How important is class independence?

[Tim Cornelis]

Recently I proposed that voting rights within the Free Union (anarchist 'federation' of sorts) be restricted to workers only. I even made the concession that "bourgeois" sympathisers could still become members with speaking rights.
Though one member argued that 'where do we draw the line for those 'tainted' by capitalism? Certainly, managers can be good contributing members?' I insisted that they have an economic interest in maintaining oppressive social relations and that therefore we should have a worker-only policy in regards to, at least, voting.
How true is this? I doubt Kropotkin would have acted in favour of the aristocracy, or Engels acting in favour of the bourgeoisie in crucial revolutionary moments. If members of the bourgeoisie can assert their support for revolutionary socialism, would their membership be problematic?

[Brutus]

Your concession seems to be the best option. What would a bourgeois individual have to gain under communism? I believe that you should keep to a worker only voting policy, but still give individuals from other classes to say what they want.

[hashem]

without class independence, there can be no proletarian movement and consciousness of workers will never exceed trade unionism.

there is no need to forbid capitalists from voting. they are a small minority of population and can easily be defeated in any election if workers have become a conscious and independent class for themselves.

[Fred]

Recently I proposed that voting rights within the Free Union (anarchist 'federation' of sorts) be restricted to workers only. I even made the concession that "bourgeois" sympathisers could still become members with speaking rights.
Though one member argued that 'where do we draw the line for those 'tainted' by capitalism? Certainly, managers can be good contributing members?' I insisted that they have an economic interest in maintaining oppressive social relations and that therefore we should have a worker-only policy in regards to, at least, voting.
How true is this? I doubt Kropotkin would have acted in favour of the aristocracy, or Engels acting in favour of the bourgeoisie in crucial revolutionary moments. If members of the bourgeoisie can assert their support for revolutionary socialism, would their membership be problematic?

The issue for me here would be, where do you draw the line? What about petite bourgeois elements? They constitute a significant number and certainly a section of this group can be great contributors to the revolution. The actual bourgeoisie are indeed a small number. Managers? Sure, they might be excluded. Cops and prison guards and such, absolutely. Lawyers? Farmers? Students? Doctors?

[Tim Cornelis]

The issue for me here would be, where do you draw the line? What about petite bourgeois elements? They constitute a significant number and certainly a section of this group can be great contributors to the revolution. The actual bourgeoisie are indeed a small number. Managers? Sure, they might be excluded. Cops and prison guards and such, absolutely. Lawyers? Farmers? Students? Doctors?

That's the point she made as well. I proposed all those whom occupy a hierarchical position as their profession to be excluded.
I also said the 'labour aristocracy' should be excluded, but since there's no way to draw an accurate line such would be useless.
And even haute bourgeoisie may be sympathetic to a socialist revolution.
In the French and American revolution, aristocrats also supported the bourgeois revolutions in great numbers and many of the bourgeoisie wanted, for instance, to remain part of the United Kingdom. So to the bourgeois revolutions class independence may not have been that important.

[tuwix]

Recently I proposed that voting rights within the Free Union (anarchist 'federation' of sorts) be restricted to workers only. I even made the concession that "bourgeois" sympathisers could still become members with speaking rights.
Though one member argued that 'where do we draw the line for those 'tainted' by capitalism? Certainly, managers can be good contributing members?' I insisted that they have an economic interest in maintaining oppressive social relations and that therefore we should have a worker-only policy in regards to, at least, voting.
How true is this? I doubt Kropotkin would have acted in favour of the aristocracy, or Engels acting in favour of the bourgeoisie in crucial revolutionary moments. If members of the bourgeoisie can assert their support for revolutionary socialism, would their membership be problematic?

I don't think so. They would be minority. The problem is when they start to corrupt. When they start to buy votes, the problem begins. In representative "democracy" it is easy because number of representants is limited. But in case of direct democracy it is useless. You can't afford to buy milion votes.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Obviously it depends on the context. Considering that your context I would generally say that I agree. That is not to say that labor aristocrats, petty bourgeois, and the lumpen have no place in the revolutionary process, but that the political organization of the working class ought to be firmly based within the basis of class, and that all other friendly non proletarian elements should be welcomed to follow the course of the working class, but should be given no opportunity to lead the working class, nor should their interests be considered as anything other than a means to advance the interests of the working class.

