How Can the Working Class Respond to the Current Economic Crisis.
[b]A contribution to the Midland Discussion Group Meeting - April 2009
First of all we have to recognise the scale of the present crisis. Recognise that it isn't the fault of errant bankers but is endemic to the capitalist system, systematic in the true sense of the word. Since the end of the last period of post war reconstruction in the 1970's capitalism has only been able to continue (though not without periodic crises) through the massive use of fictitious capital which has allowed continued expansion of the system despite the fall in the rate of profit. As such it was strictly time limited and while some thought this would be sufficient to fund an entire new cycle of accumulation the reality is that the chickens have finally come home to roost for capitalism and the crisis we have all been waiting for has finally arrived.
Needless to say the bourgeoisie isn't going to sit back and let its system collapse. We can expect to see a whole range of measures, of increasing strength and purpose, in the years to come as the crisis deepens and policy after policy, trillion after trillion are presented as the solution to capital's woes. But behind these false solutions capitalism's real solution to its historic crisis will, more and more, come to the surface - recession, depression, mass unemployment, war and the physical destruction of capital. At both a physical and ideological level we can expect a massive and sustained onslaught on the working class as the bourgeoisie seek to pauperise while simultaneously dragooning us behind another round of wholesale destruction.
The proletariat is thus being presented with another historic opportunity to pose and carry out [b]its communist solution to the crisis of capitalism.
But we must not turn from the near despair of the past twenty odd years, years when it seemed that capitalism had an answer to every twist and turn of the economic knife, and embrace an equally false euphoria that what we want to happen will necessarily happen. Already we have seen wholly unrealistic expectations and explanations appear within the communist milieu. A very small increase in numbers is lauded as a direct reflection of the development of working class consciousness rather than as what it is, a response of existing militants to the possibilities that the crisis may expose. For the truth is that we simply do not know what the response of the working class is going to be to the development of this crisis.
In many ways we are in uncharted waters. While we can point to the material circumstances of the capitalist system it is the potential for and the actuality of proletarian consciousness which will be the critical element in determining whether this rotting system can be opposed and destroyed. A look back over the events of the past three decades alone provide some startling, and worrying, circumstances we have to take into account. We have seen entire industrial bases of some advanced capitalist states dismantled and working class opposition severely defeated. We have seen the collapse into bankruptcy of capitalist economies such as Japan with only minimal working class response. Indeed we have seen the collapse of entire capitalist empires such as the Russian one in Eastern Europe with precious little proletarian response, the pauperization of large sections of the working class there and the ideological descent into rabid nationalism or despair that characterizes many proletarian populations. We would have to admit that using recent past experience solely as a guide for how the proletariat will respond to this crisis would lead us to say that the prognosis for the development of working class consciousness is not good.
The situation of the proletariat today is radically different from that of its forbears in the era of the last revolutionary wave. There are real and fundamental differences which, at the very least, necessitate us looking afresh at the situation of the proletariat today and determining what possibilities there are.
We have a global proletariat but in many areas that proletariat is dispersed. In the West the norm is no longer large concentrations of workers in huge factories.
The working class, by and large, have no real experience of self organization on any kind of permanent basis. Last time around such as unions were clear expressions of proletarian consciousness and organization, Social Democracy was the political expression of the class in which the possibility of the overthrow of the capitalist system was a given (however to be achieved and whatever timescale was envisaged). Now the proletariat is either completely ignorant of or openly hostile to the experience of "socialist" politics. The unions are either clear and open agents of the capitalist state or one of its factions.
For many workers there is no consciousness that they are members of a working class at all. Paradoxically the "idle rich" have disappeared - all are now "wage earners". We are all workers now. Workers are often atomized, imbued with bourgeois ideology.
Last time workers saw themselves clearly as members of a working class, separate and identifiable, outside "civil society" to a very large extent in many areas. Now workers are integrated into this civil society, whether termed "democracy" or "nation" or whatever.
The whole weight of bourgeois ideology is enormous and has, even within the past thirty years, transformed proletarian consciousness in the old heartlands of capitalism and in "new" areas of proletarian concentration with no social democratic tradition, no history of permanent working class organizations of any kind, with rampant nationalism dominant as in China and Eastern Europe and no tradition of action or activity outside of or against the state in any class conscious fashion.
