation is the new that grows within the womb of the old and finally supplants it.

But this is a never-ending process. Every new stage becomes in time an old stage; every negation is itself the arena of new contradictions, the soil of a new negation that leads inexorably forward to a new qualitative leap, to a still higher stage of development, carrying forward the advances made in the previous stages, often seeming to repeat—on a higher level, enriched by the intervening development—a stage already passed.

The negation of negation is thus a further “transcendence,” a further overcoming and preservation in the new of the stages already passed through. Frequently there is a return on a higher level to the original starting-point.

Too often the negation of negation has been presented as the “sum-total of examples”—and often hackneyed examples at that. Examples have to be given, but the law is an abstraction, and its content is neither exhausted nor fully clarified by examples, for it is a universal law of nature, society and human knowledge.

The appearance of classes and the eventual destruction of the whole fabric of “primitive” communist society was a negation of that society. Communism will be in many respects a return on a world scale to the human relationships and attitudes of “primitive” society, enriched by all the scientific, technological and cultural discoveries and achievements of five thousand years of class society: in other words, the negation of class society, the negation of negation.

Old knowledge is continually being replaced—negated, not destroyed—by new knowledge. Hegel described the process rather well. “Cognition,” he wrote, “rolls forward from content to content.” The concept “raises to each next stage of determination the whole mass of its antecedent content, and by its dialectical progress not only loses nothing and leaves nothing behind, but carries with it all that it has acquired.”[49] “This fragment,” commented Lenin, “sums up dialectics rather well in its own way.”[50] But what Hegel saw as the self-development of the Idea, Lenin saw as the reflection in eternally deepening human knowledge of the development of material reality.

In every process of nature, society and thought we find in one form or another this “repetition in the higher stage of certain features, properties, etc., of the lower and apparent return to the old.”[51]

Method

Lenin’s “absorption in philosophical nuances” twice led him to set forth tentatively, but highly suggestively, the elements of the dialectical method. In Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Present Situation and the Mistakes of Comrades Trotsky and Bukharin (1921) the requirements of dialectical logic are set forth under four headings. First, “in order really to know an object we must embrace, study, all its sides, all connections and ‘mediations’.” Secondly, we should “take an object in its development, its ‘self-movement’...in its changes.” Thirdly, “the whole of human experience should enter the full ‘definition’ of an object as a criterion of the truth and as a practical index of the object’s connexion with what man requires.” Fourthly, “dialectical logic teaches that ‘there is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete’.”[52]

In the Philosophical Notebooks the dialectical method is summarized from a different standpoint in sixteen points, which, though terse and unexemplified, constitute a highly dialectical presentation of this method:

(1) Objectivity of investigation (not examples, not digressions, but the thing itself);

(2) The totality of the manifold relations of each thing with others;

(3) The development of the thing (or phenomenon), its own movement, its own life;

(4) The internal contradictory tendencies (and aspects) in the thing;

(5) The thing (phenomenon, etc.) as the sum and unity of opposites;

(6) The struggle or unfolding of these opposites, the contradiction of the trends, etc.

(7) The unity of analysis and synthesis—the analysis into separate elements and the totality, the sum, of these elements.

(8) The relations of each thing (phenomenon, etc.) are not only manifold, but universal. Every thing (phenomenon, process, etc.) is connected with everything else.

(9) Not only the unity of opposites, but the transition of EACH determination, quality, feature, aspect, property, into every other (into its opposite?);

(10) An infinite process of the discovery of new aspects, relationships;

(11) An infinite process of the deepening of human knowledge of things, phenomena, processes, etc., proceeding from appearance to essence and from essence less profound to essence more profound;

(12) From coexistence to causality and from one form of connexion and interdependence to another, deeper and more universal;

(13) The repetition in the higher stage of certain features, properties, etc. of the lower; and

(14) The apparent return to the old (negation of negation);

(15) Struggle of content with form and vice versa. Throwing off of the form, rearrangement of the content.

(16) Transition from quantity to quality and vice versa.

((15) and (16) are examples of (9))[53]

Those to whom these sixteen “philosophical nuances” appear too sententious will find practical examples of their concrete application throughout the whole of Lenin’s political writings. “Dialectics,” he wrote, “can be briefly defined as the theory of the unity of opposites. The core of dialectics is thereby grasped, but explanation and development are needed.”[54] That explanation and development—materialist dialectics in action—are seen at their most concrete in the building of the Bolshevik Party, the carrying through of the October Revolution, the leadership of the Soviet State, and even in the campaign against bureaucracy which Lenin waged from his sick-bed until death silenced him. Those who study Lenin’s approach to the problems which confronted him in the course of three decades of political activity are studying the masterly application of the dialectical method in the “concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”

* * *

This article has merely touched the fringe of Lenin’s creative work as a Marxist philosopher. Fields of great interest and topicality, such as his views on objectivity and partisanship and his theory of social-economic formations, have necessarily been omitted, since this is primarily a polemical and not an expository article. Conversely, only a very small part of “Socialist Humanism” has been discussed: a mere couple of pages out of thirty-eight. There are many thought-provoking things (and many excellent things) in the other thirty-six. But the passage commented on here raises issues that are fundamental to Marxism, and “a spoonful of tar spoils a barrel of honey.” Or, as somebody once remarked, “to leave error unrefuted is to encourage intellectual immorality.”

Notes

1. The New Reasoner, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 132-5, Summer 1957. Back

2. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1952 edition), p. 85. Back

3. See, e.g., Capital, Vol. 1 (1946 edition), p. xxx; Dialectics of Nature (1954 edition), p. 271; Anti-Dühring (1954 edition), pp. 34, 467; Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 328. Back

4. Nevertheless the “uniqueness” of human thinking should not be exaggerated. At its more elementary levels of abstraction it is different only in degree from the mental processes of the higher animals. Back

5. Lenin, Cahiers philosophiques (Editions Sociales, 1955), p. 125. Back

6. Thompson here—though he may not be aware of this—is not breaking new ground; his attack on the Marxist-Leninist theory of reflection was anticipated two years ago by M. Merleau-Ponty, professor at the Collège de France, in a book called Les Aventures de la Dialectique, in which he called this theory a “return to naïve realism.” Back

7. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 161. Back

8. Ibid. p. 182. Back

9. Ibid. p. 289. Back

10. Ibid. pp. 150-1. Back

11. Ibid. p. 174. This and the dozens of similar quotations one could take from the Philosophical Notebooks seem to me to dispose of the second “fallacy” Thompson finds: “the repeated statement, in an emotive manner, that material reality is ‘primary’ and ‘consciousness, thought, sensation’ is ‘secondary,’ ‘derivative’.” Thompson comments: “Partially true; but we must guard against the emotional undertones that therefore thought is less important than material reality.” These are the words of a “partial” materialist. The statement that consciousness is secondary and derivative implies nothing about its importance, but only says something about its origin. Back

12. Here again Thompson is following in the footsteps of...M. Merleau-Ponty, who caricatures historical materialism by writing of “economic determinism,” of the “deduction of the whole of culture from the economy,” of alleged Marxist demands that the history of culture must always be strictly “parallel to political history” and that art must be judged by “immediate political criteria” and by “the political conformity of the author.” Back

13. Even though “the interaction between social environment and conscious agency...was central to their thought” and though Marx himself saw “the neglect of agency” as “the weakness of mechanical materialism.” This apparent paradox Thompson makes no attempt to explain. Back

14. Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 329. Back

15. Ibid. Cf. Capital, Vol. 1, p. 51; The German Ideology, pp. 14, 39; T.B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel, Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy (1956), p. 77; Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence (1943 edition), p. 475; Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 105, etc., etc. Back

16. Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, pp. 510-11. Cf. also p. 477: “Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that younger writers sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize this main principle in opposition to our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow the other elements involved in the interaction to come into their rights.” Back

17. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 309. Back

18. Selected Works (twelve-volume edition), Vol. 11, pp. 681-3. Back

19. Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 512. Back

20. George Lukács, Studies in European Realism (1950), p. 93. Back

21. Cf. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 30. Back

22. Lenin, Selected Works (twelve-volume edition), Vol. 2, p. 47. Back

23. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 191. Back

24. Ibid. pp. 338-9. Back

25. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 182. Back

26. Anti-Dühring, p. 158. Back

27. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 126. Back

28. Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 354. Back

29. Lenin, Marx, Engels, Marxism (1951 edition), p. 28. Back

30. “When the proletariat announces the dissolution of the existing social order, it only declares the secret of its own existence, for it constitutes the effective dissolution of this order”—Marx, quoted Bottomore and Rubel, op. cit. pp. 182-3. Cf. also The Poverty of Philosophy (1956 edition), p. 140: “In the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines...[the communists] have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece.” Back

31. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 339. Back

32. Ibid. pp. 192-3. Back

33. Anti-Dühring, p. 393. Back

34. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 250. Back

35. After Stalin’s death a certain “rehabilitation” of the dialectical categories took place in Soviet philosophical writing. See, e.g., G. Gak, “The Categories of Materialist Dialectics,” Kommunist, 1954, No. 13, translated into French in Recherches Sovietiques, No. 1, pp. 35-57, 1956. Back

36. These three flaws do not exhaust those to be found in the section on dialectics. For instance, the four so-called “principal features of the Marxist dialectical method” are set forth schematically as if they were of equal methodological importance, and the question of the qualitative leap is put crudely and confusingly. For fifteen years this booklet gave millions of people their first—and often their only—account of Marxist philosophy, which is a great pity. Materialist dialectics is much more dialectical than Stalin’s refurbishing of a series of newspaper articles written in 1906 makes it out to be. Back

37. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 90. Back

38. Ibid. p. 91. Back

39. Marx, Engels, Marxism, pp. 332-3. Back

40. Ibid. p. 332. Back

41. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 76. Back

42. Marx, Engels, Marxism, pp. 334-5. Back

43. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 110. A “moment” is an active determining factor in a process. Back

