FACING REALITY

by C. L. R. James, Grace C. Lee, Pierre Chaulieu

,'.�

BEWICK/ED 1974 CONTENTS

Introduction . . 5

Copyright c 1974 I The Workers Councils 7

Bewick Editi ons The Whole World 20 1443 Bewick n III The Self -Confessed Bankruptcy Detroit, Mich. 48214 of Official Society 42

IV End of a Philosophy 65 .

. V New Society: New People 71 Published 1958 by The Marxist Organization : 1903-1958 86 Correspondence Publishing Company VI

VII What To Do and How To Do It 106

Conclusion 161

Appendix . 167 INTRODUCTION

The whole world today lives in the shadow of the state power. This state power is an ever-present self­ perpetuating body over and above society. It transforms the human personality into a ma'Ss of economic needs to be satisfied by decimal points of economic progress. It robs everyone of initiative and clogs the free develop­ ment of society. This state power, by whatever name it Is called, One-Party state or Welfare state, destroys aU pretense of government by the peopie, of the people. that remains is government for the people. /,11 Against this monster, people all over the world, particularly ordinary working people in factorieB, mines,!3,l1d fields, and offices, are rebelling every day in ways of their own invention. Sometimes their struggles are on small personal scale. More effectively, they are the ac­a of groups, formal or informal, but always unof-

------.JfU.jtJOnsc;C 8} .. around their WO'I'k and their place of work.j� 1.l, -'Qll:r:gg:.2aAlways.llnl.ijzZJA�d the aim is to regain control over their ovm conditions of life and their relations with one another. Their strivings, their struggles, their methods have few chroniclers. They themselves are constantly attempting various forms of organization, uncertain of where the struggle is going to end. Nevertheless, they are imbued with one fundamental certainty, that they l1ave to destroy the continuously mounting bureaucratic mass be themselves destroyed by it. Foror some years after the war it seemed that the to­ talitarian state, by its control of every aspect of human 11fe, had crushed forever all hopes for freedom, for lib­ erty and socialism. Men struggled, but under the belief that the Welfare State was in reality only a half-way house to the ultimate totalitarian domination. A sym­ bolical date was even fixed when this would be achieved all over the world, 1984. Now, however, the Hungarian Revolution has un­ covered, for the whole world to see, the goal to which the struggles against bureaucracy are moving. The Hun­ garian people have restored the belief of the Nineteenth century in progress. They have restored to the revolu­ tionary soci.alist movement the conviction that the fu­ ture lies with the power of the working class and the great masses of the people. It must never be forgotten that the Hungarian Revo­ lution was successful as no other revolution in hiBtory 'was successful. The totalitarian state was not merely defeated. It was totally destroyed and the counter­ rEvolution crushed. It is the totality of the success which 5 6 INTRODUCTION e labled � the workers to do so much before the revolu­ tlOn was robbed of its . victory by Russian tanks I. THE 'WORKERS COUNCILS outsIde from What then was the HUNGAR Y : great achievement of revolutlOn? th e The secret of the Workers Councils is this. From the By he total uprising � of a people, the Hungarian RevolutIOn very start of the Hungarian Revolution, these shop floor has disclosed the political form which not organizations of the workers demonstrated such con­ only �est 'oyS the bureaucratic 7 state power, but substi­ �utes In scious mastery of the needs, processes, and inter-rela­ Its place a socialist democracy, based not on tions of production, that they did not have to exercise the ontrol of eople . � l? but on the mastery of thill.gs. polltIcal This any domination over people. That mastery is the only form IS the Workers Cou ncils, embracing the basis of political power against the bureaucratic state W 10le of the working . population from bottom � . to top, It is the very essence of any government which is to be oma Ized at th e source ? o! all power, the place of wol.'k, makmg . based upon general consent and not on force . The ad­ all deCIsions in the shop or in the office. ministration of things by the Workers Councils estab­ lIshed a basic coherence in society and from this coher­ ence they derived automatically their right to govern. ,\Vorkers' management of production, government from below, and government by consent have thus been shown to be one and the same thing . The actual resort to arms has obscured the social transformation that took place from the first day of the revolution. Along with the fighting the workers took over immediate control of the country. So complete was their mastery of production that large bodies of men, dispersed over wide areas, could exercise their control v;ith the strategy of a general deployill.g troops, and YEt with the flexibility of a single craftsman guiding his tools. The decision to carry out a general strike was not decreed by any center. Simultaneously and spon­ taneously in all industrial areas of the country, the de­ CISion not to work was taken, and the strike organized itself immediately according to the objective needs of the revolutionary forces. On the initiative of the Work­ ers Councils in each plant, it was possible to come to a general decision, immediately acceptable to all, as to who should work and who should not work, where the goods produced should go and where they should not go. No central plan was needed. The plan ,vas within each individual factory. General strikes have played a deci­ sive role in bringing down governments in every modern revolution, but never before has the general been ini­ tiated and controlled so completely by the particular. It was not merely unity against the common enemy which made this cohesion possible. The strike, as well as the whole course of the revolution, demonstrated how deep were its roots ill. the mastery over production and social processes, which is the natural and acquired power of modern workers. '1 rpI' THE WORKERS COUNCILS 9 8 FACING REALITY From the moment that they USE increasing them by 10%. PRODUCTION FOR they of industry under their control, great revolutions have obtained arms from took the apparatus . sol­ the essential off the veils which hide diersAll who joined the revolution, and by taking",them began to tear modern economy. from the police and the arsenals of the state. In this simplicity of the THE PEOPLE the Hungarian Revolution was no exception . The dif­ GOVERNMENT BY and he pl nners ference is that in Hungary, despite the fact that the The parties, the administrators � � c l­ without them socIety WIll � whole army came over to the revolution, the Workers have claimed always that . The Workers CouncIls Councils proceeded immediately to manufacture their lapse into anarchy and chaos for for an official center and a own arms . The decision was immediately taken that recognized the need revolution, because they be­ these newly-produced arms should be distributed to the head of state. Early in the e, they the confidence of the peopl striking workers in other industries who were to with­ lIeved Nagy to have . the national eadershiP. But draw them�elves into an army of defense. Production proposed that he assume � and for all wlth the delega­ for use was for them not a theory but an automatic the Councils finished once while the population retreats procedure from the moment they began to govern tion of power'S to a center . the Workers CouncIls and themselves. into passive obedience. Thus not a dual power in the At a certain stage the Miners' Councils decided thE- Nagy government were . The Nagy g vernm�nt work in order to keep the mines from flooding. Atto classical sense of that phrase � ounClI by m­ another, they informed the Kadar government precisely to legalize the revo!u ionary ? proposed . � eXIstmg� admmlstratlOn. The how much they would produce in exchange for precise corporating them into the clear, in reply, that political concessions. At the same time they opened Workers Councils made it they and that the pow to out to all a vision of the future by stating boldly and were the legal administration, . n afUClal�� confidently that once all their political demands were indeed dis-establish . legalize, incorporate, . drew no dIstmctlOn� be­ realized, they would produce at a rate that would as­ center, reBted with them. They and the work of govern­ tonish the world. Thus they established that the secret tween the work of production should OCCUpy government of higher productivity is self-government in production. ment. They decided who ed, which ministries should Previous revolutions have concentrated on the seiz­ posts, who should be dismiss dIssolved. . ure of political power and only afterwards faced the retained, which should . be attacked WIthout problems of organizing production according new be Evervone knows that the revolution to secret police. But pe ple procedures and method'S. The great lesson of the years mercy the infamous Stalinist with the far re �I ­ 1923-1956 has been this, that degradation in production have not concerned themselves � � . . the Workers Coun Ls.� It IS re}ations results in the degradation of political relations portant judicial actIOns of � to place on n al those and from there to the degradation of all relations in traditional with revolutions � . whom popular opmlOn ho ds society. The Hungarian Revolution has reversed this members of the old regime � . In the las twenty-fIve process. a result of the stage reached by modem in­ most responsible for its crimes � of political enemIes an ven­ dustry andAs its experience under the bureaucratic lead­ years, however, the trials . msepara:ble �m the ership of the Party and it'S Plan, the revolution from geance against them have become . of the totahtan an and the very beginning seized power in the process of pro­ public mind from the brutalities that they repr sented duction and from there organized the political power. imperialistic states. Conscious . . theIr� own and never forgettmg, In The Workers Councils did not look to governments a new social order, . Hunganan revol ­ carry out their demands. In the Hungarian Revolu­ they were fighting, the :u words, en ­ terror and vengeance. C:haract ? totion the Workers Councils not only released the politi­ tionarieswhy renounced . judicial functIO wlthl?­ cal prisoners, as in all revolutions. They immediately tically they carried out their ?B itself. The Counclls constI­ rehired them at their old plants without loss of pay. the framework of the plant by one, the Even while they were demanding that the government themselves into courts to discuss, one tuted the trade union officials, and abolish the sY'Stem of norms and quotas, they were directors of the plant, the from which 13houl be expell d themselves establishing how much work should be done party officials, to decide � to remam.� They dIssolved a.nd by whom, in accordance with what was needed. the plant and which allowed of the personnel departments They demanded increases in wages, but they assumed and destroyed the records the responsibility not only for paying wages but for 10 FACING REALITY THE WORKERS COUNCILS

which had become, as in pla.nts the world over, centers pOl'ated into it, or are prepared at critical moments to of blacklisting and spying. submit to it. The powerful labor organizations, there­ THE END OF THE POLITICAL PARTY fore, by their very existence, must SUPPl'el3S those crea­ One of the greatest achievements of the Hungarian tIVe energies which the reconstitution of society demands Revolution was to destroy once and for all the legend f!"Om the mass of the people. The Workers Councils in that the working class cannot act succesl3fully except Hungary instructed the workers to put aside party affil­ under the leadership of a political party. It did all that iutions and elect their delegates according to their did precisely because it was not under the leadership judgment of them as workers in the plant. At the same it of a political party. If a pOlitical party had existed to time no worker was dil3criminated against either in his lead the revolution, that political party would have led or in his election to the Workers Councils because work the revolution to disaster, as it has led every revolution of his party affiliations. The traditional political par­ to disaster dUi"ing the last thirty years. There was lead­ ties t.ake their political differences into tl1e factories, ership on all sides, but there was no party leading it. treaking the unity of the workers according to these No party in the world would have dared to lead the divisions. They make of individual workers representa­ country into a counter-attack in the face of thousands tIVes of a political line, cm-rupting relations between of Russian tanks. Nothing but an organization in close people by transforming them into relations of political contact with the working class population in the factory, rivalry. Once the powers of government were with the and which therefore knew and felt the strength of the shop floor organizations, the objective relations of the population at every stage, could have dared to begin labor process provided all the discipline required. On the battle a second time. still later, after the military the basis of that objective discipline, the widest variety battle had been lost, no organization except Workers views and idiosyncracies could not only be tolerated of Councils would have dared to start a general strike but welcomed. and carry it on for five weeks, unquestionably the most So confident were the Workers Councils that the astonishing event in the whole history of revolutionary ,"orkers' mastery over production would be decisive in struggles. the solution of all important questions, that they pro­ In these unprecedented examples of leadership the posed a great Party of the Revolution. This was to in­ Workers Councils put an end to the foolish dreams, Clude all who had taken part in the revolution, the disasters, and despair which have attended all those clerical and petty-bourgeois Right, former members of who, since 1923, have placed the hope for socialism in the Small Proprietors Party, Social-Democrats and Com­ the elite party, whether Communist or Social-Democrat. munists. Before these and other proposals could be The political party, as such, whatever type it il3, consti­ 'vI'orked out and tried, the Russian tanks suppressed the tutes essentially a separation of the organizing intellec­ revolution. tuals and workers with an instinct for leadership, from Once the Hungarian people erupted spontaneously, the masses as force and motive power. As long as the tbe rest followed with an organic necesSity and a com­ real centers of administration were the private capi­ pleteness of self-organization that distinguishes this talists in their varioul3 spheres, the apparatus of gov­ revolution from all previous revolutions and marks it ernment was relatively simple. Political parties as such a.s specifically a revolution of the middle of the Twen­ CGuid represent the opposing classes and in their con­ tieth Century. So obviously were the Workers Councils flicts with one another and their bids for popular sup­ the natural and logical alternative to the totalitarian port, clarify the choices before society, and educate the state, that the traditional demand for a Constituent population as a whole. But with the growth of large Al3sembly or Convention to create a new form of gov­ scale production, the state apparatul3 controls the na­ ernment, was not even raised. So deep is the conscious­ tional economy in fact, and whichever party comes to ness in modern people that organization of production power inherits and becomes the agent of an existing is the basis of society, that the whole population mo­ a.pparatus. bilized itself around the Workers Councils as the natural Control over production means first and foremost goveTDlllent. control over the workers, and the modern state can' It is not excluded that in their search for ways and function only if the decisive trade unions are incor- means to organize a new state, political partiel3 might 12 FACING REALITY have been formed. But with the state founded on Work­ ers Councils, no political parties could assume the pow­ ers, suppress the people, or make the mischief that we have seen from all of them in the last thirty years.

WORKERS AND INTELLIGENTSIA Capitalism has created and steadily deepened the between workers and the intelligentsia (technicians andgulf intellectuals). These have been incorporated by capitalism into the directing apparatus of industry and the state. There they administer and discipline working population. The Hungarian workers,. con­ thsciouse that technicians are part of the labor process, gave to technicians and intellectuals their place on the Workers Councils. The majority on the Councils were fittingly production workers, who com;titute the majo­ l'ity in the plant itself. But in these all-inclusive ers Councils, the technician could be functionallyWork­ re­ lated to the activities and attitudes of the plant com­ IUunity, instead of being isolated from the mass of the people, as he is on both sides of the Iron Curtain today. In previous revolutions, particularly the Russian, it c.o wa;s necessary to state and restate and underline the l!) en pGwer of the working class. The very emphasis testified ..... to the weakness of the proletariat in the social structure the nation. The modern world has understood, after threeof decades of bitter experience, that the socialist revolution is a national revolution. Recognized at home and abroad as the leader of the nation, the Hungarian workers called for the establishment of "Workers ci1;s in every branch of the national activity." ThusCoun­ not only white collar workers in offices, but all government enlployees, including the police, should have their own Councils. The Hungarian intellectUals heroically defied Stal­ inism. Yet even after the revolution began, all that they could demand was the democratization of the Party and the government, freedom of speech, honesty in plac­ the economic situation before the people, Nagy ingpower, etc. Within a week they had come to the con­in clusion that the Workers Councils should form the government of the country with Zoltan Kodaly. the composer, as president because of his great national and international reputation. It was the Hungarian workers and not they who showed the form for the new society. THE FARMERS AND THE WORKERS The Hungarian peasants showed how progressed in the last 30 years. They brokefar societythe hascolle ctive farms which were in reality factories upin the THE WORKERS COUNCILS 13 field, owned and run by the state, the Party. and the Plan. But at the same time they immediately organized themselves to establish contact with the workers and others in the· towrrs on the basis of social need. They organized theil' trucks to take them food, did not wait to be paid but went back to the countryside to bring in new loads, risking their lives to do so. So confident were they that the only power against the totalitarian state was the workers, that the peasants did not wait to see if the workers would guarantee them the land before committing themselves to active support of the Workers Councils. What revoluthe tionary governments have usually striven in vain to win, the confidence of the peasants, was here achieved in re­ verse-the peasant took all risks in order to show his confidence in the worker. These objectively developed relations of cooperation have now passed into the subjective personality of peo­ ple, their instinctive responses and the way they act. Released from the fear that art and literature must serve only politics, sensing all aroUhd them the expan­ sion of human needs, human capacities, and cooperation, the Hungarian people created twenty-five new news­ papers overnight, the older artists and the younger ents pouring out news, articles, stories, and poems, intal­ a flood -tide of artistic energy.

WORKERS AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS The Hungarian Workers Councils not only made ap­ peals to the Russian troops to cease fire and go home. They entered into negotiations and made direct arrange­ ments with Russian commanders to retire. At least one Council not only negotiated the removal of a garrison of Russian troops but arranged for it to be supplied with food. This was not just fraternization. It was the assumption of responsibility by the Workers Councils fnr foreign affairs. The simplicity with which the nego­ tiations were carried out reflects the education which the post-war world has received in the futile bickering a,nd cynical propagandizing of cease-fire conferences in Korea, Big Four meetings in London and Paris. and Big Two meetings in Geneva. Russian troops mutinied and deserted to fight under the command of the Hun­ garian Councils. When the hospital at Debrecen radioed its needs for iron lungs, the Workers Councils at Miskolc undertook to get these from West Germany and by radio Hungary organi�ed the landing of the lung-bearing plane at the 1956 Debrecen airport. The Hungarian Revolution transcend­ that combination of threats, snarls, lies, hypocrisy, ed THE WORKERS COUNCILS 14 FACING REALITY 15 charity and red tape. Thus, as in the East, Russia ap­ and brutality which to day appear under the headlines plied herself to the lSystematic destruction of the Work­ of foreign affairs. ers Councils by deportation to labor camps, the Ameri­ The Hungarian people welcomed such medical aid can government in the West began the break-up by and supplies as they received from abroad. But, as they organizing refugee camps. The Hungarian people have explained to their Czech brothers, it was not assistance not been deceived by this characteristic American charity which they needed as much as understanding or maneuver. The failure of the Hungarian Revolution the world that they fought not only for themselves they have placed squarely at the door of both the Rus­ butby for Europe. To a world which is constantly being sian and the American governments. offered bribes of economic aid and promises of a higher THE VICTORY WAS COMPLETE standa.rd of living, these words ring with a new morality. The Hungarian people were not begging for handouts The complete withdrawal of the Russian troops from from the Romanian, Serb, or Slovak workers. They 2.11 Hungary was on the surface a national demand. But in reality, that is, in the concrete circumstances, the wanted them to join in the common lStruggle for a new society. wrlOle population realized that the RuslSian tanks were only force inside the country able to crush · the The neutrality which the Hungarian people demand­ Workersthe Councils. To speak of a civil war between ed was not the neutrality of a Switzerland. The revolu­ Right and Left in Hungary once the Russian troops had tion had in fact begun by a mass demonstration of left, in the classical style of national revolutions, is to solidarity with the Poles. They did not want their coun­ misunderstand completely the stage to which the mas­ try to be the battleground of the struggle between tery of production by the workers has reached in mod­ America and Russia for mastery of the world, but they ern 'Society and the understanding of this by the whole themselves were prepared to lay down their lives in the population. struggle to build a new society, side by side with the peoples of Europe on both west and EalSt. In the Hungarian Revolution there was no divorce otherThe urgent appeals for arms in the final days of between immediate objectives and ultimate aims, be­ military battle, the voices fading from the radio tween instinctive action and conscious purpose. Work­ ing, thinking, fighting, bleeding Hungary, never for the,yith cries for help, must be seen against this awareness a the Hungarian population that they were in the moment forgot that it was incubating a new society, byforefront of a world movement to build a new civiliza­ not only for Hungary but for all mankind. In the midst tion, as profoundly different from American materialism of the organization of battle, the Workers Councils or­ as from Russian totalitarianism. Such confidence in the ganized political discussions not only of the position and aimlS by which men live can come in the of the particular plant in relation to the total struggle, idealsmodern world only from a material foundation. The ma­ but of the aims which the councils should achieve. They terial foundation of the Hungarian workers was their carried on incessant political activity to root out the and acquired capacity to organize production, political and organizational remnants of the old l'eg'ime andnntural their experience of the centralized Plan and the and work out new politics. They knew that the danger whole bureaucratic organization which has reached to the Workers Councils �ay, not in the middle classes ultimate in the One-Party State but which is character­its oDtside the factory, but from the state, the Communist istic of modern society the world over. Party, and the trade union bureaucrats, all trying to Helpless before this new civilization, so weak in logis­ remove the power from the shop floor. At the very be­ ticE; but so powerful in appeal to the peoples of the ginning of the revolution, the Gero government, l'ecog­ njzing world, aware that it is just below the surface in all that the party and the unions had collapsed, called upon the party cadres in the plants to form Europe and is ready to destroy both American and Rus­ ccuncillS and mobilize them against the revolutionary sian imperialism, the. western Powers hesitated for a moment and then turned their vast propaganda ma­ population in the streets. The workers in the streets chine to one single aim, to transform the content of the returned to the factories, threw out the party cadres and Hungarian Revolution into a problem of refugees. The re-elected their own Councils on the shop floor. Then they issued the announcement, "We have been poor, the needy, the supplicating, the weak, and helpless. these the American Welfare State can deal with by elected by the workers and not by the government." 18 FACING REALITY THE WORKERS COUNCILS 19

was the most fossiiized and bureaucratic of all the or­ workers, did try to refoJ.'m itself. It failed, as all re­ ganizations which made up the Stalinist system. forms of totalitarian states are bound to fail. That is the Poland of Gomulka today. Back to sta­ THE WORKERS TAKE OVER linism or forward to the revolution of the Polish work­ But it was not a question merely of getting rid of ers for socialism, that is to say, the Government of Stalinists, Stalinist bureaucrats, labor bureaucrats, and 'Vorkers Councils. their persecution of the ranks. The economic life of the There are some (and they even call themselves Ma.l'x­ country had to go on, and the Workers Councils pro­ ists) who admit the creative power of the Hungarian ceeded to assume responsibility for this by completely Revolution, but prophesied for it failure and degenera­ dIscarding the State Plan except as a general guide, and tion, even if it had not been crushed by Russian tanks. tbemselves carrying out the negotiations from factory The road that Poland is traveling so rapidly should in­ to factory. While Khrushchev turns the Russian econ­ struct them that is the half-hearted attack omy uPside down in a desperate search for means to on the Party and the Planit which produces degeneration. Theil' make it viable, and theoretical men of good-will break destruction is the only guarantee of a future. their heads in the search for plan without bureaucracy. total Workers Councils in every department of the national the Polish workers simply took over the plants where activity, a Government of Workers Councils, are not they had worked all their lives. That alwaY'S will be the ends themselves. They are means to an end. They only way to organize a national economy. in will result in one procedure in one country, and other It was such councils of Polish workers which org'an­ proced\lI'es in other countries. They neither automati­ ized the Poznan revolt. It was these same Workers cally reject, nor automatically include democratic elec­ Councils which mobilized themselves in the plants over tions on a territorial or industrial basis; 01' both com­ the October 19 weekend, and stood ready with arms in bined; or each for a period of trial. They would be hand to support Gomulka and the Central Committee one thing in Hungary, something else in the United of the Polish Party in their defiance of Khrushchev. States, and something else again in Britain or Japan. But under all circumstances they would The Russians retreated. Gomulka is in power. All be the political form in whicb the great masses of the people visitors report absence of fear among the Polish people, would be able to bring their eneJ.'gies to fulfill their the lively discussions going on, and the readiness on destiny, in accordance with their economic structure, the pa,rt of all to discuss freely with foreigners. That their past history, and their consciousness of themselves. all this exists i'8 due to the power which the Workers Councils exercise inside the plant. The central problem, however, remains. How is the economy, reduced to such chaos by the Party and the Plan, to be put on its feet again? Gomulka faces the insoluble problem which will lead inevitably either to the instituting of R Gov­ ernment of Workers Councils or once more to a plain and open domination by Russia.

With all the good-will in the world and despite the dismissal of bureaucrats, Poland remains a country run by the Party but this time without any Plan, and tbe Plan is inseparable from the elite party. That is bow the contemporary Polisb State was built, and slowly the whole bureaucratic formation is re-asserting itself. Go­ mulka stands half-way, with a working class in action in many spheres but above it a bureaucracy which is recovering its strengtb and is determined to re-assert itself, whether under Gomulka or any other leader. This is of extreme importance, for the Polish Commu­ nist Party, under the pressure of the people and the THE WHOLE WORLD 21 one more example need be given here. In the U. OnlyS. Rubber Plant in Detroit during the 16 months prior to April 1956, there were on the average two wild­ stoppages week. The Rubber Union is powerless II. THE ,\THO LE tocat stop them. a "\I\TORLD That is the abiding situation in thousands of plants This is the fundamental political question of the all over the United States. It is no secret. Since the day: The Government of Workers Councils, w h i c h war over a hundred stUdies by industrial psychologists sprang so fully and completely from the revolutionary have appeared, seeking in vain to find some means of c:-isis of Hungary, was it only a historical accident, pe­ controlling and disciplining these workers. Pension culiar to totalitarianism, or is it the road of the future plans, guaranteed annual wage, wage increaBes, sick. fo:!.' all society? Actually, in the United States, with benefits, all these the unions win, promising in return the most advanced technology in the world, there exists discipline the working class, i.e., to force it to submit more than in any other country the framework and to the schedules of production as planned by the em­ forces for a Government of Workers Councils. The out­ ployers. The only result has been to discredit the union side world haS been bluffed and bamboozled by Ameri­ leadership and to range it definitely with management can prop!.ganda and American movies. Politically-mind­ and supervision as one of the enemies of the working ed people outside the United States, scanning the Amer­ class. ican social horizon, bewail the absence of a mass so­ The trade union apparatus acts as the bodyguard of cialist party and a politically-indoctrinated union move­ capital. Conducting all negotiations with management, ment. American intellectuals and radicals do the same. pl'ocessing all grievances through its elaborate grievance They are constantly looking for political parties, po­ procedure, it sits at the bargaining table in a hierarchy litical allegiances, and political slogans of the old type. of posts parallel at every level with that of management. They find none because the American workers are look­ III an American plant the shop steward or the com­ ing for none. The struggle in America is between man­ mitteeman represents not the workers, but the union agement, supervision, and the union bureaucrats on the apparatus. He is bound by the elaborate contract gov­ one side and the shop floor organizations on the other. erning all issues of production which the union lead­ If any one national struggle can be pin-pointed as the ership signs in return for wage increases, pension plans, one on which the future fate of the world depends, it etc. The committeeman is responsible to the union and is this struggle, and the American workers hold all the to management for the canying out of this contract. cards. The result is that in the vast majority of iSsues involv­ ing actual methods of work, the workers have learned THE UNITED STATES to bypass the union and utilize their own knowledge of In 1955 Walter Reuther won, and made all prepara­ production and of the organic weakness of management tions to celebrate, one of his usual great victorieB­ to gain their ends. the Guaranteed Annual Wage. The press was summoned, Under the conditions of modern industry, produc­ the television cameras were in position, when suddenly tion holds no mystery for the workers. Cooperation ra­ a general strike of the Ford and General Motors work­ ther than competition is in the nature of the work ers exploded from coast to coast. It was a strike ag'ainst itself. Because of the rhythm which the worker has Reuther and the union. The slogan of the strike in developed in himself and in the group with which he plant after plant bore the extremely modest title of 113 working, he is able to devise and perfect a work and "local grievances." The great celebration of the Guar­ social schedule of his own. The workers decide the anteed Annual Wage ended with a whimper. The local pace of the line or bring it 'to a stop by ways and means managements made such terms with the workers as which it is impossible for supervision to detect. This they could. The result of the nation-wide engagement schedule gets the work done, but it also creates free was a draw, the battle beginning again the very next time for rest, relaxation around the plant, looking over cay. different jobs and new machines, and visiting friends. :to Management knows that the workers are doing all this, THE WHOLE WORLD 22 FACING REALITY as much an anachronism as a. feudal land­ where the workers in a plant are powerfully or­ now become slave driver on a cotton plantation. Manage­ ganized,but it stays out of their way as much as possible. lord or a foremen are the chief source of dis­ The situation too delicate. Any issue, however slight, ment, supervision, order and disruption in production. Millions of Ameri­ may cause an isexplosion. know that if they were left to themselves It is freedom to organize their work as they please can workers plants in their own way, they would combined with all sorts of details, such as smoking Ol� to organize the own schedules of production, lessen their the job, the condition of the rest room, not working work out their production to undreamed of heights, enor­ when it is too hot, which pass undeJ.' the title of "local hours, raise their own knowledge and capacity, and grievances." What the phrase really signifies in the mously increase time in the plant. They know that large American plants is the determination of workers have a wonderful work for women in relation to their . to run the plants to suit themselves and not the man­ they can arrange household duties, find suitable tasks­ agement. special skills and the handicapped, work hard when it is Naturally, the workers, even when solidly organized, fOJ: the aged or required and take it easy at other times. That is pre­ do not have it all their own way. Management counter­ been understood to be socialist attacks at every opportunity. 'The result is that produc­ cisely what has always workers, like workers tion, the most important business of society, is at the relations of production. American are not dominated by the desire not to mercy of this gigantic, disruptive, and unceasing con� everywhere, work. But the cooperation and the discipline that hav� fliet. Every year in the automobile plants there is a them by large scale machinery have period when the models are changed. At this time the been �nstilled into bitterness and frustration by the capi­ l'Eal chaos of American production and its root cause been t.urned into of production. become patent. Plans and new machinery which have talist nature been elaborated for months in the offices are intro­ For the time being, their energies and powers are eluced. Supervision seizes the opportunity to try to re­ for the most part used in resistance, either in the plant Fitore its damaged authority. The foreman places work­ or' by walking out on the slightest excuse-the wildcat ers where he wishes, being concerned chiefly with strike. Wildcats are a constant defiance and rejection breaking up old groups and reorganizing the plant, not of the capitalist system and of the union bureaucracy for production but for discipline. The result is disor­ which has tied its fortunes to' capitalism. Nothing that ganization, turmoil, and chaos (and production of cars management or t.he union does can stop them. Wild­ auto workers know better than to buy), until the ca,ts are the ever-present reminder of what the AmeJ."ican workers,that for their own comfort and ease of work, get workers think of the economic system under which they together and restore some order into the plant. live. The much-lauded know-how of American manage­ Unable to control the workers, either in its own name ment is a myth, and the superiority of American man­ or through the union, management in the United States agement is due entirely to the heavy investment in capi­ has embarked on a huge program of automation. As if tal and the order which American workers introduce driven by devils, the large corporations have begun to into the plant to suit themselves. When the plans for invest billions in new equipment, frantically scrapping new machinery are introduced into the plant, they can­ still useful machinery, headlining each new expansion not be applied at all unless the workers take them in with speeches about progress. At the same time thous­ charge and apply them in the way they think best. Pro­ ands are being laid off and those still in the shop are duction in a modern plant is based upon cooperation, working three and four days a week, building new mod­ not upon authority, and cooperation is essentially a els, while the just completed models are still resting problem of human relations. The strategy and tactics unsold and rusting in dealer lots. In the auto industry of the workers spring from the fact that all productivity the production schedules see-saw back and forth like and progress in the plant depend upon them. the front lines of a battle, with management obviously in the grip of forces beyond its control. WHAT WILDCATS SIGNIFY The realities of life inside the American factory This unending conflict with management, the con­ drive relentlessly to one overpowering conclusion. This stant uncertainty of life, the futility of the union, all are forcing millions of American workers, and the auto conclUsion is that management and supervision have 24 FACING REALITY THE WHOLE WORLD 25 workers in particular, to positive perspectives which b,Y­ the workers, the assembly line under the control of pass political parties and touch the very heart of Amer­ capitalism continues its relentless momentum, indepen­ ican society: dent of all human cop..siderations as to the weariness of 1) That the decisions on scheduling of production the person or his physical and other needs. But today as a whole, when there should be model changeovers, the industrial union is as helpless in the face of auto­ and whether or not there should be, whether or not new mation as the assembly line method of production equipment should be introduced and when, these vital itself. decisions can no longer be left to management. Only the workers can and must organize this. In general, automation started with industries deal­ ing in liquids and chemicals, e.g., petroleum, soda pop, That the only way to keep everybody at work milk, beer, because in such industries the materials are for 2)everything to be produced for use and not for the.is homogeneous and can flow, and production is chieflY market. a, process of heat, chemicals, piping, and bottling. Today AUTOMATION AND THE TOTAL CRISIS the oil refinery the electricity supply industry are Already grappling with these perspectives, American the closest to beingand completely automated. From there workers could hardly be expected to take seriously the automation moved to the mills because here again raw official view that today's economic crisis is an ordinary metals needed large containers and the application of commercial crisis. Their whole past experience heat and chemicals for their refining. The crucial stage has taught them that, precipitated by the unending con­ ""as reached in the 1950s when automation became firm­ fllct in production between management and the work­ ly established the industries fabricating metals. This ers, a new stage of technology is emerging-automa­ in the United inStates means the auto industry first and tion. foremost, and it was in the auto industry that the term Automation as a stage in technology is still young. "automation" came into being to describe the linking While it has existed in a few specific industries for some machine tools by electronic controls. The next stage time, it is only in the 1950s that it has begun to domi­ of its invasion is the fabrication of fabrics, e.g., rub­ nate American industry and all forms of economic or­ ber and textiles. inBecause these materials are flexible, ganization, even penetrating into the crafts. So gradual they require more manual dexterity and therefore a has been its invasion that only now is the general pub­ higher technique before automation can take over. lic beginning to suspect the l'evolution in all ruspects of Automation i'S now moving rapidly from one Ameri­ human life that automation compels. can industry to another, and within each industry from What is coming to an end is the stage of mass pro.. to more complete automation. Its technical basis dnction by assembly line workers. The assembly partialwas already being created during World War but the line is itself the last maj.or barrier to automation expansion of production during the war andIT, pent-up in in­­ dustry. The essence of the assembly line is that it cre shortages delayed its introduction on a wide scale in the ates a demand for manual dexterity but at the same jmmediate postwar years. Today, however, there is no time organizes and controls this dexterity to the high­ baJ.'rier to automation. It is even invading such fields est degree by means of the belt. The essence of automa­ as tooling where it was once believed that it would be tion is that it replaces manual dexterity altogether uneconomical. Already it is possible to send blueprints by electronic controls. Electronics is now taking the place by teletype from one city to another, a tracing tape at­ of the human being in bringing together and control­ tached to the machine reproducing the tool according ling hydrauliC'S, pneumatics, and mechanics. given specifications on the blueprint. Only a few decades ago assembly line production t.o Up to now every new stage in technology has been put thousands and thousands of workers under a single t.he basis for an expansion in the needs of manpower. roof and thus created the conditions for the new After each crisis in Which the old means of production organization of the industrial union. sheer massself­ were scrapped, the labor force expanded. Automation defense the assembly line workers createdIn the that stage of technology which under capitalism for protect the human being from being completelyCIO de­to js the first time will not create a need for more manpower stroyed by the machine. Without this intervention by L regardless of the maSB of products produced. Now soci- 26 FACING REALITY THE WHOLE WORLD 27

ety faces for the first time what Karl Marx called That meam; more to workers than it means to anyone "putting the majority of the population on the shelf." else. But at the same ti me automation is forcing every In a particular plant employing 5000, only 500 or 10% worke r to re�examine the very maru1.er of his life as a will be needed in five years to produce as much as is human being simply in order to answer the question now produced by the 5000. The percentage will vary of how he shall exist at all. fr om industry to industry and the elimination of man­ The CIO is completely incapable of riSing to this pnwer will come sooner in some industries than in new situation. It originated in the period when produc­ oth­ ers. But what is going to happen to the 90% ? Obviously tion was being expanded by the expansion of manpower. no ordinary solution possible. At its best it only defended the workers from the speed i'.s When automation hit the auto industry in the 1950s, of the line, leaving all deci'Sions as to the scheduling it not only hit the industry on which one out of every - and control of production to the capitalists. Today wben _ six jobs in the United states depends directly or indi­ capitalist control of automation is threatening the rectly. It also hit hundreds of thousands of w k e r 5 collapse of society, the CIO continues to demand a whose daily life inside the shop for the last0 rtwenty share with the capitalists in the contro l over the work­ years has centered around a ba.ttle with management ers, leaving to the capitalists the right to schedule for control over the machine. Hence while the econo­ and control total production. mists and politicians of government, industry, and the It is from the growing realization that society faces union have been babbling about wages, pen'Sions, and total collapse that has arisen the determination of profits, every new machine has been greeted by auto American worker'S to take the control of total produc tion workers and their families with fundamental que stions l3,way fr om the capitalists and into their ow n handlS. Up about who should control production. Today's crisis is to now American workers have only organized to defend driving them to expand the very meaning of that con · themselves from the machine inside the individual fac­ tl ol. tories. Now, in defense of all society, they are being Up to now the whole life of the majority of the popu­ driven to organiZe themselves to regulate total produc­ la tion has been geared to work. To the working man tion. \v orkiilg and living have be en one and the same. Now Up to now the concept of who governs society has he finds that as a result of automation wmk i'8 being been based on the idea that different parties and taken away from him and he feels that he is being groupings battle with one another over who should robbed not only of what enables him to live but of his control the workers. But control by the workers of pro­ very existence as a human being. Capitalism itself has ciuction schedules and of the process of production in­ forced the ma jority of the population into the position side society means that govermnent must originate in­ where they have no other role than that of workers. side the plant. Thus auto mation creates the conditions Now, with automation, capita lism is robbing the majo­ for abolishing all previous distinctions between political rity of the population of the only role they have been control and economic controL No longer is it possible permitted. to think only in terms of changing leaders or parties. When millions of young people have no idea whether Production as a whole can only be controlled by the they will ever have a job and lie in bed half the day producers as a whole in their shop floor organizations. because they don't know what to do with themselves, Thus, far more than in any other country, the a.utoma­ that i'S a system committing suicide. When the maj ority tion of industry in the United states is creating the ac­ of the population has no place to work and can only tual conditions for a Government of Workers Councils. look forward to more unemployment, that is the total THE AMERICAN WORKERS' WAY collapse of a society. The workers do not pose the perspective of their That is the crisis which American workers foresee and control a.s a conscious program. But it is inherent in seek to forestall. No worker i'S against automation as all their actions and in the discussions they hold among such. He recognizes that automation creates the possi­ themselves. Only people consumed with hate and fear bility of such development of the productive forces of socialism can believe that the Hungarian worker;, did that no one anywherea need ever live in want again. the things that they did all. the spur of t.he moment; THE WHOLE WORLD 28 FACING REALITY Parties in the traditional sense, but under the pressure they could act as they did only because they had for of a crisis the idea of Workers Councils or a Govern­ years meditated upon and discussed among themselves ment of Workern Councils will not be in the slightest how they wanted production to be organized and soci­ degree alien to them. ety to be run. The Depression made everybody in the is obvious that the working class nowhere is so United states recognize the capitalist economy as a system functioning according to laws which were outside organizedIt as to win a continuous series of victories. Ac­ the control of human beings. that sense, political cording to the structure of the plant, the strength of economy first came into existenceIn in the United states its traditions, the relation of the industry to other in­ with the Depression. But with the disorder of auto­ dustries, and various other consideratioIll3, the workers mation twenty-five yearn later, this fatalistic view of are often defeated, and on occasions even routed. They the laws of production has been turned on its head. In sometimes win great victories. What can be stated cate­ its place there has grown up the conviction that it gorically is that the struggle is continuous and from the present organizers of production, the state and man­is the very organization of production, the working class agement, who cannot control production but are con­ especially in large and highly organized plants holm: trolled by it. They, the workers, on the other hand, have i�s own and on the whole continuously capture� posi­ the ability to control not only individual machines but tIons from management and supervision. Each side the whole process, method, and tempo, means of whenever it thinks it has the possibility of pushing th� which machinery to be developed and byput into use. enemy back, advances to the attack. One thing how­ They have not beenis taught this by any political elite . ever, is certain. The accounts of wage increas�s and They have learned it from experience. It is from there various other arrangements which get into the press that they begin to visualize a new society. as a l3Dlution.t o any particulaJ.' open engagement. paint Just as the Hungarian upheaval took all the political no true picture of the actual situation in any plant or industry. In reality. as soon as the agreement is signed pundits and mourners by surprise, so the future course � of American society will overwhelm them. All the dy­ eac side goes back into the plant and the struggl� namic energy of American society, its ruthlessness, its begms all over again irrespective of agreements, and related solely to the particular strength of the combat­ freedom from traditional restraints, its social audacity (which was ready to attempt Prohibition by legislation), ants at any particular time. these national characteristics are now concentrated in There is no need to make prophecies. But in all the the American working class far more than in any other blindness, the violence, confusion, and despairs of mod­ section of society. But among the workers, the American ern American society, it should be obvious that the same forces which produced the 'Workers Councils in Hungary g'eniU's is united, disciplined, and organized by the very mechanism of modern production itself. All analyses 1�0� only exist but are infinitely more developed, in-. ' and perspectives of American society as a whole (and flmtely more powerful in the United States of America, we shall go into that later) must begin from the Amer­ and for the Simple reason that these forces and ideas ican working class. The most astonishing feature of it is arc the product of capitalism itself. by any organized philosophy of life that, undominated RUSSIA (the American historians having failed most conspicu­ ously to create any) ; indifferent to theories of socialism Economic relations are relations between people: and Communism and the blandishments of political who tells whom what to do and how to do it. Property theorists ; profoundly disillusioned with unionism-it has relations are relations between people and things : who created the basis of a philosophy of life of its own. This owns what ; land, facto,ries, mines, ships, etc. These that it can manage production, that to do so is its are basic definitions in the science of political economy tsinalienable right, that the secret of a happy life is mas­ as elaborated by Marx and Engels. But for many years tery over machinery and production, and that the rest carried away by the promises of the Plan, the majorit; can be easily managed. of Marxists have forgotten this. That is to say, they for­ got who was telling whom what to do and how to do it American workers are not certain of their ultimate in the plant. No one contributed to this more than aims, nor of the end towards which they are heading. Leon Trotsky, whose analysis of Russia was based upon They are indifferent to Socialist Parties or Communist 30 FACING REALITY the extremely simple and extremely false thesis that state ownership of property equals workers' state. This may sound like mere theorizing. In reality , it is the concentrated expre'ssion of the facts of life embrac­ ing hundreds of millions of people. What is the rela­ tion between the workers in Russia and the Planners and supervisors ? This, the decisive question, is the last question that the theorists, the analysts, the leftistlS all sorts, ever ask. For years they have concerned them­of selves, exhausted themselves, with the Party, the Plan, the statistics of production, the absence of political de­ mocracy. Now they have plunged into de-Stalinization, collective leadership (true 01' fal'se ), the decentraliza­ tion of industry by Khrushchev, and whether the intel­ lectuals and the youth have real freedom to speak 01' oIlly moderate freedom or none at all. The Hungarian Hevolution has taught them nothing. Important as all these questions are, they are subordinate to the one question which has now been posed by the events in Hungary and in Poland. Has large seale industry in Russia created a working cla'ss which possesses the mastery over production which resulted in R Govern­ ment of Workers Councils in Hungary ? Are workers in Russia united, disciplined, and organized by production itself in such a way that they have essentially the same attitude to management as the workers in the United States ? Have workers in Rus'sia created shop floor organizations which control production and disci­ pline management in much the same vv ay as Ameriean vJ Ol'kers ? That is not eVerything but everything begins from there. And the answer without a shadow of a cl oubt is yes. Here is the proof from the mouths of the Russian rulers themselves. The state multiplies bars and barriers between the Russian people and the outside, but period­ ically the rulers have to speak to one another in public, and although they are the most expert practitioners in the world at double-talk, the truth about the situation in the Russian plants comes out clearly. This is Khrush­ ebev at the Twentieth Congress of the RUSSian Com­ munist Party all February 4th, 1956, reporting- for the Central Committee :

It must be pointed out that there is a great deal 'of disorder and confusion in the system wages and rate-fixing. Ministries and other bodies,of and the trade lmions have not taken up these matters in France Renault the way they should; they have neglected them. 1968: Cases of wage leveling are not uncommon. On the THE WHOLE WORLD 31

other hand, payment for the same type of work sometimes differs between various bodies, and even within a single body. Alongside the low paid work­

ers there exists a category of workers , a small onE' it is true, in whose wages unjustifiecl excei.ises are tolerated.

