Plain "Proletocracy," Language, and the Working Class

[Die Neue Zeit]

[Comrades and other RevLefters, given the recent flurry regarding my neologisms (new words), I spent the past two and a half hours compiling this very first and critical portion of "Social Proletocracy: The Revolutionary Merger of Marxism and the Workers' Movement" - Chapter 5 of The Class Struggle Revisited.]



“Social Democracy is not confined to simple service to the working-class movement: it represents ‘the combination of socialism and the working-class movement’ (to use Karl Kautsky’s definition which repeats the basic ideas of the Communist Manifesto); the task of Social Democracy is to bring definite socialist ideals to the spontaneous working-class movement, to connect this movement with socialist convictions that should attain the level of contemporary science, to connect it with the regular political struggle for democracy as a means of achieving socialism—in a word, to fuse this spontaneous movement into one indestructible whole with the activity of the revolutionary party.” (Vladimir Lenin)



The quote above reiterates Kautsky’s words from The Class Struggle as quoted at the end of Chapter 3, and explains why German Marxism took the form of classical “social democracy” – the extension of political democracy to socioeconomic affairs (as well as the less obvious but equally important extension of political democracy for its own sake). In spite of the problems mentioned in Chapter 4, the Russian Marxist theoretician Boris Kagarlitsky had this to say regarding both classical “social democracy” and a crises of theory faced by modern Marxists:

This explosive mixture really did shake the world [...] When Marx's ideas became the ideology of the workers' movement they underwent a transformation, and became Marxism.

[...]

In the post-war period this link was severed.

Marxism has indeed suffered a historic defeat. However, this did not come at the end of the 1980s when the Berlin Wall fell, but much earlier, when theory again became detached and isolated from the movement. This did not happen only in the East with the founding of Stalinist 'Marxism-Leninism.' As early as the 1930s Marxism in the West became the province of academic circles, while for social democracy and the communist parties the general 'classical' formulae remained no more than dead letters.

In the 1990s the rituals were discarded. This was easy because it had been a long time since anyone had given any thought to their meaning. We returned to the starting point, when theory and the mass movement were quite disconnected. But the two are not separated by an insurmountable wall. The fact that a significant layer of workers has only a very dim notion of socialist ideas does not mean that these ideas should not be propagated.

Marxists are left with the unenviable task of going beyond merely repeating the respective “merger” achievements of Marx and of the 19th-century “social-democrats.” Through scientific socialism, Marx was able to unite political socialism with the workers’ pre-movement struggles, and his immediate theoretical successors, most notably Kautsky, were able to unite his ideas with the emerging “social-democratic” mass movement, thus creating what is known today as “Marxism” (in spite of the overly negative remarks by Cyril Smith as quoted in Chapter 1). Unfortunately, this “Marxism” itself, not just political socialism, proved historically to be quite detachable from the workers’ movement, not the least of which is because of its vulnerability to reductionism, revisionism, and sectarianism. This is where revolutionary Marxism – the revolutionary merger of both the entire workers’ movement and a “Marxism” purged of reductionism, revisionism, and sectarianism – comes into play.

Language and the Working Class

“The socialist project has to be translated into a language that people understand. This is not the language, cultivated by Western intellectuals, of postmodernist radicalism and multiculturalism. It is the simple, blunt language of classical Marxism.” (Boris Kagarlitsky)

The Marxist Antonio Gramsci formulated the concept of cultural hegemony. With this, he was able to explain the failure of past workers’ revolutions: the absorption of the ruling-class perspectives by the masses of workers. This absorption came about through compulsory schooling, mass media, popular culture, and even language.

Take, for example, the “double-duth” notion of a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Said Hugo Chavez, “We know that one of Karl Marx's proposals was precisely that of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but that is not viable [...]” In spite of the blatantly reformist context of this quote (since Chavez is an outright reformist), the Venezuelan president had an unintentional point. Marx, for all his colossal efforts to unite political socialism with the workers’ labour movement of his time, scrambled to rebut Blanqui’s conception of “dictatorship” (by a highly organized elite of secretive conspirators) with the “dictatorship of the proletariat” – and counterposed it with the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” – without properly understanding the Roman application of that very old word.

Shortly after the foundation of the Roman Republic, it was realized that, in spite of the establishment of the two-consul system, there were times whereupon unaccountable power had to be concentrated in the hands of a single person. This realization led to the creation of the Roman dictatorship, which usually functioned rei gerendae causa (“for the matter to be done”), usually revolving around the preservation of the republican order, even against elements that desired “dictatorship” in the modern sense. Moreover, this dictatorship was limited to six months, and those who held this office resigned upon fulfilling the purpose of the dictatorship. All was well until Sulla and especially Julius Caesar came along, whereupon the Roman dictatorship was transformed to become synonymous with the modern understanding of the word: tyranny.