44. Ibid. p. 108. Back

45. Marx, Engels, Marxism, p. 25. Back

46. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 89. “To transcend (aufheben) has this double meaning, that it signifies to keep or to preserve and also to make to cease, to finish.”—Hegel, Science of Logic, Vol. 1, p. 119. Back

47. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 185. Back

48. Ibid. p. 79. Back

49. Hegel, op. cit. Vol. 2, pp. 482-3. Back

50. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 189. Back

51. Ibid. p. 185. Back

52. Selected Works (twelve-volume edition), Vol. 9, p. 66. Back

53. Cahiers philosophiques, pp. 181-2. English translations of these sixteen points appeared in the March 1932 Labour Monthly, in H. Levy, etc., Aspects of Dialectical Materialism (1934), pp. 14-16, and in David Guest, A Text Book of Dialectical Materialism (1939), pp. 47-9. Back

54. Cahiers philosophiques, p. 182. Back

Qatar, Al Jazeera, and the Arab Spring

2012-01-17T17:21:00.001-05:00

The imperialist counter-offensive against the Arab Spring – Libya, Syria, Iran

17 Jan 2012

By Jane West

Any confusion about what is driving developments in Syria should be blown away by the increasingly open intervention of Saudi Arabia, primarily through its agent, Qatar, in stepping up the offensive against the Assad regime. This escalated recently with the call by the Qatari dictator, Emir Hamad, for the Arab states to intervene militarily.

Since early 2011, when the Arab Spring threatened to sweep away one after another of the pro-U.S. dictatorships in the region, a counteroffensive has been organised by imperialism. This has been aided by the West’s allies in the region, in particular Saudi Arabia, assisted by Qatar playing the role of ‘front man’.

These two dictatorships present themselves as the champions of ‘democracy’ in the region, contributing to the assault first against Gaddafi, and now against Assad in Syria. The laughable nature of this pretence in light of Saudi Arabia’s record of autocracy, repression, discrimination against women, torture, imprisonment of opponents and absence of the slightest semblance of democracy, is conveniently never mentioned in the Western media reports of outrage about Syria from the Saudi-dominated Arab League.

The negative perception in the populations both of the Middle East and the West about the nature of the Saudi dictatorship explains why it has tactically chosen to mainly act through the agency of Qatar.

Qatar has built up a quite undeserved reputation as somehow more acceptable than other dictatorships in the region, primarily through establishing Al-Jazeera, providing a haven for key spokespeople for the Muslim Brotherhood and its slightly better record on women’s rights. It is therefore worth taking a few sentences to consider Qatar.

Qatar is an absolute monarchy, whose present Emir came to power through a coup d’etat in 1995. There are no democratic institutions, no elections are held (although the Emir recently promised elections to an advisory national council in 2013), trade unions are banned, and immigrant workers denied any rights. Qatar hosts the U.S. Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and Combined Air Operations Centre for the region, was a key base for launching the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and remains key to US military strategy in the Gulf.

Qatar set up the Al Jazeera news network and allowed its development as a voice of Arab nationalism, including against Western atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Al-Jazeera accrued huge credibility for this genuinely progressive role at that time, and Qatar basked in reflective glory.

But the Qatari dictatorship has radically changed tack since the outbreak of the Arab Spring.

After the role of Al Jazeera in aiding the mass struggle in Tahrir Square, Qatar closed down this experiment. Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera's director general since 2003, was removed and replaced with a member of the Qatari royal family and the politics of the station brought back in line. It is scant consolation that its viewing figures have slumped since the take-over of what had previously been the widest source of genuine news in the Arab countries.

Qatar then joined the sharp-end of the imperialist counter-offensive, using the influence it had accumulated among some Islamic and Arab nationalist currents to broker support for Western intervention in Libya. It was among the first to recognise the NTC and while NATO bombed from the air, it had troops on the ground training and arming the opposition forces.

It is now playing the key role in campaigning for sanctions and intervention in Syria, while covertly arming the Contra-type forces being built up in and around the country.

The stakes are very high. The ultimate aim of imperialism and its regional allies is to eliminate all resistance to the interests of the West and its allies, primarily Saudi Arabia and Israel, with the Arab countries. The Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussain in Iraq was one weak link that was successfully eliminated. Gaddafi was another. The ultimate target is Iran, and its key ally, Syria. As a senior Saudi official told the US: ‘The king [of Saudi Arabia] knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.’

The aim of getting rid of Assad pre-dates the Arab Spring and the demonstrations of Spring 2011. Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have implemented a strategy of building up radical Sunni Islamist forces in Syria opposed to the secularism of the Assad regime and displaying sectarianism to the Shia and Shia-related Alawite minorities in the country.

These efforts bore fruit with the emergence of demonstrations against Assad that included such forces, particularly in Homs, in the early summer 2011. Broader democratic currents participated, but among the latter the predominant line was for negotiations with the regime with the aim of achieving concessions on the legalisation and participation of pro-reform currents of various kinds.

Imperialism, in order to justify its attempt to gain control of Syria via overthrowing Assad, used lessons learned from success in Libya.

· Imperialism and its allies moved rapidly to marginalise the case for negotiations with the regime, delegitimising it through almost immediate suspension from the Arab League and taking a variety of steps to support, arm and encourage the most radical and pro-imperialist – but not necessarily most democratic! – forces in the opposition.

· Media campaigns run down any Syrian efforts at reform or negotiations. Unreasonable deadlines are set. Conditions are applied to the regime before negotiations, but not to the opposition.

· As with Gaddafi, Assad is demonised by the media to wall off support for any kind of settlement that retains him in power. Even suicide bomb attacks against regime targets are presented as possibly stage-managed by the regime itself to win international support.

· Stepped up sanctions are aimed at eating away at the support for the regime through creating economic hardship in the mass of the pro-Assad population.

· The demonstrations in support of Assad are always dismissed as stage-managed or coerced or just not reported. At the same time, every opposition demonstration is puffed up in the media and reported as though it provides conclusive evidence for the views of the majority of the population.

With the support of Turkey and the Saudis, imperialism hurriedly orchestrated the setting up of a ‘Syrian National Council’ (SNC) as ‘sole representative of the Syrian people’. However, unlike in Libya where the division of the country between East and West meant that the Transitional National Council was based in Libya, the SNC is composed entirely of exiles without any actually existing presence inside the country.

The political character of the SNC could scarcely be clearer. Burhan Ghalioun, its Paris-based president, in an interview with the Wall St Journal on 2^nd December, set out his approach. Describing Syria’s relations with Iran as ‘abnormal’, he said that this alliance would be replaced with a closer relationship with the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, while arms supplies to Hezbollah and Hamas would be cut off.

On the Golan Heights, he argued: ‘We are banking on our special relationship with the Europeans and western powers in helping us in reclaiming the Golan as fast as possible’. That is a hope that will be in vain, as Ghalioun must be fully aware, and is anyway only aimed at quelling the anxieties of Syrian nationalist forces that an SNC regime would betray the country to Israel – which it evidently would.

However, the decisive step has been the use of regional allies to feed in arms and armed insurgents from neighbouring states, particularly Turkey, but also Jordan and Northern Lebanon. To Syria’s North, Turkey has provided a base for the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’ and it is known to be covertly helping arm and train it. It has received particular support from the victorious Libyan National Transition Council, installed in power by imperialism, which has offered finance, arms and volunteer personnel. From the south-east, Gulf finances and arms are finding their way across the border from Jordan.

With the continuing failure to gain support for a UN security council motion supporting direct intervention – due to the Russian and Chinese vetoes – alternative methods are being deployed, as last extensively used under Reagan in the 1980s, and seen in the Contra-war against Sandinista Nicaragua. In other words, where intervention is not agreed by the UN, to build up an imperialist armed proxy force, presented as legitimate local resistance, but whose capacities are entirely created by imperialism and its allies.

At the same time, proposals for a ‘humanitarian corridor’ protected by a ‘no-fly zone’ – in fact it would be the NATO enforcement of a safe transit zone for the Free Syrian Army in and out of Syria from Turkey – are an attempt to find a route to military action that might garner sufficient support to deliver a UN motion or avoid having to have one through a sleight of hand.

And, of course, constant pressure is being applied to Russia to withdraw its veto on military action at the UN.

Despite the clear reality of all this, sections of the ‘left’ persist in viewing the opposition through their own rose-tinted spectacles, with the un-Marxist view that ‘masses on the streets’ necessarily mean there is a progressive development. Such approaches fail to see how the manipulation of the West is turning the opposition to Assad to its own ends.

This view also ignores the extensive reports of sectarian, factional and racist attacks by the opposition forces, especially in Homs.

In Libya, imperialism not only racked up a military victory, but also succeeded in dividing the political forces – both in the West and in the region – that had opposed its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many currents that had contributed to the unprecedented global response to the Iraq war in particular, either supported or did not oppose the intervention in Libya, or at best opposed the intervention while calling for a victory for the imperialist-backed forces.

Having disoriented and split the anti-war movement, imperialism is relentlessly taking advantage of this to move against Syria with little opposition so far in Europe or other parts of the West.

The project of replacing the Assad regime in Syria with a compliant, pro-Western and anti-Iranian regime is the next step in imperialism’s counter-offensive against the challenge posed by the Arab Spring.

