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Title: The Eclipse of Class
Author: Ron Tabor
Date: April 20, 2018
Language: en
Topics: class, USA, The Utopian
Source: Retrieved on 2018-08-25 from https://web.archive.org/web/20180825011311/http://utopianmag.com/articles/the-eclipse-of-class-or-keeping-the-vision-alive
Notes: Published in The Utopian Vol. 17.4.

Ron Tabor

The Eclipse of Class

Speaking personally, I see my main political task at the moment as

keeping our ideas and ideals alive in a political climate that is not

conducive to their positive reception by any significant section of the

American people.

As far as I can tell, our group is extremely isolated politically, while

the ideas we espouse are perceived as being irrelevant to the economic,

social, political, cultural, and intellectual processes currently

animating US society. Although there are many reasons for this, among

them our limited numbers, our ages, and our relative lack of presence in

activist milieus, the main reason is political. Specifically, three of

the fundamental aspects of our program are completely outside the

contemporary political discourse and are considered by the vast majority

of the US population to be not only irrelevant but also absurd: (1) that

our society is fundamentally diseased --cynical, brutal, unjust, and

corrupt –and is incapable of being reformed sufficiently to provide all

Americans with a decent and meaningful life; (2) that the solution to

this problem lies in a popular revolution, an uprising of the vast

majority of the people against the tiny elite that runs our society; (3)

that this revolution should aim at establishing a truly democratic,

egalitarian, and cooperative social system, what we have called

“revolutionary libertarian socialism.” In sum, any notion of

transcending the contemporary social arrangement and replacing it with

another seems to have been lost.

Our political isolation and programmatic irrelevance are somewhat

ironic, since the word/concept “socialism” seems to be as popular today

as it has been for decades. According to various polls, large sectors of

society, particularly young people, have a positive estimation of

“socialism” and consider themselves to be “socialists” of one sort or

another. To a great degree, this has been the work of Vermont Senator

Bernie Sanders and the political campaign he waged in the Democratic

primaries in 2016. Although Sanders never called for the establishment

of socialism in the United States, he did identify himself as a

“democratic socialist.” He also spoke highly of the Scandinavian

countries and implied that they are contemporary exemplars of what he

means by “socialism,” despite firm denials of this by the political

leaders of these nations.

Unfortunately, what most people understand by the term “socialism” is a

far cry from our view. Their conception is much closer to FDR’s “New

Deal” and LBJ’s “Great Society” than anything we might consider to be

socialist. From our standpoint, the popular conception of “socialism”

has been largely liquidated of radical content, reduced not merely to

the level of the reformist and statist program of the old Social

Democracy but even below that. Today, “socialism” to most people

signifies little more than welfare-state capitalism, the contemporary

capitalist system with somewhat more generous social programs. (Even

where a more radical conception continues to exist, that is, among the

Marxist-Leninists, their notion of “socialism” is what we consider to be

“state capitalism,” that is, a highly statified society, such as the

Soviet Union/Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, and, for some, Syria.)

This fact and our resultant political isolation have been facilitated by

the collapse of the majority of US left into and behind the Democratic

Party, the party that represents the liberal wing of the capitalist

class. Among other things, this collapse parallels and reflects the fact

that what seemed to be a militant popular movement, the so-called

“resistance” that emerged in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise victory

in the 2016 elections, has been effectively defanged and has poured into

and behind the Democratic Party. On the part of both the organized left

and the “resistance,” this political alignment has been largely

motivated by fear bordering on panic, specifically, the visceral

conviction that Donald Trump is a fascist (or a “proto-” or

“quasi-fascist”) whose goal is to overthrow “American democracy” and

impose an authoritarian regime on the United States, and that the only

way to stop this, if indeed it can be stopped, is to align ourselves

with, to support, vote for, and organize for, the Democrats.

There is an additional irony here. This is that many, if not most, of

the Marxist organizations and currents that make up the explicitly

revolutionary left in the US have abandoned anything even vaguely

resembling a class analysis of what is happening in the country and have

rejected any kind of Marxist strategy for orienting themselves in the

current situation. Rather than seeking to unite the broadest majority of

the working class in opposition to the ruling class as a whole, which

was the professed strategy of Marx and Engels (as well as of Lenin,

Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Eugene Debs), they have, like the broader

liberal-left, decided to do their best to tie one section of the working

class to the capitalist liberals while abandoning the rest to the

Trump-led Republican Party.