Though this i's Greek to a Russian expert lil\:e Isaac Deutscher, any worker knows what that means. pl&nners and management plan the quotas foJ' pieceTh�­ work, which is the system that the Russians are USing' in. large scale industry. Just as in the United States, they divide workers into different catego r es as to create rivalry and antagonisms betvveen themi . .soBut the workers make a wreck of this Plan by organizing the "vork in such a way that all of them in a partIcular plant get more or less the io ume wages. Thus, the planners plan wag'es on a nat onal scale, tllOUghwng-es vary not only from i"e gion to regioll ibut from plant to plant. 'Why? Obviously because the of the workers' shop floOT organization in onestrength is differ­ ent from that in another. Sometimes, it plantseems, inside a single plant, the workers in one department are so powerfully organized. that is to :� ay, such an Ul1- clcl':,tanding among themselves, that havethey push up the the gener::..l level of tI,e plant. wages above There is no need for these shop flool' organizations

to be formally organized. As s oon as t11e men in a de ­ pa,rtment know one another and go tJ.lroug-h the work together, they are organized. Tl1e planners and manage.,. ment have one Plan, and the workers have their own. and in any such conflict, though the managers post one soldier with a loaded rifle at every tf:' t\ paces in the plant, they c8.nnot make the worker" do ,,\T hat tIley do not want to do. At the beginning of the z2.tion of Russia, Stalin could uproot millionsindustl of back­'iali­ peasants, plant in the factOl'icfi and the wacities,rd and drive them themlike cattle by the most brutal methods. Today in the large modern factories that is impossible. The struggle is permanent and, as in tIle United States, the workers hold the winning cards. '\r..Te stated categorically that in the Un i ted Sta tes, havemana gement, foremen, and union bureaucrats, are compelled to recognize the power of the worker.s on the shop floor, and wherever the workers are well organized, management and supervision have learned to leave them alone. If they attempt to force a well­ Italy 1969: Fiat organized body of workers to do this 01' that. plant can be thrown into disorder and work goes tothe pieces . L FACING REALITY THE WHOLE WOR.LD 33

The sii.ua tion is the same in Russian in dustry and could low output quotas creates the illUSion that all is not be otherwise. Khrushchev reports to the Party well, and tends to divert workers, foremen and en­ Congress : gineers from effective efforts to raise productivity.

THE TRADE UNIONS KEEP SILENT The present practice is to make output quotas cor­ respond in effect to a definite wage level, not The main thing our Trade Unions organizations, and to the technical and efficiency levels already including the U. S. S. R. Central Council of Trade Unions, lack is militancy in their work, creative achieved. fervour, incisiveness, adherence to principle, and What a confession of failure ! The planners a):ld man­ initiative in raising fundamental, vitally important agement decree that such and such must be the quota quest.ions-whether they be measures for increas­ of production for the basic wage, and only after that ing labor productivity, 01', say, questions relating to quota is produced can extra wages be paid. The workers wages, house construction, or catering to the every declare that the quota is too high, and though time day needs of the workers or other employees. Col­ study JUen (and soldiers with guns) stand over them, lective agreements are concluded at every enter­ they demonstrate that they cannot do the work at the prise, but often enough they are not carried out, rate the planners have planned. Management realizes and the Trade Unions keep silent, as though every­ that it can do nothing about this, and in the end agrees thing were right and proper. In general, the Trade that the quota should be lowered. Whereupon by de­ Unions no longer have disputes with industrial exe­ grees the workers step up production and soon 40 % to cutives. there is peace and harmony between them. 60% of the workers' wage being made by prodUCing is But on:e need not be afraid to spoil relations where what they swore was impossible in the first place. The the interests of our cause are concerned; at times sham and pretense, in fact, the gigantic lies that are a good wrangle is beneficial . . . hidden under a State Plan, like the State Plan of the Russian economy, are shown not only by all the fore­ Nothing could be plainer. The planners. the going, but by the key statement in Khrushchev's report: management, and the union leaders (in Russia they that whereas the machinery and technical organization are part of the state) make all sorts of plans and of a factory is geared to a certain level of productivity agreements about every single aspect of production. and efficiency, which is what the planners have in The workers make a mess of these But everybody . their heads and put down on paper, the Russian man­ agrees to say nothing. Because all of them know agers dare not use this as a basis of production. The that if they attempt seriously to discipline the workers, workers declare that whatever the planners plan, the the end will be worse than the beginning. True of every starting point for the schedules of production is what country, t.his is particularly true in Russia where the they are prepared to do for so much money. Khrushchev, penalties on the manager for not producing the quota Bulganin, Suslov, all sang this same mournful hymn for his plant have been extremely severe. It could be a throughout the Congress. They will sing it many times matter of life or death or deportation to Siberia, and before they are finished. For that is the nature of mod­ so as to be sure to get anything like reasonable pro­ ern capitalist large scale production, and it will con­ duction, managers have learned to come to some sort tinue and intensify until a new system of economic re­ of understanding with the workers. It has long been lations is established, new relations between people and reported from Russia that many managers protected people, management of industry by the workers them­ t.heir best workers when, for example, they broke the selves on the job. Modern industry cannot be run in savage laws t.h at Stalin decreed for those who came late. any other way. This. however, is something different. The vast ap­ This is not and cannot be a study of the Russian paratus of management and bmeaucracy not only ac­ economy, but this much can be said. While the whole cepts the plan of the workers, but keeps its mouth shut. world occupied itself with the de-Stalinization speech by How exactly do the workers break up the plans of Khrushchev at this same Twentieth Congress, practi­ t.he planners and institute their own plan? Khrushchev cally nobody paid any attention to the fact that in tells us : speech after speech at the Twentieth Congress, the Rus­ Considerable over-fulfillment of such deliberately rulers admitted that before Khrushchev spoke sian long 34 FACING REALITY THE WHOLE WORLD 35 in the plants had de­ of de-Stalinization, the workers aI'ds Movement. Despite the great reputation which this Stalinized themselves. Today, the press and the politi­ �ove?Ient �njo�s among the workers of the world, its with Khrushchev's plans for de­ . cians are preoccupied 1 ole m B;ntIsh mdustry and politics is little understood not the dismissed Molo ­ . centralization and whether or m;tsIde Britain. Even many British people have only in Hungary they were . tov will be shot or not, just as vague Ideas about Shop Steward's, except of course those and students. The preoccupied with the intellectuals who have to deal with these organizations. intellectuals and youth, the continuing ferment among It is the Shop Stewards Movem,ent which has brought show that the crisis in Russia . . conflict in the leadership, and mamtams order in British industry. This cannot be ever been in that crisis-ridden is deeper than it has better expressed than it was in the introduction to a country. a solution does not depend on the amount docume�t (state Capitalism and World Revolution. See And students, and free speech that is granted to writers, AppendIX.) which was published in England before the of was in · technicians. The crisis is far deeper than it ever Hungarian Revolution took place. Stalin's time because inside the plants of Russia there THE ALL-POWERFUL SHOP STEWARDS now exists this formidable working class, the most pow­ Twenty-five years ago in Britain because of lower erful in the world except for the ,American and in one levels of tooling, greater craft stratification and the respect far more dangerous to the ruling class than is reserve army of unemployed, it was still possible to the American. In Russia during the last fifty years there e?iorce an effective piecework system. Its destruc­ have been three great revolutions. The workers took the tIVe consequences for labor and society were multi­ lead in each. Today, with the workers more powerful plied a thousandf.old in the forced industrialisation than ever before in their history, the coming Russian of Russia and was the economic basis of the mon­ Revolution, like the revolution in Hungary, will begin strous regime of Stalin. Those days are over both with the establishment of a Government of Workers in Britain and in Russia. As line productiO�, the Councils, whatever it may call itself. That is the only donveyor system, and highly divided mass produc­ democracy that state capitalist Russia will ever have tIOn ha,ve developed in Britain, piecework has and that it will have or perish, blown up by the antag­ �lashed more and more with the objective require­ onisms that can no longer be hidden. ments for efficiency. The Shop Stewards, the shop . GREAT BRITAIN commIttees th at matured in this period, were not merely economic defense organisations of the work­ In Britain, as elsewhere, the Hungarian Revolution ers. They were the only possible means of bringing undoubtedly tore apart the pervading fear that totali­ some order to the chaos caused by the attempts of tarianism is an all-powerful form of government management to maintain individual piecework in to mould a whole population to its will. But after ablethe the new mass production industries. The workers first rush of enthusiasm and hope among vast millions in Br�tain have gone a long way towards destroying of people who have rej ected capitalism, there has been the pIecework system. any particular line 'or in a noticeable retreat among the political wl'iters and On an� particular shop, a minimum is fixed, below social theorist's. Their minds have so long been stuck WhICI: no one may have his wages reduced. By in the cement of political parties, Welfare states, and redu?mg the gap between the minimum and the other forms of government in which they, the econo­ maXlmum, the power of the rate-fixer is thereby mists, the organizers, the propagandists, the technicians, broken and a leveling of wages takes pl ace. Thus play the leading role, that they are unable to begin wages are no longer governed by individual effort from the fact that the future of society is with the but by the general level of class struggle in the shop Government of the 'W orkers Councils. or line concerned. The wo:rkers' name for this is Britain is supposed to be the great model of Parlia­ "action on the job." Action on the job goes far be­ mentary Democracy and the Welfare State. Yet long yond trade unionism, for it carries a formidable before the Hungarian Revolution, the working class had unity among the workers and gives them control created on the shop floor a nation-wide organization in every phase of production. This control,a though which is beyond all question the most powerful social constantly contested by management, never en­ force in the country. This is the celebrated Shop Stew- tirely defeated and steadily expands itsis scope. To- 36 FACING REALITY THE WHOLE WORLD

day the center of power moves away from the Labor be completed as planned, the men on that shift are the unions on to the shop floor. It asked to carry their tools to another face ; or per­ fromParty this and milieu that have erupted the startlinglyis haps, as a result of prolonged and petty differences, revolutionary demands of the Standard workers in an overseer uses strong language ; in either case Coventry in relation to redundancy. These demands the men come to the surface. Occasionally there is have been watered down by the union leadership claim for extra money due to extraordinary phy­ into compensation and a vague consultation. The asical conditions, too much water or too much dust original proposals were based on the conception on a particular job. But nearly always in each case that men and not capital must henceforth be the it is the men on the spot asserting themselves by primary concern of industry. That conviction is deep direct action, either in defiance of union agreements in the hearts of many millions OYer the world. or without the consent of the union officials, which and its objective realisation cannot3,11 be long delayed. causes the stoppage.

In the very week that this publication appeared. This indiscipline in the mines is so serious and its one of the oldest, most respected, and most reactionary causes so puzzling that two committees of inquiry tly been set up, one to examine stoppages papers in Britain published one of a series of articles have recen giving the results of a special investigation into the and the other absenteeism. On both committees the representatives of all the unions concerned as conditions of British industry. Only direct quotation can do justice to this confirmation of the reality of modern well as of the Coal Board are sitting. industry. (Emphasis has not been added.) The last sentence shows the new situation-shop floor organizations are opposed to both management THE SHOP STEWARDS DOMINATE THE UNIONS and union leaders. And you will find this in every im­ The truth is that the leaders are no longer their own masters. There has been an enormous shift of portant British industry. Here is our investigator again: power within the trade union movement from the But stoppages are not confined to the coal mines. center to the facto ry floor. However vigorously the In the engineering industry, lightning strikes of on e leaders themselves deny this, the evidence is too kind or another are occurring almost every week. strong to be contradicted. For example, since the Sometimes a man has been saeked, or perhaps a war the vast majority of strikes have not been offi­ man who has obeyed official union policy and de­ cial but unofficial. They have been called not by fied an unofficial strike has not been sacked. The union leaders but against their wishes. The most sig­ men refuse to work. In these cases it is usually nificant thing about the inter-union dock strike of shop stewards who are asserting themselves. the 1955 was not that it rendered the ports of the coun­ The metltlod of election of shop stewards varies from try idle but that the leaders of the union repre­ factory to fa.ctory. Sometimes the members of each senting the vast majority of dockers were opposed separate union elect their own stewards to repre­ to it and were unable to persuade the men to return. sent them in day-to-day negotiations with the man­

And for every strike on a nation-wide scale there agement; sometimes shop stewards represent the have been hundreds confined to particular indus­ members of all unions in their particular depart­ tries and particular factories about which nothing ment. In either case the problem is the same. has been heard. The most glaring example is in the The shop stewards are claiming that if a dispute coal mines, where unofficial stoppages have cost us arises suddenly they should have the right to take more than half the coal we are having to import whatever action they think fit, irrespective of any every year. The occasions of the stoppages are in­ agreements the union may have made with the in­ finitely varied. dustry as a whole or with the management of that particular factory. No union leader concedes this We believe that what miners want is to manage the right, but when the shop stewards are sure of their mines. Time will tell, but meanwhile let us hear the following they assume it and impose bans on over­ bourgeois investigator: time, work to rule, or a complete stop page, as It may be that if work on a particular face cannot situation requires. And every time they do this the the�'

------THE WHOLE WORLD 38 FACING REALITY 39 duals standing at street have put the official'S of one or more unions legally corners, calling upon the work­ ers to repare for re in the wrong, and so weakened their bargaining � volution). The incalculable variety of natIOnal states, their power. differing historical past the specific features of their political life, the presen;e or A little later the writer concludes, again in black absence of democratic forms, all these make it impera­ print : tive that we hold firm to the one great reality that is In the organization of labor in this country the specifically characteristic of the middle of the Twentieth struggle for power is not plimariIy between man­ Century-the unitY, discipline, and organization of the agement and men but between the union leaders working class in large scale industry. The necessity to and the rank and file. this can be most clearly seen in our last example i (Sunday Times, January 13, 1957.) thedo situation in France.

This is modern capitalism, in the United states, FRANCE Russia, as well as in Britain. The British Tory majoritiny At first sight industrial-political life in France seems in the House of Common'S stands impotent before the to be dominated by the Communist Party with its hun ­ Shop Stewards Movement and the leadership it exer­ dred and forty deputies in Parliament. The French rul­ cises over the decisive forces in the labor movement. ing clal5s has been powerless to check the Communist That is why it has not so far dared to enfQTce the in­ Party. The Socialist Party and the Radical Party which dustrial measures which it has proclaimed are neces­ dominated French political life in the period between sary to end inflation. The Tory Government is not afraid of the union leaders. The union leaders would the two wars, have been equally helpless before the be willing to come to terms with the Tory Government. French Communil5t Party. All are powerless because aU Both groups are immobilized in their positions by the are equally stained with the corruption and degradation shop stewards. all aspects of life in pre-war France, which culmi­ n8tedof in the disastrous defeat by the Germans in June It would be a serious and totally unnecel5sary blund­ and the humiliation of the Occupation. er to prophesy that the Shop Stewards Movement is an 1940 It is the working class of France in its shop flool.' embryo Government of the Workers Councils. In mo­ organizations which has already given the deathblow ments of great social crisis, organizations can undergo to this monster whose tentacles have been coiled around rapid, almost instantaneous transformation or be re­ the French people for so placed by entirely new organizations. Such speculations, long. in this context, would be irrelevant. The fundamental At the end of the war the French wotkers joined the :fact remains that British Parliamentary Democracy, Communist Party by the hundreds of thousands, ex­ the most powerful combination of Labor Party, trade pecting to find in it the party of the Russian Revolution union movement, and cooperative movement that the and a Socialist United States of Europe. In the unions world has ever known, Welfare State, socialized medi­ the French Communist Party for a time had almost cine, and all, have produced not peace but the most complete power. French workers were to discover that highly-organized and defiant shop floor organizations the Communist Party would take the power from the the world. French bourgeoisie oilly if the Russian Army was at its in back. Meanwhile, the Party was ready to exploit and We believe that th e point has been sufficiently prov­ exhaust the workers in limited strikes and demonstra­ ed, that the Government of Workers Councils which tions, for the sole purpose of embarrassing the govern­ appeared so startlingly in Hungary was no historical ment and keeping the country in turmoil. If the workers accident but a social and political form that is rooted turned from the Stalinists, they were met by the S ciaI­ in the very structure of modern industry, creates the � Democrats, trying to line them up on the side of Amer­ crisis in modern industry, and therefo:re in society as a ican capitalism, while at the same time intervenino' whole. It cannot be suppressed, and its ultimate victory with the French industrialists to obtain quieting eonces in one form or another is the only solution to the mod­ : sions for the workers. ern crisis. How and when this will take place in partic­ Painfully. since 1947, the French working class has ular countries is no business of ours (we shall later have been struggling to rescue the nation from this bureau- a few words to say about half a dozen isolated indivi- FACING REALITY THE WHOLE WORLD cl'atic stl'anglehold of the Communists a.nd the Social­ attacked the Party. Nothing but the most abysmal foUr Democrats. In the fall of 1947 a wave of strikes swept of the traditional French political parties, and perhaps t.hrough France initiated by the workers themselves. not even that, can drive the French working class back The Communists, who had joined the French govern­ under the domination of the French Communist Party. ment in line with the Russian policy of collaboration The power of the working class in its independent shop with the West, rushed to take over the leadership of floor organizations and the emptiness of modern par­ these strikes. Between 1948 and 1952, in the heat of the liamentarism are fully illustrated by the experience cold war, the Communists called the workers out in one France. in strike after another to back up such political demands 1. The French working class has been able to do as would serve Russian policy. The workers either ab­ what all the political and governmental power in France , stained 01' went along apathetically. In August 1953 backed by American billions, failed to do - break the millions of workers again struck spontaneously, inde-­ . stranglehold which the French Communi'St Party pendently of the trade union leadership and in many on French life. had cases in direct opposition to it. However, once the 2. It is precisely in elections and parliamentary man­ strikes began, they did not resist the Communists tak­ euvers that the French Communist Party retains ing over effective control of the struggle. ever power it has in France. what­ It was not until the summel' of 1955 that the French This is a fitting demonstration of the actual rela­ workers again rose in widespread spontaneous struggle. tion of forces between the institutions contending for This time, however, at Nantes, Saint-N azaire, supremacy in age. our elsewhere, they did not simply strike or occupy factoand­ ries. They passed to the attack, supporting their de­ mands by mass street fighting, at times reaching the level of 15,000 workers battling with the police. Not only did they refuse to leave the leadership of the strug­ gle to the trade unions. At critical moments they broke into the offices where the union officials were nego­ tiating, thl'ew them out, and took over the negotiations themselves. This great series of strikes revealed that by Ifl55 the French workers had arrived at the conclusion that they could gain their obj ectives only in opposition to the union bureaucracy. They could depend only on the independent organizations which they had built in their hour-to-hour, day-to-day struggles in'Side the plant. From that time the Communist Party in France has begun a steady decline. Its control of the union move­ ment has become control of the apparatus, with the workers indifferent or hostile. The fina.} blow came with the Hungarian Revolut.ion. Against the brazen defense of the Russian intervention by the French Communist Party, the French working class revolted by the tens of thousands. A'S of today, the Communist Party in France is a mere shadow of its former self. From near­ ly a million members it can now count on a hard core of a, few thousand members. It could not get 10,000 French workers into the streets of Paris to defend the Party headquarters or even to demonstrate against the Fascists when, in the agitation a.round Hungary, these THE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 43 the degree of development, a certain percentage of technicians and professional middle classes: lawyers, III . THE SELF -CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY doctors, salesmen, public relations men such as politi­ OF OFFICIA L SOCIETY cians and journalists. There are, even in many advanced societies, substantial numbers of farmers. In short, there It is quite untrue to say that contemporary society is in every society that infinite variety of occupations (whether on this side or the other side of the Iron c1;lr- and individuals in which empiricists love to lose them- , t.ain) faces the possibility of collapse. As a way of hfe selves. Counting each grain of sand, they rack their as a civilization, as a culture, modern society has col- brains to prove that there is no method of analyzing into ]apsed already. The contemporary world is .divide� history and society which is definitive enough to be of two large blocs whose rulers use all the dISCOVerIes termed scientific. They deny that there can be any . · RCierrce to snarl thr eats and defiance at each other scientific guide social action� Whereby they elaim t6 ·· ;cross the ether, and plot mutual destruction which will have proved logicato lly and scientifically that all we can be be counted in tens of millions. This is no longer to do is to submit. is the life of the compared with the life of savages. It . Social relations in production do not constitute so- by jungle. The ordinary citizen today can eXIst only ciety and no one ha.s ever claimed that they did. Mod- areas deliberately excluding from his consciousness vast ern society in particular is an enormously complex 01'- of contemporary life which it is unbearable to contem- ganism, comprising relations of production, commercial plate. Never before in human history has the world relations, scientific investigation, the highly scientific known such elementary fear of total physical destruc- orga,nizations of certain aspects of industry itself (such with tion, the savagery and brutality of the passions as for instance the production and use of atomic ener- which one half of the world regards the other, the con- gy) , The means of communication of information and of sciousness of primeval depths just beneath the veneer ideas play an enormous role in the routine of today's science and civilization, the alienation of individual from society. There is the organization of political life, the the individual in the closely-knit modern community, creation of literature and art at various levels. But de- sep- alienation of the individual from himself, the gulf . spite all the complexity, there ar� clear, unmistakable. oclety arating aspiration from reality. Never has �ny � irrefutable patterns and laws which allow us to under- tIC and been so wracked by these torments on so gIgan stand the general movement. ive. all-pervading a scale as the society in which we l . Here is one very obvious pattern of movement in

Clety ___ ------______If _w.e_haV'e__ based _our __ concept_Qf....the...!J1tur�LQL �.o ,�=__ --!' ..modenLJ3ociety:. ------o ro- upon the working class in the social relations � � ONLY FORTY YEARS is the single stab e, Ulllfy g, duction, it is because it � u:- Beginning in 1917, the political form of the One-Par- IS otherWIse and integrating element in a society that ty State, in direct contradiction to the aspirations of rudderless. riddled with insoluble antagonisms, and Europe for centuries, turn by turn has embraced such as if the only That is why we have so far written diverse areas as Russia, Italy, Germany and now China. and administra- classes in society were the organizers Today over a billion people live under a form of tors of great industry and the working class. government which half a century ago was not even l workersWe bec�useinclude among the workers millions of cleric . conceived of except in the minds of a f.ew eccentric � they Illcreas- as their work becomes more mechan�ed, scribblers. The world has divided into two power blocs ; . sectl0. of ingly feel themselves to be a proletarlamzed I7 one is committed to the totalitarian form of society, the l to the community. They tend to organize themselves � other to Parliamentary Democracy. The defenders of whlch unions and follow the methods of struggle Conservative Freedom, Free Enterprise, and Parliamen- rs. Among the they see so effeto ctively used by the worke tary Democracy held at their disposal the most highly 'r ere workers in industry there are different layers. � industrialized areas of the world and controlled hun- the w h t. e are similar broad differentiations among 1 dreds of millions of the underdeveloped peoples. half workers collar workers in America or black-coated III a lifetime they have been defeated, driven out,In rolled England. There is in every population, back. They have been reduced to a condition in which according to they say openly and without shame that the only bar- 42 FACING REALITY THE SELF- CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 45 riel' to the conquest of the world by totalitarianism is hydrogen bomb, the entire foundation of human the hydrogen bomb. But soon the bomb too was in the affairs was revolutionized, and mankind placed in hands of the so-called modern Goths and Vandals. And a situation both measureless and laden with doom. as we write, the totalitarians have gone beyond them There in one package we have all the fallacies, fool­ in sending Sputniks hurtling around the earth. ishness, and dec eitful propaganda of the two power The pattern of defeat for the Free Enterprisers and blocs. Exactly what have any governments controlled Parliamentary Democrats grows more embracing every or managed during the last fifty years? The hydrogen decade. bomb was not in existence when they controlled and Yet the successes of totalitarian states are gained managed to kill ten million soldiers alone in World War such a rever­ by such a waste of human life and effort, 1. The hydrogen bomb was not in existence when they recoil's fro sion to political })?rbarism, that the world l11 controlled and managed to kill some thirty-five million of Conservative Free­ -­ them in horror. But the advocates people in World War II. Scientists had not invented the dom Free Enterprise, and Parliamentary Democracy hydrogen ' bomb when these governments starved and gain nothing by this. The public pronouncements demoralized half the population of the world during of primitive sav­of both sides are once more at the level the Great Depression. The invention of these modern men ages in the dawn of history. What is wrong? The deadly weapons had not yet taken place when these to do? Get on the other side of the river are evil. What governments controlled and managed to shock every weapons weapons larger and more destructive than the decent instinct and moral principle by the way they of the evil men. cringed before Fascism and compromised with it. To WAR AN EFFECT, NOT A CAUSE sa;y: that it was the invention of the hydrogen bomb People have been bulldozed into the belief that the which has carried us "outside the scope of human con­ real crisis of modern society i'S war between the ideolo­ trol or manageable events" is to say that the miserable gies. To this some have added that the discoveries of record of governments before the hydrogen bomb was science are the cause of the world crisis., However much controlled and managed by them. reality they con­ these ideas may be repeated, they are the utmost folly trolled nothing, they managed noInthing . To say that and dangerous nonsense. with the invention of the hyd rogen bomb "the entire The war between the ideologies began because the foundation of human affairs was revolutionized" is mere­ ideology of Free Enterprise and Parliamentary Demo­ to try to hide the truth, that "the entire foundation ly cracy proved itself powerless to satisfy either the people of human affairs" has been in process of suicidal de­ in the advanced countr ies 01' those millions in the under­ struction for half a century. It is the entire course of developed countries who were seeking a new life. That human affairs pursuing its vicious path under the lead­ is the reason why the monstrous apparition of totali­ ership of official society that has led to the construc­ tarianism has appeared. Free Enterprise and Parliamen­ tion of the' hydrogen bomb and of Sputnik. The hydro­ tary Democracy are not on trial. They have failed. The gen bomb and Sputnik are masses of machinery lying rise of totalitarianism is the proof of their failure. in a shed. They have no power in themselves. To the The idea that modern science has brought the world capitalistic fetishism of commodities they want now to to the disastrous condition in which it finds itself is add the fetishism of science. Hydrogen bombs and Sput­ similarly without foundation. niks are made by men in a certain type of society who In March 1955 Sir Winston Churchill, who specializes have certain purposes in mind when they make them. in making words sound like a roll of drums, delivered Men make them, men carry them or launch them. himself of the following on the hydrogen bomb : There is not and has never been any impelling ne­ There is an immense gulf between the atomic and cessity to invent hydrogen bombs or Sputniks, or what­ the hydrogen bomb . The atomic bomb, with all its ever else they may invent. The whole projection of sci­ terrors, did not carry us outside the 13cope of hu­ ence in that direction has been dictated solely by the man control or manageable events, in thought or need to invent engines of destruction. In a different so­ action, in peace or war. When the chairman of the ciety, science could have easily been directed towards United States Congressional Committee gave out, equally dramatic discoveries in human biology, the pro­ year ago, the first comprehensive revieW of the' duction of food supplies, individual and social psychol- a 46 FACING REALITY THE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 47 ogy, whatever rational people would have placed first on they do not care. the list of their needs as civilized human beings. Offi­ They are prepared to take the chance. Today our rulers turn all progress cial society has produced these monstrous weapons be­ . into misery. In jet planes, adl cause it is the type of society which needs them. � ?, and television we have more means of commumcatlOn than we ever The naive platitudes of the Eisenhowers, the worn had before. But do we get to know each other better ? No. shallowness of the Macmillans, the impudent grimaces Half the world is sealed off from the other half. of the Khrushchevs, and the ferocity common to all of � Each side corrupts the v ry ether with its lies about the other. them about these destructive inventions, are an offense Now with sput­ mk, ma has shown the capacity to human reason, an insult to human dignity. They nev­ l?- to organize the most extraordma,ry mechanical instruments. ertheless are quite adequate public voices of the bar- But this tri­ 'u ph which should make every human they represent. With what other voices could I? � being thrill �Ith JOy and hop�. results in loss theybarism sp eak? of liberty, more taxa­ tIOn, vulgar boastmg, envious sneers, bitterness, meeting CONSCIOUSNESS DEGRADED � . . co mumst heads m Moscow, meeting of heads of The Americans made the atom bomb. The Russians of r . NA rO I� ParIs, and universal fear. For the Russians too made one . The American made the hydrogen bomb. s are afraId. The Russians followed. Now the Russians are first with � The damag is not merely the diversion of wealth Sputnik. The Americans have followed suit. Both of and labor to Immoral purposes. The damage is not them will soon learn how to bring Sputniks or missiles merely destruction that will result tomorrow when ei­ safely to earth and to a particular spot. Russians will ' ther by design or by chance, they loose off at one learn to blow up or to bring down American Sputniks . � another. No one nows the damage that is being done Americans will learn to blow up or bring down Russian �. to ?ur phys cal eXIstence by radioactivity resulting from Sputnilcs. Mankind may soon rise in the morning and theIr experIments and tests. The weight of scientific go to bed at night in the consciousness that Sputniks . experIment gr0v:'s steadily agaim3t this suicidal roulette, loaded with bombs are going round and round us, �]ayed by RUSSIans and Americans alike. Our men of launched by politicianS and generals who, despite their . state contmue to handle these potential destroyers of disastrous failures of forty years, still suffer from the � t e human race as if they were toy balloons. They con­ delusion that they can control and manage. t:nue to dare each other with bombs and missiles like Today even physica l control is beyond them. In Eng'" . lIttle boys blowing soap bubbles. land recently radiation escaped from an atomic pile We ust not shrink from facing steadily the depra­ and infected the countryside, and milk from cows be­ J? VIty, WhIch is �ow in charge of human affairs. It was came radioactive. What will be the consequences of a clear that as tIme went on Hitler and Stalin had lost mistake made by these juvenile delinquent mentalities, al� sense of reality, and pursued their paths, ready dr essed up in uniforms, hotrodding in the sky? to brmg down Germany and Russia in ruin rather than Ever since Sputnik appeared, the American Air Force � . . S O? If md�ed they were capable of doing so. Modern is on a minute alert. Planes loaded with bombs are � . 15 clvIllzatI�n IS a unity. A similar vertigo now dominates ready to take off against Russia in minutes. While 15 our publlc �en . TI:e lust for power and destruction has ministers lie about it on the ground, the loaded planes . b�come a thmg m Itself. Political parties, press and pul­ fly in the air . We can be sure that the Russians too are . are all m �eague to exclude from authority all who doing the same. The mental strain on the pilots must . domi, not f�rst strIP off all reason and decency, daub them­ be intolerable. If one of these boys breaks under it and selves WIth the national colors, drink deep of the cup goes crazy-or one of the directing officers makes a of bloo�, and take the oath never to weaken until the mistake-or something in the mechanism goes wrong enemy IS destroyed, even though that enemy is half the as can always happen, one or more of these bombs will . h�man race. A?-eurm Bevan, after voicing for years the fall and explode, and the last great bacchanal will be on. . dIsmay of mIllIons, no sooner sniffs the fetid aroma of They cannot continue to play with fire in this way power than he shrills with the frenzy of the newly con­ without ultimately producing consequences that may verted. well be irreparable. They do not know what they are Incantation rules, not reason. doing, and even if they do know some of the dangers, There was no reason whatever to launch the first FACING REALITY THE SELF-CONFESSED 48 BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 49 atom bombs which killed a quarter of a million human justified contempt for what their elders try to teach beings in a few seconds-the Japanese were already them. What price we shall have to pay for allowing our­ suing for peace. There was no reason to build the first selves to be driven so far back beyond the very pre­ hydrogen bomb without first calling a world conference mises of a human existence it is impossible to forecast. of the nations, great and small, and placing before it But the road back is not straight and narrow, as a all the dangers involved. Rulers of states can no longer crowd of petty WOUld-be Christs seek to persuade us. think in any sane, constructive way. Forty years of It is broad and . it is open. Nothing but the conscious, continuoUs violence and bloody destruction orgamzed deliberate, and pitiless repudiation and rejection of all bv the state 11.ave taken their toll. A whole generation responsible for this dehumanization of a world can hope of men of state have been reared and matured in vio­ to lighten and relieve the burden of expiation which lence and blood. Their state can be run only by men _ .. - this generation will have to bear; - -- -- who think in those terms. The state insists that to No, it is not war and it is not science which threaten think in terms of the salvation, instead of the destruc­ us with destruction. It is the bankruptcy of society tion of the human race is treason. Perhaps the great­ which was upon us long before atomic energy, hydrogen est damage that has yet been done is the eating away bombs, or Sputniks. of our consciousness of ourselves as civilized human be­ A FALLEN WORLD ings. It is alreadY incalculable and cannot but increase. A columnist like Joseph Not only does mankind suffer the unknown coru;equences Alsop writes that nobody believes a single word of of living in perpetual fear. We on this side of the CUl'­ the pronouncements on summit talks Ir;l:ade by the political tain, and ordinary people on the other side as well, all leaders of the West. It is absolutely true. But he then goes of us know that this insane competition, this continuous on to say that anything like a real talk at the trafficking in the annihilation of millions of people is summit, i.e., between Russia and the United States, would not only suicidal. We know that it is immoral. We know create terror among the governments of the West : they that it is wrong, that even wild beasts in the jungle do would be afraid that the two big ones might make a not behave in this way. Khrushchev shouts from the deal at their expense. Wal­ ter Lippmann writes : Kremlin that if he is provol{ ed, he will lay waste, an­ There is good nihilate, half the continent of Europe. General Norstad reason to think that both sides prefer the existing division in Paris replies that he will lay waste the other half. of Germany and of Europe to any settlement that has A thousand newspapers in fifty languages print these thus far been proposed. threats. Official society is not in decline. As civilization, That is the truth, though not all of it. Why? as culture, as reason, as morals, it is already dead. The The Western governments are afraid that need to prepare for universal destruction, to scream the a reunit­ ed Germany, with . the British and American and threat, to be unhappy unless balancing on the bnnk. Russian troops withdrawn, would hold the this is no longer politics, defense or attack. These are balance of power and use it to make Germany dominant in the deep inner compulsions of a society that has out­ Europ . e. The Soviet government is mechanical forces It cann t afraid that if lived itself, swept along by � ever it withdrew . from Eastern Germany the whole control, dreading and yet half-hoping that one clImactic satellite empire would blow up and be replaced may give the opportunity to start afreSh. not clash by neutralist governments but by implacably anti­ The final degradation for the ordinary man and Russian governments. woman is the sense of impotence, the impotence of vast What does Lippmann see as a way out? millions of human beings who see themselves daily en­ The chances are that this deadlock will not be re­ dangered and ultimately threatened with destruction solved by the initiative by of the great powers, but the work of their own hands. We try to accustom our­ rather by political developments in both halves of selves to it. We cannot do it. We may bury the fear and Europe. In the Eastern half there is always some the shame deep in our consciousnesS. But they are prospect of a revolt of the Hungarian type. In the there, corrupting us. As. for our children, it is no wonder Western half there is the likelihood that within a that in country after country more and more of them few years, within the term of this Administration, live for the thrills of the moment, with a savage and there will be new governments in Western Europe, THE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 5 L