With the Persian Gulf being the source of over 40% of the world’s oil, imperialism’s grip on the Middle East remains a vital global concern. The US’s widely announced ‘pivot’ in military policy to prioritising confrontation with China does not mean that it has changed its concerns about the Middle East. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/05/barack-obama-plans-leaner-military?intcmp=239

Getting rid of would Assad deliver twin long-standing goals of the US and its allies – to weaken and eventually bring down the resistant regime in Iran and to cut the supply chain from Iran via Syria to Hezbollah in South Lebanon that defeated Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

The imperialist success in Libya – and the greater urgency to shore up Israel after the overthrow of Mubarak – turned this aim into action

The situation in Syria is far more decisive that Libya to the relationship of forces, not only in the region, but internationally. Firstly, it is a much bigger and more powerful state than Libya. Its population is 22 million as opposed to Libya’s 6.5 million But it is also far more strategically significant than Libya, because of its position next to Israel, as a regional buffer for Iran, in the supply chain to Hezbollah, and as a supporter of Palestine and Gaza.

If imperialism succeeds in Syria – and can isolate Iran – then it would have far tighter control than at present over the entire access to Gulf oil. As well as delivering imperialism a considerable advance in the Middle East, it would have negative global consequences. It would eliminate any effective resistance in OPEC, weaken Venezuela and increase economic pressure and threats against China.

The imperialist advance in Libya was significant, but not enough to make up for the shift in the relationship of forces against imperialism represented by the fall of Mubarak. That is why it is now rapidly seeking to turn its Libya advantage into a real reversal for Arab nationalism and anti-imperialism in the region through overthrowing the Syrian regime, further steps against Iran and cutting the supply chain to both Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance.

Lukács on Bukharin's "Theory of Historical Materialism"

2012-01-17T13:53:00.003-05:00

Ben Brewster: Introduction to Lukacs on Bukharin

Merleau-Ponty once described Lukács’ work as a ‘too notional dialectic (which) does not convey the opacity, or at least obscurity of real history’. This remark probably expresses most readers’ immediate reaction to Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. Recently, this abstraction has been cited as part of a general indictment of all Lukács’ work, and all that of those Marxists in the tradition which he initiated. Whatever our ultimate judgment of his work as a whole, Lukács’ celebrated criticism of Bukharin—never before translated into any language—shows that the impression of abstraction derives from the special purpose of Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, not from the essence of Lukács’ Marxism. Lukács’ training in the social sciences was from Simmel and Weber, that is, classical German sociology. Weber’s work, the summation of this tradition, is notorious for two things: firstly its erudition, the wealth of detailed comparative analyses of every kind of society; and secondly its obsession with rationality, which took the form of a surreptitious evolutionism that saw increasing rationalization and socialization everywhere as the destiny of the West. As Weber refused a general theory of social development, this evolutionism, though all-pervasive in his work, remains untheorized. In Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein Lukács used concepts from this side of the tradition (socialization, reification) to reveal new aspects of what was a general historical scheme—Marx’s analyses of feudalism and capitalism and the passage between them. This is, of course, also the favourite field of T�es, Simmel and Weber, but Lukács’ concept of the historical totality enabled him to link their conceptual abstractions to the concrete history of the last few centuries. In the process Weber’s overall conceptions are concretized, but Marx’s highly specific historical analyses are etherealized. Hence the abstraction of Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein is relative to Das Kapital, not to Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.

The other dimension of German sociology, however, is apparently highly concrete: its vast stock of comparative detail and historical example. It is here that Weber’s work is frequently at its strongest. In 1925, Lukács brought this part of the tradition to bear on the oversimplifications and false emphases of Bukharin’s Marxist primer, The Theory of Historical Materialism, a Popular Textbook of Marxist Sociology (1921). The weaknesses of this work are well-known (see Gramsci’s criticisms, for example) even though its presentation of Marxism as a technological determinism is still widely accepted by both Marxists and non-Marxists. What is as interesting, however, is that Lukács does not confine himself to a purely philosophical critique, but examines crucial areas of the Marxist interpretation of history to show the weakness of Bukharin’s work. The concreteness of this approach contrasts sharply with the abstraction of Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. However, they are fundamentally in harmony, and have explicitly in common the concern to combat the evolutionist determinism which descended from the Second International, and replace it with a theory of revolutionary action.

Marx argued that the motor of historical change was the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production. If only the latter moment is regarded as social, the forces of production must mean pure technology. As in the last analysis the development of the forces of production produces a breakdown of existing relations of production and the creation of new relations, technology becomes the determining factor in the structure and change of all societies. This view has been widely debated and much effort has gone into attempts to prove or disprove the importance of technology with respect particularly to moral factors. Within American sociology, Alvin Gouldner has attempted a wide-ranging quantified analysis in Notes on Technology and the Moral Order. Whatever the results of such comparisons, it must be asked whether the historical relevant question can be posed in terms of this simple opposition. Lukács argues that it cannot; technology is only a moment of the forces of production which are in themselves social phenomena. The contradiction between forces and relations of production is that between the real conditions of appropriation of nature—all the social relations, cultural and physical factors that go into the process of production—and the conditions of expropriation—the relations determining the ownership and distribution of the product.

Naturally enough, Marxists have concentrated on the study of the transformations from feudalism to capitalism and from capitalism to socialism, as they have been closer to these transitions than to any other. It is therefore of great interest that Lukács here extends the analysis to a transition that is rarely discussed in depth in Marxist literature, though non-Marxist historians and sociologists have given it considerable attention: the transition from the Roman Empire to the feudal middle ages. If evolutionism is rejected, this transition cannot be regarded as just one more homologous link in the historical chain, of academic interest only, but as an immense, autonomous event whose consequences we are still living. It is a pity that neither the detailed work of non-Marxist theoreticians nor this initiative of Lukács’ have provoked much response from Marxists.

Lukács’ other central criticism of Bukharin is his insistence on the impossibility of prediction in the social sciences. As in Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein he stresses that this methodological error is opposed to the revolutionary spirit of Marxist theory; it diverts attention from the real possibilities of revolution—problems of revolutionary action —to the assertion of the inevitability (or perhaps the impossibility) of the downfall of capitalism and its replacement by socialism.

For all its brevity, this review unites all the major aspects of Lukács’ theory, perhaps in a more balanced form than in Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. Concrete historical analysis, methodological criticism and a political position are seen to be inextricably linked in a revolutionary synthesis.

Ben Brewster.

