Cool marxist scientific analysis of the 99% by the League Revolutionary Party [Archive]

View Full Version : Cool marxist scientific analysis of the 99% by the League Revolutionary Party

TrotskistMarx

22nd March 2012, 05:03

DEAR FRIENDS, READ THIS ARTICLE ABOUT 99% THAT SAYS THERE ARE MANY CAPITALISTS RIGHT-WINGERS WITHIN THE 99%. NOT EVERYBODY IS A MARXIST IN THE 99%. THERE ARE MANY ANTI-MARXISM PEOPLE IN THE 99%, AND WE ALL KNOW THAT THE ONLY SOLUTION FOR USA IS A MARXIST POLITICAL SYSTEM !!

Let us look more closely at the slogan that has stood out in the Occupy protests: “We are the 99%.” This catchphrase has caught on widely: various advertisers and labor unions trumpet it daily, and it has begun to be featured in some Democratic Party campaigns. The slogan, and its accompanying denunciation of the “1%,” has roots in the awareness of growing inequalities in American society, which has been given expression even by major establishment figures in recent years. Democratic Presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000 accused Republican candidate George W. Bush of supporting the “wealthiest one percent” rather than the welfare of everyone else. Johnson and Johnson heir Jamie Johnson filmed a documentary in 2006, “The One Percent,” about the growing wealth gap. Liberal economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz wrote an article showing that the wealthiest 1% of U.S. citizens controls 40% of the wealth.[14]

“We are the 99%” is understandably popular, since it expresses the reality that the great majority are getting robbed by the super-rich who run society. Even more positively, it implies that there is power in numbers – if we all got together, we would overpower the super-rich parasites and exploiters. Nevertheless, there are major problems with the slogan. First, it implies a false unity of interests among the majority of the population. The “1%” may be a numerically convenient shorthand for the top layer of the capitalist ruling class in this country, but this layer has the hardened loyalty of significant sections of the remaining 99%. While the working class makes up something like two-thirds of the population, there are tens of millions who have material interests in the maintenance of the system and its inequalities. These include petty (and not-so-petty) capitalists, wealthy professionals, preachers, journalists, managers, paid agents of the state like politicians and cops, all sorts of politically reactionary scum, and even the best-positioned elements in the working class itself.

Despite the class-unconsciousness of the “99%” slogan, there are those who have embraced it opportunistically, as if it were an extension of Marxism’s understanding of the centrality of class conflict between the working class and the capitalists. Alex Callinicos of the British Socialist Workers Party wrote, for example:

The slogan of “The 99 percent versus the 1 percent” has translated into popular language the Marxist conception of the class antagonism constituting capitalist society and captured the mass imagination.[15]

No, it has dangerously blurred the class antagonism between workers and capitalists, lumping the working class in the same category as many of its clear class enemies.

For Marxists, it is crucial to stress that classes and their interests are defined not by income, but by people’s relationship to the means of production. The fundamental division in capitalist society is between the capitalists and the working class. The capitalists are those who control as their property the factories, farmland, natural resources, transportation and communication systems that form the basis of the economy. The working class is made up of those who have no alternative but to sell their ability to work – their “labor power” – in order to survive (whether they are actually employed or not), and who thereby must engage in the class struggle against the capitalists, the employing and exploiting class, to improve their lot in life.

If society were simply divided between an obscenely rich 1% and its armed guards on the one hand, and a fundamentally dispossessed 99% on the other, the capitalists could hardly hold on to power for very long. Their rule rests on a broader base of support from middle classes who have an interest in maintaining the system. The relative stability of democratic rule by capitalists in the richest countries depends in large part on the imperialist super-exploitation of the neo-colonies, which affords them the ability to maintain a much larger middle class than can the capitalist rulers in the oppressed nations. The upward mobility of one person from poverty into the middle class raises the hopes of a dozen that they can do it too. Of course, the deepening economic stagnation and crisis in the imperialist countries is shrinking their middle classes and thereby undermining the ruling class’s ideological grip on the working class – thereby deepening the potential for revolution.

LINK OF FULL COMPLETE ARTICLE: http://lrp-cofi.org/statements/OWS_030112.html

ckaihatsu

22nd March 2012, 07:53

An oft-quoted OWS organizer, Yotam Marom, put it: “We’re creating alternative models of the world we want to live in while also using those new institutions as a staging ground to fight for that world –that’s what’s radical and cool about occupations.” [10]

While Marom can't control how he's quoted, I will note that from that quote itself his politics sound populist-liberal at best and mealy-mouthed vague and abstract at worst.

