Class consciousness

[mk12]

It's one of the most important political things I can't make my mind up about.

On the one hand, you have the famous Lenin quote from What is to be done:

"The history of all countries testifies that workers left exclusively to their own strength can cultivate only a trade union consciousness"

If this is the case, then the working class needs to be led by a vanguard party, composed of class-conscious workers and intellectuals.

I believe Lenin over estimated this, and it is a fact that he admitted he made mistakes later on.

On the other hand, you have people who believe workers can develop class consciousness through struggle. When they come into conflict with the state, or their boss, or the police...their ideas start to change and they develop class consciousness.

If this 'spontaneous' consciousness does take place, what is the point of forming parties or groups (either Marxist, Leninist, anarchist)? If workers can spontaneously develop a socialist consciousness, then there is surely no need any form of organisation?

I have read a lot of anarchist literature, and believe that anarchists (such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Makhno) do see the necessity of an organisation, which hopes to influence the rest of the class.

For example, Kropotkin said: "We are persuaded that the formation of an anarchist organisation in Russia, far from being prejudicial to the common revolutionary task, on the contrary it is desirable and useful to the very greatest degree."

I am interested in why they think this, if they believe workers can become socialists without the need for an educating minority.

Sorry if it's poorly worded. It should be obvious from this that I am quite confused about this subject.

 

[gurrier]

It's one of the most important political things I can't make my mind up about.

On the one hand, you have the famous Lenin quote from What is to be done:



If this is the case, then the working class needs to be led by a vanguard party, composed of class-conscious workers and intellectuals.

I believe Lenin over estimated this, and it is a fact that he admitted he made mistakes later on.

On the other hand, you have people who believe workers can develop class consciousness through struggle. When they come into conflict with the state, or their boss, or the police...their ideas start to change and they develop class consciousness.

If this 'spontaneous' consciousness does take place, what is the point of forming parties or groups (either Marxist, Leninist, anarchist)? If workers can spontaneously develop a socialist consciousness, then there is surely no need any form of organisation?

I have read a lot of anarchist literature, and believe that anarchists (such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Makhno) do see the necessity of an organisation, which hopes to influence the rest of the class.

For example, Kropotkin said: "We are persuaded that the formation of an anarchist organisation in Russia, far from being prejudicial to the common revolutionary task, on the contrary it is desirable and useful to the very greatest degree."

I am interested in why they think this, if they believe workers can become socialists without the need for an educating minority.

Sorry if it's poorly worded. It should be obvious from this that I am quite confused about this subject.

It's a bit obvious once you leave aside the Leninist disdain for workers. To an anarchist, the 'educating minority' refers to a minority of workers, not a minority of non-workers. To Leninists, the 'educating minority' are not workers but professional revolutionaries / intellectuals / bourgeios folk.

 

[mk12]

So it's ok to be vanguardist, if you are actually a worker?

 

[Ryazan]

I find Gramsci quite interesting on the subject of intellectuals. They certainly aren't a class apart.

 

[mk12]

What did Gramsci say about it?

 

[Udo Erasmus]

Sorry, if this is a bit rambling . . .

Firstly, Lenin revised his ideas on workers consciouness following the 1905 Soviets that showed the workers in advance of the vanguard.

Secondly, the problem that you outline isn't as complex as it seems.

The capitalists are incredibly organised, revolutionaries need to be similarly organised. Surely, the idea of a "vanguard" is that the most militant, radical and politicised workers get together to act as an organised body

Take as an example, if their was a call for strike action their might be tremendous pressure from the media, trade union bureaucracy, Labour party types to take more ineffectual action.

What might challenge the pressure from the media and trade union bureaucrats is if their were organised networks of militants in the workplace who were armed with the arguments and confident enough to fight the case for action - a revolutionary party.

Consciousness is always uneven. When the war broke out, a tiny minority of school students were influenced by ideas floating around about a school strike and acted as a vanguard in winning a number of other students to the idea of a walk-out - this led to a rollercoaster process across other schools as other school students spontaneously walked-out.

Trotsky called the revolutionary party the "memory of the class". Spontaneity is good, but what a revolutionary party can hopefully do is to bring to bear on a current political problem the experience, lessons and analysis of past struggles and organising.

A revolutionary party can also synthesise and co-ordinate all the different fronts of the struggle bringing together militant workers, anti-racists, radical students and school students, trade unionists etc. etc. into a coherent strategy against the system.

In May 1968 in Paris, there was the potential for a revolutionary situation to develop, one thing that stopped the uprising becoming revolutionary was the collusion of the French Communist Party, establishment, trade union bureaucracy and bourgeois media that essentially defused the movement.

If revolutionaries are embedded in every workplace, school, college, university and community they might sucessfully be able to challenge this unholy alliance and when a trade union bureaucrat tells a workplace occupation to return to work for a meagre payrise be able to win the argument with non-revolutionary workers to press on.