Georg Lukacs: Technology and Social Relations

Bukharin’s new work serves the long-felt need for a systematic Marxist summary of historical materialism. Nothing of this kind has been attempted within Marxism since Engels’ Anh-Dühring(except for Plekhanov’s small volume). Summaries of the theory have been left to the opponents of Marxism, who have generally only understood it very superficially. Therefore Bukharin’s attempt is to be welcomed even though its methods and results must be criticized. It should be said that Bukharin has succeeded in drawing together into a unified, systematic summary that is more or less Marxist all the significant problems of Marxism; and further, that the presentation is generally clear and easily understood, so that the book admirably fulfils its purpose as a textbook.
As Bukharin’s aim is only to produce a popular textbook, the critic must be indulgent towards particular statements especially in rather obscure areas. This, and the difficulty of obtaining the relevant literature in Russia, also excuses the fact that in his handling of art, literature and philosophy Bukharin draws almost completely on secondary sources, ignoring most recent research. But this intensifies Bukharin’s risk of simplifying the problems themselves in the effort to write a popular textbook. His presentation is brilliant and clear, but at the same time it obscures many relations rather than explaining them. But we must never accept a simplified presentation that simplifies the problems and solutions themselves, rather than the historical constellations of problems and solutions, especially as Bukharin’s tendency to simplification is not confined to marginal ideological creations, but encroaches on central questions. For example, Bukharin sets out a precise parallel between the hierarchy of power in the structure of economic production on the one hand and that of the the State on the other. He closes with the remark: ‘Thus we see here that the structure of the state apparatus reflects that of the economy— i.e. the same classes occupy the same positions in both.’ This is undoubtedly correct as a developmental tendency. It is also true that a long-run, major contradiction between the two hierarchies usually leads to a revolutionary upheaval. But concrete history will not fit into Bukharin’s over-schematic, simplified formula. For it is perfectly possible that a balance of economic power between two classes in competition may produce a state apparatus not really controlled by either (if it must secure many compromises between them) so that the economic structure is by no means simply reflected in the State. This is true for example of the absolute monarchies at the beginning of the modern era. A class may even reach economic power without being in a position to mould the state apparatus completely to its own interests, or to stamp it with its class character. Mehring has convincingly demonstrated that the German bourgeoisie was so afraid of proletarian assistance in its bourgeois revolution that, even in the energetic struggle for bourgeois reforms at the time of its most rapid economic advance, it left the Junkers’ state apparatus alone and quietly accepted the survival of its feudal-absolutist power structure. Of course, a textbook cannot be expected to deal with these questions in depth. But the absence even of a hint of the importance of such exceptions to the model makes Bukharin’s presentation somewhat suspect. Plekhanov and Mehring have frequently demonstrated in more specialized works how a popular presentation is compatible with a basically scientific approach. Bukharin has accepted the timely and important task of summarizing all the problems of Marxism; but in many respects he does not attain the standard reached by Plekhanov and Mehring.
But we must not confine ourselves to details. More important than such oversights, Bukharin deviates from the true tradition of historical materialism in several not inessential points, without thereby proving his points or improving on the highest level reached by his predecessors; indeed, he hardly even reaches that level. (It goes without saying that we consider his achievement, remarkable even in its errors, to partake of the best tradition of Marxism; popularizers rarely deal with such matters). This remark applies particularly to the introductory philosophical chapter, where Bukharin is suspiciously close to what Marx aptly called bourgeois materialism. Bukharin apparently does not know of the critique of this theory by Mehring and Plekhanov, not to mention Marx and Engels themselves, which sharply restricts its validity for an understanding of the historical process because of the particular place of history in historical, dialectical materialism. When every ‘idealist’ from Bernstein to Cunow has inverted this real centre of Marxism, it is understandable and, in the last analysis, healthy, that there should be a reaction. But in his philosophical remarks, Bukharin rejects all the elements in Marxist method which derive from classical German philosophy, without realizing the inconsistency this involves. Of course, Hegel is mentioned from time to time, but the essential comparison of his and Marx’s dialectic is absent. Characteristically, the only reference to Feuerbach is to note that with him ‘matter came to the fore’; ‘his influence on Marx and Engels assisted the development of the true theory of dialectical materialism.’ He completely ignores the problem of the relation between Feuerbach’s humanism and the Marxist dialectic.
This point has been particularly stressed because it clearly reveals the essential error in Bukharin’s conception of historical materialism. The closeness of Bukharin’s theory to bourgeois, natural-scientific materialism derives from his use of ‘science’ (in the French sense) as a model. In its concrete application to society and history it therefore frequently obscures the specific feature of Marxism: that all economic or ‘sociological’ phenomena derive from the social relations of men to one another. Emphasis on a false ‘objectivity’ in theory leads tofetishism.
The Role of Technology
The discussion of the role of technique in social development highlights these remnants of undissolved quiddity (unaufgelõster Dinghaftlichkeit) and false ‘objectivity’. Bukharin attributes to technology a far too determinant position, which completely misses the spirit of dialectical materialism. (It is undeniable that quotations from Marx and Engels can be found which itis possible to interpret in this way.) Bukharin remarks: ‘Every given system of social technique determines [1] human work relations as well.’ He attributes the predominance of a natural economy in classical times to the low level of technical development. He insists: ‘If technique changes, the division of labour in society also changes.’ He asserts that ‘in the last analysis’ society is dependent on the development of technique, which is seen as the ‘basic determinacy’ of the ‘productive forces of society’, etc. It is obvious that this final identification of technique with the forces of production is neither valid nor Marxist. Technique is a part, a moment, naturally of great importance, of the social productive forces, but it is neither simply identical with them, nor (as some of Bukharin’s earlier points would seem to imply) the final or absolute moment of the changes in these forces. This attempt to find the underlying determinants of society and its development in a principle other than that of the social relations between men in the process of production (and thence of distribution, consumption, etc)— that is in the economic structure of society correctly conceived— leads to fetishism, as Bukharin himself elsewhere admits. For example, he criticizes Cunow’s idea that technique is bound to natural conditions, that the presence of a certain raw material is decisive for the presence of a certain technique, on the grounds that Cunow confuses raw materials and the subject of labour, forgetting ‘that there must be a corresponding technique for which wood, ore, fibres, etc., can perform the role of raw materials . . . the influence of nature in the sense of material requisites is itself a product of the development of technique’. But should we not apply this valid criticism to technique itself? Is the conclusion that the development of society depends on technique not just as much a false ‘naturalism’ as Cunow’s theory, just as much a somewhat refined version of the ‘environmental’ theories of the 18th and 19th centuries? Naturally, Bukharin avoids the crude error of this ‘naturalism’: the attempt to explain change by a fixed principle. For technique indeed changes in the course of social development. His explanation of change is thus correct from the point of view of formal logic, in that it explains change by a variable moment. But technique as the selfsufficient basis of development is only a dynamic refinement of this crude naturalism. For if technique is not conceived as a moment of the existing system of production, if its development is not explained by the development of the social forces of production (and this is what needs clarification), it is just as much a transcendent principle, set over against man, as ‘nature’, climate, environment, raw materials, etc. Nobody doubts that at every determinate stage of the development of the productive forces, which determine the development of technique, technique retroactively influences the productive forces. Bukharin emphasizes this in reference to all ideology (Engels’ later theoretical insights are relevant here); but it is altogether incorrect and unmarxist to separate technique from the other ideological forms and to propose for it a self-sufficiency from the economic structure of society.
The Fall of the Roman Empire
This is a serious error, for if technique is seen as even only mediately determinate for society, the remarkable changes in the course of its development are completely unexplained. Take for example the difference between classical and medieval technique. However primitive medieval technique may have been in performance, however much it may have represented a retreat from the well-known technical achievements of antiquity, medieval technique’s principle was development on a higher level: i.e. the rationalization of the organization of labour as compared with classical society. Labour performance remained unrationalized, and the rationalization of the organization of labour was achieved rather through the ‘door of social violence’ [2] than through the development of technical rationality. But this laid the basis for the possibility of modern techniques, as Gottl has clearly demonstrated for the water-mill, mines, firearms, etc. This crucial change in the direction of technical development was based on a change in the economic structure of society: the change in labour potentialities and conditions. One of the essential co-determinate causes of the breakdown of classical society was, of course, its inability to support the social basis of its productive organization: the wasteful exploitation of inexhaustible slave material. The middle ages laid the general basis of the new form of social organization necessary. Max Weber [3] has convincingly demonstrated that the coexistence of slaves and freemen in antiquity hindered the development of guilds and hence of the modern state—another contrast between the Orient or Antiquity, and modern society. Medieval social organization arose in quite opposite circumstances (shortage of labour, etc.) which then determined the essential course of technical development. So when Bukharin asserts that ‘a new technique made slave labour impossible; as slaves ruin complex machinery slave labour no longer pays’, he turns the causal relation on its head. Slavery is not made possible by a low level of technique; rather slavery as a form of the domination of labour makes the rationalization of the labour process, and hence a rational technique, impossible. Little work has yet been done on slavery as a relatively isolated enclave in a world economy based on wage labour, so we know little about the modifications it introduces. [4]
This inverted relationship appears even more clearly if we turn to the transition from medieval production to modern capitalism. Marx explicitly stresses that the transition from guild handwork to manufactures involved no change in technique: ‘With regard to the mode of production itself, manufacture in its strict meaning is hardly to be distinguished, in its earliest stages, from the handicraft trades of the guilds, otherwise than by the greater number of workmen simultaneously employed by one and the same individual capital. The workshop of the medieval master handicraftsman is simply enlarged. At first, therefore, the difference is purely quantitative.’ (Capital I p. 322). It is the capitalist division of labour and its power relations, which give rise to the social preconditions for a mass market (dissolution of the natural economy) which produces a qualitative change. The social preconditions of modern mechanized techniques thus arose first; they were the product of a hundred-year social revolution. The technique is the consummation of modern capitalism, not its initial cause. It only appeared after the establishment of its social prerequisites; when the dialectical contradictions of the primitive forms of manufacture had been resolved, when ‘At a given stage of its development, the narrow technical base on which manufacture rested, came into conflict with requirements of production that were created by manufacture itself.’ (Capital I p. 368). It goes without saying that technical development is thereby extraordinarily accelerated. But this reciprocal interaction by no means surpasses the real historical and methodological primacy of the economy over technique. Thus Marx points out: ‘This total economy, arising as it does from the concentration of means of production and their use en masse . . . originates quite as much from the social nature of labour, just as surplus-value originates from the surplus-labour of the individual considered singly.’ (Capital III p. 79).
Sociologism and History
We have considered this question in some detail because of its methodological importance. This importance does not only derive from the central position it has for Marxism, but also from the fact that Bukharin’s solution is typical of his false methodology. We have already referred to his attempt to make a ‘science’ out of the dialectic. The externalization of this tendency in scientific theory is his conception of Marxism as a ‘general sociology.’ His leanings towards the natural sciences and his frequently acute dialectical instinct are here inevitably in contradiction. Engels reduced the dialectic to ‘the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thought’ (MarxEngels, Selected Works 1962, 11 p. 387). Bukharin’s theory of sociology as a ‘historical method’ is in conformity with this view. But, as a necessary consequence of his natural-scientific approach, sociology cannot be restricted to a pure method, but develops into an independent science with its own substantive goals. The dialectic can do without such independent substantive achievements; its realm is that of the historical process as a whole, whose individual, concrete, unrepeatable moments reveal its dialectical essence precisely in the qualitative differences between them and in the continuous transformation of their objective structure. The totality is the territory of the dialectic. A ‘scientific’ general sociology, on the other hand, if it does not surpass itself into a mere epistemology, must have its own independent substantive achievements allowing only one type of law. Bukharin wavers between various conclusions. On the one hand he realizes that there is clearly no such thing as society ‘in general’, but he does not see what necessarily follows from this, as his theory (his applications of his theory are often much better than the theory itself) sees historical variation merely as a ‘determinate historical shell’, a ‘uniform’ (sic). On the other hand, his attempt to establish a distinction between ‘theory’ and ‘method’ makes sociology a unified science—inevitably, given the confused posing of the question. The basically incorrect theory of the primacy of technique which we have analysed is merely the substantive result of Bukharin’s attempt to create a general sociology. It is not an accidental oversight, but the necessary consequence of superficially examined premises.
This confusion emerges particularly clearly in Bukharin’s conception of a scientific law. It is fortunate that he usually forgets his theoretical presuppositions in his concrete analyses. For example, he derives a general type of law for equilibrium and its disturbance in determinate systems, whether these belong to inorganic or organic nature, or to society. Marx and Hegel are thereby linked in a fairly inorganic way. But in spite of this theoretical position, Bukharin admits that these relationships ‘can only be applied to complex systems such as human society at best as analogies’. Thus he fortunately forgets his theory in concrete analyses, with the result that his conclusions are frequently very interesting in defiance of his starting point. His attacks on the various ‘organic’ social theories, and so on, often lead to remarkable critical comparisons.
Prediction and Practice
But his preoccupation with the natural sciences is crudest where he examines the theoretical purpose of sociology. ‘Everything we have said indicates that prediction is possible in the social sciences just as it is in the natural sciences. At the moment we are unable to predict the point in time when this or that phenomenon will appear . . . This is because we are still not sufficiently informed of the laws of social development which are statistical in nature. We cannot tell the speed of social processes, but we know their direction.’ Bukharin’s bias towards the natural sciences has made him forget that our knowledge of directions or tendencies rather than statistical predictions is not a result of the difference between what we actually know and what there is to be known, but of the objective, qualitative difference in the object itself. Marx and Engels knew this perfectly well. I only need refer in passing to Engels’ intelligent and thoughtful methodological remarks in the Introduction to Marx’s The Class Struggles in France (Marx-Engels, Selected Works 1962, 1 p. 119) on the impossibility of understanding the immediate present through statistics. Marx, of course, in his equally basic theory of the average rate of profit, drew a sharp methodological distinction between certain statistical facts and the social tendencies of the process as a whole. ‘As concerns the perpetually fluctuating market rate of interest, however, it exists at any moment as a fixed magnitude, just as the market price of commodities . . . On the other hand, the general rate of profit never exists as anything more than a tendency.’ (Capital 111 1 p. 359). Lenin himself repeatedly stressed this notion of the tendency of development, whose tendential character is not the result of our ignorance, but is based on the type of objectivity of social events whose structure also, on the other hand, founds the theoretical possibility of social relations and the reality of ‘revolutionary praxis.’ In his critique of the Juniusbrochüre (Against the Stream, Collected Works xxii, pp. 305 f.) Lenin stressed the unmarxist character of the thesis that national wars are impossible in the era of imperialism. He argues that, though they may be very unlikely, an analysis of developmental tendencies cannot absolutely exclude their possibility. A fortiori, it is methodologically impossible to know the timing of any historical event. In his speech to the Second Congress of the Communist International on the international struggle he gave even more emphasis to this methodological impossibility:
‘Here we must first of all note two widespread errors . . . revolutionaries sometimes try to prove that there is absolutely no way out of the crisis. This is a mistake. There is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation . . . To try to ‘prove’ in advance that there is ‘absolutely’ no way out of the situation would be sheer pedantry, or playing with concepts and catchwords. Practice alone can serve as real ‘proof’ in this and similar questions.’ (Selected Works 1961 111 p. 490, Collected Worksxxxi).
Marx, Engels and Lenin are not just quoted here as authorities. Our purpose is to point out that Bukharin’s theoretical aim is different from that of the great tradition of historical materialism, which descends from Marx and Engels through Mehring and Plekhanov to Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg (it is, incidentally, unfortunate, but methodologically consistent, that Bukharin hardly refers to Rosa Luxemburg’s essential economic theses at all). A really thorough discussion of this theoretical aim would exceed the space of a review. It would have to show how Bukharin’s basic philosophy is completely in harmony with contemplative materialism; that instead of making a historical-materialist critique of the natural sciences and their methods, i.e. revealing them as products of capitalist development, he extends these methods to the study of society without hesitation, uncritically, unhistorically and undialectically. But although Plekhanov’s work on Holbach, Helvetius and Hegel has provided some of the groundwork for such a critique, it has not yet been attempted, so we can only note those consequences of Bukharin’s conception which confuse his concrete sociological results and lead them into dead ends.
This short criticism cannot consider many details of the book. It has been limited to demonstration of the methodological source of the errors. It should be stressed that these errors remain in spite of Bukharin’s worthy goal of systematically organizing into a popular form all the results of Marxism. Perhaps we may express the hope that in later editions many of these errors will be corrected, so that the whole work may achieve the level of its—many—excellent sections.

