Explorations in plain Marxism: revolutionary theory, practical action

Paul Le Blanc writes about Explorations in plain Marxism: revolutionary theory, practical action.

It could be argued that a more useful definition of capitalism (perhaps more consistent, also, with the perspectives of Marx and Engels) might posit four fundamental elements in the capitalist economy, three of which are relatively simple: the economy (means of production combined with labour) is privately owned, more or less controlled by the owners (in the sense that they make decisions regarding economic policy), and the guiding principle of economic decision-making involves maximizing profits of the owners. The fourth element is far more complex: the economy involves generalized commodity production — a buying-and-selling economy, or market economy. Generalized commodity production means that more and more and more aspects of human needs and human life are drawn into commodity production, into the production of goods and services that are created for the purpose of selling them, in order to maximize the profits of the capitalists over and over and over again. Capitalists are driven to develop technology and the production process to create more and more profits. And more and more people in society are forced to turn their ability to work (their life-energy, their strength, their intelligence, their abilities and skills) into a commodity, selling their labour-power in order to “make a living” (to be able to buy commodities they need in order to live, and additional commodities that they want in order to make life more tolerable). This more “open” way of defining capitalism allows for considerably more diversity in the form that capitalism takes, and it captures the incredibly fluid, dynamic “all that is solid melts into air” quality of capitalism referred to in the Communist Manifesto.

Emphasis Mine

This is a much more complex definition of Capitalism to what I have been using. But as LeBlanc writes, this definition allows us to see the early development of Capitalism from the Eighteenth Century onwards. The definition I have been using reflects a mature Capitalist economy.

All of this is in contrast to the simple, more “open” definition offered by Frederick Engels in an 1888 footnote to the Communist Manifesto: “By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.”

Emphasis Mine

Instead of restricting the proletariat to workers of Department II, this wider definition allows for a greater participation in the revolutionary movement. This is necessary given the shrinkage in the labour force of Department II due to automation throughout the world.

If we stuck to the traditional definition of the proletariat, a socialist revolution would have become impossible, in theory, with the disappearance of the workers in Department II through complete automation.

Yet the working class reality must be understood not simply as an abstract category but as a process, associated with the ongoing dynamics of capitalism, through which the class is formed and re-formed from a massive body of people who are shaped by a variety of identities, subject to a variety of cultural and historical influences, involving a complex network of relationships and varying elements of consciousness related to these dynamic realities. We are shaped by the simultaneous influences of race, class, gender, sexuality, and more — many of which involve, in our historical context, various distinct and intense forms of oppression. Some activist-theorists have called this complex reality “simultaneity” or “intersectionality.”

In terms of practical revolutionary strategy, the central category of working class must be understood in all of its vibrant intersectional diversity, with each struggle by its various component parts being understood as a vital and necessary element of the overall class struggle.

Emphasis Mine

This is why the party is involved in multiple struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other forms of discrimination. The primary reason is to make contact with people as they struggle against oppression. A secondary is pedagogical—someone who is oppressed in one struggle can be an oppressor in another struggle. An example would be a gay who is sexist. By being invovled in multiple struggles, one can confront and start to correct one's own prejudices.

This strategic orientation — an uncompromising struggle for thoroughgoing democracy flowing into an unstoppable upsurge toward socialist revolution — becomes effective only when it animates substantial sectors of our class, and this will not happen automatically. Those of us who share this vision must organize ourselves, and join with other like-minded forces to organize struggles through which such revolutionary class consciousness can assume mass proportions. As enough people in the diverse and multifaceted working-class majority become “conscious” workers, organized as a political force capable of bringing about a revolutionary power-shift, possibilities will open up for the flowering of a society of the free and the equal.

Emphasis Mine

This is the idea behind the Leninist model of a revolutionary party.