When spontaneous movements arise, an organised revolutionary party can also act to deepen and spread the movements.

 

[Ryazan]

What did Gramsci say about it?

His thoughts that intellectuals being a group seperate to the general populace and the ruling class in society was a myth. That each strata develops it's own layers of intellectuals.

He disliked the Leninist approach of a small vanguard of intellectuals and conscious workers (working class people can't be intellectual you see ) acting in the interests of the working class, taking it's place in the lead, until it has educated the working class along the appropriate revolutionary lines, and saw it as inappropriate for developing revolutions in countries where there was a large industrial working class in existence.

Here and here.

 

[mk12]

Firstly, Lenin revised his ideas on workers consciouness following the 1905 Soviets that showed the workers in advance of the vanguard.

You're right there. (something Workers Power and other ortho-Trots won't accept)

A couple of questions though:

1. What about those class-conscious workers who aren't in the party.
2. You didn't really mention leadership. Does this party have to lead the rest of the workers?
3. Do you think that the party develops consciousness?

Ryazan:

and saw it as inappropriate for developing revolutions in countries where there was a large industrial working class in existence

I don't understand that bit. Who thought that?

 

[Ryazan]

Gramsci. He saw what happened in Russia as not being appropriate for elsewhere, well, more speciically Western Europe. Russia, as I am sure you are aware, with all those SWP leaflets you have digested, was not as developed industrially as other countries. It had a small working class.

 

[mk12]

Yep - so what did he propose for socieities with larger w/c? Or did he just not see the need for a Bolshevik type party?

 

[Ryazan]

Have you not read those links?

The role of intellectuals, how they are defined, where they come from, and what they do........Working class intellectuals are of importnance One thing cultivating an education without the antagonisms through formal schooling that many children face.

 

[phildwyer]

It's a bit obvious once you leave aside the Leninist disdain for workers. To an anarchist, the 'educating minority' refers to a minority of workers, not a minority of non-workers. To Leninists, the 'educating minority' are not workers but professional revolutionaries / intellectuals / bourgeios folk.

Define "worker."

 

[In Bloom]

Leadership of ideas, anyone?

 

[neprimerimye]

Firstly, Lenin revised his ideas on workers consciouness following the 1905 Soviets that showed the workers in advance of the vanguard.

When spontaneous movements arise, an organised revolutionary party can also act to deepen and spread the movements.

Lenin did not 'revise' his ideas concerning how class consciousness arises and the need for a revolutionary party. What he did do was abandon the unfortunate formula which he had borrowed from Karl Kautsky that stated that class consciosness could not develop spontaneously and must therefore be brought to the class by the intelligentsia. Which formulation is properly speaking a revision of the views of Karl Marx. Lenin however did not acknowledge this and the formulation was revived when Zinoviev invented 'Leninism' at the time of the literary debate around 1923/24.

Sadly many Trotskyists took their understanding of this question direct from their training in the CP's as with JP Cannon for example. In this way Lenin's borrowing from Kautsky passed into the Trotskyist movement where it has remained as a theoretical prop for those who would reify the role of the party to the detriment of the working class.

While i agree with most of the rest of the rather unexceptional comments of Udo gien that he is a member of the SWP I find his final comments rather wry in the light of events.

 

[phildwyer]

It's a bit obvious once you leave aside the Leninist disdain for workers. To an anarchist, the 'educating minority' refers to a minority of workers, not a minority of non-workers. To Leninists, the 'educating minority' are not workers but professional revolutionaries / intellectuals / bourgeios folk.

Define "worker." Gurrier or anyone else. Because I don't think you *can,* and I further think that if you try, you will soon see that what you call the "class struggle" is psychological.

 

[118118]

Define "worker." Gurrier or anyone else. Because I don't think you *can,* and I further think that if you try, you will soon see that what you call the "class struggle" is psychological.

Edit: I mean I can see why someone might think that class struggle (perhaps the limiting step) is psychological in that it requires or at least develops class consciousness. But why would it be difficult to define "worker", and why would that mean that class struggle is psychological.

 

[soulman]

Define "worker." Gurrier or anyone else. Because I don't think you *can,* and I further think that if you try, you will soon see that what you call the "class struggle" is psychological.

When you say psychological do you mean learnt/taught or something inherent within the actors?

 

[greenman]

Define "worker." Gurrier or anyone else. Because I don't think you *can,* and I further think that if you try, you will soon see that what you call the "class struggle" is psychological.

Er, someone who works ? i.e. someone whose existence depends not on inherited property or on exploiting the labour of others, but on their own labour, "by hand or brain" to quote the old Labour Party constitution.
Beyond this definition you get into classical marxist defintions regarding relationship to the means of production.
Cultural/psychological definitions may have some importance for individuals - and yes, "class struggle", in a conscious sense, requires consciousness of conflict of interests between employing classes and their paid apologists/defenders and the workers in any particular workplace/industry or other zone of conflict. Therefore, it could be seen as "psychological", but I would guess not in the sense Mr Dwyer means.