FACING REALITY munists in a second province of India would immediate ­ the existing opposi­ ly transform the holy men into frightened attackers and that in these governments ing part. If and when and defenders and the last state would be worse than tion parties will play a lead very important �hat we the first. that happens, it will be them and thus fmd our­ No agreement can keep the people quiet, not even should not have alienated an agreement to do so. An agreement presupposes some selves on the outside looking in. . V&Tlant of the status quo but the status quo is not only e. The present oppositions He makes one mistake her govern­ horizontal, it is vertical. It involves not only govern'­ they come to power. Ne� will do nothing when meI?-ts and governments but governments and peoples , Workers CounCIls ; there will be governments of ments goy�rn­ theIr own peoples as well as the peoples of other goV- be any other type of new are not and cannot ernlllents. Tl1�s Messrs. Bevan and Gaitskell propose remember the cymcIsn;-, _ _ _ . But we should note and . ment PUl::dIt to take the fIrst small step to binding Germany hand blind stupidity of thIS the meanness, and the on both SIdes and foot on the altar of peace as Isaac was bound by so beloved and respected of democracy, pre­ Jacob. Doubtless these two Social-Democratic watchdogs because Lippmann does not of the water. Cynicism of the purest breed believe that if they can persuade the ce! We are for Peace. They tend to believe in the "Pea Dulleses, and two imperialist powers to agree on this (the conference for War " which the Eisenhowers, are c a use being carefully prepared) , the German people will hav� to ladle out. Cynicism be Macmillans c'o ntinue to accept it. Who more experienced than Social-Demo­ leaders of the Free World Lippmann knows that the the threat­ crats in shoving down the throat of masses of people the produce any policy to avert are powerless to ?olus that is good for them? That the German people to leave them where �hey disaster and is content m ening llttle the West and in the East may make common can sometimes have a are. Cynicjsm, however, advocate a cause with Czechs, Hungarians-, and Poles, without bene­ has none. He does not pride. Lippmann e does not ad�ocate fit of conference either at the summit or at the bas revolution in Eastern Germany. He ernn;-ents m �u­ that in any case this imposition upon them can split power of opposition gov the coming to the German nation and create still more foundations on the outskIrts warnmg rope. But he skulks around not to be left of instability, all that is entirely beyond the vision of the Free World to be sure the leaders these scissors-and-paste reorganizers of a fallen world. o.f of this disgusting ex­ looking in. But the crown outside little rat But all this is opposition Punch and Judy. Lost to stated, so. much does this hi bition is not even all sense and reason as the politicians of official society he lives is the whole that the hole in which believe O�her cour:­ seem �o �e, none has yet reached the ultimate insanity people may make revolutions. . world. Other l1- of bellevmg that the status quo is anything more thall rties and opposltlOn po may have opposition pa tries things do not a shifting quicksand which may engulf some strateg'ic come to power. But such cies which may area at any moment and compel God knows what re­ states may come and 'stat�s ppen in the United states. ha �l�phant WIll adjustments. Their choice is between ways to destruc­ good firm of Jackass and . may go but the tion. The boast of Dulles that he chooses the brink is bred in captIVIty belIeves go on forever. So the monkey his cage. so much wind. There is nothing else to choose. consist of the cjrcus and . the world to OUT OF THEIR OWN MOUTHS the plans for peace, the llm­ All the talk about peace, mutual iI?-s?ection, op�n Our rulers have to try to deceive us. They do not peace, the neutral zone, jted and fU�ll­ are so much stupIdIty deceive themselves. Nothing shows so clearly the dregs skies, closed space, all of anythmg to which our civilization has been reduced as the open­ lies, and in any case unworthy . jty, or plain row contempt. For If tomor ly confessed bankruptcy of its rulers. but the most unmitigated . were translated mto leading men of state RUSSIA the twelve ts cov­ and signed twelve agreeme� the twelve apostles, IS ab?ve and the air and what Russia spent vast wealth, energy, and blood upon ering the land, the sea, commandments WhICh the building up of Stalin as the legitimate heir of Marx, is below, and wrote ten and what obey, body and the b!ood to Engels, and Lenin. Stalinism was inculcated into a whole all took the oath of the they an event nation as the infallible guide by which it could develop For not so substantIal would mean nothing. a jt in Eastern Germany but and regulate its material life and its ideas. Without a as a proletarian revolution election to power of Com- straightforward democratic 52 FACING REALITY

moment's notice, the rulers of Ru'Ssia flipped this nation­ al catechism into limbo. In writing, we here al'e quite naturally more concern­ to l'each people who live in Western civilization. And ed any case, by normal civilized standards there should in no need to pOint out the self-confessed bankruptcy be of the Russian state. For decades now the Russian state has found it necessary to cut off its total population of many tens of millions from all forms of information or expression of opinion except what it decreed. The infor­ mation which it manufactures has been manipulated, turned and twisted, subtracted from or added to, re-=­ versed, stood on its head, put on its feet again, placed sideways without the slightest regard for consistency ' logic, or simple common sense. Never has it shown the slightest respect for the intelligence of the population, any concern for the fact that it could remember today 'vv hat it was told yesterday. The Russian state has ended by denouncing nearly all its founders as traitors, spies in the pay of imperial­ ism, and men seeking to betray their country from the meanest motives. It carried out a series of public trials in which it flouted common sense and the elementary laws of evidence in a manner and on a scale which has no parallel in history. It conducted purges of its lead­ en:; in every branch of political and social life, and those who carried out these purge'S were in their turn purged, so that in time all that remained was a cloud of lies enshrouding accusers and accused. The Russian state sent millions of its citizens into concentration camps, where the cruelties and brutali­ ties exceeded anything that the civilized world had known for centuries, with the 'Single exception of Fas­ cist concentration camps during World War II. Its labor code sought to discipline workers in factories as if they were prisoners at hard labor. Its secret police became a gigantic economic and military state within the state. It dismis'Sed, murdered, and manipulated its supporters abroad with a cynical disregard for its professed aims and purposes. The Russian state has enslaved tens of millions of people of the oppressed nationalities, not in the remote parts of the world, but in the heart of Europe. These nationalities it has subjected to its will and exploited, politically, economically, and militarily, in a manner .John Dean Gordon Liddy which no previous imperialism, except Hitlerite Fascism. has ever dared to do. And this in the middle of the Twentieth Century. The Watergate Six 'IRE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 53

There is no need to continue with this catalogue . Brazenly denied for decades in the face of evidence piled as high as mountains, most of the crimelS of sta­ linism have been admitted as facts by the very men who helped to perpetrate them. Over these crimes with theil' millions of victims, they have pasted labels such aR "cult of the individual," "violations of socialist le­ gality," and similar high-sounding names, and seem to believe that they have thereby settled the account. They are mistaken. The revolt in East Germany in 1953, in .._ Poland and Hungary in 1956, and the rapid and com .. plete collapse of the state power in East Germany and Hungary in particular ; the crudeness with which the Russian regime sought to de-Stalinize itself, all this and the ferment throughout the Communist world show that H.usEJan totalitariani"sm has not only feet but a head of clay, is a totally unworkable system of society, and is doomed to pel'isl1 before the wrath of the people. The power of totalitarianism is due to one thing and one thing only-totalitarianism itself. Stalin could and now Khrushchev can set the most abrupt and bewild­ enng goals and changes in economic and diplomatic 1'e­ l2tions and thus appear to catch up with and surpass all rivals. But it is this very immunity from the criti­ cism of rivals and of the people that leaves them help­ less before the criticism of events and lures them on to the most fantastic stupidities. Stalin's are now common property. We shall not have to wait too long for KhrUlSh­ chev's. His successor will enlighten us. The most significant fact about the impact of this monstrous growth on Western Civilization is never 01' very rarely mentioned. History will record and, we hope, with a shame that will never let humanity forget it, history will record that the vast majority of intellec­ tuals, politicians, liberals, socialists, and humanists ac­ oepted Russian totalitarianism at its own valuation. They believed that the Russian people and the subjugat­ ed Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Czechoslovakians, etc., would accept the cruelties, brutalities, and inhumani­ ties forever. They more than half suspected that by 4" "198 all states in the world would have followed the Russian model. They believed in other words that after five thousands years of civilization, humanity was des­ tined to end up like performing animals, obedient to t,he whip of trainer. a Even the gross and stupid fallSifications of the Mos­ trials were accepted in many quarters, to the ex­ cow tent tha.t Mr. Winston Churchill in his history of THE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 55 54 FACING REALITY t.urously before the British monarchy than Life and tbe war was able to write of the masterful manner in Time, the publications of Henry Luce, and the which Vishinsky conducted them. New York Times. All this mere self-delusion when The trials have now been acknowledged for the is it is not deliberate hypocrisy. The British people do not fr:mds that they were. The Plan has been exposed in themselves believe it. Poland and Hungary. It now obvious to all except is On June 25, 1957, the Times Literary Supplement, a Stalinists and some learned economists that if any publication of the same publishing company which pro­ modern state was able to crush the working class and duces the London Times, analyzed the state of mind lower its wages by half, the state would be able to in­ of the ordinary citizen in the United States, in Russia, crease its production of heavy industry and build planes and in England. We reprint certain sections of the and missiles, until in time the whole society blew up analysis because today official society is best convicted owing to -the economic and social tensions and disorder. _ of the mouths of its own spokesmen. It was not merely Russian statistics of production -but and military power that drove Western Civilization to A time of strained and breaking loyalties all over believe the Russian state had at last discovered the the world-in politics, nationalities, religions, mo­ means of turning men into commodities, pure and sim­ ralities and families-is certainly a time of trou­ ple. The cause of this degradation of thought, this bru­ bles. Such a time has come upon us all, for the first talization of belief, lay not in Russia at alL The Russian time in history. That secular religion which once propaganda was swal lowed because of the situation at seemed the hope of half the world-Communism-­ home. If so many in western Europe and the United has equally become a prey to conflicts of loyalty, states accepted the Russian way as the way of the fu­ nationalism and morality. In Russia, as in America, ture, if they cringed before it, if they were even fas­ India and Britain; in the Jewry of the diaspora and cinated by it, it was because they no longer had any of Israel alike, as among dwellers in Arabia, the old belief in the future of Free Enterprise, or Parliamentary faiths cannot hold the young, materialism rules Democracy, or the mil k-and-water Socialism of the the roost and societies bid fair to come apart at Labor Parties, exhausted before they had arrived at the seams. Worse, they begin to seem unpatcha ble; maturity. Millions, including the most highly-educated yet no one knows, no one can foretell, what kind and well-informed intellectuals, were filled with such of soc iety will emerge as typ ical of the continental loathing, such uncontrollable disgust for the pretenses groupings (if not "the World state" itself) towards and hypocrisies and rottenness of the democratic re­ which our familiar nation-states are being hustled. gIme, that they plunged head foremost into Stalinism. We can ignore the last phrases that no one knows They were ready to drown all knowledge, all intelligence or can foretell what kind of society will emerge. The and integrity in that slime and grime, muck and blood, society that will emerge is a society of Workers Councils if that was the only way demonstrate their rejection to in every department of the national activity and a Gov­ of Parliamentary Democracy. ernment of Workers Councils. But that apart, did any The shock of de-Stalinization, the splendor of the Marxist revolutionary ever pen a more devastating pic­ HlIDgarian Revolution have brought some of them to ture of chaos, decay, and social dissolution? their senses. But for them there is no return to official The ordinary citizen has no belief in official society, society. Behind the dreary bleatings of the politicians, whether he lives in Moscow, Washington, or London. official society states quite plainly that it has nothing On the surface he votes, he works, he salutes the flag to offer to anybody. (or he does not salute it) , he listens to the politicians, GREAT BRITAIN but in the privacy of his own mind and heart, all this parade of politics and patriotism means nothing to him. Great Britain is the country which is supposed to This these serious spokesmen of official society know, have emerged from the upheavals of the last decades and they know that the root cause of it is the modern with the greatest social and moral stability. We are told octopus state, whether totalitarian or welfare. that it combines the Welfare State with traditional values. holds up its Parliamentary Democracy a'S a Our real problem today is rather "the millions in It model to the whole world. No one genuflects more rap- modern mass society who are without loyalty," who 56 FACING REALITY THE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 57 are apathetic 01' anaesthetic. This is a useful point­ lng, then the decay of human er ; for on both sides of the Curtain - and rapidly personality, the decline ?I human respect for itself, for developing in Asia and Africa-modern urban, in­ its past, for any future enougI: to bring dustrial (or industrializing) society renders its citi­ �s nostalgia for the monas tery. Millions m despalr turn back zens ever more rootless in their local habitations, to religion, that is to say return to s vagery, for when modern men who have abjured ever more mobile, ever more atomistic. They do not . � relIgIOn take refuge feel their society. They do not seem parts of it. Yet, in it, then they are even worse than the savage. simultaneously, the powers-that-be ...for brevity's The savage knew no better. The man of sake, those of the state-assume more and more today is denying centuries of human development. control over details of the citizen's life, over the Let us look once again at the supposedly stable so­ ... _ range of his decisions for his life, and over the en­ ciety of Britain. There are among the British peo ple vironment within which he must live it out. many who have pi'eserved a genuinely religious cast of mind, and some of them denounce It is perhaps platitudinous by now, but none the the USe of the hydro­ gen bomb under any circumstances, driven to this by less true, that inasmuch as a citizen feels he can­ . theIr whole Puritan not exert any influence on circumstances shaping past (and helped no doubt by Brit­ ain's vulnerable position) . These people, mOl'al, serious, his life-inasmuch as he feels himself the sport of . smcere, hope uncontrollable and unseen powers-he will "cash in for some sort of general disarmament. To them, another his chips" or, as French argot has it, he will re­ British newspaper, the Manchester �uardia�, place his spoon on the counter. He will effectively for a century famous for principled .iournal­ l�l!n , replles as follows : die towards his society. He will contract out of it, and out of his responsibilities. There is about one chance in ten of that. The far The free intelligence turns in revolt from this para­ higher probability is that it would lead within a few years to the extension of Mr. Khrushchev' site of bureaucratic administration, tyranny, and hypo ­ s crisy. kind of socialism to. all Western Europe and the British Isles. We should be powerless to resist, ex­ The citizenry - and particularly, primarily, the cept by passive means. The immediate consequence thinking elite-will suffer a kind of schizophrenia : (unless the West European countries contrived to on the one hand their social instincts will still be retain �n American strategic guarantee, backed urgent, but unsatisfiable; on the other hand, as a by Amencan bombs, while Britain withdrew) would human-natural defense mechanism, they will decry be the likelihood that the recent Soviet diplomatic and debunk any form of social activity, for that thaw would be reversed. One country after another would identify them with the powers-that-be and beginning with Western Germany, would come undel: imply acquiescence in the various forms of deploy­ Soviet pressure. Britain at first might be immune ment of those powers. Thus "a sort of traitor" arises ; but her turn would come. Mr . Khrushchev after all' not very many real, political, or military traitors, believes that the forces of history are oy{ his side: but rather a vast number of non-citizens-citizens The transition from capitalism to socialism is ine­ of nothing, attaching no positive value whatever to vitable. "The emergence of socialism," as he told their society and its administrative State, having the party congress last year, "from within the no emotive affection for it, living as atoms in it, bounds of a single country and its transformation fulfilling the barest minimum of obligations to "get into a world system is the main feature of our era." by," and generally betraying an "I couldn't care Russia's business, as her leaders see it, is to help less" mood. the process along by whatever means may be ex­ That is the society in which we live, more precisely pedient. Harsh threats are not expedient at present rival whiCh we die, Tomorrow, as the dozens of they have proved to build up western resistance: in for Sputniks spin around the earth, men, women, and chil­ But the objective of Russian policy is unchanged dren will wake and sleep in a world which have is a Communist world, under Moscow's leader� will It become the very valley of the shadow of death. ship. Once we close our ears to the slogans and the shout- There aloe, nevertheless, many Christians and non- 58 FACING REALITY THE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 59

Christians who believe that we ought to renounce Guardian appears to pe a degree below the Times, it is the bomb. They hold that its use could not be jus­ because the public for whom and to whom it speaks tified in any conceivable circumstances. Are they, prefers reality with less of the traditional trappings. then, prepared to face the agony of living under a Never have modern Englishmen sunk so low. Yet these WhO Communist system? are the same people a few years ago astonished world by their bravery, fortitude, and calmness un­ Are they? The Manchester Guardian is not unready, the der a hail of bombs. And that is now exa ctly their level. It may be that the system, by the time it reached They can stand up under bombs thrown, or throw back here, would be modified. It may also be that, as bomb'S. Perspective beyond that they have none. They Poland's delicate treading of the razor's edge might have abdicated from leadership. They hold their posi- ultimately prove, an evgltl.tion towards milder a tions by tradition, police, and army. They are going no- ___. system is possible within the Communist State. Buf . where, and none know it more than they. the process must be anguishing. Merely to think This. the attitude of British liberalism to Stalinism, of Britain as a "controlled democracy" calls for an The is not in any way peculiar to Britain. whole of effort of imagination which is hard to make. Europe is permeated through and through with this readiness to capitulate to Stalinism. They can make the effort easily enough for other On the surface it countries. can be explained thus : must we first submit to military For people in France or the Low Countries it is occupation by the Russian army and rule by the Com­ easier, because they have had the experience of lUuni'St Parties ? Must we then be liberated by an Amer­ living under an imposed regime. They know what ican invasion? After that, what will be left? But that it means to have among them secret police,. with is merely rationalization. Men have always been ready powers of arbitrary arrest, deportation, and execu­ to fight, to die, and to endure for a way of life which tion. And, since it will be said that in Russia the satisfied or promised to satisfy their material, intellec­ police powers are being made less arbitrary, it tual, and moral needs. Western Civilization no longer should be remembered that leniency is least where ccmmands that loyalty. And if even Europe survives the seeds of resistance are strongest ; that has been the liberation, then what? Only the United States shown in Eastern Germany and Hungary. We should mouthing its obscene rituals about Free Enterprise · and have to be ready to face in Britain the corrupting Democracy. influences already seen in Eastern Europe-the use, THE UNITED STATES for example, of children to inform against their parents and, where parents are accused or under When Americans look at themselves in the context pressure to "confess," the use of their children as of wOl'ld society do they take any different view of hostages. The system the Russian leaders have de­ themselves? The European face of the United States the daily Paris edition of the New York Herald Tri­ vised for their own country is one thing ; the sys­ is tem as it evolves through imposition on other coun­ bune Which is read all over Europe and the Near East. 6, 1957, tries is another. Resistance in Britain by individ­ On the editorial page of the issue of November we uals and organisations (churches, political parties, can see the arresting title, "America's Non-Genera­ and the press) could prove magnificent. But the tion." Describing the present generation of Americans 30, conflict, inevitably, would bring bitter pain. under it but repeats the view of the London Times. The real problem, you see, is the children. There is, then, a certain justice in regarding the a Such is the degradation, publicly announced, to young generation as non-generation, a collection which official society has sunk in Britain. Charles II. of people who, for all their apparent command of three hundred years ago, was ready to sell British power themselves, for all their sophistication, for all their and influence to the French king. But he did it for value "maturity," know nothing, stand for nothing, be­ received, for money, and he had the decency to do it lieve in nothing. secretly. This spinelessness, the sinking at the heart What is this but a picture of social death? Ameri­ and bowing at the knees, comes not from the enemy can sociologists have registered and documented the without, but from the enemy within. If the Manchester decline of the dynamic individualism which built the THE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 6L 60 FACING REALITY famniar with the problems posed and recognizes in­ United states into "The Organization Man," dressed stantly the social types thl'ough which these are pre­ his gray flannel suit. in sented. What the American audience does is to reject, Yet it would be a mistake to portray the self-con­ often with gOOd-humored if not contemptuous cynicism, fessed bankruptcy of the bourgeoisie in the Uni ted the synthetic conclusion. Beginning from the problems states by its pronouncements in publications COITes� the types of people placed before it, it works out for ponding to the Times Literary Supplement on Loyalties anditself the answers which producers and directors have and the Manchester Guardian on the invading Stalinist evaded-the inevitability of defeat. society. The same consciousness of failure, the same self-analysis which is taking place in Europe in politi­ FRANCE cal and literary terms is taking place in the United To conclude this picture of defeat and death, we states, in characteristically American fashion, before ­ could perh!,tps not do better than to show what official the whole population. Despite the distortions, it is films society looks like to the vast majority of the peoples -- -- ­ and television that mirror the crisis of American bour­ from underdeveloped countries, some three-quarters of geois society. the world's population. In September of 1957 represen­ Blackboard Jungle put on the screen for the first tatives of the French-African colonies held a conference time the jungle which is, American education and rela­ at Bamako in French West Africa. They were most of tions between teacher and pupil. Rebel Without a Cause them men occupying high official posts in the French portrayed the violent rebellion of American yout h colonial system. They desired internal self-government agaimt their society and their inability to find in the but they did not propose to break with France - they political and social institutions of the country any posl­ advocated, instead, a French-African community. Many tive movement for regeneration. Executive Suite, The of them were bitter anti-Communists. Yet one speech Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and Sweet Smell shoak to the marrow the French politiCians and journa- Success show the former ideal of the nation, the suc­of lists who were present. The speaker, M. Ouezzin: Couli- cessful business man, rejecting the code and sinking baly. Vice-President of the Council of Government of into spiritual death or perversion. the High Volta, led the discussion on the education of African youth. What example Yet the most remarkable characteristic of these ex­ did the state of France offer to the youth of Africa?' posurel5 is that the exposers have no values to substitute None. Instead he asked the youth of Africa to take warning against the spec- for those which they deride. The more talented the tacle which France presented. In the course of few artist, the more revealing is the bankruptcy. minutes M. Coulibaly told the African people whya they The hero demagogue of A Face in the Crowd is a could look for example neither to France, to Russia, the television idol, supported, either naively or for dishonest United States, nor to the French political patties, whe - purposes, by every section of American society portrayed in the film. The life of the intellectual is treated with ther bourgeois, Communist, or Sociali'st. Here is the scarcely disguised contempt. The film catches perfectly speech: the attempt of official society in the United States THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE U. s. A. vs. U. S. S. R. organize in advance every social stimulus and responseto Finally, in the education of the youth, of our youth so as to drown out any independent initiative of which considers itself African, we have to put our thought, feeling, or activity. the end, the film itself young people on guard against political satelliteism. is example of the same methodsIn and the same results I touched on the subject earlier. The political satel­ whichan it attempts denounce. liteism of France does not cease to scandalize all As in the quotationsto from the Times Literary Sup­ those people who wish France well and want to be­ plement and the Manchester Guardian, so in the film : lieve that there still remains something of a France the working class does not appear. In each case, there­ which was once great and powerful, that there is fore, the result i's the same-an indictment of bourgeois still some will and energy which will try to mo­ civilization by a self-confessed bankrupt bourgeoisie. bilize the people of France around some hopes and Europeans do not seem to understand that the Ameri­ aspirations for France as an independent nation. can public hal5 developed an extraordinary awareness It remains only a hope. And while we are hoping , and sensibility in regard to these, its popular arts. It is FACING REALITY THE SELF-CONFESSED BANKRUPTCY OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY 6:J

we are forced to admit that the centers of gravity thief. Arrogantly they demand that they must hav8 of world politics have shifted toward countries that a place among "the great." Snarling, they defend are now new centers of power: the Russians, the a prestige which is only paper, and they are happy Chinese, the Indians and before long, the Germans to snigger at "those idiots of Americans." But at once again. As a result of this, politics in France the same time they humbly extend to the Americans is sunk in corruption. We have to ask ourselves jf a begging hand and get into a terrible state when Frenchmen perceive the ridiculous position in which it is spurned by John Foster Dulles ; the white they are. The normal order of things is reversed. the economy of France moulders in a false security The internal policy of France, based upon the needs of charity from abroad. of the nation, no longer dictates its foreign policy. It is clear that we cannot look for inspiring politi� Instead, the internal policy has to adapt itself to cal perspectives from a class that is exhausted. For ­ foreign policy ahd this foreign policy is dictated decades now we hear from the -representatives of ...... by the two international power blocs, Russia and the classical Right Wing of French politics only a the United states. But we, the pOlitical representa­ mixture of insolence and feebleness. They collabor- tives of Africa, who refuse to let our judgment sink ated with Germany when the power was with the into paralysis, we have to a'Sk ourselves if the Germans. They followed Petain when they could French Parliament is anything more than two dele­ play the double game with danger, they joined de gations of Russian and American citizens on French Gaulle when the "noble" resistance movement tri- soil, whose business is to defend interests which umphed in the drawing rooms. are absolutely alien to the country. No decision .. THE BETRAYAL OF THE OLD PARTIES can be taken on any question of French internal As for the extreme Left, the Communists, they sub ­ politics unles'S the external consequences of the de­ scribe to the dogma that the revolution is impos­ cision are first taken into consideration. Demands sible without the Russian army . No longer are they and pl�Ograms are judged not by what they propose, defenders of the U. S. S. R. as the bastion of the but by what the consequences abroad are likely to world revolution, encircled by the capitalist world. be. France is no more than dummy, behind which a It is for them the only hope, the only force capable Russia and the United states without any pretense, of imposing the happy tomorrows of which they fight out a merciless duel. In any discussion, no sing. one paY'S attention to what the spe·aker is saying, you seek instead to divine to which foreign ideology This paralY'Sis of French political life is above all he belongs. serious on the Left. For it is the Left which attracts M. the youth. It is perhaps the first time in history Dalmas has stigmatized this national degrad­ that the two great traditional parties of the massed ation in the following terms. of the people, the Socialists and the Communists. "Our political life is completely alienated. Any real have thus "deviated." Their chief concern is no sense of what is happening in the country vanished longer to resolve the economic problems of a given before the need to interpret events according to society in accordance with their principles. The the strategy of the world conflict. We are power­ sole aim of each is to find a place for itself as less to do anything else, since the slightest gesture troops within a power bloc whose boundaries ex­ at once becomes a part of one or the other of the tend far beyond them and which has no meaning two enormous cog-wheels and has no existence of except in the perspective of war. its own. The obsession with international conflict transforms us into a passive chessboard on which This is what the colonial people see when they look Western Civilization. It is to this that the United the game is played by players who belong else­ at where. We find out about the strokes they bring States and Rus'Sia between them have driven the vast off only when we feel them on our backs." majority of the world's people. THE DEPRAVITY OF THE BOURGEOISIE There is no need to continue with this distressful SO it is that the pro-American French bourgeois catalogue. What we have to ask ourselves is : why ? We practices the diplomacy of the cringing small-time have already answered this question in terms of the M FA.CING REA.LITY

production . But th:at is not fundamental relations of . now to vle� SocIety as. a enough. We must attempt . . END OF A PHILOSOPHY all its comple�ntles and la, mlfl­ IV. whole, and seek within . thread which wIll brmg some or­ cations some guiding . There is no mystery in what is happening to our to be a universal chaos, to J.?ake der into what appears society. Men live their lives according to a philosophy appears to be the �potheosls of some sense of what . of life. They always have. They always will. They may knows what IS happemng. senselessnes'S. The bourgeoisie not be conscious of it. But when Roman Catholics and But it does r:ot know why. Of that there is no doubt. Protestants believed that it was their duty to convert, be bOU 'geOls. Because w� If it did, it would no longer � or, failing that, to exterminate each other, ideas were ality of eXls�ence, the ans:vel are concerned with the tot part of a total philosophy of life. Today Catholics and in _t _!s__ t()_saX, _ a }) 1."lllo=-_ .. - must be terms- of a total yj eW , l1_�t . atheists can live peaceably side by side in the same sophy life. of house and are more concerned with whether theii' neigh­ bors are Fascist or Communist, with which political party they belong to, than which Church they attend. Obviously the view of what constitutes the fundamentals of existence has changed. People do not need to be philo­ sophers to have a philosophy of life. Philosophers seek ;focl.'mulate in precise and com­ to prehensive terms the ideas of their age, or propagate i; new ideas, in whole in part. All this would appear or to be elementary. It has to be stated, however, because today the great stream of European philosophy has various evil-smelling stagnant pools or little streams that babble as aimlessly and far less usefully than Tennyson's brook. One of the stagnant schools has dis­ covered that the organic constitution of the human mind is gloom, anxiety. dread, suffering, and all varie­ ties of misery. The other begins from the premise that all previous philosophies. misconceived language, and they have set out to make language more precise. For them a sentence which states "The future of humanity is in peril," has no meaning. This they demonstrate by devoting twenty pages to the word "the," forty pages to the word "future," and so on. A popular tradition has it that at the end of the great age of Catholicism the theologians debated with passion how many angels could dance on the pOint a needle. Today they do not of seem so absurd in the light of the number of professors who can dance on the needle of a point. In this way, inquiring youth is corrup t.ed and shepherded into pas­ sivity before the crimes and evils of the day. These learned obscurantists and wasters of paper are of value in that they signify the end of a whole stage in the intellectual history of mankind. Philosophy as such has come to an end. From Plato to Hegel, European philosophers were 65 66 FACING REALITY END OF A PHILOSOPHY 67

struggling to make a total harmonious unity of always torchlights made by Freud and Jung, accumulating sta­ riddled by class struggles. They were attempt­ societies tistics in the spirit of Mr. Gallup and labeling it soeio­ in the mind what could ing the impossible, organizing logy. only be organized in society. But contrary to these mod­ Though confused and deafened by the clamor above, ern marionettes, they usually cleared away much that it is the working class in every country more than any had become old and rotten and at least formulated the other class which faces vel'Y lSOberly the conditions of new. But the time for that is past. The development of . life as they are today and knows that the future of scienee and industry has brought men face to face wIth human experience lies in the reorganization of these the need to make reasonable their daily existence, not conditions and not in dread, depth psychology, or the to seek in philosophical sys,tems for the harmony that ineradicable sense of sin. For the same reason, language eludes them in life. Over a hundred years ago in one adeql.ll:lte _ . . . ever the eXP:reQsion of _ of his greatest passages, Marx saw that religious and is today mor� than JQr human needs. This is not becau'Se language is more philosophical systems had had their day, and men highly developed, but because human needs have be­ would soon face the realities of social life as phenomena . come more simplified With modern means of eommu­ created by human beings, to be organized by human be­ nication, there is not an urgent social pr oblem today ings in concrete life, and not in the escapism o� .ab­ . which is beyond the rapid compl'ehension of the vast stract thought or the mystic symboll'sm of rehgIOus majority of mankind. Since the Greek city-state, it is ceremonial. This intellectual clarification had been the first time in history that this is possible. There is achieved not by intellectuals but by bourgeois society no mystery in what is happening to our society. so itself. So in the Communist Manifesto Marx pOinte.d If 'many find it easier to accept the total destruction of out that in good time men would face the world as It human society rather than see that a new society is all was and therefore have ' no need of a philosophy to around them, a society based on cooperative labor, it contradictions. The 'Socialist proletariat would resolve its is not merely because of greed, de'Sire to retain privilege, reorganize society. original sin. It is because, arising out of these material un­ Conservation of the old modes of production in privileges and re-enforcing them is a habit of mind, altered form was, on the contrary, the first condi­ a way of viewing' the world, a philosophy of life still tion of existence for all earlier industrial classes. so powerful because by means of it man has conquered . Constant revolutionizing of production, unintenupt­ nature has governed the world for over four hundred It ed disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting years and now it has come to an end. the bourgeois uncertainty and agitation distinguish Beginning in the Sixteenth Century, mankind lib­ ones. All fixed, fast-frozen epoch from all earlier erated itself from the static clol3ed conceptions of the of ancient and venerable relations, with their train universe which had characterized the medieval epoch. swept away, all new­ prejudices and opinion'S, are The study of science and the rev olutionizing of produc­ before they can os­ formed ones become antiquated tion which had grown up within feudal society opened into air, all that is holy sify. All that is solid melts up the perspective of conquering nature and subj ecting is profaned, and man is at last compelled.to face . . it to human control. Copernicus, Gali leo, Descartes, Mi­ condItIOns of hfe, and with sober senses, his real chelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus, and Shakes­ his kind. his relations with speare are some of the symbols of the new age. For us Philosophy must become proletarian-this stingi71g today, the most significant is De'Scartes. ers and snee.rs or pO Ite formulation is the source of je ; To a society advancing in science and industry, educated. It IS nevertll.e­ smirks by the philosophically Descartes gave a philosophy that expressed and released our time. Immense n ­ less one of the great truths of � the readiness to adventlll'e in every realm, including the elled at last to fa e WIth bel'S of the educated, now comp � realm of ideas. His philosophy was imbued with the con­ nditions of life and thell' �eal sober senses the real co . . viction that every discovery contributed to the libera­ off in all dll'ectIOns, hilo­ relation'S with their kind, fly p tion of humanity. It inculcated freedom from national ns o� �he eam g. of sophies of anxiety, dizzy gyrati? 1l1: .r;- prejudice for all thinking men. This philo'Sophy bore ongmal sm, dI g "I I the word "meaning," rediscovel'lng VJ? its name on its face-rationalism. think, therefore personality armed WIth into the depths of the human am," said Descartes, and the WOTld rejoiced at the per- END OF A PHILO SOPHY 69 FACING REALrry 68 alism which still rules. Stalinist totalitarianism is mere­ ion of individual personality and spective of the expans ly the material expression of the elite philosophy of ra­ the liberation of the intellect. human powers through tionalism carried to its ultimate conclusion. Its philo­ inty on man's own thought, This resting of self-certa sophy of the Party is the philosophy of the organized alone, was a revolutionary defiance and man's thought elite. Its philosophy o·f the Plan is the philosophy of dogma which had derived certainty of of the medieval the organizing intellect. It is the attempt to take what the Church. Rationalism encouraged self from God or was living, creative, dynamic, adventurous in the early the organizers of ideas, the or­ and developed an elite, da;vs of science and industry and make it into a blue­ the discoverers in science. At that ganizers of industry, prmt to regulate the infinitely complex life of modern they were needed. They stage of human development society. Its conception of the masses of the people is individual personality. It followed that cultivated the that they are the means by whose labor and sacrifice are masses of men as passive unthink­ they looked Upon the to be achieved ends which only the elite can viSUalize active organizing elite. Rationalism ing servants of the clearly. Hence the blindness, the moral degradation the as an individual, the natural saw each human being �ehumaniz tion which overtakes those who today p�'ac­ most able, the most energetic, the � leaders being the tlCe the phIlosophy of rationalism. Two philosophies the viduals. Its political form, as de­ most far-seeing indi philosophy of man's mastery over men and the philo­ only as an ideal, was democracy; veloped by Locke, if sophy of man's mastery over things, have met face to free individual competition into the transference of face. of nature, politics. It was invaluable in the conquest steadily back Fascism, Corporate State, One-Party and under its banner reaction was driven State ' Welfare State, Totalitarianism, all of these are ways and the modern world was created. in which the great rationalism attempts to adapt itself to the modern Today the tasks envisaged by Descartes, followers in the C?mmunity. Thereby it not only obstructs the new so­ men of the Sixteenth century and their Clety. It destroys all the achievements of rationalism it­ Seventeenth and Eighteenth, are accomplished. The self. ,!,he free development of the individual personality, of society is no longer to conquer nature. preSSing need o.f control, order, and the nght the meanest intelligence to wander through The great and pressing need is to of wealth and the strangest seas of thought, alone if need be, this reduce to human usefulness the mass over the last four freedom has been established as a universal principle knowledge which has accumulated ; the problem of however limited it might be by the actual condition centuries. In human, in social terms, of men in a of existence at any particular place or time. It is now mankind has gone beyond the association over nature. an ineradicable part of the human personality. The natural environment to achieve control new society, the community of cooperative labor can Today mankind is sharply divided into two camps within ' the elite and the function adequately only if this freedom can e�pand the social environment of production, . no longer repre­ to Its fullest degree. Today rationalism destroys it, not mass. But the trained, educated elite Its primary function only for the mass, but for the elite itself. So Hitler and sents the liberation of mankind. which has developed Stalin become the sole individuals in their countries en­ is to suppress the social community � The elite must sup­ t tled to any personality at alL Political parties par­ inside the process of production. lll. because this commu­ llamentary democracies become machines in which the press the new social community and reduce to hu­ individual must either conform or be ruthlessly elimi­ nity is today ready to control, order, � lated wealth and nated. uman associations no longer are guided by man usefulness the mass of accumu between an ad­ leadershIp, they pay homage to "the leader." That is knowledge. This antagonistic relation administering the why "on both sides of . the Curtain-and rapidly devel­ ministrative elite calculating and a community de­ oping in Asia and Africa-modern urban, industrial (or of others, and people in social needs industrializing) society renders its citizens ever more own needs, this new world, our world, termining their rootless in their local habitations, ever mOore mobile never lm ew or guessed at. is a world which Descartes feel ; rationalism ever more atomistic. They do not their society. ,The actual liberating philosophy of life, As an do not seem parts of it." But a society of Workers Coun­ is rationalism which no longer commands is dead. It cils in every department of the national life, and a Gov­ the allegiance of men. ernment of Workers Councils ? Ah! That, if yOU please , it is ration- Yet on both sides of the Iron Curtain, 70 FACING REALITY e. As if for fifty years will mean-the destruction of cultur systematically destroying official society has not been man. culture in it'S most preciou s castle-the mind of lity appears for a brief sometimes some scrap of rea stupidity, lies, hypocrisy NEW SOCIETY: NEW PEOPLE moment among the perpetual daily Press mechanically V. and self-delusion which the customer . Thus Yet it is in aging, creaking, conservative Britain places before even its most pretentious � th, 1957, suddenly roform\) that there flourishes as solid, as cohesive and as pow­ the London Times for April 18 er ul a national concentration of the new society as its readers: � that the poli­ eXlsts �nywhere on the face of the globe. It is composed example, being widely said It is, fQJ.' mlillons. of men, with ideals and loyalties of their_ conflicts in contemporary Brit- ­ tical and industrial of two fundamentally own. Here is one of the rare descriptions of them, as ain arise from the fact that morality and a col­ profound and brilliant a description of British life as opposite moralities, a bourgeois side by side and has �ppeared for years. From it newspaper editors, book lective morality, are flourishing it increasingly publlshers, and directors of radio stations would recoil their respective adherents find that as if stung (as indeed they would be) . But millions of a common basi'S for discussion. hard to discover orkers would recognize it at once, and it is the kind of both these societies are :w It is a peculiar idea that mformation that the masses of people everywhere need "flourishing." Let that pass. and never get. It is an account of shop stewards ' not societies. But we read on There they are, the two only as a social force, but a human beings. is-Chris­ s out that the bourgeois morality and it turns It would be impossible concretely and in detail to Pays ;" a Prime Minister tianity. "Conservative Freedom and cheating like �how, in the space of a few pages, how the growth in the House of Commons, twisting if American m power of the shop committees, in turn enabled racing tout in the dock, when asked a over the most advanced socialist to begin to see the with hydrogen bombs are flying planes loaded growing up of a new way of life and organization like greyhounds on the England ; employers straining showdown (I think that is what State Capitalism and World government signal to have the leash for a Revolution means by human relations). But one sitting late over Jung with the workers ; professors UP of the collective un­ concrete exampJe is in the very center of the clash reasons why royalty is part to find such of classes, at the negotiating committees between this is capitalistic society? conscious (British) No the shop stewards and the managements. It can and the Archbishop of Canter- thing. It is Christi�nity, be a shattering and highly formative experience bury is its prophet. to observe, week in and week out, that there ar� two different ways of life on either side of that table, and that the overwhelming preponderance of all the claSSic human virtues is on the side of the shop stewards. In an average works committee meeting, the managing director is in the chair at the head of the table. On one side of the table will be the convenor of the shop stewards, and five or six other stewards elected to represent the Shop Stewards Committee and through them every work­ er in the plant. On the other side will be say the works manager, production manager a chief of the planning department, and deputy of the works man­ ager, the head of the drawi lg office, and the sales manager. An amazing dialecticall revolution takes place.

