On class without class (was Re: [Marxism] re:Buying off the German people [carlos],and Greens [david]

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Pace" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx>

> That's not vulgarised Marxism, it's a serious scepticism about how
> reliable the allegiances of middle class people can be, and how their
> 'defence of the masses' might manifest itself upon leading a movement
> which gained power (a very real question with respect the history of
> Eastern European communism). A mass movement primarily led by middle class
> people should always be questioned. If you want to call that Trotskyist
> reductionism, then so be it.

And maoist reductionism, or you forget the anti-middle class excess of the
GPCR?

I agree with you, and this a great point of contention I have with Junaid
Alam.

Lenin, who is probably the most able political mind our side has ever had,
was very irritated by such questions, seeing them as false dichotomies, much
like that other false dicotomy of "socialism from above" vs "socialism from
below".

Lenin famously described such differences as being similar to asking a man
if his left hand or right leg were more important to him.

In classic Marxist terms, the self-emancipation of the working class is a
maximum program, a question to be answered in practice and hence one that
cannot be predicted. How the working class will gain the conciousness
necesary to

One of the problems of all attempts to copy models from relatively
successful experiences in Leninism (China, the USSR) has been the inability
to truly understand how those parties became vanguard parties. THey didn't
do so by declaring themselves the vanguard, it wasn't "build it and they
will come". It was rather a dialectical process in which different groups
and different ideologies became attracted to the same pole (from below) and
particular political cunning and correctness of line (from above).

Likewise, all great proletarian movements, from the Paris Commune to
guerillas that operate in various part fo the world, consist mostly of
proletarians, with a smacking of petty-bourgeoise and even bourgeoise, in
particular in the leadership. Marx & Engels, not to mention Lenin, Trotsky,
Stalin and Mao, where not proletarians.

Even my organization, which is quite proud of being very proletarian (our
secretary general is a retired teacher, our CC is almost all electrical,
pharmaceutical, and factory workers) has a couple-three lawyers and
physicans as leaders, and a greater number as members.

So I think Junaid is making both a storm in a cup, and confusing the reality
of cross class content of any political movement in class society.

As I mentioned before, the supremacy of the proletariat as both
revolutionary subject and revolutionary object is proven not by proletarian
revolution, but by its opposite, the reactionary counter-revolutions, for
example, fascism, or the Republican Party in the USA.

All those reactionary movements have had the need to both control the
proletariat, and use the proletariat's ability to effect change, and would
have been doomed with out the support of the proletariat.

Dick Cheney, for example, mentioned quite proudly that for 6 years he was a
member of the Electrical Workers union. He was the token proletarian in all
of those debates. Unlike both Kerry and Bush

And out all those four, he has more brains than the other 3 put together.
Yes, he is in the dark side of the force, yet it is living proof of the
ability of the proletariat to lead politically and to suceed politically.

As ML, from a working class background, I have no doubt that facile classism
is a political error, yet theoretical musings on the need for a cross class
content of the movement are self-defeating and anti-marxist in a profound
sense. Theory should be about what we want, not about what we are able to
garner. Practice is much less pure. And while Marxism requires a synthesis
of practice and theory, it doesn't require that we focus practical energy
into purely theoretical questions or theoretical energy into purely pratical
ones.

sks


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