[1] Gottl,Writschaft und Tecbnik. Grundriss der Sozialökonomik II, 236-39.
[2] Gottl, Wirtschaft und Technik. Grundriss der Sozialókonomik II. 236-39.
[3] Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.
[4] See however Marx’s notes on slavery in the Southern States of teh usa(Elend der philosophie p. 93-94) where the purely technical aspect is seen only as a moment of the overall socio-economic processes.

100 years after Titanic disaster, capitalist maritime goes marching on

2012-01-17T03:08:00.001-05:00

Six dead, 29 missing as cruise ship runs aground in Italy

By James Brewer
17 January 2012

Six passengers are confirmed dead, 60 injured and 29 still missing after a massive cruise ship ran aground with 4,229 people on board off the coast of Italy Friday evening. After the sixth body was found early Monday, rescue operations were suspended and subsequently resumed, due to heavy seas, as the ship shifted deeper into the water.

The Costa Concordia capsized off Isola Giglio [Photo: Rvongher]

The liner, Costa Concordia, the 29th largest in the world, is owned and operated by Costa Cruises, a subsidiary of Carnival Cruise Lines. Designed to carry 3,700 passengers and 1,100 crew, the ship was close to full capacity when the disaster occurred.

Initially, Costa Cruises President Gianni Onorato made a statement that the ship was on its “regularly scheduled itinerary” from Civitavecchia (the port for Rome) to Savona, Italy when it struck “a submerged rock.” Onorato asserted that Captain Francesco Schettino “immediately understood the severity of the situation” and “performed a maneuver intended to protect both guests and crew.”

Later on Sunday afternoon, the company issued a statement indicating there “may have been significant human error on the part of the ship's master.” A report on Monday’s ABC New’s “Good Morning America” said that the “captain made an unauthorized, unapproved deviation from the course,” resulting in the 114,500 metric ton vessel traversing through waters only 100 feet deep. The ship has a draft (dimension below waterline) of 27 feet.

At 9:45 the ship struck a rock, tearing a 160-foot gash in the left side of the hull, causing water to rush in. The captain changed course inside of Isola Giglio, a small island off the coast of Tuscany, toward the port of Giglio, apparently planning to evacuate the ship, when it ran aground.

The 160-foot gash in the ships hull, showing the huge rock embedded in it [Photo: Il Fatto Quotidiano]

Both the captain and first officer have been detained by Italian authorities after questioning, the captain being charged with manslaughter and abandoning his ship over three hours before passengers were completely evacuated.

The captain has denied any wrongdoing, insisting that the ship hit rocks that were not on his navigational charts and that he and his crew members were the last ones to abandon ship.

The ship’s guest services manager Katia Keyvanian has denounced charges against the captain as “nonsense and lies”, recounting that the captain remained on the sinking ship until the last.

According to the company, the manifest consisted of 3,206 passengers and around 1,000 crew members. The passengers included Italians, Germans, French, Spanish and Americans, plus some 20 other nationalities in smaller numbers.

The dead include a Spanish man, an Italian, two French passengers, a Peruvian crew member and an unidentified older male.

Among the missing is a retired couple from Minnesota, Jerry and Barbara Heil, who decided to take a cruise after seeing their children through college.

Currently the ship is resting on its side on a shelf 120 feet below the surface and is threatening to slip into deeper water. Three teams of 16 rescue divers were working on the submerged side Monday to locate missing passengers.

The Italian government, meanwhile, is reportedly preparing to declare a state of emergency over the environmental disaster provoked by the wreck of the Costa Concordia, which is leaking up to half a million gallons of heavy oil into waters that have served as a dolphin sanctuary.

Passengers described the evacuation scene as chaotic and panicked. The Italian media has referred to the disaster as the Italian Titanic.

After departing from the port of Civitavechia some four hours earlier in the afternoon, a muster drill (an exercise usually carried out just after a ship’s departure to familiarize passengers with evacuation procedures, life vests and designated lifeboat locations) had not been conducted, so not only passengers, but also apparently crew members, did not know what to do.

A passenger from Sicily, Alessandra Grasso, told the press, “No crew member was trained for an evacuation.”

Giancarlo Sammatrice, from Vittoria, Sicily, said, “there were not enough lifeboats. The pilots were not sailors but waiters who had no idea how to maneuver and kept on having us turning in circles.”

According to ABC’s report, the black box (cockpit recording device) indicated that the collision took place at 9:45 pm, but passengers weren’t notified to evacuate until 10:50.

A South Korean couple celebrating their honeymoon, were trapped in their cabin for 30 hours before being rescued.

The cruise industry has become a huge business, carrying more than 16 million passengers every year. Cruise ships have become larger and larger, sometimes being described as floating cities. Though the Costa Concordia is a massive vessel, it ranks only as 29th largest. It is 952 feet long, with 17 decks and 1,500 cabins. With such large ships and so many above-the-waterline cabins with sea views and verandas, cruise lines have been able to attract less-than-wealthy passengers.

According to a recent BBC report, “these larger ships have helped cruise liners cut prices, so during the past two decades the industry has experienced annual growth in passenger numbers of some 7.4 percent, as cruises have become a holiday of choice for ordinary people as opposed to being a pursuit only the wealthy could afford.”

It is a lucrative business.

The chairman and CEO of Costa Cruises, Pier Luigi Foschi, was compensated a total of $4,500,000 in 2009, according to Forbes Magazine. Carnival Cruise Lines, Costa’s mother company, reported an average of 13.8 percent growth over the last four quarters with a projected yearly revenue of $15.86 billion. The CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines, Micky Arison, made $7,200,000 in 2009, with a personal net worth of $6.1 billion, placing him at 75th on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans.

The cruise ship company undoubtedly has its own reasons for changing their story in relation to the ship’s captain. Carnival Cruise Line’s stock value fell 17 percent on Monday as a result of the catastrophe.

Even though immediate losses are likely to be covered by insurance, analysts are predicting that Carnival Cruises could suffer a 30 percent decline in profits. The timing of the disaster could not have been worse for the corporation, coming in the midst of its heaviest booking season.

It is to the advantage of the business to deflect any scrutiny from its own practices, such as hiring and training, to a single “irresponsible” individual. The corporation, above all, wants to avoid any implication that the disaster is the outcome of systemic safety problems in its operations and that of the industry as a whole.

In particular, the Concordia disaster calls into question the safety of the larger, more profitable cruise ships, which are more difficult to navigate and cannot pass through channels used by smaller vessels. The large passenger loads also serve to magnify the problem of inadequate training of crew members in safety and emergency response.

The media’s universal vilification of Captain Schettino serves to divert public attention from such concerns. While it appears that errors on the part of the captain contributed to the ship’s grounding, such catastrophes are rarely simply the result of the actions taken by a single individual.