It was a *weakness* of the movement that it consciously *avoided* presenting a cohesive platform of consensus initially -- after all, what's the point of being out there then -- ? It's not simply a *cultural* event, like a rock concert, and it's more than an artsy "happening" like a flash mob.

If *any* movement is going to create "alternative models" I'd imagine the participants would also want to *share* those models, and in a way that would invite understanding and agreement.

Ostrinski

22nd March 2012, 08:03

NOT EVERYBODY IS A MARXIST IN THE 99%.Yeah you ain't shittin

Orlov

22nd March 2012, 09:20

There isn't a '99 percent' in the United States. Most of the '99 percent' are actually petite-bourgeois and are therefore in some shape and form connected to capital which makes them not working class and privileged benefiting from the bourgeois system. The '99 percent' movement has only attracted simple populism as opposed to an actual working class struggle in line with the struggle in the East (The actual revolution). The petit-bourgeois are not the 99 percent and need to be rehabilitated from all bourgeois material interests before they can be the 99 percent, class unity with the petit-bourgeois with the exception of anti-imperialist blocs in 'developing' countries is not a strategy for working class revolution, it is a strategy for bourgeois populism.

TrotskistMarx

22nd March 2012, 23:33

I think that one of the main reasons for very low levels of authentic marxist-socialism information in the USA is that there is almost no way for most americans to be influenced by marxism and socialism as a solution for their low living standards and for the lack of economic progress, lack of self-realization for the majority of young people in America who are born into a very oligarchical plutocratical society in which only a lotto jackpot can get them out of their existential nightmare.

I think that it is the task of socialist labor parties in most states to work more get more pro-active at spreading the marxist-socialism political ideology as a solution for the majority of americans.

So that's why most americans participating in the Occupy Protests can be at best into Alex Jones, 9-11 truth movement, The Russia Today News Network which can be seen on channel 280 of Dish Network, Democracy Now of Amy Goodman which can bee seen in Direct TV, Dish Network and other cable-tv services. And of course the progressive liberals and libertarian websites and movements like commondreams.org and The Ron Paul Revolution which have more money to invest in advertising, marketing and propagating their ideas. Compared to marxist labor leftist parties which are a lot poorer than progressive liberal movements like Amy Goodman, The Nation Magazine and Ron Paul.

So leftist marxist parties will have to find a way to get resources and funds to invest in advertising and propagating the marxism socialism political system as a solution for the economic problems of most americans

.

.

While Marom can't control how he's quoted, I will note that from that quote itself his politics sound populist-liberal at best and mealy-mouthed vague and abstract at worst.

It was a *weakness* of the movement that it consciously *avoided* presenting a cohesive platform of consensus initially -- after all, what's the point of being out there then -- ? It's not simply a *cultural* event, like a rock concert, and it's more than an artsy "happening" like a flash mob.

If *any* movement is going to create "alternative models" I'd imagine the participants would also want to *share* those models, and in a way that would invite understanding and agreement.

Workers-Control-Over-Prod

23rd March 2012, 00:18

There isn't a '99 percent' in the United States. Most of the '99 percent' are actually petite-bourgeois and are therefore in some shape and form connected to capital which makes them not working class and privileged benefiting from the bourgeois system.

Ok, yes, but we should state our definitions here first.
For a lot of Marxists, the term "Workers" automatically means either generally producers of material wealth, or industrial workers.

But this is incorrect. "Workers" are humans that do not own property (i.e. own other wage dependent humans) and are forced to sell their labor as a commodity, for a wage. By "Proletarians" most Marxists mean industrial workers, urban producers of material wealth, the lowest class of working people(which in class analysis is admittedly the most important and should be the class that control their workplaces and production; not us revolutionaries or other working people. Only producers of material wealth should in a socialist society become their own "board of directors" and hire the subservient current-petty-bourgeois class until the gap between think and muscle work has been abolished, communism. But i digress....). Therefore, even petty-bourgeois individuals are technically workers, and if they weren't workers (i.e. without Capital) they would have no reason to go on the street.

About the 99% OWS movement: I think it is great, it has absolutely changed the central political balances and reminding capitalists that people at the bottom hate this anti-democratic system and can cause even right-wing opportunist politicians like Newt Gingrich to be forced to use terms such as "Vulture Capitalist" as an insult. That is quite a shift, because now you can use the term capitalist in a class analysis and get sympathy the way we want; against the capitalist class.

ckaihatsu

23rd March 2012, 00:42

There isn't a '99 percent' in the United States. Most of the '99 percent' are actually petite-bourgeois and are therefore in some shape and form connected to capital which makes them not working class and privileged benefiting from the bourgeois system. The '99 percent' movement has only attracted simple populism

as opposed to an actual working class struggle in line with the struggle in the East (The actual revolution).

