On the necessity/Sam Webb article

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On the necessity/Sam Webb article
by Waistline2
28 February 2002 13:50 UTC

Here is a more complete reply to the article by Mr. Webb.



-clip-. Mr. Webb article is devoid
of any logic that something new has taken place in the world of economics in
my opinion - and elementary logic.

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CB: This article is pretty limited in scope. There are discussions of the scientific and technological revolution of the last 40 years or so is elsewhere, in spades.

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>On the direct issue, surely the Roosevelt Coalition was not formed because
of the >influence of the bourgeois Roosevelt. On the contrary, it was
precisely a social >movement of the working class - Unemployed Councils, Ford
Hunger March, >returning evicted tenants to their housing, unionizing
industrial plants, vast working >class struggle in the 20's and 30'  - that
forced Roosevelt to go as far as he did to >head off more radical change. So,
Webb is accurate that there was a social >movement behind the changes 50 (and
100) years ago.


Actually, the Roosevelt Coalition was in fact formed precisely because of the
influence of the bourgeois Roosevelt, but these words have meaning. Roosevelt
was the political representative of a class, specifically the politically
dominant sector of a class, somewhat different from Lenin's traditional
description of finance-industrial capital. In our history we refer to this
distinctiveness as "Wall Street." It in fact was not (repeat: was not) the
social movement of the working class that gave rise to the Roosevelt
Coalition but a specific movement in capital and the International situation
generated by European reaction - lead by German fascism, that created the
conditions and environment in which the dominant sector of capital created
the Roosevelt Coalition.

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CB: Why would the U.S. bourgeois, or any section of it spontaneously establish a broad programs of concessions to the U.S. working class if not in response to demands and growing revolt of the working class ? Surely you know the history of working class social movements from the early 1900's. It seems fairly straight forward that Roosevelt's program was conessionary to this movement.

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The problem is that the historic analysis of the Roosevelt coalition is
devoid of a conception that places the intersection of the interest of a
section of workers with a sector of capitalist in any boundaries, which leads
to a strategy basically called the "left-center" coalition.

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CB: In what sense do you mean "in any boundaries" ? Are you saying that it was an opportunist sector of the working class that united with a section of capital in the Roosevelt coalition ?


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 The Roosevelt
Coalition arose in the context of completing the quantitative expansion of
the industrial infrastructure; a movement to accelerate the mechanization of
agriculture; the need to organize the population for the Second Imperialist
war and as these currents completed themselves the basis of the Coalition
dissolved. The working class did not force the formation of the Roosevelt
Coalition as you state or

"it was precisely a social movement of the working class - that forced
Roosevelt to go as far as he did to head off more radical change."

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CB: This is the issue in dispute.

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Was it not the fact that before Roosevelt the Democratic Party was the
reactionary party of the solid South and the need was to win a base of
support to stabilize industry and international policy.

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CB: Why was industry unstable if not for brewing working class revolt ?


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 Approaching the
matter from the "other" way leads to a conclusion that basically states the
Roosevelt Coalition collapsed when Roosevelt died and not when international
policy shifted to decolonized the earth. It was not the subsequent "lack of
strength of the workers" that cause a policy shift but international economic
reality that demand "new policy."

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CB: By and large , I'd say the Roosevelt Coalition collapsed in a counter-reform movement by the reactionary sector of the U.S. bourgeoisie. The main foreign influence was, the collapse and national liberation of the paleo-colonial system caused mainly by devestation of the European colonialist powers in WWII, the victory of the SU over Nazism, the Chinese Revolutionm , etc. , which also moved the U.S. bourgeoisie to purge the Communists and Socialists from the U.S. trade union and social movement.
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In North America the laboring classes have achieved marginal and sectional
interest when an intersect of interest with the dominant sector of capital
has arisen and made this possible.


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CB: Yes, reforms, but the sector of capital with which they "intersect interests" comes along kicking and screaming. It is forced through struggle and social movements, just as Webb said.

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Society shifts and the ideological expression as politics on the basis of and
in response to "quiet" changes in the mode of production, according to the
doctrine I use as a framework for trying to understand what is taking place.
This is not to say that ideology is politics because ideology is ancient and
predates society as such, but recast on the basis of societal change. On what
economic reality did the Roosevelt Coalition "sit" or rather, what economic
boundaries?

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CB: The Great October Revolution, The Great Depression, and the Eve of World Socialist Revolution.

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In my estimate that above lamenting over the Roosevelt Coalition is the
equivalent of stating the African American people and "their allies in the
labor movement" forced the "Civil Rights Movement." Such a proposition is
devoid of the inner logic of the movement and needs of capital (economics)
that define what is possible as politics in a specific period of history. The
reason the "Voting Rights Act" for instance was passed in the early 1960s
instead of under Roosevelt is not simply because in the 1960s the class
struggle made it so. Rather, an intersection of interest occurred rooted in
the mechanization of agriculture, the shift of million of human being North
into industry, the world anti-colonial wave to decolonize, etc.
"Intersection" of interest, which is not a bad word but outline the boundary
of why politics unfold a certain way in our country. Marxism is an
intellectual movement in my opinion, that seeks to unfold underlying
phenomena. Stating the "class struggle of the workers made it so" is correct,
but leaves out all the aspects whose totality is the "class struggle."