Immanuel Kant: A Marxist view

2012-01-17T01:27:00.002-05:00

From Chapter Three of David Riazanov's Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: An Introduction to Their Lives and Work

....Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) contemporaries among the German philosophers held to the orthodox point of view. They rejected materialism as godless and immoral. Kant, however, was not satisfied with such a simple solution. He knew full well the flimsiness of the traditional religious notions. But he had neither enough courage nor enough consistency definitely to break with the old.
In 1781 he published his magnum opus the Critique of Pure Reason in which he established most conclusively that all knowledge was empirical, and that there were no proofs for the existence of a God, the immortality of the soul, absolute ideas, etc. We do not know things in themselves, their essences. We can know only the forms in which these essences manifest themselves to our sensory organs. The essence of things (noumenon) is concealed behind the form (phenomenon) and it will forever remain in the realm of the unknown. It appeared that the gulf between materialism and idealism, between science and religion was bridged. Kant did not deny the successes of science in the study and the explanation of phenomena. But he also found a place for theology. The essence was christened with the name of God.
In his double-entry system of bookkeeping, in his determination to offend neither science nor religion, Kant went even further. In his next work, the Critique of Practical Reason, he proceeded to prove that though in theory the conceptions God, immortality of the soul, etc., are not indispensable, in practice one is forced to accept them, for without them human activity would be devoid of any moral basis.
The poet Heine, who was a friend of Marx and upon whom the latter at one time had a great influence, depicted very vividly Kant's motives for treading the two paths. Kant had an old and faithful servant, Lampe, who had lived with, and attended to, his master for forty years. For Kant this Lampe was the personification of the average man who could not live without religion. After a brilliant exposition of the revolutionary import of the Critique of Pure Reason in the struggle with theology and with the belief in a Divine Principle, Heine explained why Kant found it necessary to write the Critique of Practical Reason in which the philosopher re-established everything he had torn down before. Here is what Heine wrote:

"After the tragedy comes the farce. Immanuel Kant has hitherto appeared as the grim, inexorable philosopher; he has stormed heaven, put all the garrison to the sword; the ruler of the world swims senseless in his blood; there is no more any mercy, or fatherly goodness, or future reward for present privations; the immortality of the soul is in its last agonies -- death rattles and groans. And old Lampe stands by with his umbrella under his arm as a sorrowing spectator, and the sweat of anguish and tears run down his cheeks. Then Immanuel Kant is moved to pity, and shows himself not only a great philosopher, but a good man. He reconsiders, and half good-naturedly and half ironically says, 'Old Lampe must have a God, or else the poor man cannot be happy, and people really ought to be happy in this world. Practical common sense declares that. Well, meinet wegen, for all I care, let practical reason guarantee the existence of a God.'" [Heinrich Heine, Collected Works. W. Heineman, London, 1906. Vol. 5, pp. 150-151.]

Kant had a great influence on science, too. Together with the French astronomer Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), he maintained that the biblical account of the creation of the world was faulty, that the earth was the product of a prolonged development, of a continuous evolutionary process, that like all heavenly bodies it came about as the gradual congealment of a highly rarefied substance.
Kant was essentially a mediator between the old and the new philosophies; he remained a compromiser in most practical fields of life. Though he was not able completely to break away from the old, he none the less made a considerable step forward. His more consistent disciples rejected the Critique of Practical Reason and made the most extreme deductions from his Critique of Pure Reason.

Poe for the age of Patriot Act and NDAA

2012-01-16T19:47:00.000-05:00

If the pit don't get you, the pendulum will

2012-01-16T19:41:00.001-05:00

Any article linking Edgar A. Poe to working class political struggles gets my vote:

Of Pendulums, Pits and Getting Free

We are told that the genius of the American political system lies in the pendulum swing. Don't worry... things can't go too far in the wrong direction... because before too long, the pendulum will swing back.

"Don't worry about environmental catastrophe," they say, even as the present course seems, if anything, to be accelerating the horrifying momentum in that direction. "Don't worry about the endless wars," even as U.S. drones rain down terror on at least half a dozen countries, and threats are issued to others. "Don't worry about the evisceration of fundamental political rights," even as Obama signs bills and issues edicts that Bush couldn't even dream about [See the January 8, 2011 Revolution, for example, the National Defense Authorization Act signed by Obama]. "No, don't worry, for after all the pendulum will swing on back soon. And don't worry about the persecution of immigrants, either," even though Obama has deported many more people than Bush ever even tried to... "or the mass incarceration of Black and Latino people," which has ground on just as mercilessly under Obama as it did under Bush, Clinton and Reagan.

Leave aside for now the narrowness of this theory—how it leaves the people of the whole rest of the planet out of consideration. Leave aside its incredibly low sights—really, can we think no higher than the petty improvements offered by the best of what this notion supposedly offers people? Leave aside all that and just consider, right now, how even on its own pitiful terms this theory crashes into the hard rocks of the reality of the Obama presidency.

And yet there is one use of the pendulum metaphor that does strike a political chord. Here we refer to Edgar Allan Poe's classic story "The Pit and the Pendulum." The hero of this story is a victim of the Spanish Inquisition—a centuries-long reign of terror launched by the Catholic Church in Spain in which anyone who was suspected of harboring heretical thoughts (that is, thoughts that differed with Catholic doctrine) was hunted down, tortured, and often killed. The hero at one point lies in a cell, strapped to a board with only his left hand left free, and surrounded by hungry rats waiting to feast on his corpse. Meanwhile, a weighted pendulum descends toward him. As the pendulum swings to and fro and slowly lowers, he notices the gleam of a sharp steel blade at its end, inexorably moving to slice his chest to ribbons. He strains against the ropes, but death seems certain and he almost gives up hope. At the last minute, however, he hits upon a stratagem: he uses his left hand to rub the grease from a piece of meat onto the sash that bound him to the board. Attracted by the grease, the rats gnaw through the sash and the hero rolls free of the pendulum at the very last minute—and just before an invading army throws open the doors of his cell.

We won't belabor the point and we won't claim it fits every particular—and we certainly won't claim that Poe had this in mind when he wrote his classic story. But just think about the way in which the pendulum in Poe's story, though it swings back and forth, ultimately has but one destination; about the way in which the ropes that bind the hero keep him paralyzed as the blade hypnotically progresses toward his chest; and about how his freedom depended upon his ability to free himself from those constraints through daring and imagination. If there is anything to draw from the pendulum metaphor in the American political system, it is Poe who came closest.

Eagleton and Jameson: the accomplished fact

2012-01-14T21:18:00.003-05:00

Some interesting lines on Terry Eagleton and Frederick Jameson:

....One of Eagleton’s most recent works, After Theory, identifies the “theory” in the title with the “golden age of cultural theory” associated with the work of Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault, as well as Raymond Williams, Pierre Bourdieu, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, Fredric Jameson and Edward Said. One doesn’t want to tar this group of thinkers with one reductive brush, but, on the whole, this is a bloc of anti-Marxists, not without insights, but a bloc of conscious anti-Marxists—the cream of late twentieth century hostility to dialectical and historical materialism.
Eagleton declares in the opening of his book that the “golden age” of cultural studies has passed. He goes on: “There can be no going back to an age when it was enough to pronounce Keats delectable or Milton a doughty spirit. It is not as though the whole project [of critical theory] was a ghastly mistake on which some merciful soul has now blown the whistle.... If theory means a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions, it remains as indispensable as ever.”

The idea that “theory” means a reflection “on our guiding assumptions,” not the examination and cognition of the external world and its laws of motion, speaks volumes. (And, in fact, produces volumes, which you will see if you visit any bookstore in a major metropolitan center or one located near a significant university.)

Aside from the fact that his description of pre-postmodernist criticism is a caricature, that serious twentieth century bourgeois cultural criticism did far more than declare Keats to be “delectable,” we have to remind ourselves that this is a self-described Marxist. He appears to be arguing, if one takes him at face value, that before Althusser and Lévi-Strauss and Derrida and Habermas, no serious critical, cultural theory existed, there was merely bourgeois academia. What of the Marxist tradition? This body of work does not even merit being raised in this context, so thoroughly does Eagleton identify himself with those trends identified loosely as structuralist, post-structuralist or postmodernist. Eagleton presents himself as a critic of these tendencies, but he begins on his knees.

Eagleton’s book has a value of another sort. He does provide insight into the present situation in “cultural theory,” and here, although his tone is complacent, he no doubt speaks from first-hand knowledge. “Structuralism, Marxism, post-structuralism and the like are no longer the sexy topics they were. What is sexy instead is sex. On the wilder shores of academia, an interest in French philosophy has given way to a fascination with French kissing. In some cultural circles, the politics of masturbation exert far more fascination than the politics of the Middle East. Socialism has lost out to sado-masochism. Among students of culture, the body is an immensely fashionable topic, but it is usually the erotic body, not the famished one. There is a keen interest in coupling bodies, but not in labouring ones. Quietly spoken middle-class students huddle diligently in libraries, at work on sensationalist subjects like vampirism and eye-gouging, cyborgs and porno movies.

“Nothing could be more understandable. To work on the literature of latex or the political implications of navel-piercing is to take literally the wise old adage that study should be fun. It is rather like writing your Master’s thesis on the comparative flavour of malt whiskies, or on the phenomenology of lying in bed all day. It creates a seamless continuity between the intellect and everyday life. There are advantages in being able to write your Ph.D. thesis without stirring from in front of the TV set.” An attractive picture.

Fredric Jameson, as we discussed briefly last summer, views contemporary global capitalism as a thoroughly nightmarish and overwhelming phenomenon, in which the population is dominated by a web of bureaucratic control and media manipulation on a massive scale. The possibility of social convulsion, much less “the ultimate senescence, breakdown and death of the system as such,” is largely excluded.

Jameson, in 1995, argued that global capitalism had never had such room for maneuver, writing that “all the threatening forces it generated against itself in the past ... seem today in full disarray when not in one way or another effectively neutralized.” A new proletariat would perhaps emerge at some future date, but meantime “we ourselves are still in the trough, however, and no one can say how long we will stay there.”