Labor aristocracy is a tough one though, since in a certain sense, the majority of workers are labor aristocrats visa vie their relationship with the periphery. But I would say that in your case it is best to use the operational definition of a worker who does not own the means of production and yet has a material interest in not seeing socialism come about. For example, in my country tenured professors can make up to 300,000 dollars a year at the local state college. That is the money that can be used to purchase mansions and yachts. But when there are people without food or shelter, a socialist society will have absolutely no business in providing these luxury goods and therefore a professor has a material interest in maintaining capitalism. This would apply for Trade Union bureaucrats (who do not make an absurd amount of money but often are given large shares of their boss's corporation and hence had a direct interest in opposing the interest of the working class), some of the rank and file of unions for more privileged sectors (obviously union membership says nothing about class position, and we should not be dogmatically anti-union on that basis, but where I live the teachers union functions as the mafia functions in Sicily, as an anti-worker institution of corruption and wealth accumulation), and the obvious labor aristocrats, those wealthy blue collar workers who do not own the means of production but are far better off than many who do!

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Your concession seems to be the best option. What would a bourgeois individual have to gain under communism? I believe that you should keep to a worker only voting policy, but still give individuals from other classes to say what they want.

Yeah I mean what kind of idiot would let the bourgeois organize a Communist movement?

Oh wait holy shit what is this?

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/iwma/i03.gif

Those bourgeois fuckers in the First International let a guy who owned a Manchester fabric factory become a voting member? And to think, they even let Bakunin in, whose family used to manage Serfs before he became an anarchist!!! I guess he was a fake anarchist?


Obviously it depends on the context. Considering that your context I would generally say that I agree. That is not to say that labor aristocrats, petty bourgeois, and the lumpen have no place in the revolutionary process, but that the political organization of the working class ought to be firmly based within the basis of class, and that all other friendly non proletarian elements should be welcomed to follow the course of the working class, but should be given no opportunity to lead the working class, nor should their interests be considered as anything other than a means to advance the interests of the working class.


You're a Maoist, right? Mao's father was a landlord and usurer ... Mao was born into the family of what was basically a Chinese Kulak. That didn't stop Mao from taking a significant leadership position in the Chinese Communist Party. Sure, one can argue that one's class is not determined by their family, but was he ever a "worker"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Childhood:_1893.E2.80.931911


Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in the rural village of Shaoshanchong in Shaoshan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaoshan), Hunan Province (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunan).[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#cite_note-9) His father, Mao Yichang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Yichang), had been born a poverty-stricken peasant, and had gained two years of education before joining the army. Returning to agriculture, he became a moneylender and grain merchant, buying up local grain and selling it in the city for a higher price, becoming one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan, with 20 acres of land.

Labor aristocracy is a tough one though, since in a certain sense, the majority of workers are labor aristocrats visa vie their relationship with the periphery. But I would say that in your case it is best to use the operational definition of a worker who does not own the means of production and yet has a material interest in not seeing socialism come about. For example, in my country tenured professors can make up to 300,000 dollars a year at the local state college. That is the money that can be used to purchase mansions and yachts. But when there are people without food or shelter, a socialist society will have absolutely no business in providing these luxury goods and therefore a professor has a material interest in maintaining capitalism. This would apply for Trade Union bureaucrats (who do not make an absurd amount of money but often are given large shares of their boss's corporation and hence had a direct interest in opposing the interest of the working class), some of the rank and file of unions for more privileged sectors (obviously union membership says nothing about class position, and we should not be dogmatically anti-union on that basis, but where I live the teachers union functions as the mafia functions in Sicily, as an anti-worker institution of corruption and wealth accumulation), and the obvious labor aristocrats, those wealthy blue collar workers who do not own the means of production but are far better off than many who do!Holy shit, where is this university? Professors with yachts at a public uni? I'm guessing you're not in the USA.