71 72 FACING REALITY NEW SOCIETY: NEW PEOPLE 73 THE SHOP STEWARD IS FREE manag'er is a reasonable man, The shop stewards, workers to a man, all of yOU praise him to the director, and make him SUspect. If he them, fitters, turners, production line workers, are harsh dis is a ciplinarian, yOU accuse no longer employees; they are no longer un er t e him of provoking ? :t: strikes. All these things are difficult to detail orders of the managers or even the ma:r::agmg dl­ the total ; but . result is that the shop rector ; they are the equals of the managmg d re. c­ stewards' method . � of organisation, with everything t But the managerial side of the negotmtlOns, that it involves, proves itself in every way superior to t y the managers, are the employees. �he ShO the the way of � . ? management's. The shop stewards� are free and equal men, denvmg theIr steward who thinks who is a revolut ionary, values highly authority from the workern th y represe t. The which the syste � r: has made him what he is. u{ managers ate mere employers hIred and fIred by_ .. "THEY GLORY the managing director. The policy of the manager's IN THE STRUGGLE" These are new men, side is set by the free discussion an� free vote by new types of human is in beings, the Shop Stewards Committee. t s usual th t them that are to be � � � rt found all the traditiona virtues of the English l there is ' as there is always, a maJonty and a mI­ nation, not in decay in official as they are nority, in the shop stewards' debates ; always a society, but in full flower because these men . have per'Spective. Note particularly spokesman of the minority is included 111 the ?e�o­ that they the struggle. They glory in tiations to see that the majo 'ity, in neg tlat ng are not demoralized � � or defeated or � despairing persons. Wages with management, is not unfaIr to the mmonty. is the least of their . They problems. No minority in a Shop Stew rds ommlttee ever are animated by broad c:: far-reaching social pur­ � poses, They are leaders feels oppressed there is free dIScussIon, and demo­ but they are rooted deep those among cratic decision The managemen nows there are they lead. As is inevitable, : they have in them : � of the national divi'Sions always on the workers SIde, a d always prejudices, but this is due gripmany to the try to use that knowledge. But ne er, m� all the on education and mass .v publication of the decaying official society. They negotiations with employers at WhICh I have as are getting rid of these : and hangovers sisted, or which I ever heard of, has t e workers replacing them by virtues and qualities their an­ � cestors never knew. Ca side ever shown the employers anythmg but a reful study of the national munities com­ completely united front. of advanced Western civilization will show . that despite wide These are loyalties of the new age. These are mdeed variations, all are based fundamental on the same relations of the the classic human virtues. classes that exist in lal'!d today. Eng­ MANAGEMENT IS TIED AND BOUND , , In the working classes On the employers' side, there is the unalllmlty of the world, in production relations and personal relations, there of bankruptcy, because with them they have a boss are being posed , and foundations laid, for solution of gigantic problems who alone ultimately tells them wha to d�. If the which have baffled the world for advice of a works manager and hIS� pollc ov r centuries. We can on­ ? ly touch briefly on one weeks or months is accepted by the mana mg dI­� of them-the place of women SOCiety. in rector the boss, and it turns out wrong, he �IS sac ­ ed E ery individual manager is always under thls� WOMEN AND EQUALITY : ; t 'n ' But the shop steward negotiators are free Capitalist society has by slow and grudging degrees who are never penaliz d in this way. Th re given equality to women. But it is the same ���, � type abstract are no bo'Sses, no sackings 111 the Shop stewar� ds of equality that an individual welder . , or mainten­ Committee. The average shop st ward glo 'les 111 the ance man has with another � � individual who employ;:; battle in the negotiations, he gIves of hIS ?est a� 10.,0.0.0.men. Both are able to cast a vote and are there­ ways ' there is no boss breathing down hIS nec . fore equal. Just as Parliamentary ' Democracy ignores, It is a matter of common knowledge that t e shop and in fact increases, the real inequality of different stewards in negotiations are ruthless" never� to �e classes of men in capitalist society, so women that found "atl" 'sfied , and can always drive wedges mto the ar. tl­ equality before the law rid them of certain op­ ficial monolithism of the managemen t. If a works pressiVe and offensive feudal limitations, only to bring 74 FACING REALITY before them more starkly the handicaps of child-bear­ ing and child.-rearing in a competitive society, re-en­ iorced by the accumulated prejudices of centuries of class society. It is in the United states, where women are abstractly most free, that there is taking place a colossal struggle for the establishment of truly human relations between men and women. Among the profes­ sional classes, as part of the general reactionary trend, most women at marriage give up the unequal contest and compromise with their most dearly-cherished as­ pirations for equality. The result is the mounting di­ vorce statistics and, where divorce does not take place, an antagonism in sex and personal relations. For years this aspect of American society was regarded with as­ tonishment and often with distaste, not only by men, but by women, in other countries. But the modern eco­ nomy draws into cooperative labor or related activities sections of the population, including women. Offi­ cialall society itself can no longer defend the shamlS and vulgarity and cruelty of bourgeois morality. The result ic; that women everywhere are beginning to recognize that the hitherto notorious sex war in American life is in reality one of the advanced positions of the new society seeking to make official abstractions into hu­ man reality. But as usual, though the middle classes often pose advance the fundamental questions of the day, they co C incannot solve them. The United states more than any .J:: other country produces a number of exceptional women, U career women, usually viragoes who by use of their in­ tellectual and other gifts transform themselves as far as is humanly possible into feminine counterparts of men and believe that thereby they have solved the "woman question." Others have only to go and do like­ wise. This is no more than rationalist individualism in skirts. The real battle for new relations between the sexes is being fought above all in the American working class. During the war millions of women went into industry and many have remained there. They have no money for the elaborate home organization of the successful career woman. They retain the desire themselves to make a home and rear a family. But they have no in­ tention of once more becoming an adjunct to the male wage-earner so that he can adequately fulfill the needs of capitalist production. In the age-long struggles of human beings to remould their world nearer to their heart's desire, rarely have such heroic efforts, such Ii NEW SOCIETY: NEW PEOPLE 15

courage, such resource, such ingenuity been shown as in the efforts of American working women to live a complete life, a life corresponding to the technical achievements and social relations of their highly-devel- oped society. As long as official society lasts, they can- ;. not win a complete victory, but positions have been gained and if some have been lost, many have been held. This, one of the greatest social struggles of our time, goes um'ecorded ! What have Congress, or the New · York Times, or Alistair Cooke to do with all this?

The working class in every country lives its own . 11fe, makes its own experiences, seell:Jng always. to cre-...... __ atE' forms and realize values which may originate di- rectly from its organic oPPosition to official society, but are shaped by its experiences in cooperative labor. Nowhere is this more marked than in the United states where the raucous rowdyism of Republicans and Demo- crats obscures and drowns out the mass search for a way of life ; not a new way but simply a way, the fa- mous "American Way" being strictly an export commod- it�·. Quite often, the reaction is for the time being merely negative, but none the less indicative of the fu- ture. In the American plant the shop steward, or shop .. committeeman, although elected, is a functionary of >­ c: the union, whose main business is to see tha.t the com- pany's contract is carried out. Millions of American E... Q} workers will not accept any position of authority in the � plant, neither as committeeman nor foreman, nor lead girl. In the United states, so jealously democratic and egalitarian in its social practices, these workers shun like the plague any position which, as they have seen so often, will transform them into bureaucratic tools of the capitalist mechanism. They sometimes go farther and deliberately elect or propel to these unhealthy po- sitions, persons whom they recognize as being naturany inclined to them. For militant Negro workers this poses a specially difficult problem. As workers they share the revulsion of their fellows being drawn out of the to rank and file shop floor organizations. As Negroes they are dedicated to seeing that Negroes are represented in every layer of American society, particularly in the plant. r.r o accept or not to accept. Often the decision is difficult. Such is but one example of the social dra­ mas, individualism and collectivism fused, that are be­ ing posed and worked out by trial and error in that pulsing mass of working class humanity that seeks no escape from the real conditions of life in existentialism ?6 FACING REALITY

NEW SOCIETY: NEW PEOPLE 77 (France) or psychoanalysis (the United states) or play · ing with words and meaningB (Great Britain) . lati�n is safe from these defenders of the law' order THE BARBARISM OF OUR TIMES fan�.lIY, mo�als, religion, culture, and property of officiai There is no mystery about what is taking place in sOClety agamst the new. our society. Our age is the most barbarous, the most THE NEW NATIONS cruel, the most sadistic, the most callous history has The wo rld proietariat, with those of RUSSia ever known precisely because of the civilization, culture, � and the u ite� States at the head, m constitutes a minority and high aspirations of the great masses of the people. ev en tl e advanced count : ries. In these countries its Nothing but the most unlicensed, unrestrained, care­ c0J?-c�ntratIOn and cohesion are sufficient to make it the gUldmg fully cultivated brutality can keep them down. These forc� a:nd motive power of the new .. - ._- society. But are not slaves of Imperial Rome or peasants in ancient the vast maJorIty _ of the world's population lives in the Assyria. A modern working man, whether he is in the unde�developed countries of ASia, Africa, and Latin plant or mine with his co-workers, lives by the ideas �merIca. The abiding impudence of imperialism con­ of univ ersal secondary education, religious toleration, tmues to see �hem a'S objects of profit and of use ; at the present tIme as care of children and of the aged, freedom of speech prospective allies of one or the other power bloc. The and assembly, mastery of technical processes and self­ truth is that vast millions of the�e p ople are new government in industry, world peace-elevated concep­ � human beings, ready for the new sOClety m that they have tions which would stun into awed silence the most gifted . uncompromisingly, often vio­ ]en�IY, r Jected the status minds of Western Civilization from Plato and Aristotle � . of national humiliation and SOCIal mIsery m which they to Kant and Hegel. There is no more dramatic moment were kept by official society . T?e Russian Revolution in the history of philosophy than that in which the . shattered the structure of offICIal Europe. young Hegel, after descrIbing the disorder and torment The Chinese Revolution shattered the structure of official Asia. inflicted on society by capitalist production, came face The revolution in Ghana has forever destroyed the to face with the fact that only the proletariat could . structure which official society �ad Impos ed up?n tropical Africa . This should be resolve it. Leaving the page forever unfinished, he turn­ . . a tru­ Ism, yet It IS Impossible ed to idealism. Marx completed it for him. At the other to. approach any sphere of even contempora end of the scale it was the ineffable Joseph Stalin who ry history without using bulldozers and gas masks to clear decreed that the more socialism was established in Rus­ . the barriers and survive the fumes WIth which sia, the fiercer would become the class struggle. There­ it is surrounded by the propaganda ?orps of official society. by in his own cabalistic manner, he declared the need Ireland won, it was not given Its freedo ' Gandhi either for an oppression which would grow along with I? introduced a new dimension into the technIque of the economic development.-or the Government of Work­ mass struggle for national independ­ ence and perhaps for more. ers Councils. Official society seeks to excuse itself for His political genius one Of the greatest o.f our times, is the horrors and abominations perpetrated by Hitler and . obscured by the infla­ tIOn of Lord Mountb �ten. Stalin. The mud and blood are on their own hands and � The latest, and perhaps the most. dangerous, addItIOn faces. The triumphs of Western Civilization are com­ to. official mythology is that the ne� state o.f Ghana was mon to all its members and common to all of them are . given its independence by the BrItIsh G:0 ernment its disasters and its decline. There is not a single na­ � as the conclusion to a period of careful t�amm� and preparation-dangerous tional concentration of power and privilege in official m because large areas AfrIca are still society which would not mutilate and torture its own fighting for their freedom. GOLD COAST REVOLUTION population in the Hitler-Stalin manner if it needed to, THE and could. Repeatedly we see in the Press that a hy­ !he �ruth whi h is ! � undergoing a systematic oblite­ ratIOn, IS qUIte dIfferent. drogen bomb would kill so many million people and . Nktumah reached the Gold Coast m November 1947, render uninhabitable for some period undefined so uncertain whether he would be allO\yed many hundred square miles. This in defense of "our to land or not. In one of the most remark­ a liberties" and "our high standard of living." It is able epIsodes in revolutionary history . a he singlehandedly outlmed J?rog criminal self-deception to presume that any home popu- ram, based on the ideas of Marx, Lenin and GandhI, for expelling British Imperialism, from th� NEW SOCIETY: NEW PEOPLE 79 FACING REALITY 78 spIrIt• . of their populations and the manner 111' WhICh, over two years, in Gold Coast. Under his guidance, in little and they utilize for new purposes and n W the older people of the Gold Coast brought the economy political forms now outmoded in the e e undevel­ the tandstill in a general :;., �;� b social life of the Gold Coast to a s oped countries are part of the new s OCI� ty, not f the whose slogan was: Self­ �m strike over the whole country jailed the old. In a few years there will not be a co ony left the Government Now. The British Government world except those areas which Russ' a � he United the movement. But when � �. leaders and sought to crush spirit of the States are colonizing in their differe�t that the revolutionary CHINESE an election showed could only be suppressed 600,000,000 population was determined and ma'Ssacre We cannot here go into a d massacre, it decided that such a �y. e t a�'1 s of the expulsion by wholesale possibilities, certainly of imperialism from China I US omtry to s�y that would, among other dangers and It therefore 1'e... the Chiang-Kai-Shek regi�e �!l� pa .om tS India of the Commonwealth. � : fr I own ·· drive ailt possible face on the matter, rottenness, and the Chinese co I t h � l to treated, putting the best it had already take over. This is true but only in t �:St S� g�; Y gi ing as gracefully as it could what : and v In the years 1929-1939 Chian g-Kai-Shek exhausted t. los rectify this falsification, not to discredit British the resources of his regime i th ;. greatest effort it ever We does today more efficiently than made-the effort to crush th� C�nese Communists. Cut Imperialism-that, it to does anything else. We wish to draw attention off from contact with Moscow' ao-Tse-Tung and his it social forces of the day, the spirit of fellow revolutionists built a Par�y and an army 111, strict one of the great the vast millions every­ relation to their obJ'ectI've enVIronment and the need renaissance which now animates of mod­ o f self-preservation. Their resistance wl1ere in the glObe, and the creative handling . to th. e attempt of litical techniques by their leaders. The creation Chlang-Kai-Shek to exterminate th em �s one of the ern po ia, the brushing aside of Nizams. gr�at epics of revolutionary strUggle. T ey were sus­ of the Republic of Ind (feudal relicS main­ buned by peasant 13upport of th most herOl, bravery Maharajas, Gaekwars, and .Nawabs of tl1e and endurance. The Long Marc� 6�OO � tained solely by British power), the organization of mIles from regions, the setting up of parliament, the the South to the North of China t�kes Its place among provincial Party and the universal the greatest actions in history and assed the consolidation of the Congress and all military history of the Twentieth �e���� in a vast population largely illiterate, �� in suffrage violence and disturbance, this is one Stalinism had little to do with this It . with a minimum of ents of our own or any . IS now cam­ of the greatest political achievem vention mon knowledge that Stalin opposed th 'e seIzure of power age. Similarly it is organization of the con by the Chinese Communists If Ch'111a has gone the way other which the outstanding poli­ of Stalinist totalitarianism it · � PEOple's Party of Ghana 1's in tropical Africa u� ;S b:�: us ac�d ,with the tical achievement so far carried out Euro­ implacable hostility of ite st � per IalIsm, and of its direct subordination to even more poverty-stricken than the . 0 since the beginning an accident is proved . us SIa f the Octo­ pean Imperialism. That it is not bel' Revolution it has had o ��o��,but t? follow the the fact that it is paralleled by the Rassemblement pattern of its ' Russian all: B ma WIll not need by (Democratic Movement of Afri­ forty years to be in th ' Democratique Africain in the French colo­ o��etotalitarian,ization. cans), a party organized by Africans Par­ The dictum of stalin h�l��O���� e ::l Ore "socIalism," If the Convention People's , nies. less dynamic than ading party in the fiercer the class struggle The socks WhICh the ty, it exceedS it in scope, being the le Russian empire is experiencin'g :lre�gy, the still more many millions of French WI several colonies, comprising thousands of violent upheavals which await . i ' be felt no more west Africans spread over many tens of powerfully than in China It t e ;o say that t?e les. Compared to these purely African creations, enuine mass revolution, the r!!en� e t C ntury upns­ square mi pygmalion, deter­ ?,mg � �m French Imperialism masquerading as the of the people has not � t��n place China and out of Africans, and history has decre�d that w�� 1 oes mined to make Frenchmen . . t�ke place, it will lonial Office, with its perpetual checkers take place against the totalItanan regIme. British Co white in Executive Councils, e game of shifting black and The people of China mad_ thel' r f"�rst m�dern attempt 'Spectacles if they did not enforce their self-realization in 1925 27. aSt lIlllsm, would be comic nes. Both a rumed it. They foolishness with machine guns and pla in the t NEW SOCIETY: NEW PEOPLE 81 FACING REALITY 80 believe that their ultimate fate is bound up with the army of Mao-Tse-Tung. But supported the party and � fate of the world. endently upon have not yet come in ep ? they themselves . t en people dId m 1905 and This is true, but not in the commonly a c c e pted the stage as the Russian of the TwentIeth sense. There is an America which is not Dulles, the They will. The whole history in 1917. . rty will. The Idea that a pa Pentagon, and the Southern NegrO-haters ; a Russia century shows that they the destinies of a people which is not Khrushchev (or whoever may be ruling and a bureaucracy can shape � at historical past, by mea when this is read) , and the Secret Police. If we have of 600 millions with a gre breed them, arrange theIr not written about, for example, Germany, it is because of plans and secret police, ranchers breed cattle we here aim to indicate only broad lines of development 1· nd build factories as Texas � Ives, a Ul , slaves and b 'It ids yram with chosen concrete instances . The German proletariat or Egyptian Pharoahs bred � <: . - - t e Tw�ntleth en- -- ­ is one of the greatest social forces in the world, with a characteristic stupidity that is a of It to own past hIstory teaches theoretical and practical tradition behind it, in ideas , tury official mind. All its :. as pure politics, and labor second to none in the history of West­ of millions of Ch nese people see the hundreds . disClplmed by some su­ ern civilization. That it was not allowed itself to settle masses the obj ect of politics, � v: e ' o t� accounts with Hitlerism is one themselves, the Kuomintang and �ll :t � of the twin crimes of perior force, Il­ bewail the anachro s l Russia and the United States. Similarly in Japan, but Chinese Communists. They Their own are mfmltelY for the American military occupation wearing the cere­ lusions of Chiang-Kai-Shek. : � :. centu 'y h an ty comes monial robes of the emasculated Emperor, the Japanese greater, and when Twentieth and l"aISeS Its vOlCe, many proletariat would have made Japan into a modern com­ ou.t into the streets of China . able, may at last be pIerced. munity. It is here, and not in the decadent official so­ eardrums hitherto impenetr Clety of Europe and the United States or totalitarian THE IMPERIALIST IMPOTENCE :v spirit, tyranny in China, that the new nations have ' to edu­ l"s, theil" l"e olutionary cate themselves. It i'S on this new basis that they will But despite their numbe capacIty, the hopes and have to develop their perspectives. The imperialist men­ demonstrated political . . and their blIght­ -independent natIOns are tality of official society sees them always as poor rela­ prospects of these newly weaknesses of the ad­ tions, charitable receptacles for economic aid, for tech­ by the power, but by the . � ed not natIO s � the earliest days new nical assistance, for ideas. It is false, false as every va ced nations . From settled comm'll:ru­ other idea by which official 'Society lives and which it upon the older, more . � have depended phlC l political and PhIloso spreads in the world. The underdeveloped countries ties for economic aid and in the press, the plaIn need to be helped, but they have their own powerful . Despite all the trumpeting . . ? ideas . n r the contributions to make to the new society. Already they today, neIther m RUSSIa fact is that capitalism r: I? to sufficie t sur lus capItal have assisted it by the great blows they have given to United states, can produce ? . m Ulldmg modern official society. Today by their persistent neutralism the underdeveloped nations asSist the over- they impede, if they cannot prevent, the drive to global . cialist economy wIthout . economIes. Only a so oo? � of of fI I SOClety , and suicide. burdens and incompetence 1 head of abor in the productIvIty the immense increase 1 But there is more. Many of these countries have an­ can produce the surplus will rapidly develop, � cient cultures of their own, with social values, formerly which it economy development of worl lth necessary for the despised, which now often show surprising affinity wea and ethlCal prac­ Still worse, the political � with the latest discoveries of modern science and the as a whole d and the d the Communist wor tices and i eas of both :v � practical creativene'Ss of the advanced proletariat. Fur­ ne n tIOns, would if taken over by these . ther, their lack of economic development is not wholly Free World, mto a young injection of SyphIlIs I? negative. It enables them to begin, without being bur­ be equivalent to the in order to pre are reached hi'S maturity, � dened by the centuries of accumulated rubbish in ad­ man who has natIOns onsibilities. :rhe n w to assume all his resp vanced countries, most of which is fit only for demoli­ him serVlCe to free they pay IIp � tion squads but is preserved by privilege and sheer in­ know this and, even where n: D e ocr c re and Parliamentary .� a y. � � ertia. On this virgin terrain beginnings of world-his­ institutions e w a period of Wal mg tO s � actuallY living through � torical significance can be made in economic, social, trlUmph an . nT t.hE', t.wo rival blocs will emerge NEW SOCIETY: NEW PEOPLE FACING REALITY 63 82 the revo­ ideas, the middle classes, even when sympathetic to la­ life. But most of all, they have and ideological bor, judge the proletariat by the fanfaronades and ples and the political genius lutionary spirit of their peo solve their sycophancy of its official leaders. In generations to come accompanies it. They cannot which always t men will marvel at the �lmost pathological inabilit� of context. But to the exten problems except in a global . . as part of a ne:w educated �oClety m the mIddle of the Twentieth Century visage their own future that they en theIr to recogmze the new society which surrounded it on all that they take to solve world-order every step ' serve as inspiration sides. Yet so universal a phenomenon must have some can at the same time own needs deep connection with the essential character of the two proletarians hacking their and example to the advanced Such a mu­ societies. jungle of official society. way through the THE ARTIST AND THE NEW SOCIETY and underdeveloped relation between advanced tual official conceited ossification of In previous periods of transition, the new society al .. - countries is beyond the allow the dammed­ ways announced itself in innumerable ways not least mentality. Only its removal will and to flow both ways. �n the literature and art of the day. The gre�test names down currents to flow, lD REQUIRED: INFORMATION western art and literature, Dante, Shakespeare, Rous­ middle classes to the seau, Goethe, Herman Melville, Tolstoy, Giotto, Michel­ is the relation of the What cle�i­ Some of them whose angelo, and Rembrandt, to name only a few, were all people of the new society? to that of the proletanat men of the transition from one age to another, and we cal employment approximates and follow :nay be sure that the people of their day understood as essentially proletarians see themselves �er chem. But whereas for a century the finest minds in the are to one degree or anot the proletarian road. All ook by the cooperatIve arts have devoted themselves to destroying the intel­ in character and outl shaped what they lectual and moral foundations of bourgeois society, they What they lack is . character of modern -life. � It is informa­ 3ve bee? mcapable of putting into the concentrated, all others possess. , think they more than lllummatmg, and exhilarating forms of art, either the which the middle clas­ of the new world a-building tion countries genera.l contours or the individual personalities of the of the underdeveloped ses and the peoples new society. Even in the hectic period of the Nineteen the case of the people in It is understandable in lack. Unit­ Thirties, writers and artists either portrayed the waste­ But in countries like the distant Asia and Africa. land of official society or explO1;ed new realms of tech­ the middle classes are Britain, and France, nique. You will search in vain the writings of even ed States, ,:rpos�s structure, aims, and p as ignorant of the social pro-Communist writers like Koestler and Malraux for as they are of the mhabl­ of the industrial proletariat, any glimmer of understanding that socialism or Com­ prejudices in ' tants of the moon. Every day their ancestral munism the sense in which Marx used the word was receive loosening shoclt ' to the bourgeois order first of all a society of a new mode of labor of new and links then:­ They have to accommodate after loosening shock. social relations of production, of Workers Co�cils in claim to inherent s �pen­ to the rejection of their every branch of the national activity. For all of them selves and dIshon­ l peoples, to the incompetence ority by colonia �n­ the new society was the society of the Party and the and to the a?parently of their political leaders, Plan. esty m t J;e UUl�ed the proleta.riat. Even ending demands of Today the cry rises for writers to be "committed " for the tlme belng their financial position States where �ogy are which is only another way of saying that they must at­ gods of the national mytho is stili easy, the old t:::.ch themselves to one of the great bureaucratic social to take theIr place. down and there is nothing tumbling is to keep and political machines : these cannot bear even to con­ whose special function Some of the publicists template any activity anywhere which does not sub­ proletariat like to classes away from the the middle for the scribe to their plans and formulae. As if a man like of socialism as a prison paint horrible pictures � get very Dostoevsky, politically a reactionary of the most ex­ model. They do no educated on the Stalinist treme kind, was not committed, as few have been com­ in recent hIstory the that. Time and again far with to fol­ mitted, to the task of showing men what they were and that they are ready middle classes have shown t?e hGW they lived, so that in the end they understood will take them out of any powerful lead which . low ratlOnallst themselves better than before. ciety. Dominated by morass of official so NEW SOCIETY : NEW PEOPLE 85

FACING REALITY 84 turn helps to define The new . fram es of reference' are, by modern art so 0 classes are not helped far, beyond. the c�mpI'ehenSlOn f men tral�e ' d m the If the middle Revo­ b . the new society, if the Hungarian ourgeOls-rationalist tradit'. lOn . The. proletanat trains to understand the stimulus and explosive and can train no one i 1t oClal traditions, tradi� lution had to create without unpre­ ! � ��� � art, it is because of the very tions which a�e not ev e t s .ed except as they are clarification of iety. All previous so­ passed from generation to en . t character of the new soc e�a lOr: for strictly practi­ cedented one class society to another. cal purposes. Even the gr;at e artIsts o� our century, cial transitions were from to a society D. W. � transition is from class society Chaplin, Griffith and l1e early EIsenstein, men present no simple matter. Marx who worked for the p 'I e and, ere recognized and withoutThe classes . And that is then � in a phrase when he said that �elcomed by it, were C���i��� � rldlCu1e of official so- was not. throwing begin. lety and the reaffirmation o �d- values. But the film real history of humanity would ? .'. tl1 e is a drug that official ­ Jazz, and comic strl'p, erew- h e -- th common people wel- idea of a classless society In comed what seemed to be arts of t� ell'' wn, were apid­ The it is feeling particularly low. � ? r society takes whenever stimulus- �y corrupted by official society as 1 cOIrupts everything uses the concept as a It the United states it of the touches. , to have it. In older parts ' they are supposed thing is impossible- , In official society the popular ar' ts, teleVIsIOn in par- it is a tranquillizer - the lly tlCular are, already ex h a tus ed. Ed . M urrow . has de- world it is periodica ' the communist countries I ' r ' utopia. In to deaden the pain and to cared hIS weariness of its l�lt a�lOns. No one has injected into the population is precisely denounced it with m ore wlthermg ferocity than energy for the Plan. Yet it summon up more the artistic life Milton Berle Thus the :;,ew as well as the old organi­ there is a bridge which of z tions of of i here that and wastes itself in frus­ a ficial socie ' O [ example, television and official society cannot cross to monarchy, begin to fall a a , t only from the pres­ Capitalist society has carried a �� tration and despair. art, culture, sure without, but from th� � evo of royalty itself, Ull- traditional division between dead end the the mass of the people crowned as well as crowned ' on the one hand, and all So it is that at this sta � of r SOClety art is either learning, has previously characterized all the other. This drama­ t:t:e contem�orary abortion; Whi��, r�sp the nerves and previous centuries the Greek societies. yet in Elizabethan drama­ stImulate wIthout satisfying,' or It IS retreat to the Spanish dramatists, the accepted classics which re only a tists, the and the painters and � half-understood be­ tists, the builders of cathedrals, still close cause they are being u s a �omb, shelter, whereas who decorated them, were t ey were originally eX;I�siV�s T ere IS no help for it s('ulptors to include them in all that they h � . enough to the people removed from the yve have to do without and r� so m:uch �he poorer, ay the artists are so . did. But tod express themselves only mc�mplete human beings less fIt fOI lIfe, eIther social people that their talents can or mdividual. It is not ' e e Iy the , reorganization of ativity. r , v in pure neg in production and political � fIons whICh will gi e their also cannot create an art s�amp to the new society a�d complete the mdividu, ali- But the proletariat orkers Coullcils in ge. A society based on W tles of new people . Th e d emocracy of clent Greece its own ima activity is not a proletar·· An . branch of the n ational human �a�e the greatest step forward th at h as .ever been made every entirely new dimension in m terature when it invented the t raglC drama. The ian society. It is an dimensions. The h ts art also will assume new reorganization now of s.Clety on cla�sless lines by the living, and i ties of life and the human � , gap between the actuali only be �l'Oletariat will release i me?se energIeS m. an uninhib- great ompleteness which could Ited environment . It IS. a mIserable' C�I�gmg. mentality, need for order and c y, art, and re­ abstractions of philosoph confined to the "higher standa d Of l1vmg for our peo­ satisfied in the ecause for the triving to � , ppear. It will disappear b pIe," s to hold on at It has and to keep ligion will disa that their fu­ where they all men, will understand people are wh'lCh does not understand that first time men, is own hands. on y way out t� . by themselves, in their the l is g eo Ie new visions of them­ will be shaped universe. th t t ���: P ture undisputed center of his selves, so a hey will ne ways to express them will become the the work t t ti : Man will always be �nd o crea e new es, new bo s, and new ays has been and n . understand- Great art alw their work in accord­ between those now so . idual men. But they shape in mg who e dIVIded. of indiv ference, which their work ar ance with new frames of re THE MARXIST ORGANIZATION -1903-1958 87 . ey all consIdered th:�� . Or:.:nizations and themselves asTb the nucleus of the p y onl party, the ' d· Y p was d :�:: �: lead the :��!��d arty ��ich es tnne t 0 OR GANIZATION . .f or SOCIalism. TH E MARXIST VI. T�IS IS what ruined the e e i : 1903-1958 we'! = � : who aJ.'e the O ���� p:�iO� O: £�� ��;,c en must we do? And first ntry who ��r� �e V:��i��;n e great work for so- W,Veh at th rioUS group'S in every cou are . Ism wInch is crying to be done and which can be are the va tarian state and the Welf d one only by us. that the totali We know LENINISM TODAY have seen ties of state capitalism. he state are both varie nization of society from t . but the reorga gration.II, - Let us define our terms :I��. absolute precision. We tl1at not11ing elerating disinte nd up can check the acc world War �,re those intellectuals and r :ro have been able grou Spanish Civil War and y to var­ he h�storical process :: : �h e. The worke:rs in Before the nged or subscribed loosel p�r��� i many of us eit11er belo 01' other Marxist politics. ��. u ar al e those worke �� :,h O,. W�ile continuing to brands of Trotskyism whole new gen­ workers and having no h WISh In life to b ious e end of World War II, a vents, we mg but workers s,:; ,;rade unionism and parJi::':�­- NoW since th as arisen. Taught by e ­ eration of socialists h e1' understood that nation tary pOlitics mere. lY means to. an. end , the end be- to one deg1'ee or anoth er the basic frame­ mg the es ta b llshment of. the SOCIalIst society. have p1'oduction does not alt the men­ However much thes ��te��ctuals al1zation of ociety, we have unde1'stood the and workers might work of capitalist s have seen the Party for differ on doctrinal po ,ey have been I. � general ace of the state Plan, we ched a 1'emarkable de­ governed by tl e gr at experience of the R USSIan Revo- that it is. some of us rea ch understand­ lution and thel wrltings� and example of Lenin. The prison understanding. But su the is : . gree of theoretical it was bound to be: it is work of Lenin one of t : �r��t polItic�1 triumphs of ing remained abst1'act, as theory into life. �ankm. d .and the first sta i e emanCIpation not of t of masses which tUl"ns nd hope have ny partIcular class but f h man society in general movemen the world, new life a nd 0 � �:�. Now throughout s in Russia, in poland, a :rhe work of no Marxist no � �t" M:: himselt: en awakened by the event ouding the neW per­ f h ance fo; us t s d of be in Hungary. But becl i1'ty years ;! :: :� mnY the revolution the past th �in ni a o,,":n experiences should con:� us is the fact that · dUl"ing has been one what the Hunganan Revolution h as unmistakably spective ese Marxist organizations ne has specific the reco1'd of th k that has been do shown' th. e organizationalP th eory of Leninism nrelieved failure. The wor mpt to make and the th eOl of the Vanguard ar ty , must now be re� of u The determined atte tion of j Y been prodigious. the workers, the publica ec t ed root and branch. . . n contact with paper'S, and po­ It was a particular theory, deSIgned to suit a speCI- maintai jOUl"nals, weekly y pamphlets, theoretical ed scrutiny and rescrutiny f:::c stage of devel opment of societ tnd a specific stage cal resolutions; the agoniz ferences, the inter­ of work' mg class development Tlla �tage of society is liti classicS, the national con international �GW past. The theory, and the practlCe that went with of Ma1'xist es-it would occUpy an tel­ . . national conferenc to be able to give any in t, are now an anachronism and, If perSIsted in lead n for ten years efforts. The to one form or another of t'he counter-revolution' Th e c0mmissio magnitude of the . • account of the nd'S of devoted f::.:st thing we must d 0 IS t 0 purge ourselves of it' ligible s of thousa THE THEORY OF M ARXIST ORGANIZATIONS : 1903 ults have been pitiful. Ten sted themselves and res have exhau ­ III fighters for socialism sillusionment, often in bit What was Lenin's th eory? Here it IS· . the clearest ded their struggles in di most savage hatred and mos t unambiguous statement of that great master en infrequently in the es to. What Is To Be terness, and not given their liv uf political exposition It comes from his at they had for decades circumstances, of all th infinite variety of the exper­ Done? written in 1903'. Yet despite the ilures, the whole tragic �n order to be fully prep ared for hIS. task the work- and the fa plicity. l�g '. struggles, extreme sim : : the summed UP todaY with slOnalclass revolutionary m� also become a profes- be 86 .i..... !. ience can revolutionary . ., e do not recognize our

