RE: [Marxism] Is "class" at the root of the real division in society?

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Referring to race and gender, Jscotlive says: "If Marx taught us anything it
is that these are 'false divisions' used to distract the proletariat from
the division that matters: namely that which exists between exploited and
exploiter, between the class which controls the means of production and the
class which does not."

I said in my original post that it was easy to demonstrate that this, which
liquidates all other questions into the class question, wasn't the view of
Marx and Engels. Following are two brief and quite unequivocal statements by
Engels on the matter, followed by one by Lenin in the same tradition.

*  *  *

I therefore hold the view that two nations in Europe have not only the right
but even the duty to be nationalistic before they become internationalistic:
the Irish and the Poles. They are most internationalistic when they are
genuinely nationalistic. The Poles understood this during all crises and
have proved it on all the battlefields of the revolution. Deprive them of
the prospect of restoring Poland or convince them that the new Poland will
soon drop into their lap by herself, and it is all over with their interest
in the European revolution.

(Engels to Kautsky, Feb. 7, 1982, which is here:
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1882/letters/82_02_07.htm>

*  *  *

We can begin, I think, with a small incident involving Friedrich Engels a
century ago. The setting is a General Council meeting of the International
Working Men's Association (the First International) in 1872. Mr. Hales, the
Council's Secretary, proposes the following motion:

'That in the opinion of the Council the formation of Irish national branches
in England is opposed to the General Rules and principles of the
Association.'

Mr. Hales then explained his motion:

'He said... the fundamental principle of the Association was to destroy all
semblance of the nationalist doctrine, and remove all barriers that
separated man from man... The formation of Irish branches in England could
only keep alive that national antagonism which had unfortunately so long
existed between the people of the two countries... No one knew what the
Irish branches were doing, and in their rules they stated that they were
republican, and their first objective was to liberate Ireland from a foreign
domination, [but] the International had nothing to do with liberating
Ireland...'

The motion was debated, and Engels rose to speak.

'Citizen Engels said the real purpose of the motion, stripped of all
hypocrisy, was to bring the Irish sections into subjection to the British
Federal Council [of the International) , a thing to which the Irish sections
would never consent, and which the Council had neither the right nor the
power to impose upon them... The Irish formed a distinct nationality of
their own, and the fact that [they] used the English language could not
deprive them of their rights... Citizen Hales had spoken of the relations of
England and Ireland being of the most idyllic nature... but the case was
quite different. There was the fact of seven centuries of English conquest
and oppression of Ireland, and so long as that oppression existed, it would
be an insult to Irish working men to ask them to submit to a British Federal
Council. [The motion] was asking the conquered people to forget their
nationality and submit to their conquerors. It was not Internationalism, but
simply prating submission. If the promoters of the motion were so brimful of
the truly international spirit, let them prove it by removing the seat of
the British Federal Council to Dublin and submit to a Council of Irishmen.
In a case like that of the Irish, true Internationalism must necessarily be
based upon a distinct national organization, and they were under the
necessity to state in... their rules that their first and most pressing duty
as Irishmen was to establish their own 5 national independence...'

("The Theory of National Minorities," by James M. Blaut,
<http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/Blaut/national_question.htm>

*  *  *

[W]hat is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction
between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International and
bourgeois democracy, we emphasise this distinction. In this age of
imperialism, it is particularly important for the proletariat and the
Communist International to establish the concrete economic facts and to
proceed from concrete realities, not from abstract postulates, in all
colonial and national problems.

The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we
now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an
insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal
wealth and powerful armed forces....

I should like especially to emphasise the question of the
bourgeois-democratic movement in backward countries. This is a question that
has given rise to certain differences. We have discussed whether it would be
right or wrong, in principle and in theory, to state that the Communist
International and the Communist parties must support the
bourgeois-democratic movement in backward countries. As a result of our
discussion, we have arrived at the unanimous decision to speak of the
national-revolutionary movement rather than of the "bourgeois-democratic"
movement.

It is beyond doubt that any national movement can only be a
bourgeois-democratic movement, since the overwhelming mass of the population
in the backward countries consist of peasants who represent
bourgeois-capitalist relationships.... However, the objections have been
raised that, if we speak of the bourgeois-democratic movement, we shall be
obliterating all distinctions between the reformist and the revolutionary
movements. Yet that distinction has been very clearly revealed of late in
the backward and colonial countries.... [W]e decided that the only correct
attitude was to take this distinction into account and, in nearly all cases,
substitute the term "national-revolutionary" for the term
"bourgeois-democratic".

(Lenin, "Report Of The Commission On The National and The Colonial
Questions,"
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/x03.htm#fw3>)




-----Original Message-----
From: marxism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:marxism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jscotlive@xxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 1:16 PM
To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Is "class" at the root of the real division in
society?

In a message dated 03/06/2006 17:32:53 GMT Daylight Time,
jbustelo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

> The first division of labor (historically) was between men and women


Reply:

Yes, but acknowledging different roles, and valuing those roles equally, as
in matriarchal societies, is a far cry from the divide and rule ethos used
to split the working class that I was getting at. Women were used to depress
wages at various times, as were different ethnic groups. By pandering to
such divisions - i.e. believing that our enemy are workers of a different
gender, ethnicity or religion - we obviously denude our strength as a class.

You write:

Capitalism rests on four pillars, patriarchy, race/nationality, class, and
finally I think it is necessary to add, a generalized dehumanization of
humanity, which includes negation of our "naturalness."

Reply:

I disagree. Patriarchy is a hangover from feudalism and has its roots in
Christianity. Capitalists, the new ruling class, retained those aspects of
feudal societal structure which suited the purposes of control. The same
goes for differences of race and nationality. If Marx taught us anything it
is that these are 'false divisions' used to distract the proletariat from
the division that
matters: namely that which exists between exploited and exploiter, between
the class which controls the means of production and the class which does
not.

JD
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