The proletariat has the potential agency, according to Marx, to change the way production is organized in our society. That in no way, shape or form excludes non-proletarians from participating in the revolution, even in a "leadership" capacity. The broader point is that the Communist movement does not concern itself with the interests of the bourgeois or petit bourgeois as classes of people. That doesn't mean that individuals from these classes are somehow excluded. This isn't some rape crisis group where the bourgeois need to be excluded so proletarians feel comfortable to speak their minds or something like that. There have been members of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the socialist, communist and anarchist movements since they came into existence - in fact, from Prince Kropotkin to Karl Marx to Bakunin to Engels, the early Communist movement was based around intellectuals coming from the petit bourgeois, bourgeois and aristocracy.

As much as anything else, when the working class wants to take power, their numbers will overwhelm any particular other class interests in the movement for obvious demographic reasons. No moralism is necessary. On the other hand, these upper class people can bring the structural advantages that they have gained as members of their class into any movement (such as more access to resources, travel, educational opportunities, and so on)

[Ravachol]

Recently I proposed that voting rights within the Free Union (anarchist 'federation' of sorts) be restricted to workers only. I even made the concession that "bourgeois" sympathisers could still become members with speaking rights.
Though one member argued that 'where do we draw the line for those 'tainted' by capitalism? Certainly, managers can be good contributing members?' I insisted that they have an economic interest in maintaining oppressive social relations and that therefore we should have a worker-only policy in regards to, at least, voting.
How true is this? I doubt Kropotkin would have acted in favour of the aristocracy, or Engels acting in favour of the bourgeoisie in crucial revolutionary moments. If members of the bourgeoisie can assert their support for revolutionary socialism, would their membership be problematic?

We're all tainted by capital and parttake in varying degrees and tasks of its reproduction. Trying to cook up a hardcoded flowchart for "admittance to the proletarian revolutionary organisation for the revolutionary liberation of the proletariat" is an exercise in futility. I mean what about tenured professors (who have the power to hire and fire)? What about teachers (who are integral in the disciplining and reproduction of labour power)? What about the self-employed? A self-employed carpenter? A self-employed external managment consultant? Etc. etc.

The problem with all these things is that the lines aren't so much arbitrary (much like what work activity is 'acceptable' for communists and what is not can usually be judged on a gut feeling tbh, ie. see the Aufhebengate scandal) but that it is a useless exercise in taxonomy. Trying to divine some anthropological model of the working class is the domain of sociologists and marketing corporations or political rackets (and their less successfull cousins, 'revolutionary' rackets). Best case scenario you end up with some weird proletkult which thinks its conditions of admittence influences the scope and reach of its activity (it doesn't) or makes it more appealing to "the working class" to join or whatever (again, it doesn't). Worst case scenario you end up with a bunch of students wearing flatcaps or hardhats and reflecting jackets or blue overalls cosplaying workers like the infinite ammount of Maoist groups in the '70s and their infantile "members have to change jobs to factory-work" line or some "boots 'n braces, beer & football oi!oi! up the lads innit?" latter-day Red Action farce...

The proletariat is only of interest to communists (which is something else than bleeding-heart general empathy and human interest) in the moment of its movement, that is, when (and if) it asserts itself against capital.



Class struggle does not concern us in itself, only in so far as it can produce its own end: namely, communism. As we know, that struggle can also feed on itself, forcing the capital-labour relation to change, to get softer and stronger (both), and this is what class struggle does most of the time.

The crux of communist theory is to know if, how and when the proletarians wage a class war that is able to produce more than itself.

Communist revolution is not just an intensified extension of the labour v. capital confrontation: it extends this confrontation and breaks away from it.


As such, the composition of pro-revolutionary grouplets themselves are of little relevance imo.

But all other discussion aside, how realistic do you think it is the CEO of, let's say, Akzo-Nobel, is gonna join the Free Union? Or even some midlevel interim manager at KPMG?