"The emancipation of the working class": movement as substitutionist?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I've had the intention of asking this question for months now, but haven't because fruitful discussion on other issues has arisen. However, given the lull that is X-mas and the New Year, I think it's ripe to ask this.

Most of us are aware of the fact that "the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself." We should be aware of the most obvious signs of political substitutionism (so-called "vanguard parties" and their dreams of revolution without having at least majority political support - even non-electoral support, but so long as it's political - from the working class). On the other hand, we should also be aware of the failure of syndicalism to address political emancipation as well as the usual social emancipation.

However, missing from all the discussions on substitutionism is the organizational form known as "movement." If one were to say that "the emancipation of the working class must be the movement of the working class itself," is there the danger of substitutionism in the most insidious form?

The observant reader will realize a more "merged" relationship between "parties" and "movements," as was the case in the distant past.

[al8]

I think this is an important issue. I have often wondered myself if - yes, the emancipation of the workers must be made by the workers themselves - then in what organizational form? Clearly it isn't the entire class equally - interest, skill level, networking will be different for each individual in a position as a worker. How will people divide the work and specialize in this task. Why will there not be a bunch of people that will naturally take a forefront (a vanguard if you will)? Can that really be avoided?

[obsolete discourse]

This is actually a fascinating question which spawns and even deeper aporia then the question of dictatorship.

Because the question of "movement" connotes a relationship to time, we are forced to rethink capitalist-time, the marxian conceptions of time, and what a revolutionary time might entail. Whereas Marx began to conceptualize a revolutionary time, he ultimately fell back on a new linear time which happens as a progression of the same historical time capitalism inherited from Hegel's Spirit: the history of the state--the history of "man." However, only Walter Benjamin has really thought out this question in eloquent terms which correspond to our real history "The history of the oppressed teaches us that the state of exception is not the exception but the rule."

Because communism is a rupture in capitalist time, Marx could ultimately conclude that the events on the Paris Commune were a sort of sign-post of the world to come, but he fails to really make clear the obvious messianic analogy of communism. If the Commune, where Parisians shot at clocks, is already the world which Marx occupied, then the messiah is not yet to come, but rather "the messiah, which comes," or to use another certain concept: "The insurrection, which comes." (There is no might) In this way the abolition of class society by the proletariat (not "the working-class") is not in progress, nor will it come in the future, it rather is thus.

If capitalism is the precondition for communism, then "the real movement" is capitalism, because capitalism is thus far the only revolutionary movement of society, and because it holds in its negative potential, the proletariat who abolishes class society through its own self-abolition.

What Benjamin calls Jetztzeit (now-time) is the time of proletarian self-organization. It is not simply autonomous (self-law), but rather must be an irruptive moment which tear open the irreversible repetitive time of work day under capitalism, and which does not replace but deposes the law of value. Communisation is the only means by which the proletariat can emancipate itself.

[syndicat]

mass social movements include labor organizations as a subset. syndicalism is a part of this process. it is thru the mass struggles and efforts to develop alliances within the mass social movements that the working class, the oppressed and exploited in general, are able to create the means to their liberation. it isn't everyone but the problem with a political party as vehicle is that these tend to be hierarchical and less appropriate as a democratic vehicle controlled by the masses themselves. political parties end up controlled by politicians, leaders in a hierarchical sense.

[JazzRemington]

There's only a danger if a small minority coops the movement and uses it to further their own preferred beliefs (i.e. leninists and other vanguardist ideologies), because this minority feels it bests knows how history or society works, or what is best for the working class. If the working class is shown that they can get things done without such people, I doubt there would be any danger of substitutionism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

mass social movements include labor organizations as a subset. syndicalism is a part of this process. it is thru the mass struggles and efforts to develop alliances within the mass social movements that the working class, the oppressed and exploited in general, are able to create the means to their liberation. it isn't everyone but the problem with a political party as vehicle is that these tend to be hierarchical and less appropriate as a democratic vehicle controlled by the masses themselves. political parties end up controlled by politicians, leaders in a hierarchical sense.

The last sentence in my original post hinted at Kautsky's declaration that "Social Democracy is the Merger of Socialism and the Worker Movement," whereby "Social Democracy" referred to genuine, mass political parties (not mere electoral machines) with alternative cultures: party-movements.