This is a reflection of the fact that the concept of social class (and

especially the idea of the working class being in fundamental conflict

with the capitalist class) has become virtually taboo in the country’s

contemporary political discourse. To be sure, Bernie Sanders

periodically denounces what he calls the “billionaire class,” but he

focuses his fire at the Koch brothers and other conservative

capitalists, while never mentioning the liberal billionaires, such as

Warren Buffet, Bill and Melinda Gates, George Soros, Haim Saban, Eli

Broad, (Dianne Feinstein’s husband) Richard Blum, Jeff Bezos, Mark

Zuckerberg, Tom Steyer, and the rest. In like manner, while Sanders

excoriated Hillary Clinton as a spokesperson for Wall Street during the

Democratic primary season, he never mentioned that ever since the 1990s,

the majority of the bankers, hedge-fund managers, and investors on Wall

Street have supported and bankrolled the Democratic Party. Moreover,

Sanders completely capitulated to this tool of Wall Street several weeks

before the Democratic convention, enthusiastically endorsed her

candidacy, and ordered his political operatives, in collaboration with

Clinton’s, to muzzle his disaffected supporters at the convention

itself. Meanwhile, most of the left has followed suit. This, sadly,

reflects the fact that for all practical purposes, the American working

class has lost whatever class consciousness it ever had, while the left,

including most of the Marxist organizations, have given up any effort to

represent it or to foment it. Instead, what has emerged is a politically

diffuse and uninformed “populist” resentment that has been easily

manipulated by the leaders of both capitalist parties to pursue their

partisan agendas.

The capitulation of the Marxist left to the Democratic Party is an

indication of their theoretical bankruptcy. After all, to Marx and

Engels, “class” and “class struggle” were fundamental, determinant,

facets of human history. They insisted that all history is in fact the

history of class struggle and contended (and attempted to prove) that it

was the very logic of this struggle that would inevitably lead to an

international proletarian revolution and the establishment of socialism

around the world. It should be obvious at this point in time (that is,

170 years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto) that these

contentions can no longer be defended. However, as far as I know, the

Marxist organizations continue to uphold them in theory while completely

rejecting them in practice. They have, in essence, followed in the

footsteps of the old Communist parties, which in the mid-1930s

jettisoned even the pretense of waging class war against the entire

ruling class in favor of supporting one section of it, the so-called

“progressive” capitalists represented by the Democratic Party, then led

by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This policy, known at the time as

the “People’s (or Popular) Front,” has continued, except for a brief

left jag in the late 1940s, up until the present, under the name of the

“People’s Anti-Monopoly Coalition.”

In sum, while these Marxists continue to defend those aspects of Marxism

that I believe to be untenable, they have discarded one Marxist tenet

that I think remains valid. Thus, while I reject the theoretical

contentions of Marxism, I continue to uphold one of Marxism’s strategic

conceptions: that of uniting the entire working class against the entire

capitalist class. In the US, this means, above all, explaining that both

the Democratic and the Republican Party are capitalist parties and that

the vast majority of the American people can never win their freedom and

the opportunity to live comfortable lives by supporting either one of

these outfits.

Among other aspects of Marxism that I reject are two centerpieces of the

Marxist canon, while I would substantially revise a third.

I. I no longer believe that the working class, in contrast to other

popular social layers, is ontologically privileged. By this, I mean that

I reject the notion that the logic of capitalist development (and all

history) automatically impels the working class to carry out a

revolution. In my view, an honest look at the history of the last 150

years shows:

A.The working class is not intrinsically revolutionary. There are times

when it can and has become revolutionary, but this is not the expression

of some underlying (let alone inexorable) logic of capitalism or the

nature of the class itself, but the result of contingent and ultimately

unpredictable economic, social, political, and cultural/psychological

processes.

B.Other popular classes, such as small farmers (peasants);

semi-proletarian social strata, such as artisans and craftsmen; and

other sectors of society, such as middle-class students, may also, under

certain circumstances, become revolutionary. (Incidentally, this was one

of the crucial differences between Marx and Engels and other Marxist

theorists, on the one hand, and major anarchist thinkers, such as

Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin, on the other.) It is also worth noting

that in many of the revolutions of the past that have been described or

identified as “proletarian” or “working-class,” the most revolutionary

elements were to be found not among the longstanding proletarians but

among those social layers, such as peasants and artisans, and workers

recently derived from those groups, which were in the process of being

“proletarianized,” that is, forced into the working class.