.;1 . 88 FACING REALITY THE MARXIST ORGANIZATION-1903_1958 dut to assist every capable worker to b�com� a The rigidity of 89 proiessional agitator, organizer, prOpaga dlst, was dUe the Leninist organization in Russia rature distributor, etc., etc In this respec� we ;., ���� to the police nature of the Tsarist state . ideal was the German Social-Democracy, . His our. ts reng th mO a positively shameful manner , we ideal of specially selected, speci and it was an 1 ac 1 {: the ability to husband that WhlC. h hs ould be ary socialists, agitators, ally trained revolution_ t en ded and reared wIth. speCla0 1 Lookcare. at the revolutionaries. . , Now, half a century erma t have had a hundred tImes more trained professio after, what do we see? The ?orces :'�n;� have. But they understand perfectly typ nal agitator, the revolutionary SOCialist wel l t1la t the "average" does not too frequently pro- e of Lenin's day is today the basis of the 0 the ranks. cratic machines of the uniolllS, bureau­ . mote. really capable agltat. DIS, e t c., from the governments. the political parties, and He�ce they immediately try to place eVery capabl. e. and SOciety has moved on since that time 0 . an in such conditions as will enable hIm these elite types have now become the ::a I::��� and apply his a�ilities to tJ:eutmo st: h obstacles to that release of popular greatest Os made a professional agItator, he IS enc�urage� tive power which has always energy and crea­ motive force in the been the most powerful �o widen the field of his activity, to spread It fr m ganda of creation of a new society. PTOpa­ one factory to the whole of his trade: from 0r:� �0- the so-called "Free World" against tota rt to the whole country. He acqUIreS expenence ianism has obscured the fact that this litaJ.'­ �exterity in his profession, his outlook �eco s and Political type is not necess particular social ���. . �� cording to the political climate ofarily the a country Communist . Ac­ wIder.! hIS knowledge increases, he observes . . e he may he lives promment p a 1 leaders from other localItIes in. be a Communist or a rabid ant a�n';i�� he strives to rise to their level In the United states or in i-Communist. :�� �;�� on every rung Britain, you will find him i:e v.:ithin him Self t ���:; ed�� o Party. of the ladder of the union or the Labor . g class enVlronment and �:e s :o���!t Often selfless and devoted, he is not :nvictions with professional skill, without Wh' IC h ly engaged in a desperate struggle infrequent_ ° against the proletanat cannot· carr y on a stubborn st ruggle political bureaucracy. But his only a union or ° perspec with the excellently trained enemy. On1 y m this of substituting a more democratic, tive is that be honest more capable, more way can men of the stamp of Bebel and Auer set of bureaucrats. On whichever side ° of promoted from the ranks of the workmg c 1 ass. Iron Curtain he is, he is the mortal enemy the . floor organization, of Workers of the shop No one can mlSunderstand that. The whole theory branch Councils in evel' y . of the national activity, and of a Government IS that of training a corps of elite workers. If the theory of Workers Councils as the essence was carried to extremes 1.'n Russia it was because, as new society. and content of a L 'ft r . " what Whether he is Communist or anti-Com­ enin writes almos� immed���;'; �l � ' ' munist, for him the working class is incapable takes place very la�ge a iC l in a �oiiticallY successfully without a trained of acting free country must m �USSI� � be done deliberately and ship. Here and dedicated leader­ is the Marxist dialectic in its most profo systematicall� by our. orf::�z�;t'ons�" It was the police content. The social type, the specific und state of Tsanst RUss�a ter ards the perils sur­ formed the spearhead of personality which rounding the revo lut IOn ) which forced this conception socialism at the the workers' movement and into. narrow channels. solid beginning of the century is today the . core of the bureaucratic reaction in every When we h ave detachments of specially tramed of the working class movement. ' section gh working class revolution�ries wh v th Today the working class has no need 1 ong Years of preparatlOn (an � �: :o��: r���lu- letarian Jesuits. It has arriVed of these pro­ .' e at a stage tionaries "of all arms ") , no political pollce m lute freedom of org Where abso­ . . t them. , thfor anization, complete democracy, is world wIll be abl e t contend agams not an aspiration, but the very context, the warp these detachment s o men absolutely devoted and woof of its daily existence. and loyal to the revolutIOn.t w themselves enjoy the become Administration as such has ill . alien to it. is this, rooted absolute confidence and devotlOn 0 f the broad structure of ca It in the developing transformed pitalism itself, which has gradually masses of the workers. the union and labor party administration THE MARXIST ORGANIZATION-1903-1958 91 FACING REALITY 90 � c of the working class int? h':e�t ments of each period are absorbed and surpassed in from an instrument e , � a �r the period following. in-itself" and inevitably, ther f � ing the The idea that the independent organizations of the the q art 0 ; � e� �y �Ol�� of reactIOn. In :u �evo lution the organizations masses must replace the bureaucratic bourgeois appar­ decline of the RUSSIan � worke�s signally failed to atus of the state was first realized by the Commune. of intellectuals and advance ' pre­ was pushed to further limits by the Soviets of 1905 d in the generation It what their predecessors -: A 1917. do n d this is because and The immense merit of Marx and Lenin was ce the Russian RevolutIOn. d·mg rymg to do what no longer needed to not that they invented this idea, which they would not they have been t ' could not eb d one. have been able to do in any case. It was that they were be done and what therefore amzatIOn. . able to recognize the importance of the actual steps tak­ What then is the role of the Marxist org en by the workers, to elaborate the idea and to defend it today? against reactionary ideologists. The idea of workers' GANIZATION TODAY THE MARXIST OR management of factories, first advanced by the Rus­ has n� need sian Factory Committees of 1917, was re-invented by F" t of all the Marxist organization ! the workers of Catalonia in 1936-1937 and has now been � to anybody its �xistence �� �t���= wha;�er to jU tifY e . brilliantly reaffirmed by the Workers Councils of Hun­ tiv ties. In ve y � { :! : ! to gary in 1956. Our task is to recognize its fundamental � wor� er� a �l � l; �� : � lt�he need importance, to elaborate it and to defend it. The recog­ tallsm, 1 ���In' f .order to advance the cause· of organ l'ze themse ves . so at the present t nition of this socialist creativeness among workers must socialism. T?-ey CO �t mu� t do class societylIDe. not be confined to great historical occasions. Today it and they WIll cont mue o �a it as long as is far more important to recognize it in the sphere of exists. Z�TIO N day-to-day activity. We have already pointed out that �ND .ORGAN : ' SOCIALIST CONSCIOUSNESS the factories workers develop methods and forms of onlY to the in The Marxist organizatIOn IS MarxIst l ' cooperation, of mutual help and solidarity, of organi­ 1 P depar ture t :11S fun­ e'd. ent that it takes as ·ts oint of by the zation, which already anticipate socialist relations. Here 1 has been demons tra ted also the task of a revolutionary organization is, first, to damental 'dea which . that the proletariat w ,0 e h'IS tory of modern. . SOCle ty'. mstmc. . t . recognize these forms, to explain the significance of b 1 ther "trade umomst" or socialist only by them, and to let itself be guided by them in what it is nei y, the pr. o e ar. t by the very circum­ is doing and in what it is saying. On the contrar I. � d rn society, develops stances of its e I. e :o e n re­ The idea that the emancipation of the workers will . e, Of : o;�onsctousness, of hum� . be the work of the workers themselves is the literal and forms of lI� ��sO::;,la. lst , which constitute SOCIalIsm. the total truth. It is not enough to say that the working lations, WhICh are � r. is nothing other the one and only S�cI �lsm Socialism ied to class alone has the necessary force to realize its eman­ self O a a� 0 �f the proletariat carr clpation, as if the working class were the steam of an tban �he � l:g l1lZ 1 �letariat of today tends to de­ engine with intellectuals as mechanics and engine driv­ its ultImate lImIt. T�e day-to-day existence. velop thi's self-Organ;z�i.� on in its capitalism ers. The reality is that it is the working class alone 0 u proletariat under Tbe development e . a nd if it didn't which is able to produce the organization, the forms, leads it towards socialist COr:CI����:� �� idle and ideas which this emancipation demands. there, all tal k a b 0 t would be THE BLINDNESS AND FAILURE OF "THE VANGUARD" lead to else. It is absolutely imperative to put an end to the legend cl1atter and nothing . of "'een on the histOrIcal scale. "the vanguard" which has dominated the revolution­ ThIS. can b� plam Y 1905, ary 1 7. 1 � Revolution of movement for so many decades with such catastro­ une m �. , t�e Russian The C0lIl:ID 1917 the Spani'sh Revolution, phic results. No one denieB that, as in every group of thE' RUSSIan Revolu IOn. 0 � ' the most dra­ human beings, differentiations exist within the prole­ Hungarian Revolut on, he�e are only the the s �rugg e f the proletariat to or­ tariat itself, in regard to clarity of ideas and attitudes, matic stages .of and to reconstruct the to­ continuity in action, militancy, etc. But today the idea ganize itself mdeper:dentl� of a dia­ ]fi inherent in the traditional organizations and in the ! program and the ultimate, total ob­ which should have been the supreme JUstIfICa IOn of jectives of � the workers' strUggles to the degree that "the vanguard" and which should have proved Its ne­ these are in OPPOSition to the "minimum" demands of cessity and placed the seal on its hist ric Instead, the day-to-day ? 1'01:: struggles. All these beliefs led to the conclusion this history is a merciless condemnatIOn of the van­ that the organiZation was the true subject ; that is to guard." On every occasion "the vang�ard" ha� found say, the motivating force of history. And if the itself far behind in relation to the actIOn and Ideas of organiZation wa'S the subject of history, the pro- 94 FACING REALITY letariat was the object. In this conception the organi­ zn.tion, in philosophical terms, was the Universal. This conception of the organization is inherent in the ex­ treme views that Lenin expounded in What Is To Be Done? He repudiated them later, but not with the force and thoroughness which were needed to pl'event them frum doing infinite mischief. In the hands of Stalinism, which had no use for the great theoretical strides for­ ward Lenin had made in his Notebooks during the war and state and Revolution, these views became the chief theoretical weapon of the counter-revol1!tion. There is no excuse whatever for Trotsky, in 1938, saying thaC scientific socialism is only the conscious expression of the elementary and instinctive drive of the proletariat to reconstruct society on Communist foundations. The relation between theory and revolutionary organization 011 one side, and the action and organization of the proletariat on the other, cannot be a relation between conscious and the instinctive. The Bolshevik Party theof Lenin was the greates political party the modern world has known. In its heroict days it was incontesta­ bly the party of the proletariat and there is no greater testimony to this than the fact that before it could enslave the Russian proletariat, Stalinism had de­ stTOY the party almost to a man, discredit, disgrace,to and vilify its leaders, rewrite the history of the Revo­ lution, and suppress or reinterpret its historical docu­ ment's. But even this party in the last analysis was a type of parliament with representatives of the workers divided into debating factions, increasingly removed from the actual conditions of social and particularly proletarian life. Today a party on that model in an ad­ v&nced country can be nothing else but an instrument of oppression, tyranny, and failure. Who has not learned this after the Hungarian Rev­ olution should cease his criticism of Stalinism, union bureaucrats, and parliamentary labor leaders, for he be­ longs with them and the}.r function of safeguarding of­ ficial society from Workers Councils in every branch of the national activity. REQUIRED : INFORMATION OF THE NEW SOCIETY The first duty of the organization is to place at the disposal of the working class possible means, mate­ ria) and intellectual, of expressingall itself, its own condi­ tions of life, and its own aims. Material means, because bourgeois society is Quebec General Strike : "We the ordinary people" ganically organized so as to inhibit, repress, and whenor­ 1972 THE MARXIST ORGANIZATION-1903-19,iB 95

necessary, persecute and destroy all attempts by work­ en; even to express an independently proletarian atti­ tude to society. The labor bureaucrats, StalinilSt or dem­ ocratic, do this not only as a direct result of the very stl ucture of society, but because any such independent expression immediately calls into question their own lea,dership, and obviously can have no other purpose. All objectively reactionary tendencies in bourgeois so­ ciety reach their ultimate expression in Stalinism, where they assume their most finished and conscious form. It i,s in Stalinism, tllerefQJ:e, that can be ­ they - most fruitfully studied. The shifts and turns of Stalinist policy can be traced easily enough to the needs of the Kl'emlin, on whose power Stalinism depends to get into power ultimately. But the method used is one of de ­ liberately confusing and corrupting the intelligence and will of the workers so that in the end they learn to the le&ve everything to the Party and its slogans. However powerful the independent efforts at self­ realiZation in individual factories or units of production, they remain isolated from factory to factory, from na­ tion to nation. Any attempt to form organizations or

c even to acquire independent material means of expres­ ... Q.l Slon is at once set upon by political representatives of .!: t.he various bureaucracies within the working class it­ t self, incorporated or suppressed by the power of the o z machine, and very often of official society itseU, Work­ ers are at their very best in collective action in the cir­ cumstances of their daily activity or crises arising from it, The individual talent for gathering, coordinating, and publishing information on independent activities of national and international scope is inhibited and stifled objectively and subj ectively by every organized social force in official society. Only in a Marxist organ­ ization can such workers find the possibility of devel­ oping their talents without fear of being prostituted to bm'eaucratic ends. Only the Marxist organization can ha ve the means, the forces, and the independence to keep the workers aware of what is taking place in their world-wide, uni v e l' s a I, but uncoordinated (except at critical moments ) efforts to create the new \ society. Finally, only the Marxist organization recog­ ;\ nizes this daily activity as socialism. REQUIRED : INFORMATION OF OFFICIAL SOCIETY

The Marxist organization has another task, that of providing information about official society. Official society falsifies all information intended for the great 96 FACING REALITY THE MARXIST ORGANIZATION-1903-1958 97 mass of the people, first because it is in its very nature years of Br itish occupation of Egypt, it did not know to do so. Any elite must of necessity consciously falsify what the response of the people of Egypt would be to the information it gives to the mass. But the falsity of British inv asion. Khrushchev did not know what was a information handed out by both the public and brewing in Hungary and Poland until it was too late. privatetIl!' bodies of official society i's false for a deeper The American Government has consistently misunder­ reason. Official society does not know and has no means stood and misjudged the scientific attainments of Rus­ of knowing or even of understanding the actual facts sia. The catalogue is endless. The Governments cannot of its own existence. A French Prime Minister asserts inform the people even if they wanted to, because they that the cost of the war in Algeria is 1,000 million francs d? not themselves know. a year. ex-Prime Minister contradicts him flatly and Colossal as is this task of informing the workers, An r. The _ dEclares that the cost is 2,000 million francs a yea - . the Marxist organization must . undertake it because · House boasted forum of democracy, question time in the nobody else can. Despite the poverty of its resources at of Commons, sees the Opposition inquiring from the the start, it has the immense advanta.ge of having the Prime Minister whether planes loaded with hydrogen great knowledge and experience of the proletariat at bombs are flying over Britain and the Prime Minister its disposal, and particularly on fundamental economic U!lable to give a straight answer on this matter which and social matters this is the most authentic source literally involves the life or death of millions of people. of information in any country. By diligent attention It is only since de-Stalinization that people have come and study it can learn to sift out the truth from the to know what was always obvious to any student of ,din by which official society seeks to deafen the people Stalin's writings and speeches-his incredible, his stu­ and twist them to its own ends. pendous ignorance of the most elementary economic THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE ORGANIZATION matters at home, and politics and war abroad. The The Marxist organization, however, is no mere re­ Press Conferences of the President of the United States porter of facts about the socialist activity of the prole­ have become not only an embarras'Sment but a burden tariat, or detector and publicist of the systematic fal­ to American reporters who have to make not only sense, sifications of official society. but even sentences of his ramblings and stutterings. It has and must of necessity have an independent If tomorrow it was discovered that the President VIew of its own. First of all, there are no facts in the had died long ago and someone resembling him had abstract. All facts, and the selection of facts, must nec­ been substituted to win power for the party, m 0 s t essarily be governed by a view of society. The ine'S­ Americans would shrug their shoulders, so great is the timable strength of the Marxist organization today is cynicism and distrust of all official pronouncements that in every situation, in every crisis, national or in­ among the people. It cannot ehange as long as society is ternational, it sees not only the decadence and disorder organized as it is. of official society but also, intertwined, the elements The first necessity of democracy is accurate infor­ of the socialist solution. This knowledge i'S the origin ma tion. In fact, it is not too much to say that in pres­ of its very existence as an organization and it can be ent-day society the main ta'Sk of any government is to effective and grow only by using it. The struggle to collect information and so organize it and present it to reach this understanding and insight, the complete ac­ the people that they are able to make their decisions ceptance of socialist power and socialist ideas as ori­ and their choices. Without this, all talk of democracy gll1ating and flowering primarily in the working class is a farce. As it is, the governments of official society do itself, the immense energy, determination, and training not know the economic facts of society because the most which will be needed to maintain this assault against important of these facts, the attitudes, capacitie'S, wil­ one of the most powerful strongholds of official society, lingness, or otherwise, of worker'S, is deliberately con- this can only be fully achieved by resolutely putting . cealed from them and they have no way of penetrat­ forward the point of view of the organization whenever ing the wall of defense which workers build around the occasion requires it, in large matters or in small. themselves. The Government of Sir Anthony Eden did L?.ter in this document we shall go into elaborate de­ not know its own military capabilities. After nearly tail, based on experience, of the possibilities, difficul- 75 98 FACING REALITY THE MARXIST ORGANIZATlON--J903-1958 . 99 tIes and dangers of such a course in practical terms, daily activities of the working class, even under the independent views of the Marxist organization, talism itself. There is no period of tranSition to sociacapi­lism ButCC'lls isting of a fusion of workers and intellectuals, are after the establishment of Workers Councils in every an integral part of the new society. This society has, branch of the national activity and the Government of and will always have varying levels of comprehension, Workers Councils, Once those are established, the only perspective and policy. This does not mean what it tranSition can be to t.he degenerated Worker'S State, would mean in the fami.liar bourgeois or Stalinist ideo­ the profoundly degenerated Wmkers State, im­ the logy, that the organization takes the lead over the less measurably degenerated Workers State, and so em, literate, les s vocal mass, It means the opposite, that employ the verbal acrobatics by which Trotsky soughtto the organization makes known its independent views to disguise his SUPPOl�t (critical, mOl'e critical, most fights for them as a contribution to that democrat­ critical) of Stalinism. The period of transition to so­ alld which cialism - ic interchange and confrontation of opinion is is the present perio d, This is particularly true the very life-blood of socialist society. of economic relations. All the problems that Bol­ the THE CONTINUITY OF MARXIST THEORY sheviks grappled with, after power had been The Marxist organization has the I'esponsibility for have been pOsed under st ate capitalism, beforeachieve thed, preserving and extending' the theory of Marxism. The taking of power. preservation of the theory of Marxism is not, and never THE ANACHRONISMS OF MARXISM has been, purely a study of books and texts. Every new The Marxist organization alone is capable of gettino' step forward of the proletariat illuminates not only the . �'id Of the anachron�sms in Marxism. It is absolutel fllture but the past. Thus only the closest contact with Imposslble, to overestImate the enormous energies � tl"ie contemporary experiences of the proletariat and of creative power that have been generated in the greatand society as a whole can give a profounder understanding masses of the world's population today. Only the of what was achieved, both in practice and theory and, weight of official society holds it down. It is notdead the fsl' more important today, what is to be discarded. bUSiness of the Marxist organiZation to invent ' what is here that a task of heavy responsibility and Marx scornfully called reCipes for the cookshops the enormousIt scope opens before the Marxist organization, future. It is sufficient to watch carefully whatof the Much that was pure theory in the early days of Marxism workers are actually doing, and what they are aiming has now become common knowledge among the vast at, and to draw the conclUSions. Particularly the Marx­ masses of people. The intensive ' development of capi­ ist organization must denounce with merciless con­ talism, the maturity of the proletariat, the immense tempt those theorists who demand in advance guaran­ advances of science in the last generation, all this teed and insured perspectives and particulars about the leaves some of the most cherished formulae of Marx content and forms of parties, states, and all other forms and Lenin far behind. Careful as they were in their fore­ organiZation in the socialist society. No new SOCiety casts of socialism, they were limited by the economic ofwas ever formed in this way. It is as if a drowning man development of their day and the mechanistic concep­ with the water already in his mouth demanded a cer­ tions of the time. Such a formula as Marx wrote in tificate of navigation before allowing a boat's crew to the Critique oj the Gotha Program, limiting consumption save him. to bourgeois relations, even though the relations THE INSUPERABLE PROBLEMS, of production were socialized, has no relevance today The supposedly insuperable problem of planninl2" the where. in the advanced countries, the workers are, even complex life of modern society is seen in its true'"per­ under' capitalism, striving to establish a socialist equal­ spective when we realize that modern calculating ma­ ity, The conception of Marx and Lenin of a period tran­ chines, properly charged, can rapidly give an answer sitional to socialism is equally without meaning today to the �on'Sequencesof certain procedures and thus sup­ in the advanced countries. To continue to hold up these ply a smgle factory, a whole industry, or a whole popu� 80S guides to the future is reactionary and can come lation with the material on which to make its deciSions. only from those who look for socialism everywhere The super-planners of today, arrogating to themselves except in the only place where it can be found, in the . enormous powers of deciding and enforCing the rela- THE MARXIST ORGANIZATION-1903-1958 10 1 100 FACING REALITY "vorking day, the mathematical division between time tion between production goods and consumption goods, for work and time for self-development is a capitalistic will become the accounting functionaries of tomorrow, product pure and simple. When man uses his creative reduced to the modest role of giving information. The faculties to the full in his work, that distinction ceases great conflict between East and West which threatens to be an antagonism and becomes a Simple scheduling humanity with destruction i'S a conflict originating in of various forms of social activity. Complete universal official society, maintained by official society, and will education for all, mastery of all the processes of pro­ end only with the end of official society. The end of duction, freedom to carry on poUtical discussions in official society in any part of the world will rapidly time of work, readiness to bring its end in the other. For each of these is neces­ the place and during the work hard when it is required and to relax and be social sary to the other and they draw reciprocal sustenance whenever possible, these are now the concrete, practi­ from their mutual crimes and threats. Witness the _ cal needs and demands of workers. a s united terror of Moscow, Washington, and Berlin at What re the e but the embodiment in life of the the thought of a revolution in Eastern Germany. To formula of the mature Marx when he wrote that modern show this and to expose the social and human solutions industry would col­ lapse unless it replaces "the detail-worker of today, to the artificial problems of official society is the task crippled by life-long repetition of one and the same of the Marxist organization. Let those for whom these trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere frag­ socialist solutions are Utopia continue to cower and ment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit wallow in their realism. for a variety of labors, ready to face any change of THE REALISM OF SOCIALISM "production, and to whom the different social functions Yet the Marxist organization in performing the nec­ he performs, are but so many modes of giving free essary task of visualizing the content of socialism su­ scope to his own natUral and acquired powers." bordinates itself neither to a statistical conception of The Marxist organization in the middle of the society, nor speculations to reassure the timorous. Twentieth Century, standing on the shoulders of its It already has the immense experience of the last forty predecessors, has this immeasurable advantage over years on which to draw, the discoveries and achieve­ them, that it has before its eyes, concretely and in the ments of modern science . are available, and above all flesh, the dehumanized gangsterism of official societv" it knoW'S that the future lies with the development of and the men a,nd manners to replace it. things becoming subordinate to the development of MARXISM AND CULTURE man. It is sufficient that all the old handicaps and bar­ The organization has the task of bringing to the riers to a truly human existence are gone and only proletariat those elements of traditional and contem­ official society stands in the way. The true analysis pCl'ary culture which are needed for that full and total of the future is to show that the most expansive aspi­ e:..:pansion of human living which is now realistically r&tions of the past are now possible. Such is the already possible and needs only the socialist society to come existing community of labor and the achievements of into being. In every department of hUman life today, science that the fusion of manual and intellectual labor anthropology, medicine, architecture, biology, chemis­ lias become a necessity, for society as a whole as well as try, and education, in all its manifold aspects, discov­ for the individual personality. The Marxist organization eries and understanding of far-reaching importance can demonstrate that the mass of men can progress 11a ve been already made. A few bold pioneers even only if their creative instincts and inheritance are fully sometimes try to put some of these into· practice. In applied to the practical tasks of every day. Even the every case they find and frequently declare (most of­ earlier formula of Marx that the future development tE;n in guarded language) that it is impOSSible for man­ of man rested upon the shortening of the working day kind to make use of the knowledge which is already in no longer applies. The great problem of the leisure of its hands as long as the present structure of society socialist man which the abstract theoreticians have continues. This information is needed by the proleta­ now added to their other burdens is a hangover from riat above all other classes in society and it can be given to the proletariat only by the Marxist organization or an earlier age. The herculean struggle for the shorter ]02 FACING REALITY THE MARXIST ORGANIZATION-1903-1958 103 intellectuals and 13cientists working in close collabora­ Capital, contrary to previous societies, can live tion with it. The valuable elements in all fields of con­ by accumulation. Marx discerned in capital accumu­only temporary culture can be preserved and made available lBtjon two laws, twin sides of the same movement, the only in the light of a new totality, a new vision of the law of concentration and centralization of capital and world, and of humanized relations throughout the length the law of the socialization of labor. There is no one and breadth of society. To do this, if only ideologically, (except a well-educated Marxist) who cannot today see demands an assimilation of this culture in the light these laws in full operation. From commercial capital, proletariat. of both the experiences and activities of the the capital of trade, capital concentrated into units of not proceed from this basis end up as All those who do individual industrial capital which created the world whining or utopian snipers at capitalist culture, even market. These developed into vast combines and cartels when they do not actually defend it. until today the national capital of any country is in­ THE PROSTITUTION OF EDUCATION one form or another state capital. But the process of The utter futility of believing that it is possible to concentration still continues. The national state capitals improve official society except upon the basis of new reach out towards the formation of continental units . relations resting upon the proletariat and the great The present conflict is essentially a conflict between masses of the people, the mental paralysis which ine­ the two most gigantic concentrations of capital in the vitably overtakes all who try to do this, is proved by ,,, orld today, the United states and Russia, for the com­ the frenzied and unspeakably disgusting activity which plete domination of all world capital. To achieve i'8 now taking place in the West under the lying slogan this they force into their orbit by force, fraud, or ca­ of education. The patient work of generations edu­ jolement, all national units. Lenin found the exact cators, all pointing to the conclusion that theof isola­ phrase for them in 1918 when he forecast the coming tion of children and youth from the practical aspects of "vast state capitalist trusts and syndicates" contend­ of social life distorts both mind and body, the search ing for world mastery. His old definition of imperial­ for roads to integrate from the very start intel­ ism as surplus capital seeking higher profits in colonial lectual and social life, all this is now placed the on countries is now dead, and is used only by Stalinists shelf. Instead. billions of dollars are now to be spent seeking to exclude imperialist Russia from their denun­ in a vast ind ctrination and inj ection of the youth of � ciat.ions of imperialism. Today it is not mere profits of Vl estel'n civilization with the scientific virus. has It investment that are at stake. The territory and the no relevance whatever to education, but is in reality a manpower, the very traditions as well as the material military operation having no other purpose than to p,'oduction of the various countries of the world, ad­ c[l,tch up and overtake the enemy in the production of vanced as well as backward, are needed. What is taking weapons of destruction, for which very purpose the place, therefore, is that capital, which always had men Russians instituted their program. Thus these two in its grip, has been accumulated to such an extent, enemies grow more like each other every day. Only the intensively and extensively, that it now operates by Marxist organization basing itself on the proletariat complete mastery of men. The vast state capitalist can attempt a synthesis and transcend the essentially trusts and syndicates hurl themselves against each bourgeois antagonism between humanism and techno­ other to be shattered, only to reorganize themselves logy. in unstable combinations, vainly seeking that complete OUR UNSHAKABLE FOUNDATIONS centralization which it is the nature of capital to forever If the development of society has posed before us seek and never achieve. Lenin did not deny the theOl'e­ the crisis of contemporary society as essentially prob­ tical possibility of world capital being totally centralized lems of human relations, if the Marxist organization but, as he said, a great deal would happen before then. itself will remove from living Marxism what is now It is happening. dead, the organization never forgets its own essential Even judging the system from its own point of view fcundations. We shall conclude, therefore, with a brief it is already exhausted. Having drawn the whole world statement of the main lines of Marxism, whose essen­ into its orbit, it is incapable of supplying the undevel­ truth is not weakened but confirmed every day. oped countries with the capital needed to develop them. tial THE MARXIST ORGANIZATION-1903-1958 ]04 F ACING REALITY 105 wa Thus, as with so many other great issues long debated y �hat they and only they know, productivity cculdthe Marxism, the theoretical problem of whether capi­ be mcreased by fifty per cent. Official society cannot afford intalism would collapse from lack of markets or lack of �uch freedom. This is the true maturity of human productive power is solved in life for all to see. SOCIety, the golden age and the promised land, that modern men are at last in a position to man­ But side by side with the chaotic movement to con­ age all their material affairs so that they can now centration goes the socialization of the labor force. devote themselVes to the development of themselves as There is no need to elaborate this. In Marx's words, the human beings and not to the development of capital. labor force is constantly growing in numbers, is united, . Ideas WIll now play their proper part in the lives of men, disciplined, and organized by the very mechanism of Today when aU the bull frogs rival each other in their capitalist production itself. Sooner or later it would loathsome croakings about increasing the standard of have to rid mankind of the increasing misery imposed living, we can best sum up the Past a nd the future -in upon it by capital. In social terms this means displac­ the following propositions which formed a landmark in ' ing the human beings who refuse to abandon their our struggle towards understanding. privileged positions as agents and directors of capital. (a) All development takes place as a result of Human personality, social and political institutions, in­ self-movement, not organization or direction by ex­ ternational diplomacy, human grandeur and hum an ternal forces. weakness, all, in their infinite and from one point of ( view ungraspable and unpredictable variety, are to be b) Self-movement springs from and is the over­ seen within the context of this view of modern devel­ coming of antagonisms within an organism, not the opment. The alternative is the doctrine of Hebrew struggle against external foes. nomads on original sin, with the hope of redemption (c) It is not the world of nature that confronts by summit talks. man as an alien power to be overcome. It is the alien power that he has himself created. Today there are no longer any mysteries in the con­ ditions of social existence nor in that science of human (d) Th� end towards which mankind is inexorably affairs whose right name is political economy. In his developmg by the constant overcoming of internal not famous chapter of Capital, the last but one of the first antagonisms is the enjoyment, ownership , or volume, Marx stated, so that a child could understand, use of goods, but self-realization, creativity based upon the incorporation into the individual person­ that the new society would grow and flourish (one would flourish) inside the old. The crisis now is be­ ality of the whole previous development of human­ not t'ween two societies. All the pontifications, calculations, ity. Freedom is creative universality, utility, projects, discoveries, alternative courses of action of This is the philosophy of the Marxist organization economists about the rise of prices, inflation, balance dialectical method, a methodological guide but n the � of payments, productivity of labor, are just so much more, The organization will not seek to propagate it mystification and nonsense, necessary only to preserve TIor to convince men of it but to use it so as the more illusion that the rulers are in control and directing qu ickly and clearly to recognize how it is concretely ex­ theaffairs. While these solemn Druids and medicine men pressed in the lives and struggles of the people. sing their various litanies about the great problem of in­ flation and deflation in England, it is perfectly obvious that in a highly-organized country, with a disciplined community, like Britain, the curse of inflation not is an economic problem at all but a political one. Any government which had and deserved the complete con­ fidence of the people as a whole would have little diffi­ culty in bringing the inflation to an end. Official so­ ciety cannot produce such a government. It has been calculated that if the British workers were freed in the factodes, mines, and offices to organize production in WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 107 In one department of a certain plant in the United States, there a worker who is physically incapable of carrying out his1's duties. But he is a man with a wife and WHAT DO AND HOW TO DO children, and his condition is due to the previous strain VII. TV IT of his work in the plant. The workers in that depart­ It is agreed that the socialist society exists. Thenwe ment have organized their work so that for nearly ten have to record the facts of its existence. years he has had practically nothing to do. They have defied all efforts of the foreman and supervision to dis­ We begin at this apparently most primitive level. charge him, threatening to throw the whole plant into Experience has taught millions of workers that the most disorder if any steps are taken to di'Smiss the invalid. colossal task that faces them is to take action on the That is the soc - job for "local grievances." The whQle l;rlJreaUQratic ap.. _ _ ialist society. Careful observation will paratus of official society, the official state, labor par­ show that such enormous problems as work for the old,- ties, and labor unions function automatically to inhibit, . the handicapped, the young, of both sexes, can be easilY prevent, and suppress just this. We too have learned and competently handled without any bureaucratic ap­ that the same apparently all-embracing apparatus, not paratus Whatever, by the good sense of workers as long only in deed but in thought, creates obstacles, and every as they have the power to arrange their labor as they second of the day never ceases to attack, to infiltrate, wish. ,;Vorkers tell such episodes by the dozen. No bour­ to demoralize, to corrupt, to ridicule, to destroy any geois nor trade union journal ever prints any. attempt to present systematically the conception of the In another plant in the United states the company new Mciety as we have outlined it. The only course 'tried by a maneuver to prevent a Negro drivel' being therefore is to present what we have learned in con­ given the job of dispatcher to which his seniority en­ crete terms, approaching it from every angle, nailing titled The Negro workers in the plant called a down the individual concrete fact by looking at it in meetingbim. and gave the company a certain deadline to terms of the Universal, falling back on theory to un­ upgrade this worker to the job which was his by right. cover the so often unexpected significance of what may Before their united determination the company capitu­ appear to be casual incidents or episodes, pointing out lated. Thus these worker'S had struck a blow against the unbelievable insidiousness with which the bureau­ common injustice, racial discrimination, and the disor­ cratic environment, in matters large as well as small, der in production which management creates. That is obtrudes and in'Serts itself into the minds even of those the socialist society. It hasn't to be organized in the whose main purpose in life is to reject it. All this and future. It exists. It is organized. It has to get rid of whatever may appear to be related, we shall now try to what is stifling it, what is preventing it from expanding do. We have behind us not only decades of negative ex­ to the fun, what is preventing it from tackling not only perience. We can draw on some positive and extended the immediate problem of production, but also the more attempts in various countries to work out the new at general problems of society. But it exists. various levels of thought and action. Experiences in In a British airport the security officers salute their various countries were made in common, with constant superiors in accordance with the semi-military disci­ exchange of trial and error. The infinite variety of na­ pline that prevails in this type of public service. One tional peculiarities helped to di'Stinguish the incidental of their representatives, on going to discuss union mat­ from the fundamental. We have had successes and have ters with management, refused to salute, claiming that studied carefully their implications. As with all depar­ in this relation he and the representative of manage­ tures from established practice, the moves forward are, ment met as equals. The representative of management, and in fact must be, explorations into unknown terri­ quite obviously a man of semi-feudal mentality, de­ tory. But we have laid a foundation and it is this that manded the right to be saluted. The whole section of now try to communicate. workers went out on strike immediately, and in the we Let us begin with what is apparently a casual, ele­ end, management capitulated. That is the socialist so­ menta,ry anecdote. ciety. 106 Workers refer to these struggles as attempts to co1'- 108 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 109 rect "local grievances" and to "improve working condi­ True, it is frustrated at every turn by the existing tions." Yet to the terror of management and the per­ ca.pital-Iabor relation, but it is nothing that has to be petual astonishment of people who are no� familiar w�th created in the future by the Party or the Plan. It exists the working class, workers are ready to brmg productlOn and fights, not only to exist but to expand its sphere of to a stop and endure the greatest privations for weeks action. and months over what seems to the ordinary observer OVERTIME to be trifles. To workers it is precisely the power to To the observer outside the plant the question of carry all these ideas and wishes of theirs to complete­ overtime is far removed from socialism. Yet it is around ness wl1ich constitutes the new society. overtime that can be seen as clearly as anywhere else, SOCIALIST DISCIPLINE the socialist and all other attitudes to social labor, The new society its own discipline. Wol'}{­ posed in opposition to each , other. Management, ers are not homogeneousexercises and often some worker refuses whether democratic , or totalitarian, considers tluit i t is fellows or to play his part. its prerogative to go out on strike with his to decide when and where and by whom one of the innumerable daily clashes with manage­ overtime is to be in worked, irrespective of the wishes or needs ment. The majority of workers are quite aware that, of workers. There is a small minority consisting dissidents take a great stand on their in­ of Trotskyists, though these anarchists, radicals, and ex-radicals, who dividual rights, none of them has ever been known to have what they consider to be the r,evolutionary atti­ of money and conditions which the tude towards l'efuse the benefits overtime. They claim that any overt ime work actions of his fellows may win. In the United states the is a departure from the great principle of the 8- workers hour day and is will mercilessly badger this type of worker all therefore a crime. These are the ones who, we day. They will report his activities to colleagues of other may be sure, under what they call socialism, would departments. They will construct and even write lam­ be ready ,to impose the most brutal conditions of overtime. poons which are circulated all over the plant. In Britain According to them, once the property is ns,tionalized, the method of correction is the opposite. The British overtime is in the interest of society as a whole (these workers send the dissident to Coventry-they will not radicals having been substituted for the capitalists speak to him at all. In each case the workers are sub­ as the managers and policemen of produc­ tion) . stituting their own discipline, the discipline of socialist At the other extreme is another minority, usually consisting relations of production, for the capitalistic discipline of of skilled workers and lead men who are dismissal. eager for all the overtime they can get. The great The same type of discipline is applied to workers majority of the workers have nothing' in common with \\' ho do not do what their felloW workers consider to be any of these. They carry on what at first glance is an utterly a fair share of the work. All industrial psychologists bewildering series of struggles, sometimes for, sometimes against know that under conditions of capitalist production overtime. What the a'V erage group of workers workers have two standards of production. One they wants in regard to overtime is that they 'Should control the apply to the demands of management. At any particu­ amount of overtime, how and when it should take place lar time this consists of a quantity of work governed by and who should do it. Thus, at times the struggle is the amount of money they want to make and the energy against overtime, at oth­ ers it is for the right to work overtime, they wish to expend, on the one hand, and keeping in what appears to be a chaotic capriciousness. But one management in its place on the other. But there is principle under­ lies all these struggles. It is the fundamental another standard, a standard of their own, what under principle that workers themselves are to control the particular conditions they want to do, what they overtime and therefore keep their grip on the length consider necessary to their self-respect and security, of the working day. Control by workers over the amount and they do not lightly tolerate any persistent and ir­ of extra work that should be done, when it is to be done, responsible departure from this . This determination to how it js to be done, who will do it, just simply this control their own labor by common agreement and to constitutes socialist relations of production, and many discipline those who depart from the cooperation tl1at millions of workers all over the world are engaged in a constant modern production demands, what is it but sociali"sm? struggle to establish this. Sometimes they succeed, if WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO FACING REALITY IT 111 110 That certain length o time. this which accounts for the mountains of nonsense only partially, or for a , � IS no other kind of so- which are daily produced on the subj ect of automation. precisely is socialism and there AUTOMATION ci�lism. OF PRODUCTION While official society and the labor bureaucracies THE SCHEDULES to c ntrol w�o are excelling themselves in creating dust, noise, modern plants workers want � In most ­ confu­ to control who wIll be dIS sion, and fear over automation, the socialist society has al. e hi.red and when and what circumstances. But already put forward its own most comprehensive plans , . and when , a�d under v the plant for . dealing with automation. m!sseQ involve:s knowledge 0 f hw t a york this really '.e and general publlc a� Workers of Standards in Coventry, England, have , t 0 do • While the unions pI oposes 111 wages, wha t evel' Y w orker said the fundamental words about automation. primal'iiy concerned with COP:t. 10. _ to know in advance and _ .. y P an t wants- to. 1 If management wishes to introdllce autohiatiol1 , . 1 uction. Bu t tl:1 .1S' manao'ement", a,) evelare'. the schedules of prod into any plant, it must consult the workers in the from them. is adamant in keeping plant at the very first inception of the idea. Work­ out the slogan " e ers are not opposed to automation. Far from that. Walter Reutller once threw �i � not mean to tIle workers la They welcome it. But they insist that it is their the Books" " This did profits known. These business more than anybody else'lS. pa es s hould make their the com m , . nt and ed wIth the govelnme b) When automation is introduced, there is no ne­ rafits have to be register , . To open the cessity to dismiss anyone. at a moment's notlC� be in'E;pected the rs : Tell us m advance �aboon s m ean t to the worke It is here that not merely two methods of produc­ you PlOP e o carry k of production WhICh"t tion but two con.ceptions of society as a whole are in schedules , �� s chedules say they WIsh to see e ,t When workers conflict. Workers are not units of production, They are wish to say what the uction, they mean they � men with homes which, sometimes, they have bought or �rod to tl fierce was the response �¥think about them. So \, are in the process of buying. They have families and and workers, from thel of both management childr:en who are going to school, with the friends and SlOgal� ly with- . 'th a t Reuther rapid OPPOSIte pomts of VIew, associations that distinguish the lives of human beings from animals in the forest. They refuse to concede to men drew it. ten or twenty thousand management the right to break up their lives according In modern industry . the enormously complIcated to the supposed needs of production. The Coventry work­ 11 ave to carry out 'vV,1,10 from any modern production are excluded claimed that they could reorganize the work so that e f th y knowledge of :vhat � noerR one needed to be dismissed. They went further and e sive and precise , p but m �:� ; interests of productIOn, announced a principle that made several newspaper ���l1!.'.ve t 0 d 0. Not, in the has to treat editors declare that the end of the world had come. Its own POSI't' lOn, management , of as me the workers reJect � They stated that there were times when they had to defenselike children. This � tl:l em r T e exclu iOl fro  i! work very hard and times when they could take it easy he intolerab� � ver , ou l ri because there was no need to work so hard. pe1'lOdlCally � s r: : �:�� �: :� closely, hour. Two forces or�l t�, le e pe nies per differences of two on Amid the chorus of denunciations and yells at the , e of production based in confllct : one mo , unreasonableness, the insanity of these workers, no one l'ere are � � lll er t the re:ation of l e capital-labor relation, � :::� took care to note that the necessity to work hard at t�l� � w� r � o , ; and the othe�, m and privates iously times was not denied. It was specifically admitted. clated :n ' consc by fre�IY assa. it was based on the principle that the workers wouldBut "production s ttled plan." m accor dance WI·th � � l'egult a e d b y them con- tl1emselves decide. , at ideas or theoretical opposmg for. ces . ar e n These The clash between This was the workers' answer the great problem , eses. They exist. structlOns or hypoth , of automation. We take the libertyto of making only one . b 0 ne and stretching IS cons tantly shakmg every. tbem There are two so- addition that was inherent in the whole : it would be o t o y O let e el n:rve i necessary at times to send workers away from one plant y ? i c �italist society. T?e m con l c ' cletles , ' ' � � ! sal to recogruze to another. But who should go, and when, and under � f t ��society�� . :It is the refu other IS a socl all:st WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO 112 FACING .REALITY IT 113 what conditions, these things nobody could know and lions of volumes in the great libraries of Britain and arrange satisfactorily except the workers themselves. you will find no single volume which attempts to make any s�rious examination of what this movement is Most of this appeared in the press in garbled form. what it does, and how it does it. Yet it is certain tha But it was among the Standard workers them'Selves, in t sueh records exist, in the secret files of industrialists their private conversations, that what they proposed who have to deal with this movement and understand and, still more, what they thought, could be heard ialist soci­at as far as they are able. As far as they are able. For its simplest and mos,t direct. This is the soc itit is impossible for them, and their bureaucratic col­ ety, as complete an overturn of capitalist production But leagues, to understand that the day-to-day struggles as the most daring theoretical mind could conceive. of the workers constitute the socialist society and the ba- wild as this program seemed to official society and struggle for socialism. The proposals of the workersin labor bureaucracies and parliamentarians, it would win sicSta ndards of how to deal with automation did not come the immediate support of the vast majority of workers in from study or theory or boards of inquiry or parlia­ in every countrY in the world. This is socialism, not not mentary committees or Royal or Presidential Commis­ the heads of intellectuals and advanced workers, of a To those who ma.de the proposals they were the in the future, not to be achieved after sacrifice us, natural,sion'S. normal, in fact unavoidable conclusions, flow­ generation of human beings, but here all aronnd with ing naturally from their daily lives. Management and based on generations of experience and burning la,bor bureaucrats cannot understand this because it'S ul­ the desire to establish itself. what tim?Jite conclusion, and one that is not in any way re­ What happened is characteristic. Faced with mote, is the elimination of these parasites as an in te­ amounted to the destruction of their society, rliamenta­union gral necessity in modern life. It is to be noted that the leaders, newspaper editors, bishops, and pa The work­ vast majority of workers, contrary to the oret,ical socia­ rians rushed in and ol"ganiz'ed a compromise. as ers were promised two or three weeks' severance pay lists, have little concern with the wages or social privi­ to retreat. compensation. The Coventry workers had leges of management, supervisors and such. They are socialist struc­ But they have added another story to the interested in the free interchange of tasks in the plant, and in theo:l.'Y. ture that they are building, in practice the levelling, or rather equalization of wages through to auto­ Two weeks' pa.y . That i'S the capitalist answer which their essentially cooperative labor can be per­ the social ca­ mation. Nearly two hundred years after formed without undue friction. They are not interested revolu­ tastrophes and cruelties of the early industrial in the perquisites of management. Their main concern o weeks' pay, tion, capitalism registers its progress-tw with management i'S that it should confine its function a week for each century. to doing what they, the workers, want done. has already brought an unbelievable Automation No on e should underestimate the will and the energy of Am e I' i can disorder into the social life of millions Workers that will be needed to say, not once but again and again Unemployment pay does not satisfy. ,-v orkers. with the Coventry workers, that a body of workers in tion shows that a want some order in their lives. Automa is incapable plant constitutes the only social organization capable capitalism today, as two hundred years ago, that they of dealing with automation in a l'easonable social and order. But today workers not only know nobody else can. human way. To record it, to publicize it in every con­ <:>1can handle these pmblems, but that the days of Lenin . ceivable shape and form, to place, it before workers who These were not the problems posed in gin from here. have not heard of it, to encourage it, this is the concrete The Marxist organization must be task. Workers are ready to listen. Even 'when they ap­ FillST FUNDAMENTAL TASK pear skeptical, perseverance will often show that they Here we pause for a moment to look again at our have long thought of this but are acutely aware of the first simple statement: To recognize the socialist society difficulties in the way and push these forward because and record the facts of its existence. Workers not recoto rd. The great Shop stewards Movement, thedo they wish them to be examined and discussed. It is in most powerful social force in Great Britain these confrontations that Marxism and Marxists ac­ keeps practically no records. You will search thetoday. qUll'e life movement, and get closer to social reality. mil- and WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 11.5 114 FACING BEALITY THE MIDDLE CLASSES right of the Employees Council whether or not he A new society invading the old never establishes itself pays dues. I -No question can be resolved without the agree­ in production alone or in one class, in this case the ment of the interested worker · or workers in an v,;orking class. The pattern of production permeates the office or of all employees, according to whether it whole society. The middle classes, the worker with the concern's a single employee, an office or all tbe em­ black coat, the white coUar, or the frilly blouse, shaped ployees. by their own conditions of production, have shown them­ -All meetings are public and: all employees ex­ selves all over th e world increasingly ready to follow press themselves freely. the example of the workers, tl1U'S proving how deeply -We all work together, the Council ingrained in the new society is the activity that the has no func­ tionaries, the meetings take plac€ Q1Jtsicie workers carry on. The most striking example. course, - of jng h0'urs. Qf wol'k­ is in the Hungarian Revolution. At the same time that the Hungarian workers in the plant were forming their 3. Every person in a responsible position is design­ Workers Councils. the employees formed their own ated on the basis of the confidence of the employee'S all councils in ev ery branch of the national activity, in and is revocable at any time. government offices, in the Department of Foreign Af­ -The General Assembly of the Council, compris­ and fairs, in banks, in the information services 0'f pres'S all the employees, decides impo,}:tant· questions, radio, everywhere. ing -The Executive Committee, consisting of 38 del­ Social upheavals bring out what already exists in egates from the different offices, each representing as­ society, even though only in embryonic f0'rm, or as a group of employees dOing the same work, decides piration. But they exist. It is the task of the Marxist practical questions. organization to find them. order to obtain recognition by the firm, the In Paris at the Genel'al Life Insurance Company, Employee4. In 'S Council must elect employees' delegates, con­ an Employees Council was formed two years ago in But the unions are well protected by the law ; scious opposition to both management and the trade they are the only ones allowed to present the list. policy unions. We print here complete the program and It is only if their lists do not receive of the bal­ pub­ that it has worked out to guide it, and which lots that the elections are voided and %on the second it lished and distributed before other insurance compan­ round all candidates can present themselves. society in action. ies. It is the socialist Today the unions have launched: the worst allega­ The maj ority of the employees of the General In­ tions against the Council : Poujadists, splitters, fas­ surance Co., 87 rue de Richelieu, Paris, are no long­ cists, stooges of the company, etc. They have to er willing to entrust the defense of their interests break up this spontaneous regroupment of employees to the trade unions of any kind. or it will prove that it is possible to do without the It was as a result of the strike of November 19 55 that unions because the employees are capable of organ­ we decided to defend our interests ourselves. izing themselves so that the bureaucratic and poli­ tical apparatus of the unions is useless. WHAT HAVE WE DONE? WHY HAVE WE DONE WHAT WE HAVE,? 1. We publish every month a newspaper of the firm. The Employees Bulletin, whose columns are open THIS IS WHAT THE EMPLOYEES COUNCIL OF to all of us who have not been able to express what THE GENERAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY we thought in the trade union papers. Before being THINKS : published, each article is discussed among us so The Employees: tha,t it can best represent the opinion of all. Every employee of a firm participates in a collec­ 2. We are organized, our Council has a legal status tive task. Each has duties and his equal rights. his but WE ARE NOT A TRADE UNION W HERE But nobody is getting equal pay. EVERYTHING IS DECIDED FROM THE TOP : Look: at your pay envelopes and consider. The man­ -Every employee of the firm is a member by a,gement and the union have signed agreements. WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 117 FACING REALITY 116 MANAGEMENT AND THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE according the -which differentiate the pay They use every means (seniors, unions) to increase 10 categories toin the claBsification of employment (1 their intake. They live by only one principle : the classification of July 1954) . absolute authority of management in the firm. the differentiation -which constantly increase This authority brings in its wake waste, inju'Stice, greement of July 1954. inefficiency, fatigue, tension, discouragement. and the differences in pay (a 5) . April and November 195 , But if we place in the hands of the unions the task union del gates often Pl'�CtI� of counteracting this authority, we find that in Inside the firm the . � , : WhiCh mCI'eases thIS dlffer general the unions serve this authority rather than policy of favoritism , fIrm the em- ntiation. The result is that in every fight it. . :ployees are divided ... . WHAT WE CAN ALL DO your firms your problems are the same as ours. t and the unions are the divisive The managemen YouIn can depend only upon yourselves. elements. You are not what the union'S and management say The Seniors : you are : incompetents who have to be led. to the hierarchy in pay is even This division due . You are the most numerous, on you the functioning to the Semors. more marked in relation of the firm depends, you are capable of organizing rk as t e other employees. yourselves, while allowing to each the Either they do the same wo . ? possibility of controlling or their work is simply supervISIOn. and administering the organization com­ stified? mon to all : You are those for whom solidarity is this hierarchy in any way ju How then is not an empty word. : The Unions HELP us salary agreeme ts They negotiate with management � In every firm you can form an Employees Coun­ the increasmg crumbs from which will unify against management all the which allow us some . . cil one pomt, anageme�t as profits. outside of this � � employees now divided and dominated by the unions. It pleases In re- complete authority ; it doe's what If this is not immediately possible, form a group gard to our work, to publi'sh a bulletin of your firm to prepare the official delegates de- Check for yourselves how the way for forming a Gouncil. fend supervision in your firm. Whatever the possibilities are, make contact with us. We will tell you our experience and give you ma­ Work : terial aid. cas s what work e do In the large maj ority of � : but on the -:oood- Oui" Employees Council will survive only if other depends not on our real capacItIes Councils are formed in other companies. Our Coun­ will of management. and cils could not have been created if we had not rec­ we have to do tires us l1l:0re The work which ognized our capacities. and mechanization Increase. more as rationalization . m such a way Cooperate with us. It is for us all that we struggle. Our work is organized by management apply even 10% our March 13, 1956, that it does not permit us to of The Employees Councils of real capacities. . . . m General Life Insurance Co. the C. F. T. C. unions partlciPate The F. O. and Is it not clear that these French men and women, productivity. the commission on � working in offices, are an integral part of the 13ame new in 1945 called on the mpIOyees I'i The C. G. T. union social formation as the Hungarian wm.·kers who made to increase productIOn. make every effort . the revolution, the British shop stewards, and those to become ever mOTe pam­ We don't want our work to . Russian workers against whom Khrushchev and Shepi­ gement and the umons, ful and stupid. Unlike mana lov thunder in vain? That statement of what they are �rstand what our work we think we are able to und doing and why is socialism, theory and practice. To It. consists of and to organize WHAT 118 FACING REALITY TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 119 write this program they had to draw to a head their stewar s to present any � special views it wishes to bitter experiences with all types of Socialist, Commu­ have dlscussed. nist, and Trotskyist bureaucrats. This Central Committee always met on a Sunday Stewards would arrive But aren't there great areas of life outside of produc­ from all the little Lancashir� towns from midday tion and administration? There are. And as Marx, im­ onward'S. The landlord allotted the . � blg ass mblY room for ... deliberations patient with these babblers, once replied to them, "Who . . From mldday ntil 2 denies it?" The Marxist organization which understands � p.m. all drink beer and exchange c nversatlOn a out that its function is to learn and not to teach, will find � ? anything and everything. Sand­ WIChes and pIes (after great efforts) that outside of production as well are brought from the pub for lunc h. At 2 p.m. on Sundays the pubs as in it, the new society every day, every hour, estab- . have to stop s rvmg beer, - -- listies itself with massiveness, a solidity, and an infinite � although everyone takes the precau­ a - . tlO of order g an variety, which challenges the official structure of socie­ � � extra pint at 2 p.m. t h l theIr t oats m e p ty at every turn. m: the coming session. So at 2 oo'clock th e chaIrman opens the meeting. The agenda is SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION made up on the sP Qot. The Secretary reads any cor­ reBPondence The minutes Organization is the cry. What about organization? . of the last meeting are approve Ther is Modern industry, we are told, demands organization of ? � a minimum of business . The hole tlme untIl a kind different from these shop floor organizations . � 7 o'clock is taken up with resolu- tlOl1S and The Marxist organization will have only to look to find di�cussio�s. At o'clock the meeting . . 7 clos­ es, when It IS openmg the miracles of organization which modern workers time. Thereafter there is in­ formal c? tinuation have learned in modern industry and which have be­ J?- of discussion in groups, very often poll tIcal debate until come second nature to them. Accounts of these are so 10 o'clock when the pub close'S, few that we quote again from the document which de­ when everybody goes home having . had an scribed the shop stewards. It deals with the Central enJoyable day. Committee of the Textile Machine Industry in Lan­ The task of the small organization . earlier stated as cashire. be g merely to record � the facts of the existing socialist SOCIety, now begins to This is a meeting Qof shop stewards from all facto­ appear fOil' the gigantic and ut .. terl ries in manufacturing spinning machinery, largely � unprecedented undertaking that it is. But jt is pri­ manly a concrete ta k one large cartel. It meets whenever a factory com­ � . It can not only record, it can co tel"pos the eXIstmg. mittee thinks it necessary, but usually once a month U? � formations of the new socialist sOCle�� agall1l;t the clumsy, in a small public house in a back street in the cen­ tyrannica.l, bureaucratic mon­ �trositles which claim tre of Manchester. Now this committee is quite ty­ that modern society can only live pical of all such committees, which exist in hun­ If governed by them. Finally the strange dreds of different shapes and sizes cmresponding st featUre of so many of these with the conditions in the factories and industries new organizations is that they have no official exist­ for which they cater. ence :

