Comrade-Z
8th December 2011, 00:50
In Defense of Ideology
A fashion among some anarchists, particularly CrimethInc.-type anarchists, has been to reject "ideology" as something inherently authoritarian and misleading.
To a certain extent, one cannot help but understand where this is coming from. By leading revolutionaries to ignore the protest and resistance of real workers (Kronstadt, anarchist Spain), Ideology helped apologize for some of the worst crimes against the revolutionary left of the 20th century. For much of the "Old Left," Not even the most obvious empirical fact of worker oppression could breach the ideological aegis of "The Party is always right!"
That said, there is something to be said for ideology, so long as that ideology is correct and structurally self-critical (which Stalinism was not, despite all of its pretensions to be such), such that it does not become a self-justifying, hermetically-sealed shield against reality.
Ideology As Defense Against Ruling Class De-Radicalizing Concessions
Consider the options of any ruling class responding to working-class resistance. Although the ruling class will not always be prudent enough to see it, the ruling class always has the option of conceding everything short of its class power.
One example was the 91% top marginal tax rate in 1950s America that funded the social welfare labor aristocracy arrangement between the American working class and the American capitalist class--an arrangement that completely destroyed the last vestiges of American working-class radicalism. With that radicalism safely destroyed and utterly forgotten by this generation's American working class, the American ruling class judges the time to be ripe to revoke this labor aristocracy arrangement and subject the American working class to the same sort of exploitation, unmitigated by social protections, that American capitalists can find in places like Mexico or China, with the implicit threat being that American capitalists will move "their" jobs there unless American workers take the painful pill.
The Need for Ideology in OWS
As of now, the OWS movement has largely strove to maintain and restore this nationalistic labor aristocracy arrangement with a populist attack on "greed," deregulation, and elite tax cuts (rather than on capitalism per se). The OWS movement has not, in general, moved to a revolutionary attack on international capitalism itself...yet. Nor do I think that such a transformation is likely in the near future.
Let us assume, however, that the OWS movement did judge its efforts to protect the labor aristocracy arrangement to be futile, and did conclude that the only way to protect the interests of the American working class was through international proletarian revolution.
To the extent that they based this conclusion off of merely empirical observation of the labor aristocracy arrangement not working, rather than extra-empirical ideological determination to transcend capitalism and put the working class in power, the ruling class could respond to this revolutionary challenge as it has done before—by conceding everything short of its class power, until such a time as the working class (still assessing the situation empirically rather than ideologically) judges the cooperation with the American ruling class to be empirically fruitful for the working class...at which point the American ruling class can then slowly try to revoke its concessions once again as it is doing now. Without ideology, this static back-and-forth cycle could go on forever.
Only an ideological worker is able to say, "The ruling class is offering concessions now..." or "The ruling class has been offering concessions for the last 30 years...but I understand from Marxist ideology that what they really want to do is use these concessions to de-radicalize the working class, so that they can more-thoroughly exploit the working class in the future. Therefore, my revolutionary intention to overthrow this ruling class remains unchanged, despite their present empirical benevolence towards me."
In the months ahead, the Democrats, and aspects of the American ruling class, will try to seduce portions of the OWS movement with either some promises of reforms, or occasionally even some real reforms. If we rule out ideology, if we limit ourselves to only assessing the practical facts of each situation, then we transform Democratic Party and/or ruling class concessions into powerful weapons of de-radicalization. Only theory—ideology—informed by historical experience can persuasively rebut these inevitable concessionary overtures and keep OWS from being fully co-opted.
Therefore, in a context in which we will hear quasi- or psuedo-anarchist voices in OWS saying that we should be putting aside ideological disputes within the movement in favor of practical cooperation, I say NO. Now is the time, most of all, for ideologically challenging the populists and reformists in the OWS movement, even if that means provoking hostility from these allies. Otherwise, we deliver them into the arms of the professional recuperationists in the Democratic Party, the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, etc. Without Marxist ideology, the populists of OWS will be defenseless against the seductive promises of the professional recuperationists to help make OWS "effective" and "institutionally-enduring."