In his newest book, we are still apparently in the trough, perhaps deeper than ever. Jameson has written a work extolling the virtues of utopianism, a tendency about which we have written and spoken.

“Utopia seems to have recovered its vitality as a political slogan and a politically energizing perspective. Indeed, a whole new generation of the post-globalization Left ... has more and more frequently been willing to adopt this slogan, in a situation in which the discrediting of communist and socialist parties alike, and the skepticism about traditional conceptions of revolution, have cleared the discursive field....

“What is crippling is not the presence of an enemy but rather the universal belief, not only that this tendency is irreversible, but that the historic alternatives to capitalism have been proven unviable and impossible, and that no other socio-economic system is conceivable, let alone practically available. The Utopians not only offer to conceive of such alternate systems; Utopian form is itself a representational meditation on radical difference, radical otherness, and on the systemic nature of the social totality, to the point where one cannot imagine any fundamental change in our social existence which has not thrown off Utopian visions like so many sparks from a comet.”

This is Jameson par excellence, a pretentious accommodation with existing reality, a worship of the accomplished fact. Incapable of imagining a struggle against the present difficulties, he is a product of 1970s radicalism, who long ago gave up, if he ever possessed it to begin with, a confidence in the revolutionary capacity of the working class, the American working class, above all.

Many have undergone an even more pronounced moral and intellectual disintegration.

Source

EU: intensifying contradictions

2012-01-14T20:03:00.002-05:00

from the DIAMAT BLOG:

Contradiction and the Euro Crisis

One of the key features of a dialectical contradiction is its tendency to become more intense as it moves toward resolution. A defining characteristic of a dialectical contradiction is that the opposite sides interfere with each other. Unless one side is very weak, each side prevents the fullest possible development of the other. In class conflict, for example, the working class is oppressed by the capitalist class, but worker resistance also prevents the capitalists from fully realizing their aims.

Contradictions Tend to Become More Intense
"Intensity" in a contradiction means the degree to which the two sides interfere with each other. It is important for two reasons. One is that the intensity of contradictions must increase if they are to be resolved, that is, stop being contradictions by coming apart. Since contradictions often do become resolved, they must have a tendency to become more intense, which is the second reason that intensity is important. Intensification of class struggle or of debate over rival scientific theories are examples of this kind of process, but our interest is the intensification of the contradictions that constitute the Euro crisis in Greece and other heavily indebted countries.
The Greek Contradiction
Before the economic crisis that began in 2007, the Greek economy seemed to be fairly healthy. Beneath the surface, however, a fiscal crisis was brewing. The Greek government had a large public sector, and they also spent heavily on weapons for their conflict with Turkey over Cyprus. The European Union limits how large the government deficits can be for E. U. states, and Greece was over the limit.

In the early 2000s, the Greek government made a deal with U. S. banks (including Goldman Sachs) to borrow money off the books, to hide the deficit from the E. U. Like Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, which was exposed by the economic crisis, the Greek government eventually had to come clean in 2010 and ask for a bailout. The critical contradiction here was between the demands of the government's creditors and the financial resources available to pay those debts off. As portions of the debt became due, the government had to borrow again (by selling government bonds) to pay them off. But as the grim financial facts became public, new investors demanded higher interest rates on their loans, increasing the amount the government had to pay. The gap between debts and the means to pay them grew.

The E. U. and I. M. F. Intervene
To try to resolve the crisis the Greek government, egged on by the big E. U. states and the International Monetary Fund, agreed to lend money, but also shifted the debt burden to the working class. They insisted that the Greek government raise taxes and then raise them again. Government workers were laid off and salaries reduced for those who remained. Worker resistance grew stronger, and undermined investor confidence that the government would be able to pay.
As the situation became clearer, it seemed likely that Greece would never be able to pay off the debt unless some of the outstanding balance was written off. This is called giving the investors a "haircut." A 50% haircut was proposed by other E.U. governments. This drove up the interest rate on Greek government debt, further intensifying the Greek financial contradiction.
The Crisis Spreads Beyond Greece
Greece was not the only E. U. government in debt trouble. Ireland, Spain, and Portugal were known to be in some trouble and the example of Greece made their debt seem riskier. Eventually the interest rates rose in Italy as well, and the crisis became general.

The big E. U. states have no choice but to help Greece and the other shaky governments because their big banks have large investments in the debt of Greece and others on the brink. If the Greeks default, German and French banks may fail and need to be bailed out. For Germany in particular it is a case of paying a lot now or a lot more later.

Limits of Capitalist Unity
As clear as it seems that the big countries need to spend what it takes to keep the Greece afloat, there have been numerous disagreements and delays that tend to make the financial contradictions worse. The capacity for unity among capitalist governments is limited, and the prospects of a tighter political unity within the E. U. are remote. Thus it is likely then that the crisis will grow, and the result may be some countries abandoning the Euro or even the failure of the Euro itself.

The Bigger Contradiction
If the crisis grows, it will spread to many other countries, including the U. S. As much damage that this may do, it will certainly be a minor matter compared with other contradictions in the world that are also becoming more intense. The number one example is the growing intensity of the rivalry between the U. S. and China, which may well lead eventually to a new and terrible world war. But that is a subject for another blog.

--January 9, 2012

U.S. SWP on OWS, BHO, progressivism, and populism

2012-01-14T13:45:00.002-05:00

The current issue of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party newspaper The Militant features a line article by John Studer entitled "Obama 2012 stump speech: big gov’t and populism". It features an analysis of President Obama's 6 December 2011 speech in Osawatomie, Kansas.

I encourage everyone to give it their full attention, and at least one re-reading. The article contains many important formulations of the SWP leadership about the current conjuncture and the presidential elections.

Studer writes:

....In his speech Obama presented himself as an advocate for the “common man,” saying the U.S. should be a “country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.”
Early in the talk he pointed to the widening gap between the incomes of working people and “those at the very top [who] grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments—wealthier than ever before” while “everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t…. The average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year.”
He reached out to the “people who’ve been occupying the streets of New York and other cities,” and their protests against the banks and the greedy “1 percent.” The classless populist themes that characterize the Occupy groups, the fact they turn their fire on “the rich” and the banks, not the capitalist class and its government, offers fertile soil for Obama’s election strategy with a more populist image.
Obama calls for bigger government
The moral of this story, according to Obama, is the need for the guiding hand of ever bigger government by the wise and “enlightened,” regulating out-of-control speculators and bank executives, and expanding programs that force you to help yourself, like taxes on soda pop to reduce obesity. He calls for higher taxes on the 1 percent to finance his plans.

...Obama’s speech was long on populist rhetoric devoid of concrete proposals that could improve conditions for “the working people.” He calls for increased government investment in education, so people can learn skills to replace “disappearing” manufacturing jobs. He urges more “diversity,” drawing Blacks, women and others into the meritocratic federal bureaucracy, dictating endless rules and regulations. And he calls for unleashing “daring entrepreneurs” to advance U.S. capitalism.
Obama’s pro-“working man” rhetoric conflicts with the record of his administration. He has presided over a deepening bipartisan assault against Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He has greatly expanded the use of drones, special forces and targeted assassinations to defend U.S. imperialist interests. He has blocked any significant public works program to provide jobs for those thrown on the street by capitalism’s crisis.
And he continues to press for more government, to regulate, spy, police and imprison those who challenge his “enlightened” vision of capitalist rule.

In my reading a few things jump out. Studer's characterization: "classless populist themes that characterize the Occupy groups, the fact they turn their fire on “the rich” and the banks, not the capitalist class and its government" in particular struck me as a forceful summation. But it is also, all proportions guarded, not the final word Marxists will be writing about the #ows this year. Perhaps many OWSers will be won to Obama's rhetoric, but I think the challenge for Marxists is to mix it up with the most politically curious and hungry parts of these groups, presenting them with our perspective: the road to workers power outlined first in the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

Much as activists would like to see OWS as a unified and coherent revolutionary movement, it is not. Finding within its ranks the communists of the future is the task of Marxists: showing them how in the current conjuncture it is working class resistance and solidarity that is at the center of U.S. politics.

Jay Rothermel
20120114

In-sourcing & the lock-out wave

2012-01-14T13:30:00.002-05:00

US bosses target wages in world race for profits
BY SETH GALINSKY

According to the latest U.S. government figures, factory employment increased by 225,000 last year. The modest increase coincides with continued success by the bosses in substantially cutting wages, especially for new hires.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that wages and benefits paid to workers per unit of production has declined 13.6 percent in the U.S. in the last 10 years; it dropped 4 percent from 2009 to 2010.

This confirms what working people already know from our own experience. The capitalist owners of production are seeking to boost their declining rates of profit through two-tier wages, concession contracts, the expansion of temporary work, speedup and layoffs.

Fuller Money, a website for investors, called the speedup and wage and benefit cuts over the last year in particular “one of the most encouraging items” for the new year, claiming it is a “prerequisite for a reversal of the long decline in manufacturing jobs.”

In the 1980s bosses in the U.S. drove down real wages to early 1960s levels. In the late ’90s wages were largely stagnant. But with the deepening economic crisis of recent years, bosses have launched an extensive campaign to deepen the rate of exploitation.

The big three auto companies are in the vanguard in imposing two-tier wages. According to the New York Times, some 12 percent of Chrysler’s 23,000 union workers now earn about $14 an hour, half what longtime workers make. At the General Motors plant in Orion Township, Mich., 40 percent of workers are on a lower tier.

General Electric, which has 219 factories in the U.S. and 230 plants overseas, pays new hires in the U.S. $12 to $19 an hour while longtime workers get $21 to $32.

The bosses have also expanded their use of temporary workers, paying them few or no benefits and lower wages. From 1990 to 2008, the number of temporary workers in the U.S. more than doubled, from 1.1 million to 2.3 million.