is noteworthy that this There are only a few informal rules, which can be Central Committee of TeIt xtile Machi and are changed to suit the convenience of stew­ ne Shop Stewards has no recog . . nized ex:stence. It IS comple ards attending. There are only very shadowy Qoffi­ tely outside any union ma­ chiner or jurisdiction, cers and functions, and its decisions are not bind­ � and the emplnyers dio not and Ill not negotiate ing on any individual factory which can accept or .w with it. It an informal meetmg of the delegates reject them. Votes al'e very rarely taken; when they from fac toriesis ' yet it the po er W are, one factory, no matter what the size, counts � �ich faces twenty boards o f directors,is and whlch wlll tomorrow, as one vote. Sometimes as many as twenty factories . with the greatest of ease abolIsh them . have been represented, sometimes only say half a ' . The same thing is so for nearly all s ch commlttees.. dozen. Any qhop steward may attend, although the � . It also of note that in the constItutIon of is committee of a factory will delegate Qone or two the Confederation of Shipbuilding FACING REALITY 120 WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO JT 121 and Engineering Unions, in which neaTly all the shop steward; at the level of management of a unions concerned are confederated, there is no factory, the Shop Stewards Committee; and at the provision for such Central Committees, and shop level of the whole industry, the Central Committee. stewards and committees are not mentioned. But it Of the two parallel organi'Sing functions, the one is a matter of fact that whenever any serious ques­ of the workers was and is incomparably more vigo­ tions arise locally, i.e. on a District Committee ba­ rous and in every respect superior. sis, the District Committees invariably call unoffi­ HOW DOCKERS ORGANIZE cial advisory meetings of all shop stewards and The new society is to be found committees concerned. Real policy is decided at in the most un­ expected places. The whole world these meetings; they also carry it out, and once knows that during the last ten year'S a few thousand London called ses::;iQn for serious emergencies, they in­ dockers have repeatedly fought variablyin meet very frequently, at least once a weeK. against their ployers, union pitched battles bureaucrats, the government, and em­the But can one reasonably compare these workers sit­ official Press, radio, and publicist'S, and repeatedly de­ t�ng in a pub with the machinery of management, be­ feated them. A great university has organized a research project to find fore which the whole world bnws down, in Detroit, in out what spirit it is that moves in t11em. After years Paris, in Moscow, as well as in Lancashire? That is ex­ of investigation the researchers report their findings with actly what the writer goes on to do: the sad conclusion that they a,re not much wiser about the dockers Now (Communists and Trotskyites) will point than when they began. On one acqasion when the dockers to the factory managements with their hierarchy had once more paralyzed the ports of the nation, of superintendents and foremen and managers, and the reporter of a great newspaper sought to find the the co-ordinating boards, and the hundreds of exe­ organizer. He finally located the ob­ ject of his search cutives trained in all these things, and they will Sitting in a small back room, without secretary, without typewriter, ask ...how (the) public-house meeting is going without telephone. To the university researcher to replace an that . . . But the cold hard fact is and newspaper reporter dock­ ers remain a mystery, that committee was and is the le.ading committee and them they will always be a mystery, because to of an organisation which with the expenditure of the dockers have broken out of the bureaucratic routine not 1 % of the time, with no full time highly paid of bourgeois disorder and are blasting new roads of social and trained managers, organised the entire labor organization. This is the secret of their strength force of those factories down to the last apprentice and there is no other secret. Perhaps . . . Here, in 1947, with the bourgeoisie "organising" the most conscious and finished opposition to the parlia their own factories, the separate Shop Stewards mentary procedure and accepted routine of traditional Committees examined every plan of the manage­ organizations which exists a.nywhere to­ ments, and where changes of plan affected the day is to be found among the dockers. whole industry, the problems were dealt with by the A few hundred dockers hold a meeting on the docks Central Committee, which arrived at agreed deci­ to decide some course of policy. The first thing they Within 24 hours every worker in the industry sions. do is to inform the police to keep a.way and not to show knew all about it, every Shop Stewards Committee themselves further than a certain street or streets. wa'S considering the application of the agreed line, The pOlice, they know, are the greatest source of dis­ every management was requested to meet its com­ order. They create a mood of hostility among tb e men mittee right away, where the stewards would m.ake by their mere presence; if a distur bance does break out known how far they would agree, or the extent of the police wish to arrest the culprits, which at once refusal, etc. Of course, there was strife, permanent divides the do ckers into conflicting groups. The dockers struggle between committees and management. But · keep their own order. "Pipe down there, lad" from two the extent of management "organisation" in greater or three of the older ones is usually sufficient to sup­ or lesser degree also depended on the attitude of press any too unruly heckler. Those who start fights are the workers. At the level af the ma.chine, what the quickly disciplined without any arrests. worker thought right; at the level of foreman, the A dockers' meeting can break every rule of parlia.- 122 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 123 mentary procedure. At any stage of a meeting the procedures are carried on in exactly this way chairman or the orator who has the rostrum can be . But what matters is this. Like so many other tens ignored while the meeting breaks up into two or three upon tens of millions of workers, they have repeatedly been separate meetings. A speaker who has won the atten­ cheated and had their wishes thwarted by bureaucrats, tion of a group is pushed forward and encouraged to Chair­ rnah, Secretary, and Committee members go up to the rostrum and take over from the sp�er sitting at ta­ bles, on platforms, with speakers to motion, there. The dockers do not like votes, because votmg seconders, amendments, propo'Sals rejected because results in organized opposite camps. They s�nse the not permissible according to regulations, or according general sentiment and act on that. The vote IS alwa�s to Ma,y's or Rob­ erts' Rules of Order, the whole apparatus of taken only in one set of circumstances: when there IS tried and tested routine by which the will of the a discussion on whether to return to work or not. Then, rank and file is thwarted. The result is that they act although opinions maY differ, the vote to go back or in conscious . opposition to these procedures. It is often not go back is usually unanimous-for the sake of �­ in this way, by conscious rej ection of the old, that the new ternal l30lidarity and also for the purpose of wa�n:ng develops and i's cherished and spread because the authorities not to cultivate illusions about spl1ttmg of the enOl'mous new power it generates. the ranks. With the dockers, Their method of selecting delegates is equally op­ as with all such highly advanced outpo'Sts of the posed to parliamentary procedure. Whom to send? "What new society, the new is often very much entangled with about Tom here?" "O.K., Tom." "And Jim?" "O.K. Jim, the old, sometimes in superficially reac- , tionary forms aDd Jack here will make three." On the surface it loo�s . The solidarity may ha,v e roots in national and religious haphazard. But the man who has said Tom to be�m origins which cut the particular grouping off from with has had good reason for beginning with him. JIm the general current of the society in which they live is chosen to supplement Tom. And Jack completes a and thus strengthen their sense of hostility to its shabby trio. There may be hundreds or even thousands of men practices. Side by side with the boldest creativeness present. Few have had anything to say about the se­ may go a clinging to reactionary forms and ideas. lection. Distinctive with them is the fact tha.t;J a second It takes all sorts to make a world, and par­ ticular delegation may consist of three entirely different peo- ly a new world. But the dockers have achieved a social effect ple. iveness and a striking power which so far .'. has expr Their method of dealing WIth CommunIsts IS exem- essed itself only in successful battles against enormou'S plary. They will choose a Communist as a delegate, a�d forces. When these forces have finally fallen . apart, when the meeting is over some of them may even SIt m the energies and powers which have so far been displayed the pub listening to his exposition of C0n;tmuni'st doc­ chiefly in resistance will be free for creation industry, trine. But if they have reason to suspect, m the course in politics, in social life. But already they inmean of negotiations, that he is concerned more with the far more for the new society than the accumulat­ . . eo wisdom of Commlmist line than the dockers' interests, he IS lIkely all the Party Conferences in Britain plus the to be dropped. They will hear of a strike in :: sin�le editorial st affs of all the newspapers plus the coun­ motor plant in Coventry, and after one of th lr qUlte cils of all the universitie�. : � . informal meetings will write three or four hnes III pe�Cll RACE RELATIONS-TWO ROADS on a piece of paper torn out of a notebook, ext:ressmg It is obvious that if there ate two societies in con­ solidarity. They dispatch it by someone who IS con­ flict, then each will be deeply affected by the other. venient. When the news gets known, not only the par­ The Marxist organization will have to learn to distin­ ticular firm but all other motor firms in Coventry trem­ guish stages of the existence of the new society. Here ble. For at such times the dockers not trouble them­ a perfect example of the manner in which the socie­ do selves about niceties of distinction, and inasmuch as to tiesis are entangled. It deals with the Negro question in them one auto in Coventry is pretty much the the United States. firm same as another, they are ready to stop handling not In one of the most widely known of American auto­ in one make but all cars that come from Coventry. mobile plants, the administration from the top execu ­ This is not to say that all dockers meetings and tives to the lowliest members of the clerical staff is 124 :FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 125 white . For these people democracy means the right to vote ; whom they employ and where they employ them Our task then is to recognize the new society, align is their own business. The plant itself, however, em­ ourselves with it, and record the facts of its existence. ploys a number of Negroes. Therefore you will find on The next question is exactly how. the union executive board of a dozen people three or INDEPENDENT EDITORIAL COMMIT'l'EES four Negroes, including the Vice-President. But you If the mind of the Marxist organization is clear about what will find on examination that this a compromise. it has to do, then all problems are soluble by is The union leaders, organizers of elections, know that tria] and error. But some of us have digested, as far as we could, they must have some Negroes in the leadership, the experiences of the last thirty years. and certain set jobs, such as the Reco:rding Secretary, Some of us have not only participated in these experi­ are ences but regularly allotted to a Negro on the union election list. have made experiences of our own, seeking to discovel' Where the pressure from below is very great they will · a practice conesponding · to the theory that we deve sometimes, as in the pr-esent case, place a Negro on loped. We can therefore give with a certain con­ the list as Vice-President. This is a typically bureau­ fidence the essential elements of the structure the forms, cratic solution of an urgent problem. It will surprise the and the procedures of such an organiz�tion. These, of American union bureaucrats, who denounce British co­ course, will be diversified by the circumstances of na.tiona.l lonialism with such unction, to know that the method life, the starting point and personnel the small they use -exactly the same as that practiced through organization. The concrete results in everyof is concrete case many decades by the British imperialists in thwarting at a particular stage will necessarily de­ termine the the aspirations of colonial peoples. steps which are to follow. Despite this in­ find evitable and however, to the shop floor. There you will in every respect advantageous variety the the Go,free democracy that is the natural expression of general outline is clear. cooperative labor. In the shop floor organizations the The keystone of the arch is independent editoriah thousands of workers in the plant make no distinction committees, "independent" signifying that these com­ between whites and Negroe . They are concerned solely mittees are s independent of the organization. with organizing their work and their struggles with We may take the average Marxist organization to management as effectively as possible. The men who consist of anything from a dozen to three or four dozen can do this best are the leaders, be they white or Negro. people who are bound together by their adherence to That, however, does not exhaU'st even this summary the political ideas outlined in this document. The group sketch. Many of these white workers, after collaborat­ be composed in more or less equal degree of work­ ing most democratically and intimately with Negro willers in the plant, clerical workers, and intellectuals. workers in the plant, as soon as they leave the plant An independent editorial committee consists of any step right back into the attitude of separation between group of people, organized for the purpose of preparing themselves and Negroes which has been taught them for ma terial for publication. They may be drawn together th ree hundred years by official society and which they by a member of the organiza-tion or by someone who is see being practiced by management in its own offices, not a. member of the organization. What distinguishes not in the South but in the North. Some overcome it. them is that they are not necessarily members of the Many do not. All are deeply affected by the contradic- organization and are not necessarily candidates for tion. membership. As Marx, working backward'S, finally be­ A complication such as this is repeated in an infin- his exposition of the intricacies of capitalist soci­ ite variety of forms in all spheres of society. It invades gan ety from the examination of the single commodity, so the most intimate recesses of human personality. it is the all-sided examination of the independent edi­ shall return to it again in some of its more subtle Were­ torial committee which will show the road for the lationships. It is enough for the time being to under­ Marxist organization. stand that the new society exists, that it is engaged on Experience has shown that a single 'Worker, a mem­ all fronts in a struggle to establish itself completely ber of a Marxist organization, can gather around him and that the struggle most often is taking place in the a dozen workers, men and 'Women, who meet regularly hearts of workers. for the sole purpose of writing, discussing, and editing 126 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 127 articles for immediate publication; and immediate pub­ tion of the union bmeaucracy and the Communist Par­ lication means not a theoretical journal but a weekly ty. Whereas in the United States problems of revolu­ or a fortnightly paper. tionary theory and history are always seen in the strict­ The break with the old type of Marxist journal js est relation to a practical situation or problem, in France complete. The old type of journal consisted, and, where the workers are interested in them for their own sake. persisting, still consists of articles written by intellec­ We have expressly excluded the terms "workers" from tuals and advanced workers, telling the workers what to the phrase "independent editorial committee." The con­ think, what to do, how to make "the revolution," and. ception of workers in the plants, or of any one class the ultimate summit of understanding and wisdom, to dominating the whole of society and imposing its will join the small organization. The journal contemplated upon all others, was a product of a certain stage of here will do not the opposite but something entirely . industl'ial and social development. Today this concep- ­ different. It exists so that workers and other ordinary tion in the minds of workers, professional and cler­ people will tell each other and people like themselves iB, ical middle classes, and farmers alike, charged with all what they are thinking, what they are doing, and what the crimes and horrors of Stalinist totalitarianism. The they want to do. In the course of so doing, the intel­ Hungarian workers knew too much about oppression lectuals and advanced workers, both inside and outside to wish to oppress anybody. The Hungarian nation as the organization, will have their opportunity to learn. a whole, except for the fanatics of the Party and the There is no other way. Plan and their underlings, recognized that the working The immediate consequences of such a program are class was the natural leader of the nation. Experience immense, and inasmuch as the whole future of the has shown that the problems, the difficulties, the aspi­ small organization, internally and externally, is wrapped rations of the professional and clerical middle classes up here (and much else besides) we shall list them sys­ take a natural place in such a paper and are read and tematically. We shall start on the lowest level and step commented upon with acute interest by the workers in by step mount to where logic and experience shall lead the pla.nts . us. the end we shall find that we have covered in In still remaining on the most elementary level, we are strictly practical terms not merely the life of the or­ able to say that a dozen people by means of editorial ganization, but also in practical terms, the whole the of ccmmittees, each which can easily contain three 01' tbeory of socialism that we have outlined earlier. four workers or black-coatedof workers, can be a channel 1. WHAT IS TO GO INTO SUCH A PAPER? of communication between the paper and tens of thous­ What those in the editorial committees wish to go ands of worker'S and clerical employees. Half a dozen in will go into the paper. It will vary from country 'SlIch committees can over a period give such an account country. We have the direct experience of two coun­to of the new society in its conflict with the old as repre­ tries to go by and tentative experiences from others sents the most authentic picture of the contemporary which are enough to tell us all that is needed. In the state of the nation. United states such editorial committees consisting of 2. WHO WILL READ SUCH A PAPER? in workers have conSistently written about: conditions A single worker, member of a small organization, the shop ; the union bureaucracy and why Amer­ Vlorking with small informal editorial committees con­ ican workers have not formed Shop Stewards Commit­ Sisting of people who were not members of the organ­ tees on the British model. They raise the question of ization, has been able in the course of a few months to chHdren and how to bring them up so as to save them gain 150 subscribers to such a paper from one plant from slipping into the physical violence and psycholo­ alone. Each issue was read by at least five people. One gical disturbances which menace the children of every particular publication which dealt specifically with the class of society in the United States. (We may note situation in a particular plant was read by at least that the same problem must occupy parents in Russia.) 5000 workers. happens so often with small organi­ Finally the Negro question torments all Americans, zations launchingAs out into this new and untried field, black and white. canying with them as they do the heavy burden of the In France, dominating all other issues is the ques- past, the venture was not followed UP. We are reliably WHA T TO ,D O AND HOW TO DO IT 129 ]28 FACING ;REALITY workers af the editorial committees want it to be so. informed that in the excitement which followed the Experience has shown that there are times when work­ publication of this particular issue of the periodical, it . ers, anxious far immediate publicatian and populariza­ would have been possible to get at least subscnbers. 1000 tion of a particular slogan or directive, will demand af ' 3. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CLASS STRUGGLE? a paper that it do. this . There are times when they Isn't it the function of any socialist paper to. act as wish complete, accurate, and strictly businesslike re­ kers in a weapan in the class struggle, to. aid the war ports af the conditions af their labar 0.1' of a strike situa­ their struggles with the emplayers and the gavernment? tion which they cannat get in the official Press or their Here are the ghosts of thirty years rising up to gather ullion publication. At such times they will use any pa­ a few mare thausand victims to. add to. the pile af carp­ 'per, however small, which they know is sympathetic seF already claimed by that sad periad. Taday, now that to them. What is ridiculaus and stultifying is the long and _ we have purged ourselves it, we can laak back list of demands, the rushing in with slogans and advice . recard the calassal impertinence,o.f the delirium which as to what they ought to do. This workers do not want infected so. many heads in thase days in their detenni­ and pay no attention to. The particular issue of the natian to. instruct, arganize, and lead sametimes tens periodical which had so. striking a success did not con­ af millians of warkers by telling them what to believe, tain a single slogan, a single directive of what to do. what to. do, what to think . The warkers they have in There was a condition affecting many thousands af t.heir minds do not exist and never existed anywhere workers in a plant, "local grievances." Fifteen workers except in their awn minds. got together and drafted the statement, it was printed, In April 1957 a Caurt of Inquiry presented to Par­ and that was enough. liament an accaunt af a cantinuing crisis between man­ The independent editing committee is not a social agement and warkers at Briggs Motor Bodies Limited, form. It not a preparation for the future. It is a con­ Da,genham, England. owned by the Ford Mator Com­ venient symbolis for getting together groups of people. pany. This is what the report said. They are independent. They are to edit. The act ual for­ mations can be infinitely varied. In one of the most From February 1, 1954 to May 13. 1955, there had important factories of Europe, there is a factory group been 289 unafficial stappages. which publishes a factory newspaper. The editor, a man For this the Shop Stewards were almast entirely re- of remarkable journalistic talent, is a regular contri­ sponsible. . butor to a theoretical review. If and when, as is pro­ and August 1956, a penod Between March 31 31. posed, a paper of the kind proposed here is launched, these Shap Stewards. by the sale af lat­ of five month'S, this grouping will be an independent editing committee a sum of 50,000) . They tery tickets, raised L16,000 ($ of the paper, without in the slightest degree affecting prizes . The rest, some gave out in L9000 ($27,000) its other activities. It should be noted, however, that 00), they used far expenses and subsis�­ L'7,000 ($21,0 . . this group is the most militant and consistent of those that they called, for prmtmg theIr epce far meetings shop floor organizations which lead mass struggles and ather material and for assisting strike leaflets and the day-to-day warfare against the union bureaucracy. They did all this, ignaring the strikes in other plants. In fact, it was originally formed for that purpose and in oppositian to them, and unian afficials, sometimes that continues to be its primary interest. af them. There were Cammun­ sametimes in defiance These relations on the whole constitute a model, but report was categorical that the ists amang them but the only one model. There are and will be others. The pitfall af the trauble. Communists were not the prime cause is to believe and to act as these or other formations small groups or for that matter What is 1t that are embryonic 'Soviets, Workersif Councils, parties of and advanced workers have large groups of intellectuals . future, and such-like fantasies. No groUPS of individualsthe The questIOn wauld be to teach worker'S like these? can anticipate the social formations of the future. These for the tragic fact that bEneath contempt were it nat gestate, no one knows how long, but compensate by thousand lines have been ten millions of words and ten ing full-grown at birth. The mass organizations be­of wasted in the attempt to do just this. today are distinguished as much by anything as The paper of the Marxist arganization can be a this: they do worry their future. by weapan in the daily class struggle but only when the not about 130 FACING REALITY