A fashion among some anarchists, particularly CrimethInc.-type anarchists, has been to reject "ideology" as something inherently authoritarian and misleading.
To a certain extent, one cannot help but understand where this is coming from. By leading revolutionaries to ignore the protest and resistance of real workers (Kronstadt, anarchist Spain), Ideology helped apologize for some of the worst crimes against the revolutionary left of the 20th century. For much of the "Old Left," Not even the most obvious empirical fact of worker oppression could breach the ideological aegis of "The Party is always right!"
That said, there is something to be said for ideology, so long as that ideology is correct and structurally self-critical (which Stalinism was not, despite all of its pretensions to be such), such that it does not become a self-justifying, hermetically-sealed shield against reality.
Ideology As Defense Against Ruling Class De-Radicalizing Concessions
Consider the options of any ruling class responding to working-class resistance. Although the ruling class will not always be prudent enough to see it, the ruling class always has the option of conceding everything short of its class power.
One example was the 91% top marginal tax rate in 1950s America that funded the social welfare labor aristocracy arrangement between the American working class and the American capitalist class--an arrangement that completely destroyed the last vestiges of American working-class radicalism. With that radicalism safely destroyed and utterly forgotten by this generation's American working class, the American ruling class judges the time to be ripe to revoke this labor aristocracy arrangement and subject the American working class to the same sort of exploitation, unmitigated by social protections, that American capitalists can find in places like Mexico or China, with the implicit threat being that American capitalists will move "their" jobs there unless American workers take the painful pill.
The Need for Ideology in OWS
As of now, the OWS movement has largely strove to maintain and restore this nationalistic labor aristocracy arrangement with a populist attack on "greed," deregulation, and elite tax cuts (rather than on capitalism per se). The OWS movement has not, in general, moved to a revolutionary attack on international capitalism itself...yet. Nor do I think that such a transformation is likely in the near future.
Let us assume, however, that the OWS movement did judge its efforts to protect the labor aristocracy arrangement to be futile, and did conclude that the only way to protect the interests of the American working class was through international proletarian revolution.
To the extent that they based this conclusion off of merely empirical observation of the labor aristocracy arrangement not working, rather than extra-empirical ideological determination to transcend capitalism and put the working class in power, the ruling class could respond to this revolutionary challenge as it has done before—by conceding everything short of its class power, until such a time as the working class (still assessing the situation empirically rather than ideologically) judges the cooperation with the American ruling class to be empirically fruitful for the working class...at which point the American ruling class can then slowly try to revoke its concessions once again as it is doing now. Without ideology, this static back-and-forth cycle could go on forever.
Only an ideological worker is able to say, "The ruling class is offering concessions now..." or "The ruling class has been offering concessions for the last 30 years...but I understand from Marxist ideology that what they really want to do is use these concessions to de-radicalize the working class, so that they can more-thoroughly exploit the working class in the future. Therefore, my revolutionary intention to overthrow this ruling class remains unchanged, despite their present empirical benevolence towards me."
In the months ahead, the Democrats, and aspects of the American ruling class, will try to seduce portions of the OWS movement with either some promises of reforms, or occasionally even some real reforms. If we rule out ideology, if we limit ourselves to only assessing the practical facts of each situation, then we transform Democratic Party and/or ruling class concessions into powerful weapons of de-radicalization. Only theory—ideology—informed by historical experience can persuasively rebut these inevitable concessionary overtures and keep OWS from being fully co-opted.
Therefore, in a context in which we will hear quasi- or psuedo-anarchist voices in OWS saying that we should be putting aside ideological disputes within the movement in favor of practical cooperation, I say NO. Now is the time, most of all, for ideologically challenging the populists and reformists in the OWS movement, even if that means provoking hostility from these allies. Otherwise, we deliver them into the arms of the professional recuperationists in the Democratic Party, the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, etc. Without Marxist ideology, the populists of OWS will be defenseless against the seductive promises of the professional recuperationists to help make OWS "effective" and "institutionally-enduring."