chapter 12 Class Struggle and the Proletariat
As mentioned in the previous chapter, class struggle is the material form of class consciousness under given material conditions and their contradictions. Class struggle occurs against the capitalist class relation which operates at dif- ferent levels: a more fundamental level, and a level at which effects of the op- eration of the logic of the class relation is manifested and produces effects in the form of low wages, unemployment, etc. The struggle against the latter, the symptoms of the operation of the class relation, is the trade union struggle, which is mistakenly often equated with class struggle as such. Class struggle, class struggle proper, is the struggle against the very relation itself. It is the struggle to abolish the class relation and to construct a new society that pre- serves the positive features of the current society but goes qualitatively beyond it. Class struggle proper is the struggle that may build on, but must go beyond, the trade union form of the struggle and its aims. Many of the conditions that further and hinder trade union struggle that were discussed in the previous chapter apply, more or less, to class struggle proper as well. Class struggle is rooted in the fundamental contradiction in class relations: labourers produce wealth together in a collective process but it is appropriated by a tiny elite, resulting in deprivation and misery for workers. According to Marx and Engels, ‘the class struggle …[is] the immediate driving force of his- tory’; it is ‘the great lever of the modern social revolution’. As theoreticians of the working class seeking to assist it in its struggle, they refused to work with anyone who did not endorse this view.1 The importance of class struggle to Marxist theory can be gauged from the fact that according to Marx and Engels:
all struggles within the state, the struggle between democratic, aristo- cratic and monarchy, the struggle for the franchise etc., etc. are merely the illusory forms… in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought out among one another. marx and ENGELS, 1978: 54
1 ‘For nearly 40 years we have raised to prominence the idea of the class struggle as the imme- diate driving force of history, and particularly the class struggle between bourgeois and the proletariat as the great lever of the modern social revolution; hence, we can hardly go along with people who want to strike this class struggle from the movement. At the founding of the International, we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’ (Marx and Engels, 1879; para 6).
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‘Capitalism could have been declared – and with full justice – to be “histori- cally obsolete” many decades ago’, and class consciousness may have identified capitalism as the problem to be transcended, ‘but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capital- ism’ (Lenin, 1968: 41). The question is this: what processes promote and hinder class struggle, the struggle to abolish capitalist class relation, and not merely to receive trade unionist concessions? This is an important question in the cur- rent world conjuncture where: there is a deep contradiction between objec- tive conditions for transcendence of capitalism and for revolution on the one hand, and on the other, the preparedness of the subjective forces necessary for class struggle against capitalism. In the current conjuncture, there is wide- spread skepticism about possibilities for revolution and about the role of the working class in it. It is also worth asking whether what is usually called class struggle, i.e. trade union struggle, has itself been a barrier to the struggle for the transcendence of capitalism? This chapter is a continuation of the previous chapter, which focused on the trade unionist form of class struggle, or class struggle in its more or less spontaneous form. It begins, in Section 1, with a Marxist assessment of the idea of trade unionist or spontaneous struggle. The remainder of the chapter seeks to articulate a Marxist approach to working class struggle. Section 2 deals with the idea that trade union struggle is a subordinate part of class struggle. Sec- tion 3 deals with this question: what makes revolution – which is the highest form of struggle – necessary and possible? Section 4 examines the question of the revolutionary agent: why the petty bourgeoisie is, and is not, consistently revolutionary against capitalist class relation, and why the proletariat is the only consistently revolutionary agent, and why it is the only class which can lead all exploited and oppressed groups against the capitalist class system. Sec- tion 5 talks about the political hegemony of the proletariat as an outcome of a successful revolution. The final section summarizes the discussion presented in this and the previous chapter.
1 A Marxist Critique of Spontaneous Trade Unionist Struggle
Trade unions qua trade unions are about helping workers sell their wares on best possible terms to capitalists as capitalists. Ultimately, trade unions qua trade unions can hardly do anything to undermine the ability of the employers to do good business, because without a good business, higher wages will not be possible in any long-term manner at a large enough scale (e.g. national scale). So the fundamental aim of trade unions as institutions for getting concessions