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CB: The main antagonistic contradiction of the inner logic of the movement is the class struggle.

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If history and our daily lives revolved around the "class struggle of the
workers made it so" as opposed to the perception of class interest riveted to
economics society would not move in antagonism, only contradiction. Inner
class conflict is extremely important, not simply the workers as the historic
societal hero archetype.

In North America the idea of a "Neo-Roosevelt Coalition" is a specific
political projection and inner class conflict made manifest - which you do
not define, involving intersection of class interest for the purpose of the
domination of "our" imperialist over the world total social capital. On this
question of specificity of class relations and alignments Comrade Webb and
your statement lacks theoretical depth. What you basically propose is what
would amount to a fascist labor front in unity with a section of capital
under the conditions that exist today - in my opinion.

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CB: All this because we think it was a social movement and the class struggle that forced the Roosevelt Coaltion ? That doesn't follow at all.

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There is this question of class-consciousness that you raise, but without
definition, the words class consciousness mean a thousand different things to
a thousand different people. Class-consciousness cannot be reduced to
ideological doctrine or politics, although we fight in the ideological and
political sphere. Class-consciousness means - under our current specific
conditions defining this phase of capital and our specific culture, an
awareness of how and why classes fight a certain way for their material
survival.

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CB: Working class consciousness would be workers being _conscious_ of how and why classes fight today for material interests and state power both. Confining it to material survival or interests is Economism , in the sense that Lenin criticized it.

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"So, Webb is accurate that there was a social movement behind the changes 50
(and 100) years ago."

Stating the obvious without definition is never
accurate.

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CB: This obvious would usually be accurate.

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There has been a social movement behind all of human history but to
state this is meaningless.

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CB: Would to say history is a history of class struggles be meaningless ?


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The social movement for the past 100 years
occurred within the specific boundary of development of the productive forces
and at each successive stage altered the "form" and content (demands) of the
"social movement" as the various stages in the quantitative expansion of the
industrial infrastructure unfolded. Jesus! One hundred years ago most peoples
in North America were still on the farm. One hundred years ago America was
still experiencing the fallout from the defeat of Reconstruction.


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CB: These facts confirm , don't contradict, the assertion that social movements underlay......


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I assure you the statement by Comrade Sam is meaningless as a theoretical
utterance and without an ounce of the method of Marx, because it is devoid of
definition. One must at least try to extrapolate the currents of the modern
era. I have no desire to re-fight what Lenin meant by his various utterances.
People can be driven by ideology in my estimate, but classes as sociological
formations are driven by needs, in the context of their social relations of
production. How these needs are articulated and fought for is the realm of
ideology and politics.

Nevertheless, you raise the question of "economism" devoid of the specific
historical period in which it was raised under conditions of Russian society
100 years ago. How can the fight for needs - from the standpoint of the lower
section of the working class as a riveting point, be anything but correct,
when it has been repeatedly stated that what is needed is a political party
with an electoral capability to raise these questions of "needs" in the halls
of Congress? If this is your interpretation of "economism," fine.

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CB:  Well, you didn't mention the political and electoral capabillity and halls of Congress. This involve ideology, which you seem to aschew in what you said.

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Lenin's "What is To Be Done" was written one-hundred years ago and posed
"burning questions of our movement," in Russia from the standpoint of trying
to create a political organization of revolutionaries. Here is the specific
criticism Lenin has, which I personally understand radically different from
your formulation.

"What real concrete meaning does Martynov attach to his words about Social
Democracy tacking up the task of "lending the economic struggle itself a
political character"? The economic struggle is the collective struggle of the
workers against their employers for better terms in the sale of their labor
power, for the better conditions of life and labor. This struggle is
necessarily an industrial struggle, because conditions of labor differ very
much in different trades, and consequently, the fight to improve conditions
can only be conducted in respect to each trade (trade unions in the Western
countries, temporary trade associations and leaflets in Russia, etc.) Lending
the economic struggle itself a political character means, therefore, striving
to secure satisfaction of these demands, the improvement of conditions of
labor in each separate trade by means of legislative and administrative
measures. This is exactly what all workers trade unions do and always have
done."

Lenin calls this "economism," but this in my opinion has nothing to do with
what is taking place in America in respects to the needs of the lower section
of the working class. Stated another way, Lenin is criticizing what I would
today call social alchemy or the idea that the trade union struggle can be
"raised" or transformed into the political struggle against capital and in
the context of Lenin's time, such transformation would equal the task of
their Social Democratic Party purpose.

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CB: Yes, analogously there must be an ideological or political component to raising demands for "bread", by this standard.

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I of course am not trying to form a party of revolutionaries as such. Rather,
engagement is over concepts and theoretical framework that explore the
economic, political and occasionally the ideological sphere.