C.While the working class continues to have a structural advantage over

other sections of the population in terms of economic muscle, this is

not as significant as it used to be. Yes, workers on the whole continue

to be located in urban areas, which is where economic and political

power lies in contemporary society. Also, since most working-class

people have jobs, they have a degree of economic power because of their

ability to stop work, that is, to strike, even if this is limited in

time. Finally, many workers are still united in and organized by their

workplaces. However, because of the tremendous amount of automation that

has occurred over the last few decades along with other economic

realities, such as the transfer of manufacturing plants to low-wage

countries, the fact that small businesses today employ a significant

proportion of the working class, and the fact that many people now work

out of their own homes and/or are self-employed, this has become far

less important than it was in the heyday of “industrial capitalism.”

II. I do not accept, as Marx put it, that “social being determines

social consciousness.” In other words, I do not believe that human

consciousness is an automatic reflection (or reflex) of socio-economic

processes. This is one of the many things in Marxism that have a

superficial plausibility but which cannot be reasonably sustained after

careful consideration. In fact, nobody knows what consciousness is, what

ideas are, or how our ideas arise, let alone what the precise

relationship is between our consciousness and the rest of reality.

Moreover, the notion that social being fully “determines” our

consciousness, as opposed to merely influencing it in some way,

represents a denial of ontological freedom, that is, it defines out of

existence the idea that human beings, as individuals, groups, and as a

species, have the ability to make choices and to determine our future.

And if such freedom does not exist, the idea that human beings can

create a truly free, self-determining society, is a complete and utter

delusion, or in the words (actually, the title of one of his stories) of

the Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, “the dream of a ridiculous man.”

(The question of whether such ontological freedom exists or not has

never been answered, and in my opinion, never will be answered, by

science, philosophy, religion, or anything else. It is, at bottom, an

issue that everyone must decide for oneself [if, of course, one is

interested in such things]).

III. I think we need to revise our notion of the working class,

specifically, to broaden it and make it more inclusive. We have in fact

done this over the years, but I think we need to make this explicit and

to extend our conception even further. I believe the classic Marxist

definition of the working class is too narrow to reflect modern

capitalist reality.

Marx and Engels defined the working class primarily as the industrial

“proletariat,” that is, as workers in large industrial and manufacturing

factories and in allied sectors of the economy, such as transportation

(particularly, the railroads) and the wholesale sector. In their view,

these workers represented the essence of humanity under capitalism, that

is, people completely deprived of all their human attributes but their

labor-power, their ability to work, while all the accumulated creative

powers of historical humanity have been alienated from them and

congealed in capital/the modern technical-industrial apparatus that

stands over them, dominating them at work and, through this, their

entire lives, their very being. Marx and Engels also believed that the

logic of capitalist development, the necessary evolution of the system,

would impel the vast majority of human beings, including small farmers,

artisans, shopkeepers, peddlers, white collar workers, professionals,

intellectuals, artists, small business people, and even most of the

capitalists, into the ranks of the industrial proletariat. Eventually,

if not in their day then ultimately (asymptotically), humanity and the

proletariat would be co-terminus, so that the proletarian revolution

would represent the democratic self-emancipation of humanity. It was

this conception of the working class that was adopted by the classical

Marxist thinkers and organizations. The Bolsheviks, for example, did not

include white collar workers, such as employees of the banks and the

government, to be members of the proletariat. (These workers

reciprocated the sentiment. Better educated and working and living in

more comfortable circumstances than the industrial workers, they did not

see themselves as “proletarian” either.)

From the vantage point of the present, we can see that, at least in this

respect, capitalism has not evolved as Marx and Engels thought it would.

Thus, while today most members of society are working people in the

literal sense of the term (that is, people who must work if they are to

survive and who do not possess substantial financial assets), they are

obviously not all members of what Marx and Engels called the

proletariat. Many are white-collar workers employed in banks, insurance

companies, medical establishments, and other offices, including those of

local, state, and the federal government. Many are technicians of

various kinds. Others are teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, and other

professionals, most of whom are not wealthy. In addition, more and more

people today work as “independent contractors”; legally (as far as the

IRS is concerned), they are owners of small businesses: those who drive

for Uber and Lyft and those who work in other sectors of the “gig

economy”, along with street vendors, owners of shops and restaurants,

and other small businesses. In my opinion, most of these people ought to

be included in a political (as opposed to a narrowly ideological or

sociological) definition of the working class.