Notwithstanding the individualistic connotations of that word in this classical sense, in Marx’s formulation of the pre-socialist “dictatorship of the proletariat,” it can be said that such “dictatorship” has the feature of impermanence. However, the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” does not have this temporary feature.

Nowadays, Marxists of various tendencies promote the notions of “workers’ rule” and “proletarian democracy” in order to avoid the negative connotations of Marx’s “double-duth” concept, especially with the passing of the revisionist “Marxist-Leninist” regimes and the grossly revisionist legacy left behind by the founders of “Marxism-Leninism”: “Comrade” Stalin and his gang. However, how can that be translated into an ideology like classical "social democracy" but without class ambiguities?

As noted at the end of Chapter 4, words like “proletarism” do not emphasize the revolutionary demand for the rule of society by the working class. The Greek word for “rule” is kratos, and when combined with the Greek word for “people” – demos – the result is “democracy.” Therefore, at least one new term needs to be adopted by revolutionary Marxists – those Marxists who consciously promote the specific merger above – as a replacement for the “double-duth” notion of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (in this chapter, two distinct terms are proposed, the second being for “socialism”): proletocracy.



REFERENCES:

Our Immediate Task by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...m#v04pp64h-215]

New Realism, New Barbarism: Socialist Theory in the Era of Globalization by Boris Kagarlitsky [http://books.google.ca/books?id=SoTI...=gbs_summary_r]

Language, Marxism, and Gramsci [http://www.revleft.com/vb/language-m...133/index.html]

"Marxism-Leninism": anti-Leninist, reductionist, and grossly revisionist [http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxism-le...258/index.html]

[Tower of Bebel]

I want to add that social democracy wasn't always able to 'merge' marxism with the workers movement.

Even before the 'great betrayal' (1913-1914) and even from the beginning of the creation of the 2nd Internationale some Social democratic parties and/or movements were not aimed at merging the workers movement and marxism. For example: The Belgian social democrats were a mix of 'progressive liberalism' and what you might call reductionist views of marxism. Marx was often cited, but it was never 'merged'. Marxism was abused by some social democracy from the beginning.

So the failure or historical defeat of social democracy was imminent; in other words: there is a difference between social democracy historicaly and theoreticaly.
Even the German social democrats were never able to merge marxism with the workers movement. That's were Gramsci comes into play. Social democracy as a whole wasn't capable of ending the cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie because. It might only have been they aim of some important figures in history (Kautsky, Lenin) to breake this hegemony (= merge marxism and the workers movement; since an understanding of marxism ends the cultural hegemony of the bourgeosie).

I think this 'great canion' which is standing inbetween theory and the historical development of a movement will always affect future movements.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Rakunin, I forgot to post this Chapter 4 section in this forum (it's already in the RevMarx forum, and it comes right after a brief introduction) - I alluded to it in my remark "In spite of the problems mentioned in Chapter 4":

http://www.revleft.com/vb/parliament...977/index.html

Anyhow, this is the first section of CHAPTER 4: ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK, AND BUILDING THE MASS PARTY OF THE WORKING CLASS. Enjoy:

Problems with “Social Democracy”

"As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin's actual outlook, the terms 'party of a new type' and 'vanguard party' are actually helpful - but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks. The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as 'filling up' the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfill its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and 'combination.'" (Lars Lih)

When Russian Marxism emerged, it came in the form of “social democracy,” modeled after the very “vanguardist” German experience. Although this classical “social democracy” was a far cry from the liberal and economistic “social democracy” of today, the theoretical underpinnings of the former were rife with serious problems from the outset, which will be explained in the following deconstruction of key parts of Chapter 5 of Kautsky’s The Class Struggle.

The interest of the working-class is not limited to the laws which directly affect it; the great majority of laws touch its interests to some extent. Like every other class, the working-class must strive to influence the state authorities, to bend them to its purposes.

Great capitalists can influence rulers and legislators directly, but the workers can do so only through parliamentary activity. It matters little whether a government be republican in name. In all parliamentary countries it rests with the legislative body to grant tax levies. By electing representatives to parliament, therefore, the working-class can exercise an influence over the governmental powers.

[…]

The proletariat is, however, more favorably situated in regard to parliamentary activity.

[…]

The proletariat is, therefore, in a position to form an independent party. It knows how to control its representatives. Moreover, it finds in its own ranks an increasing number of persons well fitted to represent it in legislative halls.