4. BUT WHAT ABOUT SOCIALISM? WHAT ABOUT THEORY? WHAT ABOUT THE REVOLUTION? And finally,

WHAT ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION? The old mentality, the old habits, the old pre-occu­ pations, the psychology of leadership, these die hard, even among those who have fought hard to abjure them. It is characteristic of the Marxist organizations· that, while they have examined every political organization in sight, in its origins, its pa:st, its present, and its fu­ ture, we have never seen any attempt by any single one them to examine the bleak record of the Marxist oforga nization itself. Yet, if ever a social or political for­ ...>- mation needed self-examination, this does. Fortunately despite the: wide variation in details from country o CtI country, the basic pattern of development is the same.to .....tJ J: The Marxist organization in the past aimed at suc­ (J ..... ce'Ss, as all human organizations do and will always do, CtI and will fail unless they do. But it is the word "success" � that has to be defined. For thirty years the small or­ Co

ganization knew what it meant by success: success was :JOJ growing membership and influence, organized influence, t: '0, in the unions, labor parties, and other mas:<; organiza­ CtI t: tions of the working class. Above all, it sought mem­ CtI bership, and by membership it meant people trained Etil and educated and completely devoted to the particular ... Cll doctrines, the particular organizational practices, the �... particular leadership of each particular group. It was o always, quite literally, preparing the elite corps Which $ was in time to lead the workers and keep on leading them until at some distant time the bourgeoisie was overthrown. The Marxist group today usually has some members who hold positions of great importance in the labor and union world. It is anxious to gain new members, but new members are a by-product of its success. Its success at the present period and in the present stage of its existence centers around two inseparable processes : the manner in which it multiplies its independent edi­1) torial committees; and 2) the way in which the circu­ lation of it'S paper increases. The possibilities are endless. Experience has shown the influence it can exercise in the daily class struggle, initiating directly through its own membership great actions involving hundreds of thousands of workers key industries. But the organization of today will goin the way of it'S forerunners if it does not understand that its future does not depend on the constant recruit- WHA T TO DO AWD HOW TO DO IT 131 ing and training and disciplining of professional semi­ professional revolutionaries in the Leninist manneror , . Its task is to recognize and record. It can do this only by plunging into the great mass of the people and meeting the new society that is there. It must live this; there is no other wa.y it can live. But the Marxistby organization is a historical product. The concrete or­ ganizations of today. and it is these we are dealulg with and not abstractions, are composed of people who have inherited the traditions and in some cases were actual members of the small organizations which sought to lead the workers. The Leninist theory and practice have sunk deep into the political consciousness of the world. This is the great stumbling block, the burden not on the backs but in the minds of those very ones who have. by hard theoretical examination of the past, by trial and error, broken out of the prison of trying to build organizations of professional revolutionaries. It is not lack of money, nor lack of contacts, nor lack of ideas, nor lack of knowledge which inhibits and cramps and immobilizes the Marxist organization today. It is a habit of mind and a way of life. The vanguard organi­ z8,tion substituted political theory and an internal po­ litical life for the human response'S and sensitivities of its members to ordinary people. It has now become very difficult for them to gOo back into the stream of. the community. The organization which attempts to break out into the masses to meet the new society that is there will find that it is singularly ill-equipped for this task, that this is true particularly among those who haveand the most theoretical knowledge and experience. They are the guardian'S of the principles and ideas which any organization must have if it is to build. But these ideas have most often been worked out and tested among trained people. Now, with the perspective of going to the general public, the ideas have to stand the test of the ordinary working man or member of the general public. There is never any difficulty about mak­ ing contact with these people. But with them, if the ideas do not meet with their approval or hold their in­ terest, their rejection is immediate and definitive. They do not stay to argue thrOough loyalty or devotion to the organization. They simply go away and stay away. The tEst of the ideas, therefore, iE extremely severe, even ruthless. From this test the trained Marxists shrink back in fear and take refuge in theoretical articles and his- WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT FACING REALITY 133 132 . Even when they whose ideas and methods of thought and action are torical or philosophical disquisitions cannot give all that SImilar and familiar to them. They pull out of old to make the attempt, they decide uan­ dr;:Lwers cherished political distinctions, polish them up outside is �n unknown q they have to it. The world They are ter­ and, claiming that these hold and have always held of which inhibits and restnctl3. tity, fear un� the key to the future, trot them out on all conceivable all the way to meet the ror-stricken lest, in going �. weaken or occasions to keep their political pots boiling. Their committees, they Ill theoretical editorial , , mode of existence has its basis in some petty publica­ political pnnClples by whICh soil or lose altogether the � they are � are ?f. tion which they know is going nowhere but which they lived and whose values they have . llfe days of theIr polItIcal keep alive to give the impre'Ssion that they are still Imbued from the earliest . and exclUSIve­ actively engaged in revolutionary work. On this basis concept of theoretical purity with the � ty) , they are always ready for what they call a discussion. theory of the Va guard Par. - ness (direct result of the · to take theIr theory mto This is not mere history. There are, in every Europeail they cannot find the energy me flesh and blood. country in particular but not only in Europe, hundreds world and allow it to beco the outside �­ which have broken theor and even thousands of such people. investigator for There are even organizations An remarka�le for then the London Times recently reported on a long list and he with the past by efforts tically � the iance. They realIze wh t merely touched the borders. Some of them have en­ consistency and great brill are unable to make It a:nd sconced themselves in the mass Labor parties where next step must be. But they the preparatlOn they live peacefully, still preaching Marxism. They are for years interminably discussing sit not only ruins. They corrupt and ruin the potentiaJities for that step. � thirty years, the past fro of hundreds of young people every year, and the spec­ It is the past, the past of that past expen.,. tacle of this futility keeps many others from Marxism . these organizations have come, which �he could not have arrived at ence without which they The attempt to break out of it will be made. As of today, it is that past WhICh theoretical understanding with all such attempts, from the beginning, not of horrible concretene'Ss before they must see in all its Marxism but of history itself, there will be failures, with it forever. they are fully armed to finish setback'S, some of them serious. But whereas those who has developed cert�in char­ are really free of the past can always find new strength The Marxist organization � and are stlll de pIY in such successes as they have had and after careful which are peculiar to it acteristics � . zes yeao.-s of wo k, It recogru thought renew their efforts, that past which is so re­ imbedded in it. When, after it does not dIssolve. !t turns cent can and doe'S overcome others, pushing th em back that its hopes have failed, � on an ever-dec easmg and into the same routine which we have seen so often. In further inward, depending out lts tasks on the middle of the Twentieth Century a spectre is haunt­ core. It continues to carry hardening a yvay it is doin� has become . ing Marxism, keeping it within what is already a grave­ a routine level. What such orgamzatl ns are in many countnes ? yard, and when it attempts to come out into the open, of life. There . �rtY have been domg for th ready at the slightest sign of faltering, to show it the which are doing what they end of tlIDe way back. will continue to do it until the years and they to get any further than without ever expecting We have to refer to those who give up the struggle. are. They folloW a pattern. The result is often personal deterioration, sometimes �ems of or­ preoccupied with prob ferocious forms of distorted personality. They have given a) They become the inside the orgamzatlon, ganization, r elationships their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to resources they control. the Marxist organization, have seen their hopes and lIllman and material � profound hl:storic l rea­ efforts turn to dU'St, and turn into implacable enemies They develop the most b) wlth the which they combme of Marxism and Marxists. The worker in the plant sons for their existence, � p�rsonal needs analyses of their o usually finds shelter among his fellows. In Britain, roost subj ective use­ attempt to Justify their workers and intellectuals alike may find refuge in the an d interests. Thus they and their circle of contacts. Labor Party. In the United States, where there is no l S existence to themselves tion with former bitter mass workers' political organization go to, deterio­ � Thev tend to seek associa c) they are, ration is more 'Severe. Those who do tonot find a place � same political type political e emles of the as WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 134 FACING REALITY 135 in the union bureaucracy very often find their , they are as many as the stripes of zebra, will no into the government, not infrequently placing theirway doubt view with Olympian scorn the proposaa l that the knowledge at the disposal of Un-American Committees Marxist organization recognize as its specific function this period of and even the F. B. But whether they stay in or go in the publication a paper of the kind out, whatever they do,1. they are on the whole united we have outlined. Ten years ago, in one of the land­ marks of the long struggle the present by their attitudes to certain fundamental aspects of to position, one Marxism. Socialism they consider either to be a myth group of its sponsors wrote as follows: (the outsiders) or so far in the distance that it is noth­ is precisely It the character of our age and the ma­ ing any organization could do anything about (the turity of humanity that obliterates the opposition insiders). The revolution was either a stupid outburst between theory and practice, between the intellec- by a mass of ignorant workers (the outsid:rs) or in �ny_ _ the "educated" t�l QCcliPatiQns of and the masses .. case bound to fail and continue to fail untIl some tra�­ Three years later we developed this ed leadership is organized (the insiders). The MarxISt as follows: � All previous distinctions, politics and economics, theory of society does not apply any more, e ther be­ war and peace, , agitation and propaganda, party cause it was never a correct picture of SOCIety (t e and mass, outsiders) or has not been studied correctly or senous­h the individual and society, national, civil and imperialist war, single country and one world, enough (the insiders). There are infinite variations immediate Iv�nd combinations of all these, but in all cases needs and ultimate solutions-all these they it is impossible to keep amount to a total of disarray, disorder, and conscious separate any longer. Total , planning is inseparable from permanent crisis, the confusion before the concepts of theory, the revolutlOn, world ar�d socialism. struggle for the minds of men from the world tendency to the complete mechanization of The Marxist organization may have decided to leave men. behind it these dead and dying remnants of a past per stage of State capitalism is in itself total contradiction, ag� and make a popular pa the next. the existence. But it may be tempted to bell eve that be­its absolute antagonism. In it are concentrated all cause its basis is the independent editoria.l comffilt. tee the contradictions of revolution and counter-revo­ of politically untrained people, because it can recog­ lution. The proletariat, never so revolutionary as nize that the new society, socialism, exists over it is today, is over half the world in the strangle­ 3,reas of the world and is striding fOil:war� every day,vast hold of Stalinism, the fonn of the counter;..revolu­ may believe that for these reasons questIOns of the­ tion in our day, the absolute opposite of the prole­ itory, of socialism can be pushed aside, if 0I?-ly tempo­ trurian revolution. rarily. This, however, is merely another vanety of the It is the totality of these contradictions that today vanguard, the elite on t11e one hand and the u:ncoz:.­ compels philosophy, a total conception. scious but backward mass on the other. The ellt: III Our project for a certain type of paper is not a thiS case lowers itself to the level of the unconsclO� �. brainwave. It is the result of a total philosophical con­ even though socialistic mass. To think this is to np­ ception and of pooling together trial and error in many pIe the new organization before it has begun .. It )8 , to countries. The theoretical question is therefore for us dig beneath its feet a pit deeper than any m WhlCh practical question, and this practical question in­ the branch a its forerunners lie buried. It is sawing off volves a specific re-examination and revaluation not on which it sits. To say that the task of the Ma�13t merely of our own past but of history itself. Here is organization today is to recognize that the ne� SOCIety the first practical example. exists and to record the facts of its existence ?s not a question popularizing difficu�t �rut?s. What It means Many of those who are always so ready to give lec­ is that thereof is no longer any drstmctlOn between theory tures and write long books about the Russian Revolu­ and practice. tion have doubtless found that in general the great THEORY AND PRACTICE masses of the workers were only abstractly interested. The Il."eason lies not in the ignorance of the workers Today there is no difference be,tween theory and in the ignorance of the teachers, their ignorance of practice. The vanguard fanatics of every stripe, but an d 136 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 137 the history that is past and the history that is present� historical research, the nature of their work does not The first national conference of Russian trade unions permit them to do this. That is precisely what socialism took place in the months between the March Revolu­ will permit to those who wish it and then such history. tion and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Oc­ particularly of mass movements, will be written as will tober. But even before the unions had held the confer­ make the theoreticians hide their heads in shame. This ence the workers in the big plants all over Russia had is not a passing brick. There is not a single book in f{hl"�ed factory committees, a form of shop floor organi­ English dealing with the factory committees in Russia. zation. ThelSe factory committees supported the Bol­ In one study, and very brief it is, of Russian Trade sheviks devotedly in their struggle for power, but they Unions, there are a few paragraphs on this nation­ had ideas of theil' own. Even before the sei zure of wide resolution of the immature Russian proletariat of power by the Bolsheviks, the factory committees had 1917 to take into its own hands the management of called a national conference and their aim was to take industry. From this book you cannot leai'n the Simplest · over completely the management of industry. They were things, as for example whether these factory commit­ before their time. They and their claims to manage tEes of Russia 1917 were elected on a factory-wide scale industrY were almost immediately suppressed by the with slates It'epresenting the factory as a whole (Ameri­ Bolsheviks who preferred that power over production can style) or whether they were elected department by should be in the hands of unions. Thus, in the first department (as is the custom in England ), if the slates great proletarian revolution in the world, shop floor vv ere presented by political parties, etc. These are the organizations clashed violently with trade unions and things workers want to know. These are the things were suppressed only after a bitter struggle. For well serious students of theo:ry want to know. Here is an over thirty years this amazing anticipation of the fu­ opportunity for some of these devoted Marxists to make ture was ignored by Marxists . Only recently has it come tbemselves useful for once-the Russians (way back in to the notice of a few who re<: ognize its significance for 1927) published a study called Oktyabrskaya Revolutsi­ today. yai Fabzavkomy, the October Revolution and the Fac­ What exactly happened, what were the consequen- tory Committees. There are thousands upon thousands ces, and above all, why did it happen? What was the of workers and theoretically-minded intellectuals in ev­ relation of the factory' committees to the unions and ery country who today have the experience and the to the Soviets? These are theoretical and historical need to understand an account of what happened and is questions of the most profound importance . But i� why. It raises every single fundamental problem of the precisely questions of this type that occupy the mInds Russian Revolution and the contemporary day-to-day of tens of millions of workers, not only in Europe st:!.'Uggle for socialism. This is theory and practice. classbut of in the supposedly politically backward working Another example, even more striking. Djilas, the the United States. American and other workers are not Yugoslav, has intrigued all the political pundits with They waiting for the revolution to solve this problem. his analysis of Communism. His world-shaking discov­ are faced with it now, every day. This is the problem ery is that all previous classes who seized and held the shop stewards have partially solved, tomorrow power were in an economic position to maintain it. perhaps to tackle it in a new way. The Hungarian The workers, however, he more than implies, lack this a gov­ workers solved it triumphantly and built on it strategic hold on the economy and therefore the e:rrnment which commanded thie allegiance of rule. Such is the degradation of thought in ourcannot day whole nation. What is the difference between this theory that this is seriously discussed as a contribution to this practice? None at all. Marxism. All over the world there are workers who have andThis is the theory that workers want. Experience never read a line of Marx but would dismiss Djilas of has shown that they reject slogans and instructions with hearty laughter. They are the Marxists of our day. want are what to do. They know what to do. What they It is precisely the economic maturity of the workers, prob­ historical experiences which apply to their own their ability to run the economy, their mastery of the revolu­ lems and aims, not abstractions like "the needs, processes, and inter-relations of production, it is train tion." They do not listento to people who t� precisely this that constitutes the economic basis of the to them fOT the revolution. Workers are not tramed new society. This existence in actuality of the new soci- to do 138 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 139 now, economic form now, is �hat tJ;lis ety of the new � � Experience has shown that workers in every book is based upon. The alternat ve is o b �llev� Wlth try coun­ in m with their own instinct for what they Djilas violation of all past hIstory, VlOlatIOn of t,heir own problems need to solve what 'is in front of our eyes in Poland, Hungary, and as they see them, not only welcome sY'Stem can es- studies such as these but when they are brought to Russia itself, that a new economic be their notice, ask repeatedly for them. tablished by the Party and the PI�n. the To the disgrace and It. . IS only of Marxist movement there are many bourgeois Theory is the distill ation of hlstor� jntellectuals who in recent years have been by understanding the present that one IS able to �nder­ such studies, though doing just stand the past. With the working class and SOCIety at most often in an academic man­ at present, all the great hIS­. ner. Over and over again they have shown their readi­ the stage where they are . ness to work with an organization or group of people . torical events and ideas of the past need to be rewntten� who they serious in We require therefore to begin with: 1'len:;;e are wishing to convey· his- - History of the Russian Rev ­ torical information to the great body of the people. a) A brief, easy-to-read � principle The lution of the independent editorial committees ap­ which will trace the history of the workers 1� plies to them as to the workers. There is the Revolution from the filrst clash between factOIY them to join anything, no need for committees and trade unions to the present day. now to become members, to be train­ ed for the revolution. that Khrushchev, Bulganin, and Suslow have reve led e,) The most crying where the Russian workers have reached. I� was a:lln­ :scandal and disgrace to the JVrarxist movement is what has been done, or to be possible to write this history for our own tIme before precise, has not been done in regard to the Workers de-Stalinization, the Twentieth Congress, and the revo- Councils in Hungary. These Council'S published a se­ lutions in Poland and Hungary. ries of leaflets. pamphlets, demands, . � posals, constitutional pro­ b) Today, taught by the events of our own .tlme , manifestos, documents of all kind:s . Together we look back at the great events of the ['evolutlOn�lY t.hey constitute the most precious collection nf material past of the workers and the masses of the peopIe WIth for the understanding of the new society that exists new eyes. Near the end of the French RevolutIOn. the anywhere. In the short time allotted to them the Hun­ workers and the common people made a d sperat� at­ garian workers accomplished an � tasks. incredible range of tempt to estabUsh their own po�er, not agaInst FIenc � These documents are the record of what they aristocrats and priests but agamst those who had hI did, and of even greater importance, A what they intend­ therto led the revolution. Today, not yesterday but to­ ed to do. similar body of documents exists for Po­ day, we need an account of the struggle these pea- land. Here is socialist literature such nf isted, as has never ex­ l I d by the Enrages (the wild nnes) as the educated could not before. Collected and translated with �tth�se days called them. We need. and l"renchMarx­ the minimum of editing, it would be read by workers iSts must supply, A History of the En�ages. Two groupS and understood as no other : collection was ever read of people in society will understand It b�st, the. com and understood. It was written by workers in the plant, mon people of today and the secret pollee. It IS no" what they proposed to do about production, about the easy to find more penetrating accounts of �he worke:s police, the army and government, about foreign policy. and common people in the French RevolutIOn than m No writings of Marx or Lenin will give so complete a the reports of the secret police. picture and convey the form and content, the life and . breath of the as a c) Exactly the same thing happened in the EngllshL�V� socialist society such collection. It Revolution. For us today it is the struggl�s of the still remains to be done. Is there a more convincing ellers against Cromwell that matters. Bntlsh. Ma!l'XIStS example of the total unfitness for their most nbvious must provide a brief History of the Levellers. tasks which has now overtaken the Marxist organiza­ d) Precisely the same situation, only to a far m re tions? Instead of doing this they read Sartre's collec­ . ? tion of documents written by Hungarian intellectuals intensive degree, shnwed itself in the . AmerIcan CIvil and then set off to lead the French workers. War. Here. the Negro people in the U11lted states have here list. done splendid work, but today, for us, � new HIStOry. There is no need to continue with the of the Negroes in the Civil War is reqmred. There will be other lists. But the lesson is plain. These are practical tasks for the Marxist organizations to per- FACING REALITY WHA T TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 141 140 PAPER AND THE PEOPLTI can perform. THE form. These are tal3ks which only they this One more task . remains. The Marxist organization This is what the workers need from us. And to date andis Iha its own POlitical ideas, and velfY clear-cut ideas what we need, to bring Marxist theory up � to workers, they are. The great masses of the people have some to fit ourselves for the task of listening and of the e ideas but in their own form. To very many of to sensitize ourselvel3 to catch the true significance � problems, their these Ideas, however, they are in varying degrees op­ the overtones of their statements of their today POS d. That is precisely why they must have the oppor- aims and aspirations. What is the difference � for the '.tu�ty to say what they think in their own way. This, between theory and practice, between theory is none. WhICh causes such consternation to certain Marxists intellectuals and theory for the masses ? There of modern and drives others to a frenzy of exhortation is for us As we have said earlier, in every depalftment have _ a condition of social existence, a contradictio that has intellectual and scientific life immense discoveries � by which constantly to be overcome. The organizations living in been made which tear to bits the assumptions new society. the past know nothing of this. We on our part welcome it our society lives and point the way to a these discov­ and we propose now to show in what way this perma­ Many workers know one or the other of of nent condition becomes the source of life and progress. well. The workers wish to know as much eries very We of have shall analyze this contradiction in: this as they can and need to know. As some us referred to : a) Voting or not voting for such parties as the written in the document of 1950 previously situation, Democratic Party in the United States, the Com_ " ...the whole development of the objective of munist Party in France, and the Labor Party in demands the fully liber ated historical creativeness and higher Great Britain. the masses, their . sense and reason, a new hu­ b) The Negro Question in the United States. organization of labor, new social ties, associated of pro­ manity. That is the solution to the problems c) The Hungarian Revolution as it affected work- ilosophy ers : duction and to the problems of philosophy. Ph in the United States, must become proletarian." (1) (2) in Britain, repeat : in all these scientific discoveries what (3) in France. Is lackingWe is an integrating principle, some comprehen­ These are varied enough. They show contradiction sive universal which will relate them to each other and . (often sharp antagonism) between what one would as­ to society and open out all their possibilities. This in­ sume to be a Marxist policy and the attitude of great tegration will not come at one time, nor will it be the masses of workers. They allow us to open up the ques­ work of any one man or any group of men. But this tion of policy in the paper. much is certain, that it can come only from men who have grasped the role of the great masses of the people POLICY AND THE PEOPLE in the new society and understand that the people are I. VOTING today ready to initiate the vast changes in society Voting or not voting for such parties as the which the Hungarian workers initiated. The Marxist Democratic Party in the United States, the Communist organizations and the intellectuals in particular must Party in France, and the Labor Party in Great Britain: understand that it is their task to make all this know­ how many heads in Marxist organizations have pre­ ledge available to the people in such terms al3 they maturely gone gray, how many eyes have grown dim in the frantic efforts to answer these questions satis clin understand. This is not popularization. It has been � factorily ? proved that the most difficult of social, political, artis­ tic, and philosophical conceptions can be presented to THE LABOR PARTY IN BRITAIN the people with simplicity and without vulgarization. �et us begm with the one in which most are agreed, But to do this demands mastery of the subject and votmg for the Labor Party in England. Lenin taught understanding of the people, of the terms of their own that you voted for the Labor Party in order to put the labor leaders in power so expose their cowardly experiences. It is the second of these which so hard - . as to come by. We have indicated the road. is and capitalistic character, whereupon the w or k e r s to 142 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 143

would turn to another party. This was and is the crux today that this is necessary? The parliamentary elec­ of the matter. In 1958 it is clear that the workers do tion today in 1958 is not what it was in 1917 or even not see the future in terms of another party. They 1927. has declined in the political estimation of all It think in terms of entirely new social and political for­ 'concerned in the old countries. It has its uses and the mations. Of all the fantastic absurdities into which working class is always prepared to use elections trade the Marxist organizations weil:e led by this preparing unions, labor parties, or Whatever instrument tl�el'e is of themselves to be the leaders in the struggle for so­ to hand. But the actual election is today merely a test­ cialism, the prize must go to Trotsky himself. In 1934 ing ground and a sort of Gallup Poll for far more serious he actually proposed and engineered a scheme (for that engagements, retreats, and mobilizations, to settle the fundamental is what it was ) by which a few dozen Trotskyites in problems of society. Under these circum­ . every country would go into the Social-Democratic Par­ stances the preoccupation with voting or not voting, ties, carry on an illtensive agitation there for a blrief or whether the Marxist organization is committing a·· period, by this means split off a few thousand advanced theoretical crime by advocating a vote fnr the Labor workers, and thus create the party which would lead Party, is not only absurd. It shows how the small or­ the revolution. For Russians in 1903-1917 to practice ganization, beginning from a revolutionary standpoint l) olitics, in the more exclusive sense of that word, sig­ but one which is 50 years old, gets itself into the toils of nified an immense social advance. Trotsky faithfully reaction. For this preoccupation with voting or not transferred the theory born these circumstances to voting is no mo�e than a capitulation Parliamentary other parts of the world whereof politics meant a social Democracy, preClsely the arena to whichto the bourgeoisie and the ::wtivity already viewed with suspicion, if not outworn. labor bureaucracy seek to confine the working class. That is the only reasonable explanation, and it is a In Britain the Marxist does not only vote for charitable one, for this apotheosis of the foolishness the Labor Party. He may even be member of it. But inherent in small organizations dressing up as big ones . action, positive or negative, is nota a principled ques­ Once we get rid of these fantasies, we can begin the I:istIon. To this day the Marxist practice of recording the facts, and the facts of the organizations have no COl1- c8ption workers' movement towards the new society defy the of the fact that the British working clas'S, for example, efforts of the Marxist organizations to enclose them sees the vote merely as pal't of its total strug­ in their little programs. In 1945 in England the shop gle for the new society. Its apathy in regard to voting stewards decided that the Labor Party should given in 1956 was merely the negative aspect of its determi­ the power with a large majority. They carriedbe out a nation to transfer its efforts to the industrial plane. magnificent campaign of their own, seeing to it that all Starting from 1954 it has been attacking the govern­ whom they were in contact with directly or indirectly. ment and the employers on wages and working condi­ tions. illside and outside the plant, should vote. In so doing It is common knowledge that its wages (for what they they were taking the lead of a general sentiment in are) are in advance of the government cost of liv­ the country. The Labor Party was returned by a large ing index what that is) . They have been strength­ ening (fOT majority. their independent organiZations relation to By the situation had changed. The workers. he unio leadership, and have forced ill 1956 � � . this leadership Into . disillusioned, voted apathetically. Many did not vote a mIlItancy foreIgn to it, a militancy which has at all. The Marxist organization would have been per­ led it into a position of actual defiance of the govern­ ment. Thus forming its function if it had obsffived and clearly today when the Tory government has a pressed this movement of the working class. Shoutingex­ substantial majority, it is helpless before the working slogans as to whether the workers should or should class. The situation in the country is more tense than not vote, or should or should not get out the vote, on it has been for thirty years and both sides are anglino­ the part of small organizations, and worse still, debat­ for position in a showdown which seems imminent. Re� ing the matter, is typical of the old practices. Lenin peatedly millions of workers have made clear, and the advocate d that revolutionaries take advantage of par­ union leaders have had to repeat, that the organized liamentary elections because they offered a platform labor movement has its own policy in regard to inflation , to expose the crimes of bourgeois society. Who believes and it will not cooperate with the government. The FACING REALITY 144 WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 14:> gGvernment says that, having won the 1956 election, for the Labor Pal·ty actively or not, whether to work it has the right to demand that its policies, aimed at inside the Labor Party or not. curing a great social evil, should be followed, and in The task of the Marxist organization is to give the this, on the basis of Parliamentary Democracy, it is workers and the other oppressed classes a medium absolutely comect. Meanwhile, Mr. Gaitskell of the whereby, even on a small scale to begin with, there is Right wins over Mr. Aneurin Bevan of the Left to the a genuine presentation of the stage they are going policy of building the New Jerusalem by buying shares through. It is to give them the opportunity to coordi­ in private corporations. It is as remote from the reality nate their expeTiences and thoughts, which are some­ of the struggle for socialism as the nationalization, the times quite contradictory. This is done not primarily denationalization, and the renationalization of steel is in order to help the small organization. The task is . to the steel workers. to faeilitate the masses people in arriving ::l.t A NEW LANGUAGE the decision of what theyof wantthe to do. Information is The reality is that a great number of people in what the people require, and information is the func­ Britain, having gTasped that the Labor Party will amel­ tion of the Marxist intellectual and the advanced worker iorate evils but pToposes nothing new, aTe now challeng­ in this period of society. Once this is seen, advice and ing the old society on the most convenient issue- instruction sink into insignificance. We have shown already that agitational slogans, Le., WB must do this, wages.That is the truth about the crisis in Britain but it .. or we must do that, will find a place in the paper of a is not the whole truth. What all these people call the . Marxis,t organization as a direct result of a request by a body of workers. In the 1945 election agitation to "collective mentality" is what labor political leaders, come . out and vote would certainly have played a large union leaders, and journalists speak and write. The part in the pre-election issues of such a paper. In 1956 truly new, the conceptions which constitute a socialist it would not have done so. At times workers are par­ society, are as unexpressed in Britain today as they ticularly anxious for a certain Labor candidate or can­ were unexpressed in Hungary on October 22nd, the day didates to win an election, at other times for a certain before the revolution began. So powerfully established ­ Tory candidate or candidates to be defeated. The paper is the new society that those who represent it now even will vary its policy accordingly. In time it will arrive at talk a different language from the rulers. But what the the conclusion that for it the question is an empirical grea t masses of the people themselves think about all question. Wm-kers have no difficulty in distrusting the this, that people have to guess at. It is published no­ Labor Party and union leaders, relying on their shop where. Bourgeois researchers do indeed try to find out steward organizations, and still voting for the Labor and publish the results in summaries of interviews, sta­ Party. Nearly all the shop stewards are members of tiftics, and percentages. These publications are useless. the Labor Party. The Marxist organizations will do well These people do not even know the questions to ask, they to take their electoral tone from the paa:ticular bodies do not understand the answers they get. To do this of workers they serve and let it go at that. requires a training and a philosophy of political life THE COMMUNIST PARTY IN FRANCE that they have not got. No one could elicit by a ques­ For some of us this freedom to decide empirically tionnaire from workers that the election apathy of 1956 will be relief from the recurrent burdens of many years. was meTely the counterpart of a mobilization for the It will drive certain others to distraction. What, they industrial defiance of 1957. If (for discussion's sake) will ask, is the organization to do when faced with anyone did know that, would he have taken upon him­ elections in a country like France? There the Commu­ self the responsibility of deciding whether it was wise nist Party at one time looked as if it might become the or unwise, whether he should support it or oppose it? government through parliamentary means and is still The futility of the question shows the futility of these the largest force in the French legislature. Isn't it the preoccupations. And it shows positively the folly of duty of the organization at election time to advocate Marxist organizations in their sweating as to whether voting for the workea:s' parties which will form a social­ to vote for the Labor Party or not, whether to campaign ist�om:munist government? Don't the workers demand WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO 146 FACING REALITY IT 147 it is not the result by their support of the Communist Party at the polls? of a sudden inspiration. It is a pl'Butcess, it has a it In fact, these debate'S, including the advisability or ? beginning, a middle, and an end. WIthout Press, radio, necessity of raising a slogan for a government of social­ or any visible means of communi­ cation, workers communicate and communists, are the low water marIe of sterility. it to one another. Of all ll odern p l tical figures, Lenin Thereists is no necessity for the Marxist O'I'ganization to � ? � . had an almost psychic gIft for d1Vmmg these take any fixed position on this question at all, and this movements. From the slenderest data he could reconstruct the whole. has been so for over twenty years. In 1936 the small . His intuitive sym­ pathy wlth the masses organizations tore themselves to pieces over whether of the Russian people was forti­ fied and ass med or not to vote or to advocate voting for the Popular ':l logical form because he had a philo­ sophy of sOClety, saw Front. The workers for the most part voted the Popu­ the movements of the masses as �overned by ce:tain laws of social motion. He could say lar Front into pOwel'. But at the same time they in-_ . pomtmg to vaded the factories and created what Leon Blum has III 1917, the Soviets before the Octobel' revolution: You are looking described in the most unequivocal terms as a revolu­ for socialism everywhere and cannot see it here, all tionary situation. This action fell like a thunderbolt around us . At the other ex­ treme are the reports of on government, bourgeoisie, Communist Party. Socialist the secret police, who do not \,' ant to teach the masses Party alike. It is quite obviou'S that in the pre-election anything but look and listen carefully with trained eyes period the great body of the people were thinking and ears for the signs of new developments. The thoughts quite other than those with which year after Marxist organization can learn from both. Its fUnction s to year they had approached other elections. The Marxist i report the movement tow­ the new society. Not organizations would have been much more usefully em­ ards only does it make itself ridi­ culous by pontificatmg about ployed in learning than in teaching. whom the workers should 110te for. It does not know, it cannot As we have shown, in 1947 the Communist Party pOSSibly know what government best cOl wielded a powerful influence in the working class (par­ Tesponds to the needs of so ­ cialism at the particular moment. ticularly in the union movement) and other sections of In the strikes of 1955 a.s have seen, striking workers the population; its Press was the most widely read in we in the large scale in� clustries formed their own organization'S against both France and it won a great success in the elections. In employers and Communist leaders and yet, 1957 its influence in the working class had undergone as far as can gather, voted for the Communist a catastrophic decline, · the number of its publications we Party in the elections which followed. They doubtless had decreased, the circulation of its daily paper had sunk had very good reasons for doing so. In the from first place to far below that of three or four other face of this the violent debates and conflicts in the small organiZation daily papers, but its election successes in 1957 were s as to whether it was correct Marxism to advocate greater than those of 1947 . the slogan of "A government of Communists This is no place to go into analyses of twenty years and Socialists" is seen for the folly that it was. It does not French political life, but this much is clear - the matter. workingof people of France do not confuse voting in THE UNITED STATES elections with their 'Struggle for a new society. They In the United states voting for the Democratic have broken out of the circle of ideas in which bour­ Party presents the dilemma of the Marxist organization geois society struggles to confine them, the belief that a more serious form. The Democratic Party is a bour­ in voting for a party is the be-all and end-all of democra­ g�ois party. The Marxist organization cannot under any cy. They have put voting in its place and see it as only clrcumstances vote for an avowedly bourgeois party, one, and a subordinate one, of their total social move­ that is to say, take responsibility for it or imply that ment and exploration. It is this total movement that by voting for it some fundamental social problem is matters to the Marxist organization, as much of it as likely to be solved. If we remember that the paper a small organization can grasp and reproduce. of the Marxist organization based upon definite poli­ The process by which great masses of workers ar­ is tical pri�ciples and aims at presenting the new society, rive at a decision to make a totally unexpected but there wlll be no doubt in the minds of its readers on drastic change of direction in their politics remains one Its independent editorial committees, faithful con- of the great mysteries of social psychology and politics. this. FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 149