The drop in wages in the U.S., while wages in China have risen, has somewhat narrowed the U.S-China wage gap. Enough, according to the New York Times, that some companies have moved production from China to the U.S.

Workers at Oshkosh Corp., which makes military trucks, voted down a contract in September and again in October when the company demanded the right to make as much as 10 percent of the workforce temporary employees without union representation by the United Auto Workers.

“It’s all about the money,” Don Forster, 58, who works on the wheel-end table, said in a phone interview. “They don’t want to pay pensions, they want to go the cheaper route. Having temporary workers goes against the grain of what a union stands for.”

While workers forced the withdrawal of the temporary worker proposal, the company succeeded in pushing down workers’ income.

“We have a five-year contract with only an 8 percent raise,” Forster said. “But our health insurance has more than doubled, we’re paying through the nose.”

At the same time, the company is pushing for a faster line speed. “They say they’re promoting safety,” Forster noted, “But in reality it’s ‘hurry up and get done.’”

Working-class resistance

Across the country capitalist owners in a wide range of industries have locked out workers who refuse to go along with concessions or forced them out on strike. Among the companies: Armstrong World Industries in Marietta, Pa., which locked out 260 workers for five months; American Crystal Sugar in North Dakota and Minnesota, where 1,300 workers have been locked out since Aug. 1; Dayton Beach Park Co-Op apartments in Queens, New York, where building maintenance workers went on strike July 7; C.H. Guenther & Son Pioneer Flour Mill in San Antonio, Texas, where workers walked off the job April 25; Honeywell Corp., in Metropolis, Ill., which locked out 200 workers for 13 months; and many more.

In many cases, bosses have pushed through concessions without much organized resistance. In New York City, St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center pushed through a contract at the end of December forcing nurses to pay health insurance premiums for the first time.

And Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ signed a tentative deal with the Realty Advisory Board there for 22,000 office cleaners in January that includes lengthening a lower tier for new hires from the first 30 months to 42 months and decreases their starting pay from 80 percent to 75 percent of the base rate for long-time employees.

Workers at Roquette America in Keokuk, Iowa, were locked out in September 2010 after voting down a concession contract. The union fought hard, but after 10 months they went back to work. The company’s original proposal of starting new hires at $4 less than long-term employees was reduced to $2.

Two-tier fosters divisions

The two-tier system is more like “four tiers,” noted Buddy Howard, a leader of the fight against the lockout. Not only do new hires start at a lower wage, the company changed the pay level for numerous jobs, he said. Some jobs that were considered level seven, for example, are now level five so that some new hires are paid $5 to $6 an hour less.

“They use it as a shell game saying it’s all or nothing and claiming ‘at least we’re creating jobs,’” Drake Custer said in a phone interview. Custer, a syrup refinery operator at Roquette, is vice president of Local 48G of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which organized workers at the plant.

Like the two-tier system at the auto factories, Custer said, “the new tiers at Roquette are permanent. The new hires will never earn the same wages we do.”

“It’s a way the bosses create dissension in the ranks and pit workers against each other. It’s a global thing,” Custer said. “The guy next to me says ‘Why should I work as hard when the guy next to me is making more money.’ It’s another battle for us to encourage new employees to become union members because they already feel like they’ve gotten a raw deal.”

“I think the two tier is meant to keep us at each other instead of seeing who the real enemy is,” he added.

“The unions need to keep fighting for decent benefits and safe working conditions,” said Oshkosh worker Forster. “Seeing what the companies do when you have a union, can you imagine how it is for people without one?”

“Since I’ve been working here for just a year, I get lower pay and no benefits,” Aldrich Grandy, a freight elevator operator at a midtown Manhattan office building, told the Militant. “I’m just glad to have a job.”

“More and more it’s just two classes, the rich and the poor,” Grandy said. “What I would really like to see is for working people to band together and fight for our rights.”

The Wall Street state: a dictatorship of capital

2012-01-14T13:24:00.002-05:00

From the latest Militant newspaper editorial:

....Longshore workers in Longview, Wash., members of ILWU Local 21, are also “criminals” in the eyes of the bosses and their police, courts and government on the local and federal level. For defending their union, ILWU demonstrators were attacked by cops and some 200 were slapped with criminal charges. The union has been cited and fined thousands of dollars. The capitalist media has smeared them as criminals and thugs. The Barack Obama administration’s National Labor Relations Board imposed an injunction on behalf of EGT against the union and tried to ban peaceful picketing to further tie these fighters up in red tape. EGT’s first shipment expected in January will be escorted by vessels and helicopters from the U.S. Coast Guard.
In the words of ILWU International President Robert McEllrath, they are “being methodically and maliciously prosecuted for exercising our free speech rights.”
While those who resist the capitalist exploiters become special targets, the propertied rulers’ police, courts and government are aimed at the entire working class and designed to keep us “in our place.” The job of their cops is to serve as an anti-working-class armed force of repression. The purpose of their courts is to railroad hundreds of thousands of working people to prison and probation as well as slap injunctions, fines and restrictions on workers’ struggles. Their methods include the frame-up, coerced confession, plea bargain and increasingly severe sentencing guidelines. If you’re working class, particularly if you are Black, you are in fact guilty until proven innocent.
When working people stubbornly fight against this routine injustice, as some are doing in Chicago (see page 5), we can expose the class morality of the capitalist system and push them back.
The capitalists’ state is always used against us. And the ruling class constantly seeks opportunities to strengthen the hand of their state power by seizing on abhorrent and violent acts. They used the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as a pretext to pass the USA Patriot Act and eviscerate basic constitutional protections. Somali immigrants today are standing up to the government’s use of the Act to stop them from supporting their families in Somalia. In the United Kingdom, a 1993 racist murder was recently used to erode the presumption of innocence and double jeopardy protections.
From the point of view of the working class, which values human solidarity and life, the capitalist system itself is criminal on a worldwide scale. Our answer is to count on our own collective power to resist it and to fight for our political rights and the space to do so.

ILWU prepares for arrival of scab ship

2012-01-14T13:20:00.001-05:00

AP/Don Ryan

Action at Kelso, Wash., courthouse Sept. 16 demanding frame-up charges against members and supporters of ILWU Local 21 who protested union busting at Port of Longview be dropped.

Port workers defend their union from bosses, courts
Back ILWU, join Wash. protest of scab ship!

BY MARY MARTIN

LONGVIEW, Wash.—In a victory for International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 21 in its ongoing fight against union busting by EGT Development, six more Longshore workers have been cleared of frame-up charges. Three others were cleared last week.

About 200 members and supporters of the union were charged with trespass, disorderly conduct and other false allegations for their participation in union protests against EGT at the Port of Longview last summer.

In all except one of these first nine cases, Cowlitz County prosecutors dismissed the charges without prejudice. This unfortunately means they can be refiled at a later date.

EGT refuses to hire ILWU workers here, in violation of an agreement with the Port of Longview. Instead, it has hired members of Operating Engineers Union Local 701 through a subcontractor, without a contract under inferior working conditions and wages. If EGT prevails it will be the first grain terminal on the West Coast run without ILWU labor in more than 80 years.

Local 21’s union hall here is a lively organizing center as ILWU members, retirees, Ladies Auxiliary members and supporters step up their six-month fight against EGT Development and prepare a large protest for the arrival of the company’s first scab ship, expected here before the end of January.

On a visit to the union hall Jan. 7, worker correspondents for the Militant found active and retired members taking inventory of picket signs for the coming protest. Dozens of unions and organizations have pledged to participate. Their hand-written cards and messages of support along with press clippings line the union hall’s walls.

Local 21’s Community Action Committee is planning a “Community Action Movie Night” Jan. 10, where they will show “Bloody Thursday,” a documentary about the 1934 battles that led to the formation of the ILWU on the West Coast. “The purpose is to provide education and answer questions in the community,” Shelly Porter, vice president of the committee and member of Local 21, told the Militant.

“When I started out as a casual I didn’t understand the meaning of ‘an injury to one is an injury to all,’” said Porter. “It didn’t have real meaning for me until this fight with EGT. Until the day I watched my union brothers get beaten, pepper sprayed, handcuffed and arrested. They were coming to the aid of members of the union’s Ladies Auxiliary carrying out a peaceful protest and were themselves assaulted by the cops. We must educate people in the community about this fight.”

Meanwhile, Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council issued a Jan. 1 resolution calling on the Washington State Labor Council, Oregon Federation of Labor, California Labor Federation, the AFL-CIO “and all other relevant organizations” to take part in the ship protest “when called upon to do so.”

According to Lt. Lucas Elder, a spokesman for the Coast Guard’s Portland-based marine safety unit, the Guard will deploy one or two vessels to escort the grain ship up the Columbia River, with more on call if needed. “The Coast Guard is definitely going to be involved in making sure the port is safe,” he told the Daily News.

ILWU International President Robert McEllrath issued a statement Jan. 3 to all Longshore locals to “prepare Longshore Division locals for the action that we will take when that vessel calls at EGT’s facility.”

Some forces, including anarchists, have indicated they intend to come to the protest with their own agenda and disregard the need for a disciplined union-led action to advance ILWU’s labor battle.

“We fully understand that the ILWU’s labor dispute with EGT is symbolic of what is wrong in the United States today,” McEllrath continued. “Corporations, no matter how harmful the conduct to society, enjoy full state and federal protection while workers and the middle class get treated as criminals for trying to protect their jobs and communities. However, please take extreme caution when dealing with supporters of non-ILWU sanctioned calls to action relative to EGT. Everything is at stake for the community of Longview and our members—including personal freedom. We welcome outside support for our efforts against EGT but must make effective use of collective power.”

Send messages of support and donations to the union hall: ILWU Local 21, 617 14th Ave. Longview, WA 98632. Make checks out to “EGT Fighting Fund.