The petit-bourgeois are not the 99 percent and need to be rehabilitated from all bourgeois material interests before they can be the 99 percent, class unity with the petit-bourgeois with the exception of anti-imperialist blocs in 'developing' countries is not a strategy for working class revolution, it is a strategy for bourgeois populism.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but on a finer point, I don't think the class struggle can be simplified or designated according to geographical areas of the world, like "East vs. West". That said I realize that the broad areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have tended to be colonized and oppressed by "The West", meaning Western European countries, the U.S., and Japan.

But since the postwar period onward economies are less and less nationalistic and the world market has become more all-encompassing, proletarianizing many 'First World' populations that used to enjoy significant nationalist privileges -- it's been more of a "race-to-the-bottom", though, rather than a leveling-to-the-average.

ckaihatsu

23rd March 2012, 01:45

[Some] activists within Occupy Wall Street in New York campaigned for the adoption of a “Jobs for All” demand and a big public works effort; such a program could have encouraged working people to join the struggle with confidence that it would fight for their essential needs. But the campaign was met with fierce opposition from the unofficial OWS leadership, which called it, among other things, divisive because it is too radical for the bulk of the 99%. One OWS leader told a forum audience that “privileging” the working class would be “playing identity politics.”[21]

It's reprehensible and enraging to see a genuinely pro-proletarian demand ("Jobs for All") conflated with 'identity politics' -- as if acknowledging one's actual position in society is a mere affectation in a contrived game of political posturing and role-playing.

For Marxists, it is crucial to stress that classes and their interests are defined not by income, but by people’s relationship to the means of production. The fundamental division in capitalist society is between the capitalists and the working class. The capitalists are those who control as their property the factories, farmland, natural resources, transportation and communication systems that form the basis of the economy. The working class is made up of those who have no alternative but to sell their ability to work – their “labor power” – in order to survive (whether they are actually employed or not), and who thereby must engage in the class struggle against the capitalists, the employing and exploiting class, to improve their lot in life.

[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

http://postimage.org/image/34modgv1g/

Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

http://postimage.org/image/1g4s6wax0/

http://postimage.org/image/2cvo2d7fo/

TrotskistMarx

23rd March 2012, 06:04

Wow what a perfect analysis of the 99% percent. Thanks for your comments about it. And indeed. The left would have to find a better way, a more scientific analysis of classes than just 99% oppressed and 1% oppressor ruler class

.

There isn't a '99 percent' in the United States. Most of the '99 percent' are actually petite-bourgeois and are therefore in some shape and form connected to capital which makes them not working class and privileged benefiting from the bourgeois system. The '99 percent' movement has only attracted simple populism as opposed to an actual working class struggle in line with the struggle in the East (The actual revolution). The petit-bourgeois are not the 99 percent and need to be rehabilitated from all bourgeois material interests before they can be the 99 percent, class unity with the petit-bourgeois with the exception of anti-imperialist blocs in 'developing' countries is not a strategy for working class revolution, it is a strategy for bourgeois populism.

TrotskistMarx

23rd March 2012, 06:17

RedTrackWorker

23rd March 2012, 06:25

Thanks for sharing. I posted the whole article on revleft here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/ows-marxist-assessment-t169377/index.html?p=2393434#post2393434) so people can discuss it.

A Marxist Historian

23rd March 2012, 09:06

Ok, yes, but we should state our definitions here first.
For a lot of Marxists, the term "Workers" automatically means either generally producers of material wealth, or industrial workers.

But this is incorrect. "Workers" are humans that do not own property (i.e. own other wage dependent humans) and are forced to sell their labor as a commodity, for a wage. By "Proletarians" most Marxists mean industrial workers, urban producers of material wealth, the lowest class of working people(which in class analysis is admittedly the most important and should be the class that control their workplaces and production; not us revolutionaries or other working people. Only producers of material wealth should in a socialist society become their own "board of directors" and hire the subservient current-petty-bourgeois class until the gap between think and muscle work has been abolished, communism. But i digress....). Therefore, even petty-bourgeois individuals are technically workers, and if they weren't workers (i.e. without Capital) they would have no reason to go on the street.

About the 99% OWS movement: I think it is great, it has absolutely changed the central political balances and reminding capitalists that people at the bottom hate this anti-democratic system and can cause even right-wing opportunist politicians like Newt Gingrich to be forced to use terms such as "Vulture Capitalist" as an insult. That is quite a shift, because now you can use the term capitalist in a class analysis and get sympathy the way we want; against the capitalist class.