tributors to and supporters of the paper, are not given every country, and in the United! States in particular, to being disturbed by the fact that the editorial policy 1s the ingrained habit of Marxists to approach them of a paper differs from what they do or what they wish with a set of principles and policies to which they are to write in the paper. It has been noticed in many 'supposed to subscrib e. They not only value the Marx­ countries that hundreds of thousands, even millions ist's knowledge and education. They respect his prin­ of workers, read a particular paper every day for years ciples, weigh them and judge them and measure their and never subscribe to its politics. own against them. They hold the ideas in mind as an The paper of the Marxist organization in the United " ideal construction. Today may not be the day, but states has to record where the new society is and where perhaps tomorrow will be. Meanwhile they are pre­ it is going. It will record that many millions of workers pared to live and let live. That is the working class, are unrelentingly depriving management of its functions and its general attitude is infinitely superior to that of - and frequently discuss the advantages and disadvaIi': the old Marxist organization. It is not deceived by · tages of their taking over the plants. But it will record elections and keeps them in their place. The Marxist also why so many of these workers continue to vote organization will do well to follow suit. The decisive for the Democratic Party. It will find various levels of step forward to be made here is that the paper becomes approach, from the utmost cynicism to a shrewd and the vehicle not for shouting at the workers what they carefully calculated estimate of the advantages to be ought to do, but a means of communication of how gained along with an overall skepticism about the abil­ and why they vote (or do not vote) . ity or the will of either the Republican or the Demo­ II. THE NEGROES IN THE UNITED STATES cratic Party to change the realities of life in the Unit­ Undoubtedly there is opposition in politics and opin­ ed states. ion between a Marxist organization and a body of con­ There is absolutely no necessity on the part of the tributors, readers, and supporters of the kind we en­ paper of a Marxist organization to ca:rry on any pro­ visage. Every country has many national pOlitical issues tracted debate with the correspondents of its paper as peculiar to it, some of them rooted deep in the national to why it is unprincipled or unsocialistic or wrong for historical development. As the nation grows to matur­ them to vote for a bourgeois party like the Democratic ity, what ought to be done, what is right, becomes quite Party. Those voters who discipline manag"ement i.n the clear, especially to a Marxist. How it ought to be done plant and then vote for the Democ,r atic Party ; the pa­ or more precisely. how it will be done, is what the Marx­ per which holds a position of not voting for either of ist cannot possibly know. The evil, the peculiarity. is the bourgeois parties ; these two together constitute and has been so much a part of the nation that even the new society in its various approaches. There is ab­ among the progressive classes an abstract consciousness solutely no reason why an independent editorial com­ of what is right is overshadowed and sometimes lost by mittee should not, along with its other contributions, what, after many generations, seems to be part of the st::tte in the paper why it believes people should vote natural order of things. Such a question above all ques­ for the Democratic Party. There is every reason why tions is the Negro question in the United States. it should. The small Marxist organizations must above Marxism has a few triumphs and! many unpardona­ all maintain a sense of proportion, recognize that they ble blunders to its account on the Negro question in are not small editions of large political parties. They the United States. This does not include the calculated I , , de must keep clearly in mind what is important to them ceptions of the Communist Party which have nothing to do with Marxism and everything to do with the and what is not. Kremlin line. But altogether apart from this the record In the stage of political awareness in which we live induce in the Marxist an attitude a group of workers can tell a conscious enemy of offi­ is one which should of respect for the Ne�o people and their political ideas, cial society after the first sentence he utters, often be­ fore he says a word. They do not object to association seasoned with a strong dose of humility. Great changes recent American society, the greatest of which has and even close association with such people. They rec­ beenin the organization of the C.I.O., have been the mo­ ognize their value and go to great lengths (often too force creating new attitudes to race relations among great lengths ) to give these people every opportunity to tivewhites Negroes alike. But it is the Negroes who convey to them what they know. What they object to. in and 150 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 151 ha,ve broken all precedents in the way they have used thentic outposts of the new society. Perhaps the most the opportunities thus created. In the course of the 'striking example of this are the Negro workers in in­ last twenty years they have formed the March on dustrial plants. Sensitized by their whole lives against Washington Committee which extorted Executive Order racial discrimination, and having to be alert in the from the Roosevelt Government. This was the 8802 plant to prevent themselves being discriminated against, order which gave Negroes an invaluable weapon in the they begin by being a militant formation to protect struggle to establish their right to a position in the themselves. They soon end by being in the very fore- plants . Negro soldiers, in every area of war, and some­ ':front of all actions against management. Many Marxists times on the battlefield itself, fought bloody engage­ enjoy themselves analyzing the Negro bourgeoisi� and ments against white fellow soldiers, officers, generals, the Negro petty-bourgeoisie and its reactionary char ­ and all, to establish their rights as equal American citi­ acteristics. The procedure is without s-eIlEe, being de­ zens. The Marxists had proved analyses of texts- . rived from books. The American bourgeoisie will reap and of society that integration of bywhite and Negro sol­ the full reward for its centuries of exclusion of the Ne­ diers in the armed forces was impossible except by the gro people fr om official soctety. Invitations to the White revolution led by the trained vanguard. The Negroes House and spectacular appointments here and there did not so much refuse to accept it as ignore it, and will not alter the results of the centuries of Negro seg­ that battle they won, not completely (all bourgeois regation, persecution, and humiliation. When the Ne­ rights are abstractions, never fully realized in practice), gro masses move, out of the White House, the State but sufficiently to provide a basis for further struggle. Department, the Embassy in Liberia, or wherever they The Negroes in the North and W'est, by their cease­ may be, the Negro middle classes will come running less agitation and their votes, are now a wedge jammed behind them. between the Northern Democrats and the Southern. Yet the fact remains that the Negro question in the Atin any moment this wedge can split that party into two United States is a complex of enormous difficulties with and. thereby compel the total reorganization of Amer­ tl'l?upS and pitfalls on every side. For the purpose of il­ ican politics. They have cracked the alliance between the lustrating the lines along which the paper of the Marxist right wing of the Republicans and the Southern wing organization has to face its tasks (that is all we can of the Democratic Party. By patient strategy and im­ do) , we select two important issues, confined to rela­ mense labor, they have taken the lead in the movement tions among white and Negro 'Workers, the largest sec­ which resulted in the declaration of the Supreme Court tions of the population affected that racial segregation is illegal. Now the people of . Montgomery, by organizing a bus boycott which for a 1) Many white workers who collaborate in the most year was maintained at a level of over 99 per cent, have democratic fashion in the plants continue to show struck a resouncHng blow at racial discrimination all strong prejudice against association with Negroes out­ over the United States and written a new chapter of side the plant. 'world-wide significance in the history of s t rugg e 2) Many Negroes make race relations a test of all against irrational prejudices. The full consequences1 other relations. Thus in politics they vote always for of this will be increasingly seen in the years to come, the party which in their view offers the best opportun­ and not only in the United States-people take time itv of winning some new position for Negroes ; in the digest such revolutionary action. plant they face white fellow workers with issues, not to The American Negroes did not wait for the Van­ strictly industrial, which force the white worker to de­ guard Party to organize a corps of trained revolution­ clare himself on the racial question; and, most impor­ aries, including Negroes, to achieve their emancipation. tant for our purposes, in relation to Marxist organiza­ They have gone their own way, and in intellectual mat­ tions, they judge them by jealous and often delibe­ ters (for example, the study of Negro History) as well rately critical attitude to theira position on Negro issues. as in practical, they have in the past twenty-five years In the face of this (and more) the Marxist organi­ created a body of political achiev,ement, both in strik­ zation'S have failed monumentallY. The abstractness, ing at discrimination and influencing American civili­ the fear of offending one race "and then the other, the zation as a whole, which makes them one of the au- enunciation of high principles, the opportunism, the 152 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 153 eapitulation to the prejudices of official society and to ii) How is he to be reasoned with, argued with, and the prejudices of particular workers or groups of work­ if necessary fought to a finish? ers, the blunders, stupidities, and confusion the Marxist First by making it clear that his ideas, his rea­ organizations have been guilty of on this question are sons, his fears, his prejudices also have every by themselves sufficient to condemn them on all other right in the paper. Every white worker who is in questions. In the United states who fails on the Negro daily contact with Negroes knows of their ag­ question is weak on all . "Black and White, Unite and gressiveness on the race question. It is no se­ " Fight" is unimpeachable in principle and undoubtedly , cret to him. Further, apart from the fundamen­ has an excellent sound. But it is often misleading and tal conflict with management, few questions oc­ sometimes even offensive in the face of the infinitely cupy him so much. Whether he speaks about it varied, tumultuous, passionate, and often murderous or not, it is a hard knot in his consciousness, reality of race relations in the United states. as it is in the consciousness of every America.n What then is the paper of the Marxist organization today, a growing torment which the American to do? We shall list a series of statements. They can­ cannot rid himself of. A frank and free discus ­ not be argued here but, taken together, they give the sion in public of the various difficulties as they orientation by means of which the Marxist organization arise is the surest way to prepare for that clos­ can drag itself out of the mess and avoid the disasters er unity which comes from common participa­ which have beset the path of every such organization tion in great actions. on this inescapable question in the United states. We have said little about the actual editorial 1) Negro aggressiveness· on the race question has iiD functions of the paper of a small organization. ev ery right in the paper, more right than any other This is no place to do so. The answer in any pcint of view on the race question. is here that the case lies in trial and error. W'e rest on the as­ Marxist organization has to show firmness,It not in de­ sumption that merely to attempt to prodUce a fense of its own abstract principles, but in its determi­ paper of this kind demands a very high degree nation that the Negro worker shall say what he wants of political consciousness. The paper recognizes to say and how he wants to say it. This alone will make and records. But like every paper it has its posi­ a paper in the United states unique. tive functions. This is one case in which it 2) The chief arguments against this policy are a) enters firmly into the discussion, pointing out that it will alienate white workers who are the majority that Negro aggressiveness on the ra!,":ial ques ­ of the American workers ; b) that it will encourage tion is one of the most powerful forces making Negro nationalism and even chauvinism. Both argu­ for the new society as a whole in the United ments are at the very best abstract and reactionary. states, not merely on race relations. We have listed some of them abo,ve. Here is another. It i) We are dealing here with a paper, a concrete is the Negro people and Negro workers in par­ paper of so many pages, appearing periodically, ticular who have brought home to white work­ recording the new society. Inside such a paper ers the importance of the colonia I question. in Negro aggressiveness takes its proper place as Africa, but also in the Far East. one of the forces helping to create the new so­ ciety. If a white worker or group of white iv) The paper lShould actively campaign for Ne­ workers after reading and contributing to the groes in the South to struggle for their right paper as a whole finds that articles or to vote and actually to vote. Where the rulers expressing Negro aggressiveness on racial lettersques­ of society for generations have used every de­ tions make the whole paper offensive to him, vice to debar Negroes from voting, then it is a that means that it is he who is putting hi'S pre­ Marxist duty to encourage them in every way judices on the race question before the to win and to exercise that right. If Negroes outside of the South vote, now for the Demo­ ests of the class as a whole. He must beinter­ rea­ soned with, argued with, and if necessary fought cratic Party and now for the Republican, they a finish. have excellent reasons for doing so, and to their WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 155 154 FACING REALITY existence is not available to stUdents of Marxism and general activity shows that large numbers of workers alike. To be able to recognize and to record can them see voting and the struggle for Supreme result onl from a political revolution in the theory Court decisions merely as one aspect of � and practIce of the Marxist organization. tality. They have no illusions. The Marxista or­to­ This ganization retains and expresses its own view. � is most needed where the Marxist organization But it understands that it is far more impor­ t�in s it is strongest and on safe ground-the revolu­ tant, within the context of its own political tlon Itself. The Hungarian Revolution seems easy enough principles, of which the paper taken as a whole �o record. We have shown that this is not so-the most is an expression, within the context of its own Import�nt thing about it is as yet unreco:rded. But publications, meetings, and other activities recogmtion and recording involves careful consideration in its name, within the context of its trans­ of the aUdience. Independent editorial committees · ­ latioownns and publications of the great revolti= France, Britain, and the United states cannot recorciin tionary classics and other literature, that the the Hungarian Revolution. This is one of the functions Negroes make public their own attitudes and which rest squarely on the intellectuals and advanced reasons for their vote. workers of the Marxist organization. But this is the lesser half. Such in general is the function of the paper of a FRANCE Marxist organization in the United States on the Negro The Hungarian question. It will educate, and it will educate above Revolution in France meant above everythmg. wh ite workers in their understanding of the Negroall else a new stage in the attitude of the great body question and into a realization of their own responsi­ of French workers to the French Communist Par­ ty. For bilities in ridding American society of the cancer of many it meant the final disillusionment with the Communist racial discrimination and racial consciousness. Party. To take one key center - the great Marxist organization will have to fight for its own posi­The Renault factory. Within the General Confedera­ t on of Labor unit in Renault, tion, but its position will not be wea risome repetition � . a minority which was lghtmg t e Communists for con of "Black and White, Unite and Fight." It will a � . ? trol has been spulTed mto actiVIty resolute determination to bring all aspects of the ques­be and won a certain consideration from the mass tion into the open, within the context of the recognition of the workers. The Communists themselves in the hopel that the new society exists and that it carries within ess position of having to defend the mass�cre of the wo it'self much of the sores and diseases of the old. On rkers in Hungary, relaxed their grip in order that their followers may more tr..is, as on many similar questions in other countries, easily retain contact with the mass. the Marxist organization may have to carry on what for long periods may seem a losing battle. It will have But the great mass of the workers, in particular to stand firm. The working class fights out its battles the younger generation, pay less and less attention to within itself and arrives at greater understanding these two groups of leaders competing for control of the stages. But whatever its difficulties, if the paper andby Ul"lion. To them the Stalinist-anti-Stalinist issue has be­ the organization are expressing the new society as a come a scholastic one . They now have to find their own whole, the violent passions of the Negro question can way. They are French workers, with a long revolution­ never overwhelm it. ary tradition and an instinct for revolutionary politics and revolutionary theory, so much of which has orig­ III. THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION AND THE PAPER inated from their own past history. It will be seen already that the simplicity of At the same time groups of Fr.ench intellectuals, formula that we have to recognize and to record is pro­the some of them many hundreds in number, have joined foundly deceptive. So far no group or individual has together for the study of the history of Workers Coun­ recognized and recorded the decrees, political state­ cils, of the colonial question, the role of the state �, ments, and other publications of the Hungarian Work­ the revolution, the role of the intellectuals in thein ers Councils, in order and separated from everything else. revolution, and so on and so forth. Thus the most authentic, the most complete, and the We do not propose here to say what must be the most concrete body of socialist theory and practice in TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 157 FACING REALITY WI-IAT 156 orga a­ the paper of a Marxilst � joiced at the proof tha,t the totalitarian state could not form and content of . clear that if th orgaruzatlOn mould a nation to its will. There, theoretically, they tion in France. But it � �f revo­ stopped. So deeply imbedded is the Welfare State men­ in the istheoretical discuSSlOns involves itself � �­ among !T nch mtelle tality that the Briti'sh socialist movement rap i d Y lution which have flourished . be undIstlngUlshable m plunged back into its preoccupation with elections, na­I so many years, it will tuals for � from the people in genera tionalization and denationalization, coexistence with eyes of the workers and the ?- t m t e around them . It does ? I: Russia, etc., etc. what is going on all what are the differences of polItIcal POSl­ As far as it had been possible to inquire and esti­ least matter of still be part and parcel mate the British workers reacted quite differently. tion it developS ; it will the mass of the workers There was a widespread acceptance of the fact that the that arena from which in aside. next stage for l;jocialism is Government of Workers have already turned _ a, - . Renault � . since the HUngar an Revolu­ Councils. With them it is not a theOT t cal question at The French workers, e l towards graspmg the fact all. They have behind them over twenty years of the have gone a long way tion revolu­ any difference betwee?- uninterrupted growth and expansion of the Shop Stew­ tha there is no longer � t a p aper WhICh howS ards Movement, in one form or another, in every impor­ theory and practice. Only tionary . �­ tant branch of industry The divorce between their it has turned Its back on mte . by its very form that . about revolutIOn and lB thinking and the thinking of their leaders on the Hun­ minable theoretical discussions its theory fro� garian Revolution is complete. practicing its theory, drawing actually Dl­ in their shop floor orga It is obvious therefore that the task of the paper the activity of the workers directly to them, only and addressing its theory of the Marxist organization in Britain will be immensely zations, work­ anything to the French different from that in France. Britain is the original such a pa,per will mean the Commu­ this the actual relations between home of the organized shop floor organization in times ers In of and Poland and the workers of social peace-some such social formation. always ap­ nist Party in Hungary a central part. pears in times of revolution. To the British workers the those countries will play actual efforts have been Government of Workers Councils is merely the final Much preliminary work and now is to take the steP. step in a long development which · they themselves more carried out. All that remams based on and ad?r'essing than any other body of workers have lived through. But nothing but a paper boldly And . � lec­ these ideas find no expression whatever in any section pull the re�olutI nary mtel itself to the workers will dISCUSSIons and pre­ of the capitalist or labor Press. Like the Central Com­ tuals away from their theoretical � Communist Par y mittee of the Textile Machine Industry's shop stewards occupations with how to convert the French workers they ha.ve no official existence. In Britain today the its left-wing) to Marxism. The (or �st Par­Will will leave the commu revolutionary tradition receives no concrete expression. move, and when they do, . e, It IS the particularly because since 1945 the British bourgeOisie But whatever the futur ty hanging in the air. � but �f the French i'3 in retreat and goes to unbelievable lengths to avert of the French intellectual attitude not e WhICh WIll determiIl: any direct clash with the working class. But the form to the Communist Party workers thIS taken by the Hungarian Revolution and its close rela­ politics, and it is therefore the future of French and content of the paper tion with the shop steward form, and the silence of all will determine the form which commentators on this, creates a situation where the field of a Marxist organization. is wide open for the specific function of the Marxist BRITAIN organization. m B·t·am. There different is the situation . n Profoundly UNITED STATES was taken over by the THE ngarian Revolution the Hu � The bour­ con­ The effects of the Hungarian Revolution on the into a r efugee or y. geoisie and transformed CommunIst Party was working class in the United States could not possibly in the small and negligible fusion excelled them­ have been anticipated by any Marxist, showing the dif­ The labor leaders . derided in the Press. � of rases about the h rOlsm ficulties which lie behind the phrase : recognizing and in high-sounding ph . selves � CIal-Demo­ . The decisive feature of the Hungarian Revo­ and the VIrtues f SO recording Hungarian workers the lectuals re- lution was the creation of the Workers Councils and Communism. The mtel cracy a'S opposed to 158 FACING REALITY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT 159 their assumption of all the functions of government. the a x st organizations in their attempt to convey This seemed to be the least of the concerns of American � � � . the slgmflCance of the Hungarian Revolution to Ameri­ workers . The American working people of all classel5 re­ can workers. To complete the confusion it was the acted with an almost universal disillusionment with the bourgeois Prel5s which seemed to be preoccupied with American Government and distrust of its foreign policy. the Workers Councils. After all th e billions of dollars for foreign aid, foreign THE PAPER AND THE ORGANIZATION alliances, and the millions of words about the power of Our Russia and the need to contain Russia, the impotence summation has to be, and has no need to be otherwise than brief. or unwillingnes-s of the United states to do anything to . The paper of the Marxist organi­ za bon help Hun!5ary wrecked any confidence the workers may has to recognize and record. It had to recognize and ... . have had in what the government was doing abroad. record the Hungarian Revolution. But it had also ···· to reco American workers of Polish and other Eastern Euro"':­ gnize and record, and record very fully, the 1'e- ­ sponses pean origin saw the revolt in national terms, as freedom of the American workers in their editorial from the foreign enemy. committees. It had to gO further. Its primary business The reaction of the Negro workers was distinctive. was to bring out into the open what the American workers were In September 1955 a Negro youth from Chicago, Emmett thinking, in their own terms. That is what Till, was murdered in the southern state of Mississippi has to grapple with, the concrete realities before it it in a manner that shocked the whole of the United to see that each side, the paper and the people: Statel5. But the murderers, known to all in the country, thoroughly understands the position of the other. That were found "not guilty" as usual by the white jury. itself is progress, progress for the readers of the paper From that time there has been taking place an emi­ and progress for the Marxists. It is difficult, it is impossible gration of Negroes from the state to the industrial only if the Marxist organization persibutsts in scr North and Middle West at the rate of many thousands eaming its own views at its public, and considers them backward a month, one estimate going as high as 30,000 in cer­ because they do not accept them. It is perhaps tain months. These tens of thousands of Negroes find not going too far to say that a) the paper of a Marxil5t that, despite all the talk of the fabulous prosperity of organization would give as much space to the the United States, continuous unemployment exists and reactions of workers as it would to the Revolution has existed for years in towns like Detroit, Pittsburgh, itt'elf; b) the presentation of the Hungarian Revolution would and Cleveland. When faced with the prospect of thous­ differ widely from country to country. ands of Hungarian refugees being welcomed in the After some years of screaming, the voice of the Marx­ United States, the Negro workers raised the bitter Cry : ist. organization gets hoarse, its members diminish and What about the refugees from the South? Not those who remain sink into self-examination. Their was the que-stion legitimate. It had behind it memoriesonly fatigue is not physical. It is a political inertia. Contra­ centuries old, not the least of which was the welcome diction, even antagonism, is the source of all life and during and after the war of German prisoners of war movement. It is from the confrontation of fundamental into public places from which Negroes continued to be ideas with the reactions of workers that new ideas excluded. emerge and new energy is created, in the small organi­ Amid th is variety of responses, the question of the zation and in the workers themselves. This is one of the Workers Councils received little attention from the most fundamental processes of cognition. workers and it proved almost impossible to make them What happens to the Marxist organization, intent see it for what it was and to understand why Marxists only on re cruits for the revolution, is that the refu­ attached so much importance to it. American workers sal of workers to accept its ideas, their OPPOSition, their bave no fear whatever of totalitarianism. They are hesitation, or their questions, paralyzes it. It stands im­ .! cheerfully confident that they can take care of any who mobilized, not knowing which way to turn. Often it has try to impose upon them a totalitarian regime and no made great efforts to reach the workers. But the one who knows them has any doubt of this. deeper it has come into contact with them, the more 'I The above are of necessity apprOXimations, but they baffled it has become. When an event like the Hunga­ represent a reasonably accurate picture of what faced rian Revolution takes place, every meeting with work- 160 FACING REALITY ers who are thinking their own thoughts is a great effort. The old political life was very easy. Con�tact was usually confined to advanced workers, or wor ers you were in the process of advancing. You contmued to write and speak more or less the way you al:vays had. CONCLUSION Experience has shown and will show th.at an mde�end­ The Marxist organization organizes itself to produce a ent editorial committee creates an entlrely . nel?-v: � sItua­ paper which will recognize the existence of the new so­ tion. It is prepared to speak and t? l? ubl1s ts own ciety and record the facts of its existence. We have mind because it is aware that what It IS saymg repre­ outlined the practical method with which this must be opinion of many thousands of others. sents the a _ approached. It is not everything, but it is enough. Let - - -TO publislT such paper -as -v:e outline . o.e1l1ands,� - us now, in conclusion, examine this simple affirmation--­ besides deep theoretical understandmg, techmcal n.o�­ of recognizing and recording, in the light of Marxism, skill, a sense of values, fleXIbilIty ledge, journalistic . so as to place the paper historically. We must knowin and firmness, combined to an exceptIOn�1 �egre�. Some what we represent, what we symbolize. The Press, of these can to some extent be studied m IsolatIOn, but� other words, means of communication, is a gauge and their full application and development ca� O � y today shown are the. vast Imp l­ touchstone of the struggle for socialism. be achieved in what we have eXlS­ Lenin centered his struggle for the Russian Revolu­ cations contained in the formula: to recogn:'-ze the tion around the Press. The Press was to be the organ­ tence and record the facts of the new sOClety. izer of the revolutionary people around the elite party. Because Tsarism suppressed all political life, the Bol­ shevik Press was essentially political, though political in the widest sense of that word. It campaigned for land to the peasants, the eight-hour day for the workers, and for the democratic republic. When the second Rus­ sian Revolution broke out, however, the people, to the astonishment of the whole world, created the Soviets, a body based on factories, peasants, and soldiers, but es­ sentially political. When the Russian Revolution declined and Stalin­ ism reigned in Russia and in the Communist Parties everywhere, Trotsky, Lenin's close collaborator, at­ tempted to rebuild an international movement of the Leninist type. He failed for one reason only: the work­ ers of the world no longer needed vanguard or elite par­ ties.. Yet despite hi'S serious en'or in attempting to re­ produce the politics suitable to one period in another, Trotsky had a far better understanding than his mis­ guided followers of the principles which should govern a workers' paper. Criticizing the weekly paper of all the Trotskyist organizations, he wrote words which are of the utmost value today. He said: The paper is very well done from the journalistic point of view; but it i'S a paper for workers and not a workers' paper . • . As it is, the paper is divided among various writ- 161 CONCLUSION 163 162 FACING REALITY is inevitable in the first· period of the development ers, each of whom is very good, but collectively of the organization. is at the same time a big they do not permit the workers to penetrate to the e handicap to the politicalIt education of the more pages of the Appeal. Each of them speaks for th gifted workers . . . It is absolutely necessary at the workers (and speaks very welD but nobody will next convention to introduce in the local and cen­ hear the workers. In spite of its literary brilliance, tral committees as many workers as pOSsible. To a to a certain degree the paper becomes a victim of worker, activity in the leading party body is at the journalistic routine. You do not hear at all how the same time a high political school . . . workers live, fight, clash with the police or drink whiskey. It is very dangerous for the paper as a He was always looking for workers to tl'ain them revolutionary instrument of the party. The task for the revolution. He wrote again: is not to make a paper through the joint forces _ devote enough or equal forces to all the Q! a skilled editorial board but to encourage the work­ Wefactories. cannot Our local organization can choose for its ers to speak for themselves. activity in the next period one, two or. three fac­ tories in it'S area and concentrate all A radical and courageous change is necessary as a its forces upon these factories. If we have in one of them two or condition of success .•. three workers we can create a special help commis­ Of course it is not only a question of the paper, but sion of five non-workers with the purpose of en­ of the whole course of policy . . . larging our influence in these factories.

The difference is summed up in two conceptions : a He had been br ought up in the tradition of seeking paper for the workers or a workers' paper. But the for­ influence for the elite party in the factories and he nev­ mula itself, though it clarifies, does not solve. One has er got rid of it. The modern worker does not wish any­ to define the term : workers, and to define workers in body or any party to have inflUence in the factories. the sense of theory as a guide to action require'S a defi­ He can manage his own affairs in the factories. He has nition of society and its direction. That is why we had enough of these seekers of inflUence. One of the began with the Hungarian Revolution. To the end of first things that the Hungarian Workers Councils de­ his life Trotsky thought about workers in terms of the creed was that all political parties as such should be stage of society in 1917. He could not grasp that the excluded from the factories. When the great upheaval development of capitalism into state capitalism and came, they did not form Soviets for politics and factory the corresponding development in the working class had committees for industry as the Russian workers had created an entirely new category of workers. The15e did done in faraway 1917. The Workers Council was produc­ not wish to substitute for a totalitarian party or Welfare tion unit, political unit, military unit, and governing state party a democratic party. They sought to substi­ unit, all in one. Trotsky's idea of the silent worker in a tute themselves as a body for all parties whatsoever. political committee of an elite organization coming to That is the history of mass movements from 1933 on­ life only when something practical had to be done is as wards. To his dying day Trotsky believed that worker'S ancient a figure as a knight in armor. And the modern had to be led by the politically advanced. As late as worker does not find himself in a workers' paper because 1937 he could write : the Marxists do not know that he exists and are not looking for him. I have remarked hundreds of times that the worker who remains unnoticed in the "normal" conditions Thus the paper as we envisage it is what a Marxist of party life reveals remarkable qualities in a paper always should be, a workers' paper and not a pa­ change of situation when general formulas and flu­ per for the worker'S. But workers change and papers ent pens are not sufficient, where acquaintance must change. They must perform functions that are with the life of workers and practical capacities are not being performed by any other force or group in so­ necessary. Under such conditioIlB a gifted worker ciety. That is the guarantee of their success. reveals a sureness of himself and reveals also his. Every international organization of the proletariat general political capabilities. (and of the bourgeoisie as well) is the result not of what takes place in the minds of political people, but of Predominance in the organization of intellectuals FACING REALITY 164 CONCLUSION 165 changes in the very structure of society. That is why and therefore unrecorded. Fascism saw it and tried to the revolutionary paper of today does not have to preach destroy it but only succeeded in bringing it and advocate revolution in the terms of barricades, cap­ nearer Periodi al1Y the secret terror � and imp otent des air ture of government buildings, etc. In 1917 this was the of the rulmg classes ; breaks out as in de-Stalinization necessary first step, the struggle for socialism coming the Eden expedition to Suez, and the frenzied efforts afterwards. Today the process is completely reversed. make the world believe t� that some attempt is beina All the problems, particularly in production, that Lenin made to rid humanity of the physical and spiritual bur� faced after the seizure of power are now being vigorous­ den of modern armaments. Always the result is to leave ly foug'ht out in every developed country before the seiz­ the situation worse than it was before. When in ure of power. Workers today are building the socialist or that this country the people feel that the moment ..... society, often under' the commonplace :name of "local come, has �hey will act. The paper of the . . . Marxist organiza­ grievances." They are struggling to make the place of tIOn wlll do well, here as elsewhere, to be instructed work a human habitation where the first consideration the people. by .. is not capital but men, men not as units of production What the people need is information of where but as human beings. This conception is the beginning are, what they they are dOing, what they have done in the (and very nearly the end) of socialism. past. They are the ones to say precisely what they want That in many, or at least a few, of these countries and when. the past the intellectuals served the bour­ the new society will come fully into existence only af­ geoisie. WhenIn they saw the decline of bourgeois society ter the violent destruction of the remnants the �bey thought it was their . turn to lead the people. These remains as true today as it has always been.of But thatold, lllusIOns we must strip off and cast behind in 1958 does not occupy the place in the Marxist Press us. Even in the fully-established socialist society, those with intel­ that it did in 1917. After two world wars, the Russian lectu l gifts and � inClinations have an indispensable Revolution, the Great Depression, Fascism, an� the fu ctIOn to perform, to master � the material in any given Chinese Revolution, the violent seizure of power IS not �oclal sphere and so present it to the people that it the main preoccupation of workers and peoples. They lS eas:v: for them to decide what they want to do.. In­ play the parliamentary political game for what they formatIon : that is what the people want, information can get out of it. But they know that when the moment about themselves and their own affairs, and not so much comes they can overthrow any power, government or about the crimes and blunders of official society; otherwise which seeks to enslave them. one no has to look too far for those any more. As far as The r al problem of the mass of people today is not c n be seen at the � � present, this is the ultimate tIOn func­ the overthrow of the old order (who any more believes of government in the mo dern world. But that in in it?). It is the fear of what will happen afterwards, the Marxist phrase, ' is the music of the future. whether the inevitable result will be the One-Party What, it may legitim ately be asked, is the future totalitarian state. It is not merely that the people of o� the Marxist organization ? Its future is more pre­ the West see the bureaucratic monster behind the Iron dICtable than the future of society itself.110 Despit e the Curtain. They see all the premises of it at home, and �nachronism of the traditional workers' party, it is not that is why workers in all countries steadily lay the m the least excluded, for example, that the first great foundation of all possible safeguards against it, in their upheaval in the United states may take the form of a shop floor organizations, in their reaching out to the many-millioned mass workers' party aiming at political technicians and the clerical and professional middle power in the traditional sense, while at the same time Worker classes in their contempt for the traditional parties and s Councils appear in every ' branch of the na­ unions whose meetings they don't attend. There is tional life. A direct revolutionary in seizure of power action in the world today, on a world-wide scale, a revo­ cIvil war may break out in France, provoked by theor lutionary mobilization far more formidable than any­ French bourgeOisie in the same trapped, desperate mood thing Lenin ever knew. The people are moving forward, that provoked the Suez ad venture. Such events have and as they move forward are consolidating their posi­ been and always will be utterly unpredictable. But spite de­ tions. Because this vast revolution does not take the the unpredictable and innumerable , variety of traditional form, it goes almost entirely unrecogmzed forms of development that the Marxist organizations FACING REALITY 166 and their papers may take, those will" be closest to these events and will best serve them who have trained themselves to recognize ihat the new society exists and to record the facts of its existence. APPENDIX

The ideas and perspectives in Facing Reality are the -result of 17 years of theoretical study, cooperative ef­ fort, and an intensive political experience inside and outside of small political organizations. We can only indicate here some of the landmarks in that develop­ ment. Some of the material, particularly that written -- - before 1947, appeared only in mimeographed form and Is not readily available. The most complete file of ma­ terial can be found in Socialisme ou Barbarie, a French quarterly published in Paris since 1948. The editors of Socialisme ou Barbarie, a group of a few dozen intellectuals and workers, have governed all their activities by the conception that the main enemy of society today is the bureaucracies modern capitalism. Since 1948 they have documentedof and an alyzed each stage of the workers' struggle against the bureaucracy. No. 13, the issue of January-March 1954, is devoted to an analysis of the East German Re­ volt of June 1953 and a detailed account of the French strikes which erupted in August 1953 among the tal workers, the railroad workers, the Renault autoPOI3- workers, and the insurance office workers. The editors show how these two explosions marked the first turning point in the post-war relations between the workers and their oppressors. No. 18, the issue of January-March 1956, s devoted to an account and analysis of the world-wide.i workers' struggle in 1955, of the French workers in Nantes and Nazaire, the British dockers, and the American autost. workers. As the editors pointed out, these strug­ gles showed that the workers were acting not only in­ dependently but in defiance of the union apparatus. The article, "The Workers Confront the Bureaucracy," this issue reads like a preview of Poznan. in Believing that the content of socialism is in what workers are already trying to work out in their daily struggles, the intellectuals of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group have encouraged and assisted the workers in the group to report every detail of their lives in the plant. Notabl-e among the articles by workers published in the

16'1 F I 168 FACING REALITY APPENDIX 169 I , magazine are "Workers Journal (May 1956 at Renault,") Marx, namely, his realization that side by side with an account of the incipient revolt at Renault over the the fragmentation and mutilation of the workers in call-up of a worker for the Algerian war and the block­ the capitalist labor process, there is emerging inside ing of the revolt by the union ; "An Experience of the factory a new form of social organization, the co­ Workers' Organization : The Employees Council at the operative form of labor. General Life Insurance Co.," a detailed account of 1947 they translated and published the Economic­ work in a modern office and how this led to indepen­ PhilosophicalIn Essays oj which he had written in dent organization by the workers; "Renault Workers 1844. In this same year Marxthey published Dialectical Ma­ Discuss Hungary," "The Factory and Workers' Man­ terialism and the Fate oj Humanity, an essay showing agement," an account by a Renault worker of how how the creative reason of the masses in revolution has workers in a particular department organize their work produced all the great advances of civilization. In 1948 independently of both management and the union; Notes on the Dialectic was written, an analysis of the and "Agitation at Renault," an account of the present development of the labor movement, applying the cate­ indifference among the Renault workers to the Stalin­ gories and method of Hegel's dialectical logic. ist-anti-Stalinist agitation of both the Communists and Three works exemplify their approach to the Rus­ the Social-Democrats. sian question. "After Ten Years" is a re-examination in The magazine has also carried reports of the life 1946 of Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed in the light and activities of workers in other countries. In 1948-49 of Marx's philosophy of the activity of men in the la­ a complete translation of The American Worker ap­ bor process. "'rhe Nature of the Russian Economy," peared in its pages. One of its writers has reported also written in 1946 on the basis of an exhaustive fully on the relations between East German workers analysis of all available data on the Russian 5-year and the Communists in the plants after the war. Plans, shows how the contradictions of capitalism are Socialisme ou Barbarie has published one pamphlet, inherent in the Russian economy as they are in the a pamphlet on the Hungarian Revolution which was American economy or that of any other classic capi­ published immediately after the outbreak of the revo,. talist country. The Invading Socialist Society, published lution, addressing questions to Communist militants in 1947, is an analysis of the mass movement towards about the revolution. new forms of social organization all over the world, Another series of publications is the work of the and in particular, the European movemel!lt towards a Johnson-Forest Tendency which developed as a body Socialist United States of Europe. Today the chapter Trotskyist organizations. of ideas inside the American on "Poland-Where All Roads Meet" is of special value. The supporters of this Tendency have since broken The theoretical summation of the work of the completely with Trotskyism and the Leninist theory of Johnson-Forest Tendency is to be found in State Capi­ the party and the Tendency no longer exists. The actual talism and World Revolution, originally written in 195.0 account and analysis of their lives in the TrotskYist and reprinted in 1956 under the auspices of six Euro­ organizations and why they turned their backs on this peans representing three different countries. Originally kind of political life are contained in two documents, written as a contribution to the discussion in the Trot­ The Balance Sheet, written in 1947, and The Balance skyist movement, State Capitalism and World Revolu­ Sheet Completed, written in 1951. tion has not made the complete break with the Leninist From the moment that the supporters of the John­ conception of the vanguard party. Today we recom­ son-Forest Tendency broke with Trotsky's theory of mend particularly the section on philosophy to the Russia as a workers' state, they realized that their general reader. this section the philosophy of ra­ break was not only with a political position but with a tionalism is tracedIn from its revolutionary beginnings method of thought. Hence they set themselves to re­ in the 16th century to its present counter-revolutionary discover for this epoch what Marx had meant by capi­ form in the party of the elite, the administrators, the talism and socialism and the philosophy of history organizers, and the bureaucrats. which had guided his economic writings. a close study of the Hegelian dialectic and of Marx'sBy writings, The introduction the 1956 edition of State Capi­ talism and Revolto ution they were able to grasp and hold tight the essence ended as follows : of World 170 FACING REALlTY APPENDIX 171 When the document was written six years ago, all in 1947. Side by side with this diary was published a this was mere heoretical prognosis. It is printed t philosophical analysis of the daily life of the worker, now with the more confidence as a guide the showing how in his activity and attitudes to his work great events ahead. to is contained the basis for the reconstruction of society. It is not the debates on free speech behind the In The American Worker the diary and the philoso­ Iron Curtain which will be decisive in the libera­ phical analysis are still separate. Not until 1955 are tion of these oppressed peoples. It is what took theory and actual experience of the working class place at Poznan. Like the Berlin rising i� J:me, joined together in a single document. This is in the 1953, it came directly from the shop orgamzatlOns account of the Shop Stewards Movement in Britain of the workers. The ultimate aim in Coventry, Ber- . from which we have quoted extensively in the text free lin, Detroit and Poznan is not liberal and which is reprinted as an appendix. to State Capi- nor higher wages, "compensation" nor "consuspeeCAlta­ _ talism and World Revolution. tion," but the construction of a new society from Along the lines set forth in Facing Reality several the bottom up. journals have been attempted. The lessons learned While the new edition was still at the printers, the from their successes and failures have been incorpo­ Hungarian Revolution broke out and on the cover the rated into this study. The first of these was .Corres­ following was added: pGndence, published at Detroit, Michigan, every two weeks from October 1953 to March 1955 and thereafter Hungary is merely the beginning. All political par­ bi-monthly. ties, including Stalinists and Trotskyists, and in­ The June 1955 issue of the bi-monthly carries an tellectuals of the right and left, for years preached account of the British dock workers' strikes in 1954 and acted on the theory that the modern totali­ and 1955. The December 1956 issue is devoted to an tarian state by its combination of terror and in­ account of "Wildcat Strikes at U. S. Rubber" and doctrination could mould any popu lation to its will. the February 1957 issue gives "A Forward Look Into Now the revolution in Hungary has blasted all Chrysler. " these cowardly and defeatist illusions, and the most As we go to press the editors of Correspondence are indoctrinated and the most terrorized have accom­ publishing sample issues in preparation for a four-page plished the greatest proletarian revolution in his ­ weekly. The April 1958 issue carried a special Transit tory. Supplement, reporting the efforts of New York Marxism alone can explain these events. State · subway workers to organize themselves independently Capitalism and World Revolution is published to­ in opposition to the Transport Workers Union and the day exactly as it was written in 1950. alone, by New York Transit Authority. its analysis of modern production and Itpolitical re­ Correspondence has also published two pamphlets. lations, foretold with precision and confidence the The first, entitled Wildcat Strikes and Union Commit­ violent explosions immanent in all forms of the con­ teemen contains a factual account of the nation-wide temporary state, whether totalitarian or democrat­ wildcat strikes against· Reuther in 1955 and an account ic. In its detailed exposure of the fallacies of the of the problems of editing the paper which centered "Vanguard Party" and "The Plan" it is the only around the editor, an ex- committeeman. The second political analysis in English which outlines the Correspondence pamphlet is entitled Every Cook Can future of scientific socialism. Govern and is a popular study of Athenian Democracy. 1955 there was a split from Correspondence and The body of ideas in Facing Reality has been devel­ anotherIn publication, News and Letters, was begun along oped in the closest relation to what workers are dOiD:g . the general lines of Correspondence. in the plant, listening to them and sponsormg ubh­ ,? In 1954 a group of workers at the Renault plant cation of writings by the workers themselves. Wlthout Paris began publication of a small mimeographed paperin this there could be no theory corres ponding to reality. entitled Tribune Ouvriere. The project began from the The first of these was The American Worker, diary enthusiastic reception among Renault workers of a of a General Motors worker's life in the plant, publia shed leaflet written by one of the workers of the Sociali13me 172 FACING REALITY APPENDIX 173

ou Barbarie group on the question of abolishing the Industry by J. A. Brown sums up the work hierarchy in pay and skill among workers. Since that oyythat ojhas been done in theC. field of industrial relations time Tribune Ouvriere has appeared monthly and some the last twenty-five years, particularly since the end 30 Renault workers meet every two weeks to write and ofin the last war, and the unavoidable conclusion from edit articles for it. all these researches that productivity will never be In Holland another journal, Spartacus, has for years creased until the organizations of workers on the shopin­ devoted itself to expressing concretely the conception floor feel they have control over their work. Two parts of that it is the activity of the workers themselves in their a book, A Study of American Society, now in prepara­ shop floor organizations which is bringing the socialist tion, have been completed. The first describes the life society. of the Detroit auto worker and the conflict that has There are other journals in Britain, United existed since the formation of the U.A.W. between the states, and France, such as Dissent, Liberation,the and activity and aims of the workers and those of the- ­ Universities and Left Review. But while these to one union. The second part examines the crisis in the mod­ degree or another oppose official society and do useful ern family in the United states. Extracts from A Study work, it is our view that it is impossible for them to make oj American Society have been published in Correspon­ real progress so long as they do not align themselves dence, April 1956, June 1956, and June 1957. positively with the forces of the new society which are A. S. P. Woodhouse of the University College in embodied in the phrase : Workers Councils in every Toronto has given us in Puritanism and Liberty an ac­ department of the national activity and a Government count of the conflict between the rank and file sol­ of Workers Councils. diers in Cromwell's New Model Army and Cromwell The life of the modern worker is governed but not himself, showing the insistent drive towards democracy eXhausted by his life in the plant. Indignant Heart is the on the part of the ranks in the face of Cromwell's own story of a Negro worker, from his childhood in the hesitations. Professors Haller and Davies have made an South to his later experiences with political parties, the important contribution to the current re-examination of union, and Negro organizations in the North. A Wom­ the English Revolution by their collection and editing an's Place, written by two working women, is a pro­ of the Leveller Tracts. The introduction is particularly foundly simple statement of the problems faced by valuable today, showing Lilburne and his followers in American women today. these writings a new litera­ a far more favorable light than hitherto in their rela­ ture is being created, breaInking completely not only with tions with Cromwell. the approach of the sociologist but also with the Exis­ The finest study of the activities of the working class tentialist intellectual preoccupied with his own dreary during the French Revolution is La Lutte de Classes doubts and anxieties. by Daniel Guerin. We can refer here only to a few other works which Du Bois' Black Reconstruction, first published in give the necessary background our thinking or which 1935, remains to this day the best study of the American in themselves show that seriousto thin kers today in every Civil War, being based on the role played in it by the sphere are accumulating the material for a new ap­ Negroes, particularly the slaves. ' proach to both the past and the future. Mbiyu Koinange s The People of Kenya Speak jar Lenin's writings of 1920 and 1921, collected in Vol­ Themselves, tells the story of how Kenya Africans were ume of his Selected Works, are an indispensable building schools, cooperatives, and their own political guide IXto anyone, worker, student, or political leader, organizations in an effort to become a part of the mod­ who seeks an understanding of the relations between ern world when they were thrown back, not by the the state, the unions, and the masses in the modern Mau Mau but by the offensive of the European settlers ,,,orld. backed by the British government. Two Europeans have A Little Democracy Is Dangerous Thing by Charles made valuable contributions to the theory of the co­ Ferguson is a brief but powerfa ul argument for complete lonial revolution today, showing that the nationalist control from below in every sphere of modern life struggle is not only for independence but to liberate the partial democracy that exists today not going if new forms of social organization. Thomas Hodgkin in be driven towards totalitarianism. The Socis to Nationalism in Colonial Africa describes the various ial Psychol- 174 FACING REALITY

forms in which the newly urbanized Africans organize themselves. F. LeGros Clark in an essay entitled �'Con­ ditions of Economic Progress" (published in The New West Africa) states unequivocally that technical pro­ gress can take place in the underdeveloped areas only through the release of the creative energies and self­ organization of the African people, whatever risks and tensions this may introduce to newly independent gov­ ernments. In recent years scholars have been rediscovering by

- - hard -research, how the great artists of the past. ar ­ ticular Shakespeare, were the great creators thatin they p were precisely because they ereate d for the mass popular audience. Among the valuable works on this subject is Shakespeare and the Popular Tra­ dition by S. L. Bethell. Dramatic This Appendix does not pretend be a complete. It shows an attitude of mintod. in ny way ON THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS

The American Worker by Phil Romano and Ria Stone. Originally published in 1946. An article by a young auto worker describing life in a FM plant and a philoso­ phical article incorporating that experience into the body of Marxist theory. 70 pages, $1.00.

Union Committeemen and. Wildcat Strikes by Martin Glaberman. Two articles: the story of the 1955 wi l dcats in auto and a discussion of the radical union committeeman. 23 pages, $.50.

Punching Out by Martin Glaberman. A popular pamphlet on factory life. 32 pages, $.25.

ON MARXIST THEORY

A Workers Inquiry by Karl Marx. A questionnaire for workers. 12 pages, $.25.

Mao As a Dialectician by Martin G laberman. A critique of Maoist philosophy. 25 pages, $.50.

· i WO RKS BY C.L.R. JAM ES

Modern Pol itics Six lectures given by James to an audience in Trini­ dad, in which he explains the meaning of socialism, placing it in the context of world history. Illustrations. 167 pages, $1 .50. - - -

State Capitalism and World Revolution Theoretical analysis of the present stage of capitalism in the form of a polemic against Trotskyist views, docu­ mented with quotations from Marx and Lenin. 107 pages, $2.50.

The Invading Socialist Society with F. Forest and R. Stone. Original ly pu blished in 1947, this is a Marxist state­ ment on the world and revolutionary potential after World War II. I ncludes analysis and nature of the role of Commun ist parties. 63 pages, $1.00.

Every Cook Can Govern The title phrase is from Lenin and it argues for participatory democracy based on the experience of ancient Greece. 35 pages, $.20.

Send for list or order from:

Bewick/ed Mile One Publications Bewick Wyandotte West Detroit,1443 Michigan Win2180dsor, Ontario U.S.A. 48214 Canada

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