Whenever the proletariat engages in parliamentary activity as a self-conscious class, parliamentarism begins to change its character. It ceases to be a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This very participation of the proletariat proves to be the most effective means of shaking up the hitherto indifferent divisions of the proletariat and giving them hope and confidence. It is the most powerful lever that can be utilized to raise the proletariat out of its economic, social and moral degradation.

The proletariat has, therefore, no reason to distrust parliamentary action; on the other hand, it has every reason to exert all its energy to increase the power of parliaments in their relation to other departments of government and to swell to the utmost its own parliamentary representation.

All of the above – albeit within the context of the lapsing of the Anti-Socialist Laws shortly following the dismissal of the “Iron Chancellor” Bismarck – is an expression of the then-newfound parliamentary reductionism on the part of Kautsky, in part because of his “apocalyptic predestinationist” belief that capitalism would soon collapse because of a crisis either in the here and now or on the horizon, which would “explain away” his revisionist conclusions that no real revolutionary theory was needed and that only a Rabocheye Dyelo-style “economism” (albeit only in the polemical sense) was necessary. For him, the “union of the labor movement and socialism” – the central theme of this thesis – culminated in a mere parliamentarian “Socialist Party”: the social-democratic party. It is unfortunate that his most well-known disciple, when he scrambled to “find” the earliest traces of Kautsky’s transformation from the real founder of “Marxism” to an anti-proletarian “renegade” – and then committed his “findings” to The State and Revolution – did not find the answers right under his proverbial nose.

On another note, even the word “democracy” in “social democracy” raises serious concerns. First, Kautsky entertained fetishes of “pure” (bourgeois) democracy, hence the aforementioned parliamentary reductionism and the lack of discussion on participatory democracy (much less its most extreme form, direct democracy). Therefore, the question to ask is: “social democracy” for whom? That is, was this “social democracy” for the working class, for the petit-bourgeoisie, or for the bourgeoisie? History has irrevocably answered that question. Second, it would appear that Kautsky, in spite of what he said about educated proletarians, was the intellectual forerunner of modern sectoral chauvinism (the application of the word “proletarian” to only those who work strictly to produce commodities, thus separating them from the rest of the working class) – hence the need for the confused “social democracy” and not the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (which will be revisited upon as a term later in the thesis):

The Socialist movement has, in the nature of things, been from the beginning international in its character. But in each country it has at the same time the tendency to become a national party. That is, it tends to become the representative, not only of the industrial wage-earners, but of all laboring and exploited classes, or, in other words, of the great majority of the population. We have already seen that the industrial proletariat tends to become the only working-class. We have pointed out, also, that the other working-classes are coming more and more to resemble the proletariat in the conditions of labor and way of living. And we have discovered that the proletariat is the only one among the working-classes that grows steadily in energy, in intelligence, and in clear consciousness of its purpose. It is becoming the center about which the disappearing survivals of the other working-classes group themselves. Its ways of feeling and thinking are becoming standard for the whole mass of non-capitalists, no matter what their status may be.

As rapidly as the wage-earners become the leaders of the people, the labor party becomes a people’s party. When an independent craftsman feels like a proletarian, when he recognizes that he, or at any rate his children, will sooner or later be thrust into the proletariat, that there is no salvation for him except through the liberation of the proletariat – from that moment on he will see in the Socialist Party the natural representative of his interests.

We have already explained that he has nothing to fear from a socialist victory. In fact such a victory would be distinctly to his advantage, for it would usher in a society that would free all workers from exploitation and oppression and give them security and prosperity.

But the Socialist Party represents the interests of all non-capitalist classes, not only in the future, but in the present. The proletariat, as the lowest of the exploited strata, cannot free itself from exploitation and oppression without putting an end to all exploitation and oppression. It is, therefore, their sworn enemy, no matter in what form they may appear; it is the champion of all the exploited and oppressed.

Third, this is rather surprisingly the forerunner to Lenin’s historically validated theory of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. The key problem with Kautsky’s formulation here is that it is best applied only during the beginning of the capitalist mode of production in any particular nation-state, and not during towards the end, when a proper socialist revolution occurs.

One can only wonder about the petit-bourgeois and lumpen elements – non-bourgeois classes – who flocked to the fascist causes, as well as wonder about modern “social democracy” (that is, “social democracy” for the bourgeoisie) being the direct result of not orienting the classical “social democracy” in the most advanced bourgeois-capitalist countries to the working class only. Lenin wrote a rather lengthy work attacking populism, titled What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats. Today, it is more apt to comment on what the populist “social-democrats” are – and how they fight the working class!