Are 99% of the American population wage workers (or their families) deriving the bulk of their earnings from selling their labor power? Hell no, far from it. I would guess no more than three-quarters, if that. If anyone has any actual figures, they should be easily available, that would be good. Doctors, lawyers, computer consultants, and other independent "petty bourgeois" professionals aren't workers. Not to even to speak of the quite sizeable number of small businessmen in America running stores and whatnot.

And of course there are plenty of people who draw a salary who aren't really wage workers, as their main function, what they get paid for, is the "labor" of keeping the real working class in line. Like managers, supervisors and cops. A distinction the OWS movement is notoriously poor at making.

The Trotsky quote in the LRP piece about how German Nazis were talking about "the 95%" as Hitler rose to power is very relevant and probably the best thing in the whole article.

Is the OWS movement a "good thing"? Well, it's sure a hell of a lot better than the Tea Party!

This piece by the LRP characterizes the OWS as populist. Not exactly an original comparison. Me, I've been posting to that effect here from months now, and it's not original to me either, I get it from one of the LRP's major rivals, the Spartacists, who were saying this almost from the get go, long, long before it occurred to LRP to pick up this point.

But to call the OWS "populist" is not to say it's a bad thing! The original Populist movement of the 1890s definitely was an expression of popular rebellion many of whose veterans became socialists, most famously Eugene Debs.

But the way the Socialist movement of the time benefitted from the OWS movement of the time, the Populists, was by fighting populist illusions tooth and nail, denouncing the stupidities and treasons of the Populist leadership, and winning the best Populist fighters over to socialism.

The immediate impact of OWS is to replace the Tea Party as the latest political thing, and make it more likely that Obama will be re-elected President. And that's probably all the American working class will get out of it--unless we follow the example of the Socialists of a century ago, and instead of being impressed with how much better the general political climate suddenly is (for the moment), we do the necessary.

-M.H.-

A Marxist Historian

23rd March 2012, 09:18

hahaha, this is so true. Even comrade Church Pastor Pat Robertson wrote an article some months called "God is ok with socialism". I think that when Karl Marx wrote about *the spectre* of communism around the world, I think that he meant that the new ideas spread around the whole world of socialism will come like a tsunami which will in a way *wash away* the old ideas that people have in their heads of capitalism. So what I am trying to state is that little by little, step by step socialism is becoming a *mainstream ideology*. Even celebrities today like Sean Penn are defending the socialist ideology. 50 years ago it was impossible for any movie celebrity to defend the ideology of socialism. So because of the evolution of ideas, historical materialism and all that in the near future, in some years even people like Glenn Beck will defend socialism.

In the book "Human all Too Human" by the philosopher F. Nietzsche he claimed that political systems died, and collapse, and fade away and give way to new political systems. He even wrote in another of his books (Written around late 1800s) that in the future the working class, will be the ruler class and will be presidents, and rulers of all countries of the world (And it is worth noting that Nietzsche wasn't even a socialist leftist thinker).

So even non-leftist writters predict the coming of a world socialist system, so even Glenn Beck, TV, movies and all that will one way or the other have to welcome the new ideas of socialism that are becoming more in fashion

.

I don't think Glenn Beck is gonna welcome new ideas of socialism! In fact he's "welcomed" them already, accusing Obama of being a socialist, which in his book is basically a form of Satanism.

Likewise with Nietzche. I'm surprised to hear that Nietzche predicted the working class would take over, but then he was a pessimist.

You do know that he despised lower class people, seeing them as inferior uncultured "untermenschen," unlike the sophisticated cultured "ubermenschen" he wanted to see rule the world? And that he thought all socialists and anarchists should be stood up against the wall and shot?

He was pretty violence prone in his thinking, which is the major reason he opposed Christianity, which in his view prevented the "ubermenschen" from being ruthless enough with the underclasses and troublemakers. He didn't put the ugly stuff in his books, wouldn't have helped sales, but his letters, where he let it all hang out, have been preserved.

Hitler made Nietzche a national hero, with the enthusiastic support of his widow. A bit ironic, as Nietzche was never a German nationalist and had nothing against Jews. So Nietzche's problem with Auschwitz would not have been that Hitler exterminated so many people, but that from NIetzche's POV he exterminated the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

And Nietzche would have been contemptuous of anyone opposing Nazism on moral grounds. Though he might well have thought it was unaesthetic.

-M.H.-