With all due respect to Mr. Lenin, something different is taking place in
America that has progressive economist trying to unravel this phase of
development of the economy and citizens slowly organizing to secure the
material goods needed to sustain a decent life.

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CB: The Russian citizens were organizing to secure the material goods need to sustain a decent life in 1903 too.

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Mr. Lenin was waging a
polemic on behave of the specific character of the political organization he
was part of and did not want it to pursue a policy that would make it
resemble a trade union as opposed to a political organization of
revolutionaries. Please note in the quote above that trade unions in the
Western countries are equivalent to "leaflets in Russia," which describes a
certain quantitative development of their productive forces and industrial
infrastructure.

To counter-pose a hundred year old debate on the building of Lenin's
conception of a revolutionary political party - in a society with very little
industrial infrastructure and leaflets serving as the rallying point instead
of trade unions, with the growing needs of the lower sections of the working
class in America is a unique point of view.

What about this phase of production, this stage of investment of capital and
its modes of expression; this stage in the polarization of wealth and
poverty; the specific configuration of North American society and the
politics of our era?

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CB: Common to both concrete situations is the need to combine economic and political struggle, not wage only economic demands.

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>From my standpoint the problem is that by "politics" many of the "old
Leninist" mean an abstraction called "socialism" or trying to figure out how
to "take socialism to the working class," and this "socialism" remains und
efined, or rather unable to be defined on the basis of North American society
because our reality is not that of the working class movement in "Europe" one
hundred years ago or even fifty years ago. Not an exception to capitalist
development but different.

This of course is what Comrade Sam article is about - taking socialism to the
working class or rather trade unions and deep lamentation over our inability
to "carry the line." Lamentation over the old Roosevelt Coalition and calls
for a Neo-Roosevelt Coalition without pondering the full implication of this
lamenting is scary. A "Neo-Roosevelt Coalition" doesn't equal a "chicken in
every pot" but a political alignment because the word coalition means
alignment of class forces.

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CB: Actually Comrade Sam didn't say anything about the Roosevelt Coalition. That was your gloss on what he said. Your argument becomes somewhat of "with a strawman".

Don't be scared. I have fully pondered the implications of this lamentation.

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Comrade Sam article is devoid of any inkling of current reality and without
any theoretical merit in my opinion. Nowhere is current economic reality
presented, that is to say this stage of development of electronic production
and its impact on profits, society at large, polarization of wealth and
poverty and the political sphere. Why should we continue to be dominated by
the old forms of the working class movement that grew up in Europe and past
periods of history that no longer exist?

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CB: Actually, Webb was talking about the U.S. and didn't say anything about Europe. As to past periods, you know. Past is prologue :>) Do you think _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ teaches us nothing about today because it is from a past period of history that no longer exists ?

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Dreaming of a better time in a past
that never existed is not my idea of a good time. There is nothing in the
1930s and 1940s I want to see ever in life. Putting a "neo" on the matter is
real scary.


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CB: Sort of like nightmare ?

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Socialism - in my opinion, was a concept and reality of developing the
industrial infrastructure of society on the basis of public ownership of the
primary properties of the infrastructure. It seem to me that we are forever
leaving industrial society and in transition to a qualitatively new system of
production and lamenting over socialism is a call to go backwards in terms of
the infrastructure.

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CB: There are probably qualitative developments in the instruments and means of production, but the qualitative transformation in the mode of production will be to socialism, and the latest in bourgeois science and technology is not that.

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Finally, what sector of capital would provide a basis for the unity or
intersection of interest with what section of the working class and on what
basis? The Roosevelt Coalition was a political alignment representing the t
intersection of needs of various classes. I personally believe that current
economic reality makes such an alignment or intersection of interest
impossible. Which is why the Bush administration is acting like maniacs,
terrorizing the entire world.

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CB: I didn't say I was looking for such a unity or intersection. You said that.

However, a reform aim would suggest such a strategic use of splits in the ruling class if we can find such

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"Is there a specific theoretical shallowness that you note in this article?"

Actually the whole article is a lamentation and devoid of theory as I
understand the word. Where is the beef?

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CB: That's "where" the shallowness is, not what it is.

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This does not make Sam Webb a bad
person or anything like that, but to present a lamentation as analysis and
drag a hundred year old article about the specifics (not general economic
development) of Russian political landscape is a unique approach to the here
and now.


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CB: I think you are running what I said together with what he said. I don't recall him lamenting or talking about _What is to be done ?_ that was me. However,  the notion that hundred year old articles are not pertinent is , as you put it , "scary" . Well, not really  fear inspiring , but it would pretty much wipe out all references to Marx and Engels, and confine us to reading stuff from ,what , the last ten years.

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Hey, everyone has their point of view. Me? Its like Ripley said in Aliens
(the second one) "I'm not going back there." Well, she ended up going back
and wanted to nuke the joint, everyone got slaughtered and we ended up with
Alien 3 and Alien 4.

Peace

^^^^^^^^

CB: And Power to the People