Today, as I understand the situation, roughly 20% of the US population

are wealthy or at least comfortable. The rest of the people, roughly

80%, are struggling to get by; many, maybe the majority, are in deep

distress. So, when I say I wish to unite the working class in a militant

movement against the capitalist class as a whole, these (at the risk of

being theoretically muddled and overly sentimental) are the people I

mean.

To me, what our situation adds up to is that, today, we and other

radicals face a choice. Either we abandon any claim to stand for a

revolution, deciding that it is not feasible at the moment or not

possible at all, and commit ourselves to support, vote for, and organize

for the “lesser evil,” which, to most leftists, means the Democratic

Party. Or, we can continue to raise and fight for the idea of building a

revolutionary working class movement, one that is conscious of itself as

being distinct from and counterposed to the entire ruling class. And

this, in turn, requires opposing both the Democratic and the Republican

parties. (As a tactical aside, I don’t think we should concentrate our

efforts on convincing people not to vote if they are inclined to do so.

Instead, I believe our focus should be on exposing the pro-capitalist

nature of both parties, while arguing that we need to build a movement

that is independent of both of them. For those active in political

organizations, this means opposing resolutions to endorse Democratic

candidates, to give them money, and to work on their campaigns,

including so-called “socialists” and “progressives” running in the

Democratic primaries.)

If we are to unite the majority of the American people into a militant

anti-capitalist movement, we cannot write off all the people,

particularly the working-class people, who voted for and continue to

support Donald Trump. These people have real grievances; they have been

victimized by the capitalist system that we oppose. Living in

medium-sized and small cities, in towns, and in rural areas that have

been rendered obsolete by the relentless march of the capitalist system,

millions of them are truly suffering, from unemployment or partial

employment, and from social isolation, depression, and opioid addiction.

Moreover, they are not all committed racists and fascists. Nearly ten

million people who voted for Trump in the last election voted for Barack

Obama in 2008. Hardcore racists do not vote to make a Black man the

president of the United States! While they have illusions in and

delusions about Donald Trump,as well as various levels of racist and

sexist attitudes, they have legitimate resentments against the

capitalist liberals in general and the Democratic Party in particular.

Remember, the Democratic president, Barack Obama, who claimed to

represent all the people, threw billions of dollars at the banks and

insurance companies and bailed out the auto companies but did very

little to help the real victims of the recession: the homeowners who

lost their homes, the workers who lost their jobs, the small business

people who lost their businesses, and the millions of others whose lives

were devastated by the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. The

workers and other people who voted for Trump have good reason to hate

the Democrats and the rich, corrupt, and condescending liberals, such as

Hillary Clinton, who lead the party. Following on Obama’s betrayal,

Clinton made it very clear, both in word and in deed, that she didn’t

need and didn’t want the votes of the white working-class and

middle-class people in the cities and towns of the Rust Belt and

elsewhere in the heartland of the country, people who once constituted

the base of the Democratic Party. I don’t know how we can even begin to

talk to these people if we tell them that we voted for Hillary Clinton

and think that they should support the Democrats this time around too.

As I see it now, it is people like us who represent “class

consciousness,” at least in embryo. If we don’t hold onto it and fight

for it, nobody else will. At some point in the future, such

consciousness may emerge among broader layers of the population. (As we

know from our experiences in the 1960s, things can change, and radical

consciousness can develop, very rapidly.) However, neither the “laws of

motion” of capitalism nor the logic of history guarantee its emergence.

As far as this year’s election and the election of 2020 are concerned,

each of us ought to act as he/she thinks best. If people are so

frightened of Donald Trump and the policies he is pursuing that they

want to support the Democrats in the next two elections, or support

“socialist” candidates running in the Democratic Primaries, they should

do so. I, for one, do not want to try to convince people intellectually

of what they do not feel emotionally. However, I will continue to wave

the flag of revolution no matter how absurd this may seem at this time,

to try to explain to whomever is willing to listen what’s the matter

with the capitalist system and why the majority of the American people

should rise up, smash it, and replace it with a better one. And I will

continue to look for and to unite with other people who think and feel,

in their heads and in their guts, as I do.