Where does this lead us? At the very least we must understand that we face a very different class terrain from the past one where we face very a strong bourgeoisie and where the impact of bourgeois ideologies on the working class are very powerful - ideologies which the bourgeoisie will seek to develop and impose as part of its solution to it historic crisis. No crisis is so bad that capitalist cannot find a way out of it through war and the destruction of capital. We just have to look back at the history of capitalism and our class. 1909, 1929 or 2009?
1909 saw capitalism at its apogee before its descent into decadence led first to world war and the development of a proletarian consciousness and the first attempt to break the stranglehold of capitalism.
1929 did not lead to a massive rise in class consciousness on the proletariat's own terrain but the marshalling of workers behind various bourgeois ideologies, state capitalism, "socialism" Stalinism, democracy, nationalism, fascism, etc. all of which led to the bloodbath of WW2.
2009 presents us, once again, with the historic opportunity to oppose and destroy the capitalist system. We need to soberly and realistically assess the plusses and minuses that face us as we move into a period where, honestly, we just do not know how the working class is going to respond to what is going to happen. Certainly there have been encouraging signs already in such as the factory occupations in France and England but we are a very long way indeed from even the militant activity of 30 years ago let along the development of proletarian consciousness that will be necessary to defeat our historic enemy. We certainly face mass unrest throughout the world but its clear that the working class is massively unprepared for this compared to the last revolutionary wave.
In particular, revolutionary fractions are tiny, fragmented and completely separate from the class. We just need to compare the Bolsheviks' pre-1917 with ours today. They were a living part of the class in a way in which we can only dream about.
Time is short. While we may not know how the proletariat will respond we have to make sure that we, its communist minorities, are committed to playing our proper part in the struggle for communist consciousness that may unfold. We must commit ourselves to working together whenever and wherever we can. Internally (within the milieu) we need to openly and fraternally discuss what is happening so that we are all better able to respond to it and intervene in it. Many questions that, for instance, we were only able to begin to understand let alone comprehend from the last wave of struggle in the 70s and 80s are bound to reappear and we all need to be open to each other in discussing these issues. We must overcome any tendency towards sectarianism and, at the very least, find a way of working together, even if, for the moment, this must fall short of actual regroupment..
The core of this must be the programmatic positions encapsulated in the platforms of all the left communist groups.
The need for communism;
The need for proletarian revolution;
Intransigent internationalism
The need for a revolutionary party as the internationally organised expression of the working class' political vanguard. The dead weight of counterrevolution has left many believing 'vanguard' is a pejorative when it is in fact a positive - a human storehouse of the proletariat's history, of the lessons learned through working class actions in the past with the consequent clarity to point the way forward with a clear understanding that history shows us absolutely clearly that it is the class' mass organisations which will take power, not that vanguard.
Defence of the proletarian nature of the October 1917 revolution:
Defence of the proletarian nature of the Bolshevik party, (accepting differences on when exactly it became counter-revolutionary);
Rooting ourselves in the Marxist tradition of the 1st, 2nd and 3d Internationals;
Left Communism;
The decadence of capitalism which has resulted in the integration of previously working class organs into the bourgeois order. Thus:
The rejection of bourgeois democracy and the use of parliament;
The counter-revolutionary nature of the trade unions;
The counter-revolutionary nature of national liberation:
The counter-revolutionary nature of the "left" and the idea that there can be any accommodation with 'progressive' factions of the bourgeoisie.
These positions represent a basis for joint work, discussions, interventions etc., though clearly for regroupment to be on the agenda we need a clear understanding of how a revolutionary fraction conducts itself both internally and externally, and why. Needless to say we will obviously work and discuss with elements who do not adhere to all of the above but who do hold to the class lines which differentiate the proletarian milieu
We must move away from the sectarianism and polarization that has characterized the last 30 odd years. We must understand that it is the milieu as a whole which constitutes the communist vanguard, not one or other political organization jealously guarding its sectarian purity. We need to act responsibly towards each other and this entails a responsibility to be fraternal and nurturing rather than seeing polemic as a justification for denigration.
Internally we must move away from the practice of seeing discussion as something that takes place primarily behind closed doors and only 'released' to the milieu when 'done and dusted'. Externally we must encourage joint interventions, dissemination of press and leaflets not as something pragmatically useful but as a cementing of solidarity between us.
Members of the former Communist Bulletin Group