 

[gurrier]

Define "worker." Gurrier or anyone else. Because I don't think you *can,* and I further think that if you try, you will soon see that what you call the "class struggle" is psychological.

somebody who depends for his/her survival on the sale of his/her labour power.

Not a perfect definition, bus since we are dealing with classes of people and large scale trends, we don't need a definition that works perfectly in every individual case.

 

[Fruitloop]

Define "worker." Gurrier or anyone else. Because I don't think you *can,* and I further think that if you try, you will soon see that what you call the "class struggle" is psychological.

Bizarre kamikaze-style thread derailment there.

If you're going to use those blasted asterisks, please at least have the decency to nest them inside the punctuation. To me, "*can,*" looks more like a regular expression than part of a meaningful English sentence.

 

[General Ludd]

Lenin did not 'revise' his ideas concerning how class consciousness arises and the need for a revolutionary party. What he did do was abandon the unfortunate formula which he had borrowed from Karl Kautsky that stated that class consciosness could not develop spontaneously and must therefore be brought to the class by the intelligentsia.

The Kautsky deserves quoting, as whether he abandoned it or not it theoretically it is precisely how the Bolsheviks continued to act.

“The more capitalist development increases the numbers of the proletariat, the more the proletariat is compelled and becomes fit to fight against capitalism. The proletariat becomes conscious of the possibility and necessity for socialism. In this connection socialist consciousness appears to be a necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle. But this is absolutely untrue. Of course, socialism, as a doctrine, has its roots in modern economic relationships just as the class struggle of the proletariat has, and, like the latter, emerges from the struggle against the capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions. Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicle of science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia [K.K.’s italics]: it was in the minds of individual members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduce it into the proletarian class struggle where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle [von Aussen Hineingretagenes] and not something that arose within it spontaneously [urwuchsig]. Accordingly, the old Hainfeld program quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat [literally: saturate the proletariat] with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task. There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle.”

Which formulation is properly speaking a revision of the views of Karl Marx.

They represented a complete misunderstanding of Marx. Kautsky (and indeed Lenin) saw the working class and class struggle as objects, rather than the subjective processes that Marx viewed them as.

Define "worker." Gurrier or anyone else. Because I don't think you *can,* and I further think that if you try, you will soon see that what you call the "class struggle" is psychological.

To present it solely as psychological is to ignore the very real opposition we face, the fact that there are people very prepared to use all the (considerable) force at their disposal to keep us as workers.

 

[mk12]

Wasn't there a worker who came up with similar theories to Marx, at around the same time? Does anybody know his name?

 

[butchersapron]

Dietzgen

 

[mk12]

Cheers!

According to marxists.org, "an entirely self-educated worker (his primary skill was as a tanner) who independently created dialectical materialism shortly after Marx & Engels."

Doesn't this sort of contradict Kautsky's views?

 

[General Ludd]

Just about everything in history contradicts Kautsky's views...

But he does accept the existence of 'more intellectually developed' members of the proletariat who may be able to understand things on the bourgois' terms.

 

[Pickman's model]

Just about everything in history contradicts Kautsky's views...

But he does accept the existence of 'more intellectually developed' members of the proletariat who may be able to understand things on the bourgois' terms.

but do people want to understand things on bourgeois terms? is it worth it? or is life too short and the bourgeoisie should understand things a bit more on proletarian terms?

 

[mk12]

Just about everything in history contradicts Kautsky's views...

Really? What else?

 

[General Ludd]

Really? What else?

The entire history of organisations devoted to bringing class conciousness or any other kind of revolutionary truth to the working class (whether this is what they believed they were doing or not) is one of miserable failure, with the result of 'success', that is the seizure of state power, being far from their dreams. Contrary to Kautsky's views, socialism it would appear can not come from outside the working class, from outing class struggle, but only from within.

but do people want to understand things on bourgeois terms?

I don't, and wasn't suggesting that people should.

 

[mk12]

The entire history of organisations devoted to bringing class conciousness or any other kind of revolutionary truth to the working class (whether this is what they believed they were doing or not) is one of miserable failure, with the result of 'success', that is the seizure of state power, being far from their dreams. Contrary to Kautsky's views, socialism it would appear can not come from outside the working class, from outing class struggle, but only from within.

I meant: proof that consciousness can come from within.

 

[revol68]

I meant: proof that consciousness can come from within.

and you dare call yourself a fucking marxist?

exactly where else will it come from?

Oh wait the great bored spoilt youth of the bourgeois whose all bitter cos the Tsar killed his brother.

The fact you have to ask this question shows how little you understand about communism.