democratic socialists of america political education committee los angeles fall 2018 A CLASS O N CLASS DSA-LA’s Political Education Committee is proud to present a Class on Class. CLASS This study series examines a selection of foundational concepts and inquiries, with the goal of more deeply grounding our collective struggle in rigorous UNDER socialist analysis. As organized socialists in the resurgence of a popular social- CAPITALISM ist movement in the United States, we have the responsibility to study and learn from the radical visionaries who have built and sustained the movement many of us have recently joined — we see this Class on Class as a way to undertake this important work together. A The Class on Class is comprised of four distinct modules which conceptually build on one another. Each module features a selection of readings and initial discussion questions (contained in this reader), as well as an in-person compo- nent where a short presentation is followed by ample opportunity to discuss, CLASS dissect, and debate these concepts in facilitated group conversations. SURPLUS The construction of the Class on Class was the product of five months of VALUE & collaborative work undertaken by new and long-time leftists in DSA-LA’s Politi- cal Education Committee. From the beginning, it was never our goal to assem- EXPLOITATION ble an authoritative or comprehensive reading list, but instead, to work togeth- er to curate a selection of readings from a range of classic and contemporary materialist thinkers that would bring key analyses and arguments into conver- sation with debates and organizing projects in our own chapter and beyond. The topic of the study series itself (class) was informed by polls of both the Political Education Committee and the chapter at large, and all Committee members were invited to contribute suggested readings. While teams of 3-4 volunteers took the lead on developing each Class, both leads and members met together to consider, debate, and select readings for several evenings over tea, beer, and fried rice. This communal, participatory process was itself a form of study, and reflects our deeply held belief in the capacity of all people to serve as co-learners and educators, and acknowledges our collective respon- sibility to share our analysis in a way that builds popular support for an alterna- O N tive politics. So, if this is your first time reading Marx, Luxemburg, Bhattacharya and others — welcome. If you’re already well-acquainted with these concepts — welcome back. Today, the potential to build a new socialist society in our time is greater CLASS than it has been in decades, and this is part of our work together. ? The Communist Manifesto 06 chapter one 04 Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels CLASS UNDER What Keeps Capitalism Going? 14 Michael A. Lebowitz CAPITALISM Why the Proletariat? 19 Hal Draper Value, Price, & Profit 30 28 Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels SURPLUS The Contradictory Unity Of 62 VALUE & Production And Realisation David Harvey EXPLOITATION Selections From ‘The Mass Strike’ 68 Rosa Luxemburg The Marxist View Of Labor Unions 92 66 Dan La Botz CLASS STRUGGLE Why Class Struggle Is Central 125 & POLITICAL Ellen Meiksins Wood Liberation Praxis Of Social 128 STRUGGLE And Political Movements Enrique Dussel Neoliberalism Is A Political Project 139 David Harvey CAPITALISM TODAY Globalisation And US Prison Growth 145 “LATE CAPITALISM” Ruth Wilson Gilmore How Not To Skip Class 162 Tithi Bhattacharya Right To The City 178 David Harvey ? class u n d e r capitalism Capitalism is not the inevitable, natural organization of society—but this reality is too often obscured by capitalism's near total victory over all aspects of our lives. As individuals, we often feel powerless in the face of a ruthlessly entrenched world system built to dehumanize us, extract value from us, and discard us. Yet, dismantling capitalism and building a different society—a radically democratic society structured around human need, dignity, and freedom—is possible, and it’s our shared obligation to do so. As socialists, a material analysis of the current conditions of society and power (along the lines of class, race, gender, origin, ability, and more) is critical to defining and manifesting a winning strategy, and ultimately building the world we envision. This first module seeks to lay a foundation for the entire Class on Class—readings have been selected to introduce and reintroduce members to what we mean when we talk about “relations of production,” why socialists focus on the working class, and why our collective liberation necessarily requires that we go beyond mitigating the harms endemic to capitalism and dismantle the capitalist system entirely. 4 MODULE ONE The Communist Manifesto states, "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionizing the instruments of production, hence the relations of production, hence social relations as a whole." Why do you think the bourgeoisie has this characteristic? Lebowitz claims that people need to believe that an alternative to capitalism is possible in order to move to abolish it, that simply strug- gling for justice within capitalism will not lead to socialism. Do you agree? Why or why not? Draper notes that the depredations of capitalism have alienated and bankrupted members of the capitalist class itself—how and why are the interests of these disaffected capitalists still antagonistic to those of the working class? ?5 ? Communist Manifesto Bourgeois & Proletarians Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle of labour in each single workshop. Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois. Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same ? 6 ? proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.