To Nancy Brumback

[Hari Kumar <hari.kumar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To Nancy Brumback:
I had intended to just sit on this list & watch. I will revert to that
stance shortly. But in order to clarify my own responses to your
questions it was necessary to codify my response in written form.
Nancy: Thanks for your comments, they are of course something that
repetitively arises & needs a constant revision. I do not think that we
really disagree, but I am certainly of the
spanner-wielder"-is-the-central-component" school thought, that will
possibly repel you.
Nancy, you write:
1: "The potential revolutionists are exactly all of those who can expect
their lives to be changed for the good. This is why I keep saying
(though I haven't said it on this list yet) that those who want social
change have to stop focussing on the working class to the exclusion of
all others."
MY REPLY:
But where is it that ML-ists (& thus I indicate M,E,L, S) say anything
[or in practice do anything that limits them to] regarding "focussing on
the WC to the exclusion of others?" [I would concede that also Trotsky
did not "focus on the WC to the exclusion of others"].
Nancy, how would you interpret Lenin's famous phrase that the Bolshevik
must learn to be "the Tribune of the oppressed people"? His "Development
of Capitalism in the USSR" is not negligent of many non-WC elements who
came to the revolution. His accents on what it is that the
intelligentsia might bring to the revolution if they divorced themselves
from the Narodnya semi-anarchist thought - were not derived from
"focusing exclusively on the WC". Someone has already cited the
Manifesto in this regard to you - it is full of references to the non-WC
who would follow the WC.
Nancy, you say: "But your phraseology "...the mechanical reality ...
hands on the means of production....engine of history ..." is
uncomfortably suggestive of the orthodox definition of
the working class, i.e., those who live on wages received from their
labor. Some marxists have interpreted this so narrowly that they have
focused on organizing at "the point of production," i.e., trade unions
involved with heavy manufacture."
The relevant rejoinder is that such people may not be interpreting M,E,L
as they themselves had intended. Besides they may be 'blind' to reality
- which is the central point that you wish to make. But these peoples'
blindness, does not invalidate the thesis that the WC are central to
successful revolution.
2. It is true, as you rightly say- that there is often an emphasis on
the WC in our circles/propaganda etc. And, yes again you are right, that
very often there is this vague notion that only a spanner-wielder is a
"real worker". Leaving aside the one-sideness & simplistic distortions
in the 'spanner-wielder' view, it is perhaps worth reiterating why it is
that the WC are indeed central to many visions of revolution. I will not
attempt to be complete/fully-referenced etc. However, my view woudl be
that an emphasis on the WC (let me say right now that includes
agricualtural workers who are 'poor peasants') - is totally justifiable
from the standpoint of revolution. My view is that this reflects the
following:
i) The WC has in large part, accepted a non-individual, a collective
task/discipline/approach, mainly because of 'modern' methods of
production - the term 'modern may be questioned by some who would wish
to cite evidence of gang-work & production-line work dating to much
earlier than the capitalist era, but I will stay with that term for now;

ii) Mass production is key to enabling the distribution of wealth; NO
social wealth is produced without the WC;
iii) The W.C. has nothing to lose "but its chains";
iv) A recognition that there is increasingly - only 2 camps: the poorest
& the oppressor:
"The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal
society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established
new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in
place of the old ones.  Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie,
possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the
class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into
two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each
other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat."
iv) & How can you change society without the bulk of the people who make
up society - "the masses"? Communist Manifesto; Part 1: "Bourgeoisie &
Proletarians". http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/CM47.html#s1
3. Nancy: If what you are really saying is subsumed in this comment of
yours: "So, by working class, do you mean those who live on wages
received from their labour? " - then personally I would agree. Not only
Zweig but many people since M & E - have pointed out that the WC is
growing. Not merely numerically, but in terms of a loss of the
'self-control' of labour. Hence E says in a later clarification to the
Manifesto: " 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. [Note by Engels to the English edition of
1888.]"  Communist Manifesto; Part 1: "Bourgeoisie & Proletarians".
http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/CM47.html#s1
In a further graphic phrase, the extent of this 'proletarianisation' is
depicted in the original 'Communist Manifesto' by M & E as:
"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into
its paid wage-labourers."  Communist Manifesto; Part 1: "Bourgeoisie &
Proletarians". http://www.marx2mao.org//M&E/CM47.html#s1
For now, I will just conclude that in my own view, that M & E were
right. The future has to be built on the reality that it is the working
class who works. My own personal history reflects their view and
reinforces my own beliefs. My father was a petit-bourgeois who under
Thatcher became bankrupt. I am a scientific worker - whose participants
have a 'false conciousness' that they are somehow not workers. In
reality, that is all they (& I) are.
Cheers, Hari Kumar



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